Category Archives: Regions

#GOP: #NoConscience, #NoShame

22 Wednesday Mar 2023

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Alluded to in the above tweet–>

Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements
Trump, Corruption, Narcotics, Russia-A Glance
#DJT The Success! (At Failing): Two Tweets

#ModernAmericans should not be waking up to a daily feed of vitriol for and against #DJT who has proven himself time and again aligned with Moscow (video: “Helsinki Moment”), dependent on Russian wealth for bailouts or profits, incapable of running a straight show, and apparently bereft of such human basics as conscience, ethics, integrity, and normal moral principles and values (take the URLs as suggests: the themes are the thing and may be easily and exhaustively researched online).

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National Security and Drowned Tweets: The Way Twitter Works

09 Thursday Mar 2023

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#Corruption should have been #CorruptionGreedKompromat.

#ModernAmericans may have a choice right this moment between a “hollowed-out democracy”–a democracy in superficial appearance only–or an authentic democracy, for the above-mentioned hash tag might get at the truth. Our #UnitedStatesOfAmerica just hasn’t been herself lately, and as one must know that Corruption is the Cancer of States, there might be an answer having to do with it.

Where are America’s sworn counterintelligence professionals on the possibility that we might have been compromised by our own tendencies with money and pleasure?

I’ve posed the question.

Has anyone answers?

*

I’ve noticed with my most cogent tweets embedded with BackChannels URLs that . . . no one picks up. For the qualities, which are very good, very few eyes seem to see https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/ on the Post-Soviet or Cold War Era, 1992-2022 or, on the Orange AntiChrist (#OrangeAntiChrist) https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/10/10/trump-corruption-narcotics-russia-a-glance/ .

#WTF indeed.

Probably, if not “shadow banning”, the numbers in other twitterati simply swamp individual expression or voice. Individually, we no longer matter, and collectively, we don’t seem to count.

Related Online

Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements
Published here October 9, 2021.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1163931/jeffrey-epstein-boasted-putin-millionaire-secrets/ – Jeffrey Epstein visits Putin.

There’s hardly point in chatyping since my most of my posts, including the above mentioned, convey reference that leads to more reference.

#ModernAmerican #RealAmericans and, for each of us, all our old friends who really believed in democracy in support of rational, responsible, and responsive governance, some way of coming together, of organizing, of being together, would be helpful.

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#HavanaSyndrome Havana Syndrome – A Small Disagreement with ‘Findings’

06 Monday Mar 2023

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I had caught a glimpse of a now truncated Wikipedia page for the Navy’s first and foremost Science and Technology organization prior to the establishment of the Office of Naval Research, i.e., Office of Scientific Research and Development, so there’s no point now in putting in the URL as a response to the search term “psycho-acoustic research, conscientious objectors” would no longer be found there. That Orwellian absence will, of course, thin support for the contention to nothing.

Almost.

Since when has tinnitus ever been associated with Covid?

And just like that, all of a sudden?

And since when has any “mass psychosis” been associated with unusual experiences of sound?

Oaths of Office

Government officials and military officers in the United States of America take a very special oath of office in their commitments to public service at the executive level. It is an oath not to any agency or person but a pledge to defend the Constitution of the nation itself. Implicit in that pledge is the promise to defend democracy, dignity, freedom, and humanity itself in a structured way envisioned by the Founding Fathers. It seems a long way from those 18th Century visionaries to ourselves now mired in division and suspicious of government, but there is this moment (must I take a screenshot?) on the public page of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a statement about Truth: “We seek the truth; speak truth to power; and obtain, analyze, and provide intelligence objectively.”

So says the DNI, whom one might remind of Cromwell’s dictum, ““Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”–Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton, 1877.

I would press for further review, and in secret if needs be, of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of Naval Research in relation to what has come to be called and puzzled as “Havana Syndrome”.

This morning, I tweeted the following to investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and John Hudson who have recently published on the topic in Yahoo News and The Washington Post.

I wish not to see Americans enslaved — yet another medical mystery! — by a phenomenon as yet unproven to have any basis in biology (oh, well, maybe that will show up tomorrow in new “research”).

My friends who have had tinnitus have associated it with loud music; others have perhaps had some damage related to combat or some macho hours or years at the firing range, and we all do age and may experience some hearing loss, but this seems different and the findings dissatisfying.

Three of the Morning’s Tweets

1.

2.

3.

The intrepid may wish to check on Kent Taylor’s stay in Bermuda. I thought I had read that somewhere but can’t find my source online–and not too much into this issue, I hadn’t saved it address. In any case, at the time of his travail, the phenomenon was not so widespread nor so variously described.

Addendum – Occasional Added Reference

Achenbach, Joel and Shane Harris. “NIH probe of ‘Havana syndrome finds no sign of brain injuries.” The Washington Post, March 18, 2024.

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Z->Western End of the Soviet Era & Putinism

28 Tuesday Feb 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Epistemology, Europe, Great Britain and United Kingdom, North America, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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ㄥ & 7 = Z

2022-1945 = 77 (years)

Zapad -> West.

As with that other now infamous symbol, “9/11”, Putin’s world appears to delight in rich metonymy: “911” emergency call number in the United States; “9/11/1877”–Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birth date. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, we have had yet another cruel symbolic ‘joke’ from Moscow’s most criminal mind: “Z”.

So far, KGB Putin has driven his “Z” into ideologically westward Ukraine only to see armored columns destroyed time and again while sending into battle ill-trained poorly equipped troops who may rightfully consider themselves “cannon fodder”. The rest is numbers.

Putin’s goal in his malign narcissistic fashion: the imprint in Russian popular memory of his courageous-heroic image–a projection covering fear of his own humiliation, which, ironically, he is now handily creating himself with the useful idiots one might call his enablers; also and still related to his narcissism and all the more criminal for it, his own restoration but viewed in the reflection of restored empire starting with the Soviet “Near Abroad”.

The Damaged West

In the 9/11 narrative, the Russian side has Zawahiri “detained” over the winter of 1996/7. Whatever the American story might be, i.e., hapless blundering while the crews got themselves through jet flying school or the “9/11 Truth” argument, the event put Radical Islam on America’s collective cognitive map–or let’s just call into its “enhanced political perception”–and created a patriotic wake-up that headed full throttle toward the “New Nationalism” that would help along the autocratic, narcissistic, xenophobic campaign that would boost Donald Trump’s ascent to power in 2016. In foreign affairs, the same and similar Muslim-identified terror attacks would ease the way for Erdogan’s archaic autocratic consolidation, Le Pen’s prominence in France (with Putin’s approval and possibly his assistance as well), and Orban’s methodical retrograde reactionary degrading of democracy in Hungary. Even though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine–and the perhaps unintended elevation of Volodymyr Zelensky as a Churchillian world-class leader in time of war–brought the Atlantic Alliance to its feet with its hands reaching for the check books, the most familiar indices of nation strength, i.e., political cohesion and coherence, have been altered.

Toward Western Political Repair and Russia’s Liberation From Tyranny

At this time, a year of war in Europe, mass displacements and migration, and the confrontation with Moscow’s evil have strengthened western resolve, and if the Russian Mafia State is not to drain patience and treasuries by drawing out its war, which might be for Putin & Nefarious Company just another “Frozen Conflict”, the whole will have to methodically degrade and hollow out from within Tsar Nobody’s domain with hope that more noble forces presently intimidated and suffocated by Putin’s manipulations will find their way back to daylight and embark on a path of their own toward greater integrity and responsibility in modern governance.

While NATO works up its own broad-spectrum defense capability-in-response, EU/NATO constituencies may wish to revisit Russian Political Absolutism and secret police state history from the Imperial to Bolshevik to Putin eras and ask how so much power could possibly be wrapped into such myopic and small nut balls. Perhaps where force has worked in relation to domestic order in the past it now primarily inspires contempt and resentment (as it should).

Today’s West should have no place for Tsar Nobody or anyone like him.

Related Online

AFP. “Russians and American share spacecraft despite nation’s enmity over Ukraine.” The Guardian, September 21, 2022.

Amaro, Silvia. “Russia ties haunt far-right candidate Le Pen as France gears up for election day.” CNBC, April 22, 2022.

Arms Control Association. “U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control Agreements at a Glance.” Fact Sheets and Briefs, October 2022.

Chang, Kenneth and Anton Troianovski. “In Space, U.S.-Russian Cooperation Finds a Way Forward.” The New York Times, July 15, 2022.

Coelho, Carlos. “Why Is Russia Losing So Much Military Equipment in Ukraine?” RFE/RL, May 13, 2022.

Cohen, Raphael S., Elina Treyger, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Asha Clark, Kit Conn, Scott W. Harold, Michelle Grisé, Marta Kepe, Soo Kim, Ashley L. Rhoades, Roby Valiaveedu, and Nathan Vest, Little in Common: Prospects for U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia Security Cooperation. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2023.

Cole, Brendan. “True Meaning Behind Russian ‘Z’ Symbol Finally Revealed.” Newsweek, April 19, 2022.

Cooper, Helene, Eric Schmitt, Thomas Gibbons-Neff. “Soaring Death Toll Gives Grim Insight Into Russian Tactics.” The New York Times, February 2, 2023.

Council on Foreign Relations. “U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Control”. Timeline.

Dean, Jeff. “The letter Z is becoming a symbol of russia’s war in Ukraine. But what does it mean?” NPR, March 9, 2022.

Epstein, Jake. “Putin brags that Russian weapons are ‘years, perhaps even decades ahead of rivals as his army pulls old Soviet-era tanks out of deep storage due to losses in Ukraine.” Business Insider, August 16, 2022.

Galeotti, Mark. “Narcotics and Nationalism: Russian Drug Policies and Future.” PDF. Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS. Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Latin America Initiative, Foreign Policy at Brookings, 2016.

Gavin, Gabriel. “Putin’s push for a new USSR reawakens the bloody chaos of Soviet collapse.” Politico, September 19, 2022.

Gessen, Masha. “‘Z’ Is the Symbol of the New Russian Politics of Aggression.” The New Yorker, March 7, 2022.

Keane, Isabel. “Ukraine losing large number of troops as it boasts about Russian casualties.” New York Post, February 14, 2023.

Keaney, John. “US-Russia Cooperation.” American Security Project. 2017.

McCormick, Kiley. “Fast Reactors and Opportunities for Russian-American Collaboration.” Wilson Center, May 28, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled.” BackChannels, July 10, 2022.

Rahman, Khaleda. “What Marine Le Pen Has Said About Vladimir Putin.” Newsweek, April 19, 2022.

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

Sokolsky, Richard and Eugene Rumer. “U.S.-Russian Relations in 2030.

The White House. “Guidance on Scientific and Technological Cooperation with the Russian Federation for U.S. Government and U.S. Government Affiliated Organizations.” June 11, 2022.

VOA News. “US Contends Russia Violating Nuclear Arms Treaty.” January 31, 2023.

Vexler, Vlad. “Putin: The Problem of Evil in Politics.” Video. YouTube, February 27, 2023.

Wikipedia. “Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War.”

Wikipedia. “Felix Dzerzhinsky.”

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Ukraine, One Year Out, Feb. 24, 2022->Feb. 24, 2023

24 Friday Feb 2023

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

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Posted to YouTube on February 19, 2023, this has seemed to me an extraordinary retrospective for this one-year anniversary–and may there not be another with the conflict ongoing–of Russia’s entirely surreal and unwarranted invasion of Ukraine.

My second-row seat to history, i.e., the modern desktop on the World Wide Web, has been overwhelmed by all of the option, and this day the live “presser”, now a recording for history, by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky-worth every second of its 2:20:55 run time. Also in the audience: The New York Times with its “Live Updates: On War’s Anniversary, Allies Support Ukraine With Words and Weapons.” There’s no waiting on the mail these days as the time between the question asked and answered and its appearance in the most reliable media has a lag time of about 10 minutes (for the typing into publication, no doubt).

For commiseration, memory, and solidarity with Ukraine in the defense of freedom this day: Bucha, Donetsk, Mariupol, etc.

For western can-do obligation, optimism, and spirit related to Ukrainian refugees in a time of war initiated by tyrant deserving of the title, “Tsar Nobody”: UNHCR Data; The Economist on the experience of Ukrainian refugees; and ordinary Americans rising to the occasion to host Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s war.

I have noted with sustained conviction the idea that Putin will not stop his own criminal assaults on Ukraine and against the west in general until stopped, and, frankly, I believe the entire relationship structure of the Russian “Mafia State” must be betrayed, confused, disinformed, hounded, and manipulated into the chaos, collapse, and corruption it has had in mind for all of the rest of the world. Putin, Kadyrov, Prigozhin: political criminals (my two most relevant signatures on Twitter: “#MaligNarcs” and “#PolitCrims”).

For Insight and Related Online

I have been relaying the following URLs for some time and have no longer the patience for typing, retyping, copying or pasting the same damning set of excellent independent research–>

David Satter on Putin’s ascent to power via the Moscow Apartment Bombings: https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible/

Anna Politkovskaya on the Putin-permitted Russian Army’s brutalizing of Chechen villages during the Second Chechen War: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3617244.html

John Schinder on Al Queda and Aymen al Zawahiri’s stay in Russia, winter 1996-7,in relation to 9/11 and probably a “reflexively controlled” New Nationalism across EU/NATO: https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6

By yours truly, James S. Oppenheim, on post-Cold War history, 1992-2022, and 30 years of optimistic “peace dividend” cooperation with Moscow even while it grew as a Russian “kleptocracy” (rule by thieves) and resumed its support for dictatorships and terrorist organizations worldwide–https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/

I think that’s enough to tie Russia’s abysmal purposes in Ukraine to its government’s criminal character at home. Russians have proven weak or bereft of power at home–more the latter, but they have nonetheless painted themselves before the world–and have made themselves ugly worldwide.

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V. Putin, Prigozhen et al.

12 Sunday Feb 2023

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

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Here’s the prompt for this post–>

Racecar driver Igor Sushko has a small history with compiling and relaying Russian FSB documents through his eponymous blog and related Substack. Sans backers myself, I’m feeling a little poor about the requisite spending on curiosity, but I believe he’s on track as regards Putin confidant and Wagner Group commander Yevgeny Prigozhin. This is from The New York Times two days ago (February 11, 2023).

Even the Kremlin appears to be trying to keep Mr. Prigozhin’s political rise in check. Sergei Markov, a pro-Putin political analyst and former Kremlin adviser who appears frequently on Russian state television, said that officials had been transmitting an unusual directive to Moscow’s talking heads in recent weeks: “Don’t excessively promote Prigozhin and Wagner.”

Troianovski, Anton. “Wagner Founder Has Putin’s Support but the Kremlin’s Side-Eye.” The New York Times, February 11, 2023.

Sushko’s YouTube featured yesterday an inside-the-inside look into Putin’s ambitious and rival war circle by Russian human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin:

Related Online

Troianovski, Anton. “Wagner Founder Has Putin’s Support but the Kremlin’s Side-Eye.” The New York Times, February 11, 2023.

Wikipedia. “Gulagu.net”.

Wikipedia. “Ramzan Kadyrov”.

Wikipedia. “Sergei Markov”.

Wikipedia. “Sergey Surovikin”.

Wikipedia. “Vladimir Osechkin”.

Updates to Reference

Stanovaya, Tatiana. “Man vs. Myth: Is Russia’s Prigozhin a Threat or Asset to Putin?” Carnegie Politika, February 13, 2023.

One billion views–what’s one more?

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Nord Stream 2: Biden’s Warning, Putin’s Timing, and Germany’s Separation from Russia

10 Friday Feb 2023

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

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Posted by C-SPAN to YouTube, February 7, 2022.

The simpletons, including those in the Kremlin, will scream casus belli over the alleged September sapping of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline laid out by Pulitzer Prize-winning Seymour Hersh in his Substack blog, but the big picture will not have changed: on February 24, Russia invaded a peaceful and sovereign Ukraine taking its business westward away from Moscow’s criminal corrupt and plundering character, and it did not take long for the invader to overtly frame NATO as its admitted true target. With the what-ifs of national security floating ahead of an ever-unfolding present, the Biden Administration appears to have at least developed a plan to secure the functional and political coherence, cohesion, and defense of NATO.

Even if the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, #PutinFullTonto continues to live in the past while fully believing he’s fighting a medieval war involving primarily feudal force and will: “President Vladimir Putin has accused ‘Anglo-Saxon’ powers of blowing up the pipelines, a Kremlin-designed project to circumvent Ukraine in exporting its gas under the Baltic Sea directly to western Europe.”

With a secret kept secret–or a fabrication not too flagrantly distributed–the White House could have pointed to Russia’s extraordinary lies all the way back to at least the false-flag Moscow Apartment Bombings that well appear to have brought Vladimir Putin to power and paved way for his army’s brutality in Chechnya. Now the Federal establishment will have to defend its denial of Seymour Hersh’s allegation and analyses. Given Hersh’s persnickety and thorough attention to details and references, the Government will lose.

Biden’s Administration, however, will remain well in the right in relation to post-Soviet Russia as a criminal and implacable force that has repeatedly bloodied the world’s stage with its support for barbarism, corruption, terrorism, and transnational crime. Moscow appears to have taken on the role of Evil in a religious play it believes must seek an ambivalent balance between the Devil and God. Well . . . that’s bunk, but it’s also signal of Putin’s own medieval and malign narcissistic (messianic, delusional, grandiose) mentality.

Support may be found for each claim I have made regarding Putin’s Russia, but those who follow know, or all those simply curious, independent, and possessed of integrity in their own OSINT (or better) adventures, will find in every examination of Putin’s tenure in power a damned regime, and one still godless and smarmy even before God, an ignominious little show put on by ruthless small and violent men.

Regarding Putin’s inverted worldview, Germany, and “RusNazis”, having Nord Stream 2 offline and Germany all in with NATO fairly halts the further development of Putin’s backward-moving and upside-down ambitions in Ukraine and the rest of Europe. He has done his damage to British and European spirit, and when he’s gone–and he will be gone, one way or another–greater western and liberal repair will ensue.

Related Online

Faulconbridge, Guy and Vladimir Soldatkin. “Kremlin says those behind Nord Stream blasts must be punished.” Reuters, February 9, 2023.

Hersh, Seymour. “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” Seymour Hersh, Substack, February 8, 2023.

Jackson, Jon. “Putin Preparing Russians for War With NATO.” Newsweek, May 1, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “Detecting Post-Soviet Russia’s Black Narrative of Revenge for ’89 and ’91.” BackChannels, July 19, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “KGB FSB ROC M-O-N-E-Y.” BackChannels, January 18, 2023.

Politkovskaya, Anna. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. Alexander Burry and Tatiana Tulchinsky, Translators. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

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.

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Janus Notes Trump’s Arrival and, Perhaps, Departure, Manafort to Kise

07 Tuesday Feb 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Russia, United States of America

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Author Greg Olear this morning republished his 2020 take on Russian collusion (no delusion) involving the Trump campaign with focus on Paul Manafort. It’s worth the three most critical “R’s” in political analysis–Reading, Remembrance, and Reflection.

For juxtaposition, the BackChannels post “Trump Lawyer Christopher M. Kise, Registered Foreign Agent” (September 19, 2022) might serve to bookend Donald John Trump’s increasingly traitorous-looking term in politics.

Related on BackChannels: “Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements” (October 9, 2021); “Trump, Corruption, Narcotics, Russia-A Glance” (October 10, 2022).

Janus, the god of the gate looking in and looking out, might suit the passage made by former President Donald John Trump in relation to his appointing as his first campaign manager the world’s most notorious flack for dictators–and then or now–as his legal troubles mount beyond his managing–a lead lawyer for his team (for a short term) with a clientele in Venezuela.

Related Online

Winter, Tom and Ken Dilanian. “Manafort associate is Russian spy, may have helped coordinate e-mail hack-and-leak, report says.” NBC News, August 18, 2020.

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