With the annexing of Crimea, Great-Leader-for-Long-Time Putin has driven himself closer to the wall that stands beneath the banner, “No Farther.” From Syria to Ukraine, the Statesman of Respect, the same that continued arms deliveries to the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, thereby sustaining also the projection of influence paid for by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, has enjoyed and employed power at egregious cost to the humanity of the states concerned.
What have Russians gotten out of Syria other than the identification of their state with a monster?
While Crimea’s Russian contingent has obtained some measure of Slavic assurance and validation, one might ask whether as much was at all needed, and then, given former President Yanukovych’s kleptocratic display, whether ethnic vanity has not been served much at the expense of an improved economic future and peninsula-wide political stability.
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The peninsula’s native population, the minority Crimean Tatars, boycotted the vote wholesale, as did many ethnic Ukrainians. Authorities have already begun asking Crimean Tatars to vacate their property; one Tatar man, who opposed the Russian takeover, has turned up dead, his body bearing marks of torture.
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. . . the main thrust will be to attack Russia’s ambitions to be increasingly influential and respected in the world by freezing it out of bodies such as the G8, and projecting it as a gangster state. Russia longs for respectability and to become a super-power once more, but the Crimean adventure has scuppered that.
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This bland description of what happened to the Tatars is appalling. In May 1944 the whole Tatar population of Crimea was rounded up in days and transported to gulag-style slave labour in the eastern USSR: ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Stalin against fellow Soviet citizens.
Crawford, Charles. “Vladimir Putin, Crimea and ‘Double Standards’.” The Commentator, March 21, 2014.
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The conflicts I’ve looked over, so far, are loaded with disingenuous speech, for there is no other way to sustain a dictatorship that barrel bombs children except by lying about every facet of it, nor for that matter, is there any good way of maintaining one’s warm water naval station and kleptocracy with absolute certainty and control except by promoting and establishing the pretext for stealing it.
This blog has now a small assembly of nifty concept widgets addressing the mentality that abets and drives dictatorships.
Start with “malignant narcissism“.
It does not yet have an off button for them.
However, there is an “off button” in global political reality, and it is simply insistence on integrity in governance and related speech.
As much may be enforced by a free press, presuming the mass of it has some integrity itself, the many peccadillos of scribblers notwithstanding.
For various internal reasons — reasons known only to themselves — dictators fear honesty, starting with themselves. In their own heads, they must be great beyond imagining, and then in their social surrounds, that greatness wants its equal in validation.
Remember: the (malignant) narcissist is never wrong.
While one may wonder what enables a man to deploy — or maintain the deployment of — snipers intent on crippling children, one may go on to question the ethics and humanity of any anomic enough to keep the same interminably propped.
Comrades in crime?
Yes.
But oh what crimes!
A little bribery, corruption, graft?
Piffle.
Those things: apologize to the public, perhaps; do some time, maybe; retire to the marina; hang out at the mansion; mix with the beautiful people until the sun sets.
To do what the Great Bad Boys do — start by making an unmistakable statement!
Arrest children at the local people’s protest; move on to murder and torture (see, for example, “Children of the Syrian Revolution” [2012]).
Initiate an indiscriminate bombing campaign against communities primarily up in arms about jobs and local services.
Set loose one’s hired thugs and laconic snipers, the kind who shoot to kill their “enemies” while still in the womb.
Take it up a notch: while claiming to be fighting “the terrorists”, drag in the real McCoy — and work with them!
Get to a place from which one cannot retreat or recover, the scope and viciousness of the criminal misjudgment — or criminal assertion of a sadistic bent — being too great.
And bond with like-minded others, the kind that like Yanukovych my write their reflections — also their blackmails, bribes, loans at high interest, perhaps — in diaries and memos.
The enormity of the crimes political and the blood spilled with them may be what bonds Putin-Assad-Khamenei and Putin-Yanukovych and Chinese political elites with Nicolas Maduro and his new hires who seem to know how to shoot while rolling on two wheels.
Thugocrats love Vesparados.
Once firmly on that track, the only “off switch” is what others may do to derail that black locomotive of a personality in its every facet.
And afterward, should the good prevail, God willing, the good may demand integrity from the next empowered politician arriving at “reset”.
Death on Wheels — Two Links
Back to the Beginning with Putin – Still Recent Related Background
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