Category Archives: North America

Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State

28 Tuesday Jun 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Russia

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“Full Tonto”?

Criminally insane, mad, off the rails, and in the manner of the Malignant Narcissist and Thug in Charge, Russia has lost all sense of boundaries and limits. Putin’s Russian Circle of Thieves has taken from the Russian People their dignity, economy, freedom, and security; it has marched into battle enslaved conscripts and either criminal or leveraged (both) officers.

I’ve made the case on this blog that the “end of the Cold War” became in its underlying reality a struggle for revenge on the west for the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan (shorthand: “’89”) and the dissolving of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy (“’91”). We are now about 30 years out (1992-2022) from Vladimir Putin’s most traumatic political memory (the fall of the SU) and very near direct war against what has become a politically absolute, criminal, and rogue state held in the grip of real mafia and political thugs.

How Close the Prospect of War with Russia?

How Free are the Russian People Under Putin?

Might There Be Some Practical Motivation for Russia’s Conquest by the Destruction of Ukraine?

Amelin, Anatoliy, Andrian Prokip, and Andreas Umland. “The Forgotten Potential of Ukraine’s Energy Reserves.” Harvard International Review, October 10, 2020.

Excluding Russia’s gas reserves in Asia, Ukraine today holds the second biggest known gas reserves in Europe. As of late 2019, known Ukrainian reserves amounted to 1.09 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, second only to Norway’s known resources of 1.53 trillion cubic meters. Yet, these enormous reserves of energy remain largely untapped. Today, Ukraine has a low annual reserve usage rate of about 2 percent. Moreover, more active exploration may yield previously undiscovered gas fields, which would further increase the overall volume of Ukraine’s deposits.

A Note on the End of the Cold War and Russia’s Persistent Imperial Vanity

I’ve no idea what CIA, GHCQ, NSA, et al. have been doing, but I’ve cause to believe I’ve both found and uncovered The Dots, fuzzy and large though they may be. Here they are:

.Felix Dzerzhinsky, born September 11, 1877
.Dawisha (RIP) Soviet Nomenklatura Transition Plan
.Nekrasov’s documentary
.Zawahiri in Russia, ’96-7
.Satter on Moscow Apartment Bombings
.9/11 Reflexive Control->New Nationalism EU/NATO
.Sustained Active Measures | Russian Mafia State | Syrian Barbarism | Trump Ascendancy
.Ukraine, 2014 Crimean Annexation, Invasion 2022

Circumstantial? Coincidental? Disconnected?

I don’t think so.

I suspect one or more Soviet Era KGB found themselves driving cabs early in 1992 and determined to get themselves back into business inside the state (watch Nekrasov’s documentary).

Motivating Zawahiri to team up with Osama Bin Laden to work on fireworks for 9/11?

Addressing Islamic Extremism (and Osama Bin Laden) may have been something Moscow and Washington thought they might work on together.

Wishing not to repeat myself nor dull the reading with definitions (“Active Measures”, “Destabilization Operations”, “Hybrid Warfare”, etc.), it may do to stop here but with the observation that Russia’s barbaric behavior in Syria starting in 2011 may have also set the stage not only for the invasion of Ukraine but added emphasis to its various nuclear-related civilizational, existential, and political threats: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has no conscience.

Regarding the term “Mafia State” as applied to Russia

Galeotti, Mark. “Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia.” The Guardian, March 23, 2018.

McIlvenna-Davis, Dylan. “Gangs and Gulags: How Vladimir Putin Utilizes Organized Crime to Power his Mafia State.” Berkeley Political Review, December 16, 2019.

These newly established enforcers formed the seedy underbelly of Russian society that expanded upon the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the move towards free-market practices. Since his rise, Vladimir Putin has incentivized gangsters to do his bidding in a new way. Rather than overt collusion, the Russian government, as ABC puts it, “make[s] its views known” and allows gangs to operate within the guidelines set forward by Putin.

As the European Council on Foreign Relations notes, more and more crime networks tangentially linked to Russian actors have appeared all over Europe. Multiple politically convenient assassinations or assassination attempts have been made on anti-Russia figures by gang members who have been accused of being Russian assets. The Russian government, via the Russian mafia, has dabbled in ventures ranging from hacking to money laundering.

Nevzlin, Leonid. “The Result of 20 Years of Putin: Russia as a Mafia State.” Institute of Modern Russia, January 24, 2020.

The west handled the “end of the Cold War” as if the key elements in “east-west rivalry” had been resolved and returns to the previous state of affairs could be dulled through cooperation, peace, and prosperity.

As much has proven over time an horrendous goof however noble the intents.

*

Regarding Russia’s “help” with the “War on Terror”: Rowlett, Justin. “Russia ‘arming the Afghan Taliban’, says US.” BBC, March 23, 2018; Maynes, Charles. “The Russian Embassy in Kabul Is Now Under Protection of the Taliban.” NPR, August 16, 2021.

*

The West–EU/NATO–has been “played” by Moscow.

Putin & Co.’s Russia presents as nothing less than a most barbaric, criminal, and self-centered enterprise bent, enthralled, and maddened by its own destructive capability, narcissistic paranoia (see “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”) and grandiose messianic delusions.

Posted by Fantasy & World Music by the Fiechters, January 23, 2016; on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BBELZFC .

This with Russia’s criminal political enterprise persistent through Putin more from the Bolshevik camp than the Romanov will end in Russia internally–or from without but with consideration for The Russians en masse and for the world’s Modern International Standards in cultural comportment, development, integration, law, technology, and trade, all of which Putin & Co. have chosen to degrade and destroy without putting up anything at all that could be called Good.

–33–

FTAC: Russia’s One Big Step Backward-Why Ukraine Must Prevail to the Four Compass Points of Its Pre-Crimean Annexation

05 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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Macron fears a nuclear exchange with a deranged Putin, but compromise anywhere along Ukraine’s writ will not damp that possibility. Putin’s criminal narcissistic psychopathy has been such as to compel ever greater distancing from the “narcissistic mortification” that derailed him on to a false heroic course in the first place. The only western solution for him and his codependents will be to reverse the tide in its entirety and get the demilitarized zone on the Russian side of the fence. In no way has Ukraine been at fault in relation to Russia’s aggression and barbaric caste. Putin, whatever demonic fantasia he may have as regards his own medieval revanche and resurgent and thug-reliant absolutism, may have just made himself Russia’s Last Emperor, Rus, and Varangian. Even Ukraine’s modern Russian-speaking citizens hate the onslaught driven by his delusional derangement.

I wrote that comment two hours ago here:

Times Radio, June 5, 2022.

Russia’s despotic President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has escalated his real black politik to threatening the world’s food supply and nuclear security, and to think that encouraging him with a small morsel of eastern or southern Ukraine will appease either him or the weak men fully inveigled in his criminal madness should seem to the cool headed among political analysts and politicians worldwide irredeemably delusional. “Vovo” has succeeded primarily in making himself Russia’s Last Emperor, Rus, and Varangian, and beyond that, he has ruined Russia’s character, credibility, integrity, and reliability as a modern and responsible.

I had heard in the high school classroom of the 1970s that Russia’s history had long involved “taking one step backward before taking two steps forward.”

Although I lack the scholarship for filling out that statement with examples from the 10th Century to this day, I would suggest that Putin’s Feudal-Medieval Revanche has accomplished nothing for ordinary Russians and post-Soviet neighbors (viewed by Putin as still client states or satellites in a cooked-up Russian “Near Abroad”) but to associate the obscenity of breathtaking corruption with wealth (as with Ukraine’s former bullying political mafioso Viktor Yanukovych) while otherwise crawling along, if at all, with modern economic development and law. In place of Russia’s cooperation, friendship, and trade in the international sphere, Putin has through his actions and words put on full display his own brand of barbarism, enslavement (of Russian soldiers, no less), ethnic cleansing, and the crudest leveraging having to do not only with basic energy and food resources but with the pride and spine of greater leaders whose accomplishments he may never hope to achieve.

Putin has ruined himself, his image, and his stature in history while Russians left behind have paid the price for his ambitions and crimes internally–and they will pay a price too for his crimes at war, but with one caveat: Ukraine and the rest of the world need the healthier, modern, and much higher integrity state that a post-Putin & Company Russia needs must become.

Related Online

Faulconbridge, Guy. “Putin warns United States against supplying Ukraine longer range missiles.” Reuters, June 5, 2022.

Of course there’s much else related online, but at this point, the actively engaged may noodle through the news and opinion themselves. While I may return to bibliography, I wonder if with short opinions whether a need for it remains. With some posts–and some unwieldy writing–the scope of coverage has required reference as dots for connections. Here where Putin has brazenly and stupidly fashioned a gambit that comes to “Step up, step down, or step back–or else!” neither experience, knowledge, prudence, nor wisdom counsel appeasement.

–33–

A Note on Russia’s Criminal President and the Long Effort to Destroy Western Political Coherence, Cohesion, and Will

21 Monday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia, Ukraine

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Karen Dawisha -> Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya’s “Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case” -> David Satter’s “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power” -> Anna Politkovskaya’s A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya -> John Schindler’s “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence” -> 9/11 : Reflexive Control -> New Nationalism — in Wikipedia, “Neo-Nationalism” — in EU/NATO and its effects in Great Britain (BREXIT), Hungary (Orban), Italy (Far Right), Poland, Turkey (Erdogan’s feudal revanche), United States (Trump).

Why?

Karen Dawisha detailed how the Soviet nomenklatura prepared in the mid-1980s for the demise of their state and what would have been their fall from grace but for plans to capture the state’s assets for themselves.

Mission accomplished.

Husband and wife Andrew Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya documented in part how former KGB driving cabs determined to return to their former status in power as politically criminal agents with the master who seems today busy with trying to steal back a state that had gotten rid of its Moscow puppet. Once again, Moscow’s premier secret police–from Okhrana to Cheka to FSB–have succeeded in destroying goodness and justice in Russia (the west may be only waiting for the Russians to figure out how they have been themselves once again enslaved).

David Satter has made a mission of convincing the world that Putin’s ascent to power was predicated by the KGB’s false flag bombing of apartment buildings over which the fingers would point toward Chechen Rebels. Given the Kremlin’s penchant for absurd lies, barbaric acts elsewhere, and dramatic political theater and reputation for Orwellian perceptual control across time, I’ve been convinced.

Anna Politkovskaya reported directly on the brutalizing of Chechen villages to drive men and boys into the camps of experienced Chechen terrorists while sustaining an Islamist warlord in power.

According to John Schindler, the KGB had terrorist Ayman al Zawahiri of hijacker coordination fame as a guest over the winter of 1996-7, which makes sense of a timeline that fits with the KGB’s “recovery” of its less savory powers a little earlier in the mid-1990s (do watch the Nekrasov documentary for what happened in the gap between the “end of the Cold War” and the launching of revenge for the Soviet loss in Afghanistan and subsequent bankruptcy).

Aside, those fond of serial coincidences may enjoy looking up Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday and taking into the consideration the role of “1” in the dissolving of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the September 11 attack on the United States in 2001, the start of civil war in Syria in 2011, predicated in part on fighting “The Terrorists” (together with the west), and now the Russian Invasion of Ukraine here in 2021.

Hey, wait a minute!

Lol.

(“Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps”).

Motivating terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center while working with western security to eliminate terrorism . . . that’s pretty slick, but it fits with the temperament of the damned that have also sustained the Middle East Conflict and countless other “frozen conflicts”– as well as dictatorships — worldwide, and it also helps answer the question as to why the west has bent backward so often for so long in the interest of sustained peace beneath the black cloud of mutually assured nuclear destruction.

To this point, the west (again, Zawahiri, KGB, from 1996, it’s easy to see) has been repeatedly bitten by Islamic Terrorism, albeit less lately than in previous decades, and thereby encouraged to stand up for its own cultures — and Christian or secular governments — while treated to waves of migrations motivated by once Soviet-backed conflicts, crime-related violence (at the transnational level), and economic despair (note: although desertification in the presence of global warming has had nefarious political effects, including motivating appeals to despots for relief).

When Obama offered the “reset”, the decision point to join the west over Syria’s agricultural woes — and later to the United States said, “don’t forget who you are” — as well as the stern warning to Putin not to return to the “KGB Playbook” . . . it was already too late (really: have a look at 2016’s Putin-Trump billboard in Russia – or the old “laundromat” story – or the real estate stories).

So here we are with a monster dredged from fascist, feudal, and medieval quarters that now razes with blunt force and fire a modern state aspiring to a democratic, free, honorable, and peaceful future. While we have done more than stand by and watch–we have been responding to our more stranded neighbor–we haven’t faced the full criminal scope of the Russian President’s magical narcissistic beliefs and his related and wholly destructive behavior. Deluded and drunk in power, President Putin lies to himself and to Russia, and yet no one will either dare interfere with his course, and, quite possibly, no one knows how.

Have conditions in the west to become “existential” to do as Ukraine has been doing?

UATV English, March 21, 2022.
Live at posting.

–33–

Two Twitter Spears

15 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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Life Online and the War in the Ukraine move fast!

With that speed, inspiration -> political punditry -> launch (something, anything, hope it works) has become a very short cycle.
***

Got to jump down turn around and send a missive flying
Go to jump down turn around and compose again . . . .
***
So it goes.

Sources for the first tweet date back to the Putin-Trump bromance of 2016 and the Republican chorus of denials over Russia’s onslaught of methods of perceptual channeling and control that were to be popularly known as “Active Measures”–>

It’s impossible to miss Russia’s criminal anger and resentment of the modern world in its aggression against the west as its secret police and other elements got to their feet in the shadows of the “End of the Cold War”. Out to the edges of the former Soviet spheres of conflict, control, and influence, an habitual penchant for Absolute Power and the endorsements of political theater and terrorism became fixtures of political behavior in Chechnya and Syria as well as Afghanistan (Russian arms and materiel were to support the Taliban all the way back to Kabul).

To this day, Russia’s leadership has shown the world nothing of modern compassion, conscience, constructive ambition, empathy, or humanity while demonstrating only the feudal-medieval barbarism and rapacious destructiveness and greed of the police state it has become and that it intends to impose on Ukraine and the west.

–33–

FTAC: On NATO’s Avoidance of Potential Nuclear Exchange Involving Russia’s Emperor Putin

10 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Great Britain and United Kingdom, North America, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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The West had perhaps thought the Cold War over on December 25, 1991 with the announcement at noon of the Soviet Union’s dissolving itself in bankruptcy, but here with are with a post-Soviet KGB/FSB President Putin in power who while demonstrating his idea of logical reasoning repeatedly proves himself barbaric, inhuman, and irrational and only best in his expression of unhelpful and wholly destructive madness. He appears to have no insight as regards his own malign and narcissistic disorder, but his army knows it, his generals see it, his inner circle suffer for it and none appear able to stop him.

It would appear that KGB Lt. Colonel President Emperor Tsar Putin has given himself the power to destroy Russia pretty much on his own through the employ of those he has managed to suborn to himself and who now appear to tremble before him.

For Ukrainians, who are but the latest to catch Tsar Putin’s cross-hairs, the question comes up as to why EU/NATO so far refuses Ukraine offensive weapons sufficient for controlling its air space. The Atlantic Council circulated a germane answer in the form of a survey of experts and simple chi-square chart, and this morning when both plea and question came up on Facebook, I felt bound to respond.

From the Awesome Conversation

In what follows, I’ve added URLs where they would be otherwise absent in plain text.

Out of laziness, perhaps, I’ve chosen to plant surprises, helpful ones, in the URLs and forego the creating of standard reference (a “Related Online” section has been otherwise a BackChannels desktop publishing tradition).

Here’s the thinking regarding NATO’s official avoidance of war with Russia beneath the black cloud of Mutually Assured Destructed attached to any exchange of nuclear weapons and related and possibly out of control (worse: computer-controlled, according to Putin) escalation.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/the-big-story/what-are-the-risks-and-benefits-of-us-nato-military-options-in-ukraine-our-strategic-risk-calculator-has-answers/

Note: Russia boasts two related threat assets: 2000 “tactical nuclear weapons” and fast-and-crooked (rather like Russia’s leadership itself) “hypersonic missiles“. Both may be easily looked up online.

Where the United States has forsworn first use of a nuclear device, Russia’s mafia-style doctrine has gambled on a smaller is larger option–and it is because the world has this smaller-leverages-larger nutcase getting everything he wants predicated on his demonstrations of ability to launch wars by proxy, his show of barbarism, especially in Syria (now Ukraine, and who’s next?), his support for “frozen conflicts” and terrorist organizations, and his employment of methods of political blackmail and compromise (look up Jeffrey Epstein’s visit to Moscow) and intimidation, he presents before all the challenge of shutting down what he would regard as his life’s work, piece of ____t that he is.

The first steps have been to erode his financing, hit his backers, and get Mother Russia — i.e., someone more authentically representing her — to take care of him.

The medieval world hates the modern–and His Malignance hates what he cannot absolutely control and plunder.

Update: An Argument for Increased Ukrainian Surface-to-Air Defenses

Rogoway, Tyler and Thomas Newdick. “Ukraine Needs Ground-Based Air Defenses Way More Than MiGs. Here Are the Best Options.” The Warzone, The Drive, March 10, 2022.

–33–

Putin the Pirate

24 Monday Jan 2022

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

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Well, he stole Robert Kraft’s Sacred Superbowl Ring, so what wouldn’t he steal?

Kraft’s ring now appears on display in the Kremlin’s library, quite a trophy brought home to Moscow by Russia’s Boss of Bosses.

From CNN:

The 4.94-carat ring is in the Kremlin’s library, where all official state gifts are kept, he said. It is worth more than $25,000, according to multiple reports from 2005.

A Kraft spokesman said Sunday the story is a humorous anecdote that Kraft “retells for laughs.”

“He loves that the ring is at the Kremlin and, as he stated back in 2005, he continues to have great respect for Russia and the leadership of President Putin,” said Stacey James, a spokesman for The Kraft Group.

Eshchenko, Alla and Faith Karimi. “Russian president: I did not steal Super Bowl ring.” CNN, June 17, 2013.

No. Putin didn’t steal it. It was a gift!

🙄

***

Will Ukraine be a gift too?

***

Putin the Pirate has done a few things under the table upside-down and sideways over decades to weaken western political coherence, cohesion, and resolve. Start with the KGB’s handling of Zawahiri over the winter of 1996/7. In connect-the-dots fashion, I believe that stay led to the attack by jet hijacking Islamists on 9/11 that in turn goosed the pride of western states in their Christian and independent political cultures and led to what has been referred to as the “New Nationalism”.

When bees sting and flesh swells, the response has not been called “proud flesh” for nothing.

The popular western response in enmity and fear regarding Islam has not been misplaced in relation to Islamic Extremism and related Islamist Terror, but the same has given rise to blood-and-soil nationalism, authoritarianism, and actual autocracy in some EU/NATO states. Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (one nation under Trump for a while) have each seen their open democracies challenged by demagoguery or political perversion.

We may also take note of the “01s” in dates: 1991-dissolve of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy following American intercession opposite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (from which Russia was forced to retreat in 1989); 2001-the September 11 attacks took place on Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday, quite a gift for a Moscow bent on revenge for its losses in Afghanistan-and, no, Putin didn’t do it–it was obviously radical Muslims assembled and deployed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden; 2011-The Horror taking off in Syria that would send millions of refugees into NATO (Turkey, which today hosts about 3.68 million Syrian refugees), the European Union (0.7 million-Germany), and Scandinavia (0.3 million), another goad for the defense of the rightly ethnolinguistic state cultures settled and enjoying the benefits of, well, being themselves, the only problem being a concomitant drift toward the same feudal-medieval worldviews and fascination with authority held by Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, and Vladimir Putin; 2021-Russia’s repeated threats by military feint against Ukraine, a young democratic state seeking NATO accession, and, by extension, NATO itself, but not quite as Ukraine remains without accession.

So hey, Bob (Kraft), George and George, Jr. (Bush), where are you today with Putin (the thief)?

***

Where and when are dictatorships to be stopped?

Is it when one or another has engaged in political repression and breathtaking plunder at home?

Should it be when the security service agents and agent provocateur show up within the borders of one’s democratic state?

Should it be when the tanks roll into a neighboring state struggling for its own sovereignty against barbaric force and the possibility of a return to corrupt, kleptocratic, and tyrannical governance?

Reference

Amante, Angelo and Crispian Balmer. “Analysis: Italy’s Salvini struggles as rightist ally grows stronger.” Reuters, May 10, 2021.

Bertrand, Natasha and Devan Cole. “Blinken says ‘a single additional Russian force’ entering Ukraine would trigger US response.” CNN, January 23, 2022.

Christophersen, Erik. “These 10 countries receive the most refugees.” Norwegian Refugee Council.

Cummings, William. “‘I am a nationalist’: Trump’s embrace of controversial label sparks uproar.” USA Today, October 24, 2018.

Duffin, Erin. “Nationalism in the U.S. – Statistics & Facts.” Statista, March 11, 2021.

Ellyatt, Holly. “If war is coming, the West must decide how far it will go to defend Ukraine against Russia.” CNBC, January 24, 2022.

Fearnow, Benjamin. “Donald Trump Urges Americans to Bring ‘Nationalism’ Back Into the Mainstream.” Newsweek, November 19, 2019.

Gross, Terry. “Manafort’s Guilty Plea Details His Entanglement with Russian-Backed Oligarchs.” NPR, September 19, 2018.

Harding, Luke. “Former Trump aide approved ‘black ops’ to help Ukraine president.” The Guardian, April 5, 2018.

Hemon, Aleksandar. “Trump’s Nationalism Advances on a Predictable Trajectory to Violence. His Supporters Will Kill When They’re Told To.” The Intercept, May 2, 2020.

Kajta, Justyna. “From street to state: How radical nationalists gained power in Poland.” Open Democracy, April 1, 2021.

Musharbash, Yassin. “The Globalization of Far-Right Extremism: An Investigative Report.” CTC Sentinel, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 14:6, July/August 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “Syria: The Horror: 2011.” BackChannels, December 29, 2017.

Oppenheim, James S. “Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements.” BackChannels, October 9, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “Ukraine: A Reminder.” BackChannels, December 7, 2021.

Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Schuster, Simon. “How Paul Manafort Helped Elect Russia’s Man in Ukraine.” Time, October 31, 2017.

Smith, Deyscha. “New details shed light on the Robert Kraft-Vladimir Putin Super Bowl ring controversy.” Boston, September 10, 2020.

Statista. “Ranking of the largest Syria refugee-hosting countries in 2020”.

Stewart, Katherine. “Christian Nationalism Is One of Trump’s Most Powerful Weapons.” The New York Times, January 6, 2022.

The New York Times. “Gerald L. K. Smith Dead; Anti-Communist Crusader.” April 16, 1976.

Troaianovski, Anton and David E. Sanger. “Russia Issues Subtle Threats More Far-Reaching Than a Ukraine Invasion.” The New York Times, January 16, 2022.

Turner, Lauren. “Ukraine: Boris Johnson warns Russian invasion would be disastrous.” BBC, January 24, 2022.

UNHCR. “Syria Refugee Crisis–Globally, in Europe and in Cyprus.” March 18, 2021.

VOA. “Russia Threatens to Deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons.” December 14, 2021.

Wikipedia. “America First Party (1943)”.

Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.

Wikipedia. “Felix Dzerzhinsky”.

Wikipedia. “Gerald L. K. Smith”.

Wikipedia. “Osama bin Laden”.

Wikipedia. “Putin’s Kleptocracy”.

Wikipedia. “Russo-Ukrainian War”.

Posted to YouTube by WGN News, January 24, 2022.

–33–

An America Compromised, Corrupt, Infiltrated

28 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology, United States of America

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Miami Herald journalist Julie Brown noted the presence of countless unanswered questions in association with her research into Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita industry. The full accounting of who, what, where, and why would today seem largely absent and sealed by Epstein’s own hanging, but perhaps there’s one aspect that bears further attention in this most distracted age: Epstein’s Russian interests. The powerful personal brands associated with the Epstein vortex range from Alan Dershowitz to Prince Andrew — so how deep and how wide the damage done?

State secret?

Anything’s possible.

Former American President Donald Trump has had his allegiance questioned quite famously in relation to the Steele Dossier, but what of his noted and more accessible financial entanglements with Russian money?

Whether by way of fear of being found out or found guilty of one crime or another, when have the business and political leaders of a nation been compromised enough to accept bridling by the state’s foremost enemy?

***

Should you pick up American Kleptocracy by Casey Michel, you will learn (here cribbing direct from the book’s title) “How the U.S. CREATED the WORLD’S GREATEST MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME in HISTORY”. Forget expensive cars and real estate, at least until one has established sufficient anonymous businesses- as-persons courtesy of Delaware, South Dakota, Wyoming, for a start.

***

Before Maria Butina, the “illegal”, got caught, American Administrations, including Trump’s, had given the boot to Moscow’s spies-under-diplomatic-cover. The question to which only the state, actually the CIA and FBI, might respond would be “How many more Maria’s might there be?” Doing what? How? And where?

***

With respect to East-West Rivalry and Moscow-Washington Relations, just how bad might compromise, corruption, and infiltration serving Russia’s defense and promotion of political absolutism and kleptocracy be here in the United States?

We know of at least one former American President having been up to his eyeballs in Russian money related to real estate (and few will ever forget or forgive his “Helsinki Moment“).

Whatever Washington’s true state of affairs might be with Russia — and a kleptocratic Russia unrelenting in its will to confuse and degrade EU/NATO cohesion and coherence — one may hope the open democracies of the west and their allies will renew their vows (for Americans, see “Basic Training” on this blog) and rediscover and reaffirm their commitments to American and modern civility, ethics, principles, rights, and values without compromise and, always, with compassion, humanism, and reason.

CBS News. “Russian spies livinig among us: Inside the FBI’s “Operation Ghost Stories.” October 13, 2020.

CBS SF Bay Area. “Alleged Russian Spies Told to Leave SF Include Consulate’s Chef.” December 30, 2016.

Cenziper, Debbie and Will Fitzgibbon. “Rogue Americans Stashed Assets Offshore, Eluding Victims and Impeding Investigators.” The Washington Post, October 4, 2021.

Cenziper, Debbi and Will Fitzgibbon. “The ‘Cowboy Cocktail’: How Wyoming Became One of the World’s Top Tax Havens.” The Washington Post, December 20, 2021.

Epstein, Adam. “The stranger-than-fiction story of the real Russian spies who inspired “The Americans”. Quartz, March 7, 2017; updated November 21, 2019.

FBI. “Operation Ghost Stories: Inside the Russian Spy Case.” October 31, 2011.

France 24. “US expels 35 Russian diplomats over election hacking.” December 29-30, 2016.

Mazzetti, Mark and Michael S. Schmidt. “Two Russian Compounds, Caught Up in History’s Echoes.” The New York Times, December 29, 2016.

Michel, Casey. American Kleptocracy. New York: Macmillan, 2021.

Michel, Casey. “A Ukrainian Oligarch Bought a Midwestern Factory and Let it Rot. What Was Really Going On?” Politico, October 17, 2021.

Michel, Casey. “How Delaware Became the World’s Biggest Offshore Haven.” Foreign Policy, November 19, 2021.

Michel, Casey. “It’s Put Up or Shut Up Time in the Fight Against Global Corruption.” The New Republic, December 27, 2021.

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FTAC: Aghanistan, Corruption, and Greed

28 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Afghanistan, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, North America

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While the Modern West most certainly appears to be at war with feudal-medieval, narcissistic, and totalitarian forces and tendencies worldwide, there seems a part in which the Modern face off with the Modern over the management of corruption and greed. This note From the Awesome Conversation may be accompanied by a minimum of inline or separate references, but I do believe each claim or implication easily substantiated with a little bit of online research effort on the reader’s part.

From the Awesome Conversation (Now Growing Old as I Grow Old) 🙂

Inline URLs have been added to the original plain text.

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HE was thinking “Putin”, whose black market provided the Taliban with arms and materiel and whose white market sells defense goods to allies on Afghanistan’s border. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/20/trump-peace-deal-taliban/ Grand Game thinking and Rare Earth Minerals have been a part of this tug-of-war between Moscow and Washington as has been the intent of “updating” Islam or Islamists hewing to impossibly archaic beliefs and execrable behavioral standards. Russia now has the Taliban where it has needed them — in power, out in the open, and free of any kind of support from Washington. 🙂

Moscow’s “Absolutism”, “Active Measures”, “Hybrid Warfare”, and Medieval “Realpolitik” have been somewhat proven against EU/NATO, which by “Reflexive Control” (see “Business Insider, Zawahiri, Russia“) has itself been pushed toward the “New Nationalism” with Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey motivated most of all to march forward into the feudal-medieval past.

Add the arc of Soviet / post-Soviet alliances x Areas of Control x Regions of Influence, and one may glimpse the persistently barbaric and feudal world Moscow has in mind for the global future.

Not only Zawahiri but Jeffrey Epstein as well had Moscow stays in Russia], and the medieval emphasis on “kompromat” — and potential public embarrassment — may have come through most clearly during the Trump Administration (and Trump especially had relationships involving criminal elements and substantial sums of Russian money — start with Craig Unger on all of that).

One more note on Afghanistan: the fate of that state would seem inseparable from corruption and greed on the part of all involved, from the native warlords to American industries fueled by Big Defense contracts and supported by complex battle systems requiring the cooperation and presence of ready assets, especially air-related, and the administrative and technical abilities needed to run and sustain operations.

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Related Online

Kazmin, Amy, Benjamin Parkin, Katrina Manson. “Low morale, no support and bad politics: why the Afghan army folded.” Financial Times, August 15, 2021.

Wilkie, Christina. “‘9/11 millionaires’ and mass corruption: How American money helped break Afghanistan.” CNBC, September 10, 2021.

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