Category Archives: Great Britain and United Kingdom

Syrian Protesting Chemical Attacks, Lauding Trump’s Countermeasure, Shouted Down – Links to Soviet Era Antecedents

09 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

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Greater awareness of the Soviet Era history of the Far Left may help make greater sense of Hassan Akkad’s recent experience.

In relation to yesteryear:

According to Stanislav Lunev, GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the peace movements against the Vietnam War, which was a “hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost”.[3] Lunev claimed that “the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad”.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

Lunev, Stanislav and Ira Winkler. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: Russia’s highest ranking military defector reveals why Russia is more dangerous than ever. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.

In relation to now:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

Perhaps Great Britain’s version of America’s New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left should wish to recover the memory of it’s being played by Moscow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Great_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

Vladimir Putin’s fascist nationalist revanche — that thing once again anchored by secret police, the adulation of a Great Leader, and the reappearance of deeply patronized (and compromised) aristocracy — appears to have proven George Orwell as relevant today as back when.

Have another look at the silencing of the one lone protester for Syrian lives at the British “Stop the War UK” event:

After a video of the encounter video was shared widely online, Mr Akkad told the BBC: “I didn’t see them protesting against the chemical attacks, I didn’t see them protesting against Putin bombing Syria for the last two years.

“I wanted to go to that protest and I wanted to observe.

“I went to the protest and I saw a group of 30 people with placards, not a single mention of Assad.

“All the placards are against Donald Trump and they’re repeating baseless slogans with their megaphones.”

Fisher, Megan.  “Syrian refugee ‘felt oppressed’ by Stop the War protest.”  BBC, April 9, 2017.

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Trump vs Steele – An Emerging Credibility Gap

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Journalism, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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Fusion GPS had been hired by Republican opponents of Mr Trump in September 2015. In June 2016 Mr Steele came on the team. He was, and continues to be, highly regarded in the intelligence world. In July, Mr Trump won the Republican nomination and the Democrats became new employers of Mr Steele and Fusion GPS.

In the same month Mr Steele produced a memo, which went to the FBI, stating that Mr Trump’s campaign team had agreed to a Russian request to dilute attention on Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. Four days later Mr Trump stated that he would recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. A month later officials involved in his campaign asked the Republican party’s election platform to remove a pledge for military assistance to the Ukrainian government against separatist rebels in the east of the country.

Sengupta, Kim.  “Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months.”  Independent, January 14, 2016.

This scandal that has come out of the shadows — by way of the findings of the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as a consultant of highest repute; by way of the associated imprimatur of the highly experienced and respected former British ambassador Sir Andrew Wood — may not be returned to them.

The story appears to be taking off, a BackChannels’ opinion based on so many options for searching up the “Trump Kompromat” story.

The political mobs, among other interests, seldom appreciate hearing how they have been snookered, but they may have to hear as much as more comes to light.

As well acknowledged by the press, American President Elect Trump has moved to dismiss Steele’s report as fiction concocted by his political enemies, first within the Republican Party, and after his nomination, then in the Democratic Party that picked up on the availability of the consulting firm Fusion GPS (URL references Daily Mail, January 13, 2017).

Be that as it may, British MI6 — in fiction and film, James Bond’s outfit — has, as may America’s CIA, the deepest imaginable investment in producing for the state’s highest and most information privileged officials, clear, accurate, and complete intelligence in service to the state’s defense and interests.  The highest integrity — and loyalty — may be expected of such agents.  It is against that tradition that Trump throws chafe.

Trump and others may have been better off citing Moscow’s KGB history of “Active Measures” and “Disinformation” as a potential cause for Steele’s findings, i.e, Steele had been “played” by Moscow.  That  would have taken the story into the parallel universe of espionage and just as well — at the some future date — into the theaters.

This day may be too late for merely dumping Steele’s outrageous claims — ah, but Steele has behind him a terrific reputation for integrity — on Moscow’s prowess at playing “Spy vs Spy”.

President Elect Trump may be counted on to play “Trust me” with his developing authority as an American president, but there’s an old guard too of Federal government employees and an American Press — the “Fourth Estate” — known for its extraordinary tenacity when challenged by an especially curious political scandal and mystery.

Reference

The response to the information from the FBI, he recalled, was “shock and horror.” After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau. These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources. But he said, “My track record as a professional is second to no one.”

Corn, David. “The Spy Who Wrote the Trump-Russia Memos: “Hair-Raising” Stuff.”  Mother Jones, January 13, 2017.

Goodman, Alana.  “Meet the espionage firm which ordered Trump ‘dirty dossier’ – a secretive D.C. firm which has aided Planned Parenthood and attacked Mitt Romney’s friends.”  Daily Mail UK, January 13, 2017.

After he left the spy service, Steele supplied the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with information on corruption at FIFA, international soccer’s governing body.

It was his work on corruption in international soccer that lent credence to his reporting on Trump’s entanglements in Russia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

Hosenball, Mark.  “Former MI6 spy known to U.S. agencies is author of reports on Trump in Russia.”  Reuters, January 12, 2017.

Hughes, Laura.  “Former British ambassador to Russia warned US of Donald Trump ‘dirty dossier’.”  The Telegraph, January 13, 2016.

To some, the dossier’s errors and far-out claims stand in stark contrast to Steele’s usual approach to intelligence-gathering. West noted that only one intelligence officer was listed as a direct source.

“Nobody is saying he believes in any of this,” West said. “What he was hired to do was write a series of reports based on info he could glean from his contacts. His contacts are very good but they’re more in the business community than the intel community.”

Neubert, Michele, Ken Dilanian, Cassandra Vinograd, and Tracy Connor.  “Christopher Steele, Trump Dossier Author, Is a Real-Life James Bond.”  NBC News, January 13, 2017.

The talk comes from writer Nigel West, the nom de pen of Rupert Allason, whose Wikipedia entry notes the following:

In 2001 Allason sued Random House, the publishers of The Enigma Spy, the autobiography of the former Soviet agent John Cairncross. Allason claimed he had ghostwritten The Enigma Spy in return for the copyright and 50 per cent of the proceeds. However, Allason lost the case and was ordered to pay costs of around £200,000. In passing judgment the trial judge said that Allason was “a profoundly dishonest man” and “one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen”.[9][10][11] In September 2005, Allason was threatened with prison for contempt of court in relation to paying the damages from the 2001 case.[12][13][14]

Sigh.

In an alarming Twitter post, the Russian embassy in London suggested Steele was still working for MI6 and ‘briefing both ways’ against Mr Trump and Moscow.
A Russian embassy spokesman said the tweet – which said ‘MI6 officers are never ex’ – ‘reflected the mood in Russia’.

Robinson, Martin.  “‘I don’t think he made it up… but he doesn’t always draw the correct judgement’: Ex-UK Moscow ambassador admits he was middle man who tipped off John McCain to Trump ‘dirty dossier’.”  Daily Mail, January 12, 2017.

Sengupta, Kim.  “Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months.”  Independent, January 14, 2016.

Townsend, Mark and David Smith.  “Senior British politicians ‘targeted by Kremlin’ for smear campaigns.”  The Guardian, January 14, 2017.

BackChannels Thematic Update

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/01/17/address-christopher-steeles-2016-report-involving-president-elect-donald-j-trump/

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Triple Vision – Iran – From Nazanin Fatehi to Nazanin Afshin-Jam to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe- 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2016

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Iran

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Nazanin Fatehi appears to have committed a murder in self-defense as a 17-year-old girl in 2005.  The regime initially found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to death by hanging.  The human rights community took up her cause and the lunatic processes of what passes for justice in Iran released her (with financial obligations) in 2012.  She has disappeared.

Nazanin Afshin-Jam, an Iranian-Canadian possessed of gorgeous looks and multiple talents took up Fatehi’s cause on top of the cause of freedom in Iran and became part of the run-up to the 2009 challenge to the regime. As an advocate for Nazanin Fatehi, she published a book, The Tale of Two Nazanins (2012).

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is today a British citizen held by the regime on secret charges — an affront to British Power, a potential casus belli — and part of an absurd diplomacy involving provocative behaviors (e.g., seizing patrol boats in open waters) that appears to play out between Iran and its western marks with fair regularity.

Posted to YouTube December 22, 2006.

Posted to YouTube April 27, 2007.

Posted to YouTube June 21, 2009.

Posted to YouTube June 3, 2012 (22-minute interview).

Posted to YouTube May 10, 2016.

Posted to YouTube December 19, 2016.

As of July 2012, the whereabouts of Fatehi, age approx. 25, were reported as unknown by individuals in the West with whom she had prior contact, with current contact being only the most sporadic.[2][6][10] A book from Canadian supporter and activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam appeared in 2012 chronicling the divergent lives of these two Iranian Nazanins, whose lives intersected during the period of Fatehi’s trial;[11] media responses to the book were generally positive

Nazanin Fatehi — the “Nazanin” referred to in the 2012 interview with Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Canadian Human Rights Activist

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, British Citizen capriciously and currently imprisoned by the Iranian Regime

Related ‘Fast-Link” Reference

http://news.sky.com/video/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-is-serving-five-years-in-prison-for-charges-that-remain-secret-10667803 – 11/22/2016.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/22/british-woman-jailed-iran-must-take-two-year-old-daughter-prison/ – 12/22/2016.

Change.org Petition

https://www.change.org/p/free-nazanin-ratcliffe

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Also in Media: “A wake-up call: Jews challenged in the UK” | Noor Dahri | The Blogs | The Times of Israel | November 10, 2016

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Great Britain and United Kingdom

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As a former anti-Semite and anti-Zionist campaigner, I am very worried about the recent wave of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incidents happening across the UK. I know anti-Semitism, I practised it and I can smell the threat which is on its way to the Jewish community of the UK.

Source: A wake-up call: Jews challenged in the UK | Noor Dahri | The Blogs | The Times of Israel

Note:

“When I look at the flag of Israel, I realise the true meaning of this flag is as the symbol of those six million Jewish martyrs who sacrificed their most valuable lives for the future of their race and religion, for the future of their children and for the future of the only Jewish nation in the world.”

The true meaning of Israel’s flag isn’t about the Holocaust, which is just one event, however horrifying and ultimately ineffable it may have been, but signal of more than 5,000 years of the survival of Jewish culture, ethics, language, and law — and perhaps today signal as well of the survival of the influence of the same in others, much including Christians and Muslims, for without Moses in the hagiography, there would be neither Jesus nor Muhammad.  There have been always other possibilities, but the lore and intellectual adventure of the Hebrews appears to have served the formation of the two great contemporary religions.

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Note – Russian “Influence Operations”

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, France, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Political Psychology, Russia, United States of America

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In the unruly and frequently unpredictable way of the web, Jakub Janda’s “Czech intelligence alarmed by Russian ‘threat'” (Sept. 2) showed up on the desktop unaccompanied by other recent or breaking “influence news” and was simply passed along by BackChannels.

Not thirty minutes later (and published just six hours ago):

Priest, Dana, Ellen Nakashima, and Tom Hamburger.  “Intelligence community investigating covert Russian influence operations in the United States.”  The Washington Post, September 5, 2016:

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.

Related in The Washington Post: “Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s” (Michael Birnbaum, March 8, 2015).

Related in Defense One: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-american-president/130163/ (Patrick Tucker, July 24, 2016).

With even a little looking into “Russian influence operations”, one finds gems.

Here’s one from France:

The French Coordination Council of Compatriots is a subsidiary of the International Council of Russian Compatriots established in October 2003, the Putin equivalent of the Ausland Organization (AO) created by the Nazi Party in 1931 in order to mobilize the German diasporas to serve the Reich. This network now relies on the “Russian world” (Russkiy mir), an organization founded in 2007, which signed a collaboration agreement with the Orthodox Church in November 2009.[2] The first Forum of Russian Compatriots was held in France in September 2011 at the Russian Embassy. At the 3rd Forum organized in October 2013, French citizens of Russian origin were explicitly invited by the attending representatives of the Russian authorities to become vectors of the Kremlin’s policy in France.[3] In France the role of the Moscow Patriarchate in the seduction of the conservative right should not be underestimated. Since 2000 the Moscow Patriarchate has been taking over Russian Orthodox parishes formerly in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, reportedly with the occasional help of the Russian special services.

http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-party-france (Francoise Thom, June 15, 2016).  The Thom’s article is rich with information on Moscow’s infiltration of France’s cultural and political machinery.

From UK Scotland comes an account of “framing”, a technique that takes a given reality but sets out to cast the same in a disparaging manner:

It was a moment in which the people of Scotland were vulnerable, says independence campaigner Douglas Daniel, who was present at the vote count and wrote about it for the political website Wings Over Scotland.

At the time, he says, he knew nothing about the ROIIP team.

“It wasn’t until the articles speaking about ‘Russia’ and saying the process was flawed [appeared] that I became aware of their existence,” says Daniel.

Sure enough, by the end of the day after the vote, the ROIIP delegation’s damning verdict was all over the British and Russian press.

The vote in Scotland “[did] not conform to generally accepted international principles of referendums,” said Borisov, the delegation’s head.

https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/5368-brexit-how-russian-influence-undermines-public-trust-in-referendums – June 20, 2016 by Iggy Ostanin and Eleanor Rose for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which is supported by “grants by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the United States Department of State, the Swiss Confederation, the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Google Ideas and the Knight Foundation, i.e., Moscow’s opposition, including George Soros, whose own organization may have taken on some life of its own through staffers now associated with Black Lives Matter and other “western critics” (to put it very mildly).

In the above cited quotation and article, the “ROIIP” was Russia’s “election monitoring” organization that ended up predictably devising and promoting criticism certain to cause dissension in the Scottish electorate.

Again (if you’re a BackChannels regular, you seen this point made many times), the purpose of the spin appears to be that of sowing discord and conflict in Moscow’s target states.

The point was writ large with the January 2016 announcement of a Congressionally-backed mission to review of clandestine Russian funding of European parties over the last decade:

A dossier of “Russian influence activity” seen by The Sunday Telegraph identified Russian influence operations running in France, the Netherlands, Hungary as well as Austria and the Czech Republic, which has been identified by Russian agents as an entry-point into the Schengen free movement zone.

The US intelligence review will examine whether Russian security services are funding parties and charities with the intent of “undermining political cohesion”, fostering agitation against the Nato missile defence programme and undermining attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/12103602/America-to-investigate-Russian-meddling-in-EU.html (Peter Foster, Matthew Holehouse, January 16, 2016).

Related (possibly): Bertrand, Natasha.  “America’s top spy just hinted at how much leverage Russia truly has over Washington.”  Business Insider, Military & Defense, July 29, 2016.

Additional Reference

Estonia

http://www.fpri.org/article/2015/10/russian-propaganda-disinformation-and-estonias-experience/ – 10/4/2015

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/russians-estonia-twenty-years-after – 7-8/2014 (Backgrounder involving Russophone relationships in Russia’s “near abroad”):

As I remember it, the first signs of danger started appearing close to ten years ago, when, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people in Russia and in former Soviet republics started expressing their discontent about the poor economic situation, social inequality, and political chaos. The post-Soviet emphasis on developing democracy gradually started to fade, replaced with other concerns, above all a critical attitude toward the United States and the West in general, which was considered to be responsible for the decline of Russia. The message of the Russian powers had changed, and everything from television and large-scale events to daily interactions and personal attitudes reflected this. The Soviet Union and its World War II victory became more hallowed; red flags, red stars, and portraits of Lenin and Stalin reappeared. So too did the glorification of the Russian Empire. Drivers in Ida-Viru County, for example, decorated their cars with the orange-and-black Ribbon of St. George, a symbol of military valor in czarist Russia. In an attempt to show pride in their Russian heritage by supporting both czarist and Soviet imperialism, these patriots seemed to forget that the Bolsheviks oppressed recipients of the Order of St. George and executed many of them.

Works by energy consultant Agnia Grigas always prove enlightening as regards Russian influence and policy in its foreign relations.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Russia%20and%20Eurasia/0812bp_grigas.pdf (Agnia Grigas, August 2012): “Legacies, Coercion and Soft Power: Russian Influence in the Baltic States“.

Ragozin, Leonid.  “Putin’s Hand Grows Stronger as Right-Wing Parties Advance in Europe.”  Bloomberg, March 15, 2016:

Ten days ago, yet another far-right party supporting Russia gained a foothold in an EU country, this time Slovakia. People’s Party, Our Slovakia won 8% of the vote in national elections, joining a burgeoning club including Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.

The far-right parties, which often stem from neo-Nazi groups and sport crypto-fascist insignia, are the most visible layer of the pro-Russia camp in Europe. With Europe engulfed in a migrant crisis sparked by the war in Syria, their anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric is in hot demand across the continent, particularly in the east. Party leaders are frequent guests in Moscow, and many of them are closely linked to Russia’s own reactionary networks. Together, they are nudging the political mainstream toward radical nationalism, which these days often comes hand in hand with pro-Russian sentiment.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_influence_operations_in_Estonia

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Also in Media – Op-Ed: Pakistani man condemns anti-Semitic mobs who gang raped Jewish man – | JerusalemOnline

01 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Political Psychology

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After the Gaza war in 2014, the Jewish community all around the world especially in the UK was targeted by extremists. Some cases were highlighted in the media and many disappeared as usual but the Police tried hard to bring the offenders to justice. One of the cases was about 52 year old Mr. Yisro’el Shalom, who brought his case to me. Mr. Shalom had been living in the Borough of Newham in East London for nearly 22 years and in the last three years, he was attacked 340 times and verbally abused nearly 60 times. He was physically tortured, kicked and punched in his face by a gang of Asians (most probably Pakistanis) because he was a Jew living within the Muslim community.

Continue reading at  Op-Ed: Pakistani man condemns anti-Semitic mobs who gang raped Jewish man – | JerusalemOnline – 9/1/2016.

FTAC – Absolute Power – Positioning for Greater Conflict

29 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Great Britain and United Kingdom, North Korea, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Ukraine

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September and October — flak jackets on and hunker down: We’ll have the election in November; Putin will have more assembled in Syria and Crimea and, in general, who knows what on behalf of the world’s other dictators; Erdogan will have sorted out Turkey HIS way with NATO at this moment deeply compromised by dissolving or near dissolving of the Turkish military (accompanied by the rise of a Turkish police state). As weakness invites war, expect “fireworks” this fall.

I don’t want to shout “the sky is falling too often”, but just this once, take a look at the total state of foreign affairs. American appears to be between presidents and the politics are hardly bringing us together.

These “rigs” in relationships have survived the Obama Administration: Putin-Assad-Khamenei; Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan.

The Russian Army claiming retreat in Syria has instead ramped up its basing and technology there; in Crimea, it still has Ukrainians fighting one another while Russian Orthodox Christians in the state march on Kiev. In the west, its “investment” in ISIS has paid off handsomely as goading populations toward or into defensive nationalist postures themselves. “BREXIT” was not a win for the UK or Europe: it was helpful to Russia in its efforts to destabilize the region, i.e., weaken its enemies. Or, taken this other way, because it thinks so much of itself — superior Russian soul and culture and all that — the manipulation proves to itself its own mastery over the world.

Russia’s message has changed with revolution and dissolution, but perhaps its medieval essentials have not: secret police, an all powerful head of state, a patronized aristocracy: they are all there on this day. And those who might take advantage of heightened east-west, medieval-modern, despotic-democratic tensions breaking out into conflict, they’re getting into position.

Even sitting at a desktop with few distractions (from political chatter, at last), once cannot “cover it all” — not China in the South China Sea, not North Korea, which has effectively updated its war footing with Washington, not Syria, not Crimea.  Overviewed, however, an image seems to emerge.  For BackChannels, it has been that of accentuation or amplification along Red, Brown, and Green — Old Communists, New Nationalists, and Islamists — lines sufficient to weaken the west and make way for the greater establishment of authoritarian / despotic governance and all that may be implied by that.

Related Reference

Kureev, Artem.  “The Invisible Russian military presence in Syria.”  Russia Direct, July 19, 2016.

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Political Myopia – Chilcot in the Post-Soviet Context

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Fast News Share, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Iraq, Middle East, North America, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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BackChannels places conflicts involving Iraq in the post-Cold War framework and suggests that military engagements were part of “containment” and the “building down” of Soviet alliances that remained in character authoritarian and openly supportive of terrorism.

Note too that Russia today refuses to designate either Hezbollah or Hamas as terrorist organizations; that is has met in recent years with PFLP (easily looked up online), well recognized for the hijacking of airliners in the 1970s; and, sigh, that it is most responsible for allowing / enabling / encouraging Assad to incubate ISIS — by deselection for bombing and combat — in Syria as that conflict got under way.

Basically, Russia then and Russia today criminally manipulates foreign political constituencies to suit its own kleptocratic appetites. Hussein (and Gaddafi) were part of that enterprise, and perhaps as God willed it, both are gone (and thank God).

Yesterday’s BBC report on the Chilcot report  keeps itself narrowed on the image of Iraq as an oasis of stability, however miserable, under the rule of a strongman, and the report itself reasserts at face value the idea that “regime change” in Iraq linked to direct threats posed by WMDs, which imbroglio BackChannels would shove into a bin labeled “Potential Convenient Pretexts” (sorry the same don’t really work out) and the more general “Global War on Terror,” which period of observation appears to start on September 11, 2001:

10. After the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 and the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in November, the US Administration urned its attention to regime change in Iraq as part of the second phase of what it called the Global War on Terror.

Source: “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary: Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors: Ordered by the House of the Commons to be printed on 6 July 2016”, PDF, page 5, Item 10).

It is unfortunate that governments most devoted to “classical liberalism” and democracy should feel the need to resort to manipulating their “masses” (instead of free constituencies) because they have failed to publically educate the same in the longer-lived themes of geopolitics and history — or worse, lost that battle to the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left that relies on short memories to promote their own ultimately authoritarian, fascist, and totalitarian outlooks.

I don’t know what BackChannels is going to do when the 25th Year Anniversary of the Dissolving of The Soviet passes on December 26, 2016, but as that day is still coming up, it’s going to harp on it with the hope that other “English” and Europeans and others less free or more so catch a glimpse of Putin’s Excellent World (PEW), the world from which it has emerged, and the malignantly narcissistic worldview it continues to promote or install wherever it may.

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