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Category Archives: Regions

FTAC: “Oh, Jerusalem” and Islam’s New Divide

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Jerusalem, middle east conflict, Palestinian KGB, Palestinian Rescue, Soviet / post-Soviet politics

The prompt was the familiar — too familiar — and now cliche threat: the whole Muslims world will now unify against the “Little” and “Great” Satan that would be Israel and the United States were it not that Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran have consistently and with enthusiasm proven themselves cruel and evil to the Believers fervent or moderate:

Unless directed by Moscow — the PLO was once its projects; Hezbollah and Hamas remain its clients; Assad and Khamenei remain its fellows in dictatorship — the “Jerusalem Move” may well divide Islam.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/islam-supports-israels-right-of-existence/

The “Palestinian Cause” isn’t what it was when cobbled together by the Soviet Union and pressed into the minds of the unknowing or leaders venal enough to inspire jealousy and leverage it into greater power for themselves — and what sadistic and tyrannical selves they proved to be.

The Palestinian popular charges of corruption leveled at Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leadership as well — and their reputations for growing wealthy off funding intended for Palestinian development — may also turn support away from old Soviet Moscow’s pernicious designs. (Note: the Soviet Union will have been dissolved 26 years this coming December 25).


Referenced

Dahri, Noor.  “Islam Supports Israel’s Right of Existence.”  Times of Israel, October 16, 2016.

For Noor Dahri and other devout Muslims knowledgeable in the interpretation of the Qur’an, the “Jerusalem Decision” may call for choosing between Moscow’s tired incitements and manipulations of the Muslim community and a renewed message in scripture.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/ 

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

 

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

On Palestinian Corruption

Eldar, Shlomi.  “Palestinian journalists frustrated with inability to cover PA corruption.”  Al-Monitor, January 12, 2017:

No journalists in Gaza — no matter how senior — would even think of criticizing the leaders of Hamas, and in the Palestinian Authority (PA), criticism of any kind against President Mahmoud Abbas, or exposure of corruption in the PA, could result in the journalist’s arrest.

“We all known there’s terrible corruption in the PA,” a senior veteran journalist from Ramallah, the seat of the PA in the West Bank, told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “We know hundreds of stories about senior PA officials and about Abbas’ sons, but we can’t publish them or even talk openly about them.”

 

Laub, Karin and Mohammed Daraghmeh.  “In tough times, most Palestinians view government as corrupt.”  AP, May 24, 2016:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A gated community of villas with well-tended flower gardens near the West Bank town of Ramallah may help explain why Palestinians almost universally believe there is corruption in the government of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The secluded “Diplomatic Compound,” built for senior Palestinian Authority officials on subsidized land, is one of the symbols of what many Palestinians think is wrong with their leaders — that they are cut off from the people and award themselves special privileges.

Menenberg, Aaron.  “Terrorists & Kleptocrats: How Corruption is Eating the Palestinians Alive.”  The Tower, June 2014.

The Tower.  “New Survey: 96% of Palestinians Believe Palestinian Authority is Corrupt.”  May 24, 2016.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “Palestinians: ‘The Mafia of Destruction’.”  Gatestone Institute, September 21, 2016.

FTAC Addendum

I think there’s more to the story as Moscow and Tehran crowd Israel with military presence beyond Hezbollah alone.   In essence, te Cold War’s tension is back in place, and this time — and at this time — it appears the United States has chosen to assert western power with a move certain to be opposed but with uncertain cohesion in the Russo-Arab and Russo-Iranian spheres of control and influence. What Washington may have just done with Jerusalem stands counter to Moscow’s assertions of power in Syria and Ukraine. We have more or less planted a flag forward and now will see some return from the Russo-Iranian axis.

–33–

FTAC: The PLO Remembered

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

middle east conflict, PLO, Soviet Disinformation, Soviet Era, Soviet Political Manipulation, terrorism, Yasser Arafat

Source of inspiration:

Younis, Rami.  “Looted from Beirut 35 years ago, now on display in Tel Aviv.”  +972 Magazine, December 4, 2017.


“Similar to the destruction of Palestinian urbanization in 1948, the theft of Palestinian visual culture is another attempt by Israel to control the historical narrative and erase Palestinian history. “

And yet the authors of both the documentary and the gushing +972 promotion launch their criticisms from Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University with the help, frankly, of the IDF that could as well have kept its information out of the public sphere.

Palestinians may wish to revisit the real history behind Yasser Arafat —
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/ — who survived his repeatedly defeated troops and impoverished people to die himself with upwards of $100 million in loot (and about the same may be said of the living Abbas who has also built a remarkable system of patronage on the suffering of the Palestinian main base).

A few reminders about the PLO and perhaps the principle of evil.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/middle-eastern-history/black-september-group

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer119/dilemma-plo

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=795&x_context=7

For more on the Soviet role in the weaponizing of the Palestinian mind:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the-cold-wars-arab-spring


Referenced

Berlinski, Claire.  “The Cold War’s Arab Spring: How the Soviet’s Created Today’s Middle East.”  Tablet, June 20, 2012:

Two of Bukovsky’s documents appear in English for the first time in Behind the Desert Storm. The first is Yuri Andropov’s memo to Leonid Brezhnev in 1974 detailing a KGB meeting with Palestinian terrorist Wadie Haddad. It recommends that the Soviet government provide material support to Haddad’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The second is the transcript of a 1984 Politburo meeting approving the shipment of 15 million rubles’ worth of weapons and ammunition to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in exchange for a collection of ancient art. The invention of modern terrorism: All credit is due to the Kremlin.

Borden, Sam.  “Long-Hidden Details Reveal Cruelty of 1972 Munich Attackers.”  The New York Times, December 1, 2015.

CAMERA.  “Yasir Arafat’s Timeline of Terror.”  November 13, 2004.

Cobban, Helena.  “The Dilemma of the PLO”.  Middle East Research and Information Project, Winter 2016.

Encyclopedia.com. “Black September”.


Link Modules Related on BackChannels

On the Disingenuous Cruelty of the BDS Movement

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

On the KGB’s Manipulation of Palestinian Politics and Mind

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

On Russia’s Endemic Medieval Anti-Semitic Habits and Related Defamation and the Development of Other Political Disinformation

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

 

–33–

 

 

Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad Tribesmen Protest Threat of Expulsion, Qetta, Balochistan, Pakistan, November 22, 2017

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Khiliji Qaumi Ittehad, Pakistan, protest against expulsion

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In the above slideshow, Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad tribesmen in Quetta, Pakistan protest the threat of expulsion to Afghanistan posed by Pakistan’s government and military, according to BackChannels’ contact in the region.

Source claims that Pashtun tribes have been ordered to produce “proof of locality” before 1976, and toward that end, the state has sent out notices ordering tribesmen to submit national identity cards to the government.  In response, the Khaliji Qaumi Ittehad have undertaken a hunger strike — after four days of that, readers may see that the ambulance had to show up to rescue those who had essentially victimized themselves through that action — and related street protest.

Here follow a few excerpts from correspondence (lightly edited for readability and sense).

Historically all Pakhtoon are Afghans.

There were Indians and Afghans in the region.

Then the so called Durand Line was drawn in1893 that divided the Afghans…After Pakistan csme into being Pakhtoon on their own land were living.  Thus assumed the nationality of Pakistan which they heartedly not accept today.  However with passage of time they merged into Pakistani society.  Now they are seen as alien people .

The Afghan migrated after Soviet invasion is also the factor.

It is hard for Pakistani government to differentiate between immigrants and original Pakistani tribes.

Today, as a whole, they treated like animals

Wars make a mess of cultural and social relationships, and the Durand Line region separating Afghanistan from Pakistan while sitting astride the Pashtun tribal belt has seen more than its fair share of disruption through criminal and martial violence.

Request for National Identity Card Submittal, Quetta, Pakistan,

Above: “This is the form of chic (STET) which requires attestation of two grade 17 govt officers. Which is hard to find two officers.”

Below: “Now despite completing the process they are still denied.”

Rejected Residency Documents, Quetta, Pakistan, November 23, 201

This note comes from earlier in the conversation:

If one marry to lady, the lady also has to prove herself Pakistan and provide the evidence of 1970.

In number of families the male is considered Pakistani but his wife with so many children is declared Afghani.

Most of tribesmen have stopped visiting bazaars or the main cities and remain at hope to avoid the danger of arrest by the state security agencies


A web search for the Khiliji Qaumi Ittehad will show that the tribe has been active in anti-western protests involving drone strikes as well as anger with former General and President Pervez Musharraf, and one may find online images of the same burning American  and British flags.

Source notes the following:

Pakistan still think Taliban is strategic assets for it.  Pakhtoons are so dependent economically that even I can recruit thousands for any ill cause for very less amount.  Most of low rank Taliban fight it as holy war while their high ranks fight for money.

We the local see that war is the most costly exercise.  If they are not supported by state, they would never be able to challenge the mighty NETO — by state supported Taliban I mean those fighting in Afghanistan and those killing the Pakhtoons.

Madrassah is main factor for cheap recruitment. in madrassah they r only taught religious text.  They live in a controlled environment.  I live in the area where Taliban are kept and trained.

BackChannels shared David Satter’s coverage of the false-flag Moscow Apartment Bombings with the source, who responded, “Wow Putin and our rulers are so similar in action.”

BackChannels would question the conclusion; however, here is the bottom line as regards a part of Pashtun tribal attitude toward the State of Pakistan:

Sir I’m hopeless here. How would we survive since we r short of basic needs and education.  I know Russia backing Taliban. But the US role in the region is skeptical too. A country spends 700 billion dollar on defense and not able to defeat Taliban?

…

Quetta, the capital of Balochistan sees protest on the part of tribals live on their land even before the emergence of Pakistan.

They in all grounds of life were kept backward by state of Pakistan. They are economically poor and less educated.  Since last ten years they are being deprived of national identity.

Now these tribals receive notice from govt of Pakistan to submit back the identity cards that were issued to them. Give says that the state secret agency has declared them aliens.

Now an organization of these tribes under Tribal leader Nawab Salman Khilji (STET) is observing hunger strike till death. It’s 4th day of the strike but no govt official has contacted the hunger camp. They may turn violent if someone dies in this hunger strike.

Their camp is at door of Quetta Press Club but receives no media coverage . . . because media here is state controlled

While BackChannels may relay the above testimony as regards conditions, it may not — or not yet — from its desktop independently verify all of the source’s claims.  Nonetheless, comments on the depth of poverty in the region, presumptions about the character of the Pakistani State as experienced by “tribals”, and related beliefs about State — and American — culpability for terrorism would seem to ring true with other domestic and xenophobic mistrusts.

The Pashtun have been rudely treated in their remote and semi-autonomous areas, and it may be difficult for the earnest to convey a more accurate state of affairs.

With the Soviet / post-Soviet “toolkit” involving criminal activity, anti-western disinformation campaigns, and false-flag operations designed to channel political perception, it may be especially difficult for remote Pashtun to develop reliable conclusions about the political states of affairs that surround them.

–33–

 

“Kompromat”: A Compilation

20 Monday Nov 2017

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

democracy, dictatorship, Donald J. Trump, east-west politics, east-west relations, Felix Sater, Kompromat, medieval vs modern, Paul Manafort, URL compilation

Trump-Kompromat-URLs


Updates

The latest to pop up on Facebook:

Trump praised the organization in a speech—“I love WikiLeaks”—on October 10th. He tweeted about WikiLeaks on October 11th. The next day, WikiLeaks, seemingly encouraged by the coördination, sent another private message to Trump, Jr.: “Hey Donald, great to see your dad talking about our publications. Strongly suggest your dad tweet this link if he mentions us.” Fifteen minutes later, Donald Trump tweeted, “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by Wikileaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!” Two days later, on October 14th, Trump, Jr., tweeted the link that WikiLeaks had provided. The entire political world wanted to know whether the Trump campaign was actively coördinating with WikiLeaks, an organization that Trump’s own C.I.A. director would later call “a nonstate hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-gops-boil-the-frog-strategy-to-save-trump/amp – 11/16/2017

For the public, perhaps, the encounter with so much information buzzing around — rather like electrons around a nucleus — may well be jading or numbing; still, one may wonder about the Trump narrative in relation to Moscow and its still feudal methods of handling and influencing political events in the states it targets.

Have Americas voters by way of weaknesses in election-related processes — including the defense of Party (either) information assets, the defense of the American People against “Active Measures'” disinformation in the American “Information Space”, and, in the end the defense of American principles and values — handed “Washington” to “Moscow”?


Aside | Related

BackChannels will miss Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, whose dictatorship this morning is on the ropes.

This blog has often cited as rye observation and warning Mugabe’s stay in power as proof that a wily dictator may indeed make a life of it and hope to die contented and peacefully in his sleep.  Alas, continued political life in Zimbabwe is not looking much good today for President-for-Almost-Life Mugabe.  He has been expected to resign, and, as expected, he has so far refused.


Trump and the Company Encountered and Kept

On the home front, the nimble pack of the Fourth Estate has been circling our oafish President Donald J. Trump and producing reports of unwanted connections in the open manner (as opposed to the closed represented by Mueller’s legal hounds).

Herewith, BackChannels own bookmarks, unfiltered, unfixed, but for the “link rot” of disappeared web pages, ever present on the web.

What to make of so much reportage?

Should the BackChannels reader wish to live in a world where gangsters get what they want and hold on to it, where the world is ever at war but one cannot with accuracy comprehend why, where souls repeat themselves endlessly as if on a zoetrope spinning the same moving images against a wall (for as long as it spins), and where Orwell no longer matters, then stop here, for all is spinning as designed, albeit not designed by God (nature, or the universe) but by the same lot that incubated ISIS in fine Totalitarian KGB Theater style.


The Latest from Luke Harding

Nobody does it better . . .

. . . than Luke Harding when it comes to development of intimate knowledge of the Russian “mafia state”.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke – 11/15/2017

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842 – 11/19/2017


BackChannels “Trump Kompromat” Bookmarks

The desktop pigeon — that would the blog’s editor — appears to have a bad read-save read-save habit unattached, so far, to being fed, and the saving while surfing has been complicated only by the question, “where should this go?”  The links that follow were shrugged into the “Trump Kompromat” bin, and, in the way of the all-day web surfer, forgotten.  Even without titles and dates, it is something to see even a few on this course listed in one space.

•

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-idUSKBN14V18L | “Trump accuses U.S. spy agencies of Nazi practices over ‘phony’ Russia dossier”.  Related on BackChannels: “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-steele-idUSKBN14W0HN

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4115134/NAMED-British-Ambassador-played-key-role-revealing-dirty-dossier-ex-MI6-man-Donald-Trump.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/13/former-british-ambassador-sir-andrew-wood-warned-us-donald-trump/

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christopher-steele-trump-dossier-author-real-life-james-bond-n706376

The Spy Who Wrote the Trump-Russia Memos: It Was “Hair-Raising” Stuff

http://news.postimees.ee/3977431/estonian-foreign-intelligence-in-the-spotlight – “A meeting between a member of US president-elect Donald Trump’s close circle and a pro-Putin member of the Russian State Duma in a Eastern European country was picked up by the Estonian Information Board, Newsweek wrote yesterday, based on information from several people with ties to the agency.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/17/apprentice-contestant-summer-zervos-slaps-donald-trump-with-defamation-lawsuit.html

http://www.voanews.com/a/russia-kompromat-remains-alive-and-well/3677094.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims/story?id=45019603

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/russia-is-already-winning-214648

http://www.courant.com/nation-world/ct-jeff-sessions-russia-20170301-story.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/trumps-ties-to-russia-amount-to-treachery-to-the-republic.html

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/323192-dem-rep-claims-without-evidence-that-some-trump-dossier

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/politics/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-meetings/index.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-pal-roger-stone-admits-spoke-privately-dnc-hackers-article-1.2994990

http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/national-govt–politics/yachts-trump-financial-backer-russian-oligarch-seen-close-together/gI074W3JLqvEYrQ0hm9zlN/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/meet-dmitry-rybolovlev-oligarch-believed-tied-trump-article-1.2998754

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/17/flynn-was-paid-67g-by-russian-interests-documents-say.html

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/mike-flynn-and-russia-2017-3

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-mike-flynn-did-for-turkey

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trumps-jekyll-and-hyde-foreign-policy-214903

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/jimmy-breslin-s-columns-on-donald-trump-1.13288319

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/russias-plot-against-the-west-214925

Investigators on the Trump-Russia Beat Should Talk to This Man

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia

The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/trump-pal-busted-allegedly-running-hooker-ring-yacht-article-1.191136

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2017/01/23/bernie-ecclestone-reaches-end-road-formula-one-chief-executive/

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08KYIV2414_a.html

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/us-seeks-arrest-of-reputed-russian-mobster-23337

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.ukrainian/1mtgIacNtMw

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/21/trump-aide-paul-manafort-hid-payment-pro-russian-party-ukrainian-lawmaker-says/21904362/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-22/paul-manafort-s-lucrative-ukraine-years-are-central-to-the-russia-probe

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

High-ranking FBI official leaves Russia probe

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/presidential-pardons-might-not-end-russia-prosecutions-n797266

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/15/another-prosecutor-joins-trump-russia-investigation-242794

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-facebook-warrant-could-signal-a-turning-point-in-muellers-investigation/

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article162789803.html

http://verifiedpolitics.com/new-documentary-just-exposed-trump-tower-hotbed-russian-mob-activity-watch/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-business-partner-tries-to-erase-his-prostitution-bust-from-web

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article176003346.html – “Fugitive Kazakh clan has deep ties to Trump associates”:

The Khrapunovs, with the help of a partner of Sater’s, later purchased and quickly flipped three condos in the Trump Soho hotel and condo complex. They are accused in Kazakhstan of embezzlement and money laundering. The Khrapunovs face civil lawsuits in New York and Los Angeles that seek to claw back what the Kazakh government says is stolen money. Some of the cash allegedly washed through U.S. real estate, including the Trump properties.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-mueller-pee-tape-dossier_us_59d6b2e9e4b046f5ad972628

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/07/trump-russia-steele-dossier-moscow?CMP=share_btn_tw

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/17/ex-trump-adviser-carter-page-subpoenaed-by-senate-committee.html

The Trouble With the Steele Dossier

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/06/ivanka-trump-the-russia-scandal-and-her-billionaires-social-network/

Solving the Mystery of the Maltese Professor


Related to Felix Sater

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/felix-sater-donald-trump-russia-investigation.html

http://nypost.com/2015/12/05/donald-trumps-senior-adviser-is-a-stock-fraud-felon-with-mob-past/

https://www.law360.com/articles/688835/secret-prosecutions-and-the-erosion-of-justicehttp://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article174494801.html

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article174493821.html

https://shootingthemessenger.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/saterized/

https://shootingthemessenger.wordpress.com/tag/tevfik-arif/


Related to Paul Manafort

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/paul-manafort-ukraine-104263

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/trump-hires-fixer-with-soviet-connections/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-chief-paul-manafort-named-in-ukraine-anti-corruption-probe/2016/08/15/fa180f20-6327-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/paul-manafort-resigns-from-donald-trump-campaign-w435333

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-ukraine-kiev-russia-konstantin-kilimnik-227181

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/21/trump-aide-paul-manafort-hid-payment-pro-russian-party-ukrainian-lawmaker-says/21904362/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-22/paul-manafort-s-lucrative-ukraine-years-are-central-to-the-russia-probe

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/08/19/paul-manafort-s-man-on-the-inside

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

http://fortune.com/2016/08/15/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-paul-manafort/

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/manaforts-ukrainian-blood-money-caused-qualms-hack-suggests-235473

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/10/04/ex-trump-adviser-paul-manafort-conspired-mislead-bankruptcy-court-son-in-law-charges/723689001/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/26/feds-call-ex-manafort-associate-dmytro-firtash-top-tier-player-russian-organized-crime/514131001/

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/manafort-gates-indictment-explained/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/george-papadopolous-trump-guilty/index.html

Lawsuit: Trump Aide Funneled Mob-Linked Ukrainian Oligarch’s Fortune into U.S. Real Estate

–33–

FTAC: Absent of Boundaries; Absent of Conscience: Dictatorship

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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Active Measures, agitprop, aristocracy, authoritarianism, Chinese and Russian Totalitarianism, dictatorship, Global Information Space, information space, information warfare, malignant narcissism, oligarchy, propaganda

The prompt from my conversational partner: “. . . to solve these problems, we need cooperation, not war. And the main question is why does the government not understand this?”

The response:

Paper, scissors, stone,  and “paper” (money) covers and suffocates all beneath it while “liberating” those who have it and, perhaps (I don’t want to find out!), those who might believe themselves above it – or those of merely modest material ambitions.

My personal approach has been “Money Matters!” but is not everything; however, and this especially with our health care industry, there are forces producing polices I can’t field, and of course that inspires a yet impotent resentment.

Our government should be Christian, good-willed, and muscular (academic term “muscular Christianity” works in this regard), but it’s bending toward the criminals in the great mansions and penthouse suites, and I’ not talking about Bill Gates or most “plutocrats” but rather those who believe there are no boundaries between their perfect embodiment of the “isness” (I will find the word, literally) of their state and themselves. The businesses, the courts, the military and paramilitary elements, and legislatures are all theirs to exploit and manipulate on behalf of their preferred . . . associates. That’s dictatorship.

Let me see if I can find the word for existence as the authentic expression of spirit . . . .

“Esse” and “essence” were not what I was looking for but for an esoteric term having to do with the being of the thing within the thing. Believing in the singularity of person and state (as Ceausescu had; as Erdogan and Putin do) may comprise part of the messianic delusion suffered by dictators but unfortunately visited (with fist in the velvet glove, at best) on their subjected people.

I’m finding my reading of Russian history steeped in punitive control, and that doesn’t come with interest in “the masses” half so much as in the developing and sustaining of wealth beneficial to the image and power of the central figure in power.


Related, Recent, and Singular

On today’s Chinese and Russian totalitarian aggression in Global Information Space:

Walker, Christopher and Jessice Ludwig.  “The Meaning of Sharp Power”.  Foreign Affairs, November 16, 2017.

BackChannels maintains a brief bibliography of accessible and general volumes on Russia’s political history in the “Russian Section” of this blog.  For greater insight into the authoritarian-patrimonial experience of the political culture from the 9th Century forward, I would recommend Richard Pipes’ fine history, Russia Under the Old Regime.

Punitive control: in geopolitical space and in the various ages of the “rule of the strong”, including for Russia and surrounds domination by the Mongols, the power to control space produces arrangements with in to produce wealth.  Pipes’ — in the above cited volume — steps off with economic variance in the productivity of Russian land compared to soil fertility to the south to explain motivation for the social arrangements that would ensue in history and effect Russian political arrangements to this day.  What Pipes appears to find essential — and what most concerns this blog — is the prince’s (or equivalent or greater in power) considering the ownership of property and persons the same thing.  Worse — the test of sovereignty becomes the permit to engage in the wholesale destruction of both!

Now have another look at Assad’s destruction of Syria and incubation of ISIS as a useful foil and political tool (“Reflexive Control’s” little helper) as well as the very emblem of the worst of the worst of destructive forces.

Who has the control of it?

Moscow-Tehran.


Note: keyword tags are related this time but not directly addressed except beneath the category that is “Dictatorship” and its essential and unfailingly malign narcissism.

–33–

Also in Media: “Western Worries About Russian Disinformation ‘Just Fits of Hysterics'” | Hungarian Spectrum | November 15, 2017

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

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Active Measures, post-Cold War, post-Soviet Era, Russian disinformation, Soviet / post-Soviet politics

Of course the title of the Hungarian Spectrum article is ironic, not dismissive.

Moscow’s manipulation of “Information Space” beyond its boundaries is serious stuff, and the American public and other western democratic constituencies need to know it down to and through their grassroots.

Good examples of Russian manipulation can be seen in the Catalonian independence referendum and Brexit. Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis announced that his government had confirmed that a propaganda campaign intended to destabilize Spain came from Russia and Venezuela. They used Twitter, Facebook, and other internet sites to publicize the separatist cause and swing public opinion to support it.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh identified 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) that attempted to influence British politics. Russian hackers also spread anti-Islamic sentiments in Great Britain after the recent terrorist attacks. According to The Guardian, hundreds of paid bloggers work around the clock at IRA “to flood Russian internet forums, social networks and the comments sections of western publications—sowing disinformation, praising the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, and raging at the west.” On Monday Theresa May addressed the issue in a speech, saying that Russia’s actions were “threatening the international order on which we all depend.”

http://hungarianspectrum.org/2017/11/15/western-worries-about-russian-disinformation-just-fits-of-hysterics/


Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/10/01/the-active-measures-links-page/ – a short and goofy primer that probably should have a more formal twin.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/10/23/fake-news-genuine-fake-news-the-real-fake-news-get-your-fake-news-here/ – American mainstream journalism is “high-integrity professional” by design and training.  BackChannels believes it has been an authoritarian ruse with some P. T. Barnum thrown in to sell alienated or struggling white Americans (for the most part) on the distrust of the mainstream (NOT “lamestream”) media.

Reliable, verifiable, and trusted news — “clear, accurate, and complete” — forms the very foundation of public impression and related decisionmaking, and to smear the entire industry bids only for absolute and tyrannical power.  Around the world, however, what governments may withhold as secret from the press may not be known, or easily known, and from that comes a contest in democracies between governments and Real Press for general constituent and voter confidence in their elected government.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/ — Moscow’s Game.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/ – a good natured primer on the world’s most cynical political regime.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/ – a backgrounder in the form of a bibliography listing the most accessible and enjoyable volumes on Cold War history and related political mafia and disinformation (and much else).  Highly recommended: Disinformation by Pacepa and Rychlak and the Agnia Grigas work on Crimea.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

Call BackChannels the work of an obsessive curiosity by the most accidental tourist in political science and political psychology.  I’d say the editor would be a senior in high school, perhaps a junior in college, at this point . . . perhaps a little more sophisticated for breadth of awareness of related elements across regions (“culture, conflict, language, and psychology”) and ability to get the connections just about right.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/paranoid-delusional-narcissistic-reflection-of-motivation/ – if ever there was a psychological phenomenon or method accompanying the aggression of the murderous and tyrannical, the title gets it.

Related in Wikipedia

For the once-Soviet inspired, manipulated (and paid) Hard Political Left whose most privileged of the Party would regard the same with contempt for being pliable and useful idiots:

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

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

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

–33–

FTAC: A Thought on Powerful Global Elite and America’s Own Holy War in Defense of Democracy

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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authoritarianism, defense of democracy, political absolutism, Putin

Our (American / EU / NATO) failure to so far address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Russo-Iranian support for tyranny in Syria and war by proxy in Yemen, and our manner of perhaps chiding China (and trying to talk down North Korea off its military nuclear-development platform) may signal both result and cause for ceding the fullness of an authentic (!) democracy to the capricious will of politically absolute (authoritarian / dictating) elite and joining that at the expense of democratic constituencies.

Theresa May isn’t having it with Russia, but have a look again at what Tayyip Recip Erdogan has done to “NATO” member Turkey and at how Viktor Orban in Hungary has attached himself and family to state patronage.

Who else?

The American Jihad — why not appropriate the term and really confuse some issues? — may be to struggle against the extremist politics that divide us and to struggle against the “absolutism” or fascism and chimera of “national socialism” that may be in the process of being forced upon all of us.


I’m not sure the note was even relevant to the prompt, for the words came to mind after watching this June 2017 BBC documentary focused on Vladimir Putin with side trips into his relationship with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:

As the Phantoms of the Soviet loom over America’s international affairs, two other BackChannels posts may be worth a look as regards reminding ourselves just how audacious totalitarian manipulation can be:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

BackChannels believes that Moscow / Moscow-Tehran account in large measure for the contemporary experience of Islamic Terrorism and continues to promote the idea that Syria’s tyrant Bashar al-Assad incubated ISIS to deal himself the tool of a most useful enemy.  If you have a device that can prick or sting the body politic of a target state, then that same tool may become a part of bending your enemy’s political and security cultures to your own authoritarian will:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

Check the references.

Check the fit with other high-integrity and decidedly UnFake News.

–33–

 

 

FTAC: After the Cold War – An Observation

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

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absolute power, democracy, economic feudal estates, Police State, Russian history, Soviet Era

We may have misinterpreted the Cold War and most certainly misrepresented it as an ideological war predicated on the spread of “Communism” when, in fact, the tension has been always about autocratic / authoritarian political culture.

Open democratic systems strive to balance and limit the power of any one organization, party, or person to impress will on others without consent.

Dictatorships inherently represent police states, and the end of that kind of power becomes inevitably the power to visit suffering on others with impunity.

The “Empire” was Russia.

When the Cold War ended, the west may have opened its doors, its hearts, and its wallets to encourage democracy and the open market systems, and in some ways it started to work: the posture helped produced Kremlin adversary Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a part of the starting-gate mafia (to whom key state assets were sold) whose wealth transformed him into a modern and moderate capitalist politician.

The it’s-all-mine emperor-to-be (so today it seems) in the Kremlin disagreed with both liberalism and westernization and appears to have turned instead to building a feudal network of power to be distributed through the wealth of a massively enriched elite worldwide.

I have heard that Russia has exported as much as $3 trillion into western (rule-of-law) assets (I don’t have the time frame for that history of capital flight and seemingly quite compulsive and mad spending, the kind that doubles Trump’s money on a property and goes on to raze the mansion, thereby producing a $92 million undeveloped luxury beach front lot — it would be only money were it not also an investment tied to foreign wealth).

It would seem our businesses and properties may be working to benefit “Moscow” — Putin’s nobility — after all.


Richard Pipes book, referenced below, suggests that Russia’s princes adopted the outlook of the Mongols as regards power, property, and persons as the power of the same diminished over the land.  That early and traumatic experience with the Golden Horde appears then to have left its mark within the political culture that came to stand in its place.  By about 1702, the relationship between the powerful and the ruled had produced sufficient resentment and related insecurity for Tsar Peter I to issue a decree installing Russia’s first secret police organization:

According to its provisions, the head of the Preobrazhenskii Prikaz had the right to investigate at his discretion any institution and any individual, regardless of rank, and to take whatever steps he thought necessary to uncover pertinent information and forestall seditious acts . . . .  No one — not even the Senate which Peter had set up to supervise the country’s administration — had the right to inquire into its affairs.  In its chambers thousands were tortured and put to death, religious dissenters and drunks overheard to make disparaging remarks about the sovereign.  The uses of the police, however, were not confined to political offences, broadly defined as these were.  Whenever the government ran into any kind of difficulty, it tended to call upon its organs for help.  Thus, the complex task of managing the construction of St. Petersburg, after various unsuccessful attempts was in the end entrusted to that city’s police chief.

The Preobrazhenskii Prikaz seems to have been the first institution in history created to deal specifically and exclusively with political crimes.  The scope of its operations and its complete administrative independence mark it as the prototype of a basic organ of all modern police states.

Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization.  P. 130.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Related in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnik
Era: Ivan the Terrible

Modern theories suggest that the motivating purpose for the organization and existence of the Oprichniki was to suppress people or groups opposed to the Tsar. Known to ride black horses and led by Ivan himself, the group was known to terrorize civilian populations.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
Era: Alexander II, Alexander III / 1881-1917

Formed to combat political terrorism and left-wing revolutionary activity,[2] the Okhrana operated offices throughout the Russian Empire and satellite agencies in a number of foreign nations. It was concerned primarily with monitoring the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad, including Paris, where Pyotr Rachkovsky was based (1884–1902).

The task was performed by multiple methods, including covert operations, undercover agents, and “perlustration”—reading of private correspondence. Even the Foreign Agency served this purpose. The Okhrana was notorious for its agents provocateurs, including Dr. Jacob Zhitomirsky (a leading Bolshevik and close associate of Vladimir Lenin), Yevno Azef, Roman Malinovsky and Dmitry Bogrov.


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

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

The Russian Section of the editor’s library offers additional and in-depth reading for those on the edges of Russian Studies, which were necessarily a big deal during the Cold War but another element much diminished when the end officially arrived on December 25, 1991.

–33–

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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