Elon Musk ISO Self-Navigating Soul

08 Friday Sep 2023

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

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Have these emperors no clothes?

Putin has turned out a monster fairly bathing in blood; Trump has been all but declared a felon several times over–his image will lose the “alleged” before the charges against him; and here Musk, the world’s wealthiest industrialist appears ill-informed and lacking in insight. The first two I would cast as feudal-medieval thugs and in modern parlance “malignant narcissists”; the third has expressed concern for his fellow travelers in the most democratic terms, but while his platform, literally, and stature give him a mighty voice, he appears without background for the world he may view, also literally, from outer space.

Here follow three brief X-Riposte (I guess) to his callous and naive suggestion on Russia’s ethnocide in Ukraine: “Both sides should agree to a truce.”–>

I know I know my little bit of history in relation to Russia but am no match for Ph.D’s in Russian Studies–and to my own disadvantage, don’t speak a word of the language. On the other hand, inflection points and nodes may emerge from broad and general knowledge (plus boundless curiosity), and that much I have enjoyed in abundance. With respect to Russian history, I do know that those who crossed from what is today Scandinavia found the northern soil of the new continent thin and consequently would roam south for more fertile land (credit the thought to Pipes, Richard.  Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974).

For vision, it helps to have background, engagement over time, an understanding of historic as well as present issues, and awareness–sometimes in depth–of variables contributing mightily to the way things look and, in fact, appear real and true with high confidence.

For Elon Musk and others, Russia has behaved in the manner of a criminal enterprise since the early mid-1990s. It’s leader’s malign narcissistic psychology has been expressed through especially cruel and sadistic operations in service to his development of political power. He hasn’t Russia’s better interests in mind but rather the defense of his own projected and sustained heroic image, and given his underlying fear of humiliation–or related cowardice–has no reverse gear, however irrational the prospect of his own continued success may appear.

Over time, BackChannels has covered Russia’s establishment of its anti-Semitic beliefs and traditions, its transfer of related thought to Adolph Hitler, and its yoking of the Palestinians to its own hate and related political paradigms.

Packaged here for compression, all cited URL’s may be unpacked but perhaps not in a simple hour or a day, but to any devoted to seeing how things work and have worked, what matters a little more time?

For the technology-enabled future of greatest benefit to humanity, both Putin and Trump must be defeated as the anachronistic and far bent personalities each has become. For Ukraine, there will be no security for Russia left as a politically intact and ever ruthless and vicious kleptocracy with imperial ambitions; for the United States, there should be no drift into criminal horse dealing of its own and the compromising of the privileges, prerogatives, and rights of citizenship without bounds of the nation’s Constitution and established political and social ideals, processes, and traditions.

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Tsar Nobody Steals the Holocaust and Related Absurdities

22 Saturday Jul 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Russia

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Here’s the premise for the above title:

One step down, Retired European wrote, “Exactly, Russia is the new Nazis”, and to that I responded:

And the posts are still there for all who would be good to find courage.

***

The same theme invited a more congenial follow-up:

For my followers in many social media quarters, the concept of “Malignant Narcissism” as a political interpretation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder needs no introduction.

***

In the region of the Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote, “Terrorist methods have become routine for the #Kievregime and the most odious terrorists in world history would envy the scale of it.”

Hence my response:

hhttps://twitter.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1682763932501508096?s=20ttps://twitter.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1682763932501508096?s=20

***

Chelsea, Edward, and Julian

Twitter lends itself most of all to squawking and very little to I-Thou conversational exchange. Here, #SovietPostSovietRussia claims human rights violations for traitors with heart, courage, and narcissistic leanings who may have–I’m not certain–been able to address their core issues (in order of mention: America is being run like a prison camp; intrusion into private lives is possible, undeniable, and probable; and there should be no state secrets-everything should be online) via other channels and methods. In any case, adult, cognizant, and sophisticated Americans should understand that all states have secret lives and ours in America fewer than others (although that’s a box always a little bit compelling for unpacking).

and his crew have been the schoolyard bullies who want your lunch money and your lasting fidelity to their glory. So far, none but a pissed off Prigozhin, another former criminal, has dared question Putin’s military leadership. The idea of the Tsar right up there with God appears to remain fixed in the Russian psyche, which has also practical fear of so obviously criminal a power as Tsar Nobody knows all of their secrets, controls their careers and paychecks, has ways of assaulting (or murdering) any Russian, so far, anywhere in the world by means traditional–that would be defenestration, for example–and surreal, i.e., Polonium Tea.

In effect, Putin has all of Russia enslaved to and within his own delusional and malign narcissistic fantasia.

None dare leave who have “achieved” any stature within his realm.

–33–

Medieval Russia v. Modern Russia

14 Friday Jul 2023

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

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Putin may believe himself the personification of Russia, i.e., that Putin is Russia, but Putin is not Russia, and the cognizant and educated among Russians know it and know furthermore the Kremlin feeds Russia’s public–“The Masses” given Putin’s weird Imperialist-Stalinist revanche–garbage.

Given the dangers, including nuclear blackmail as evidenced by the mining of the Zaporizhzha Nuclear Power Plant, the possession of so-called “tactical nukes”, and the inveigling of Belarus in nuclear threat ambition, Putin may be expected to fail from within.

This morning, I posted two notes to European and global security expert Nicolas Tenzer’s Twitter feed–>

“…& muscled back”, i.e., muscled their way back into power, making Putin’s 1999 election a triumph in the realm of totalitarian state perceptual control–related reference on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/05/03/reference-journalist-alexander-zhilin-operation-storm-in-moscow-aka-moscow-apartment-bombings/ (Putin appears to have had now a lifetime of serious issues with apartment buildings).

***

What is a feudal tyrant doing as the head of a still powerful and promising Russia?

Part of the answer involves a cosmic “Why not?”

As a gang, disaffected KGB–out of power, out of work in suddenly post-Communist Moscow–may have had a thick-as-thieves coordination and ruthlessness fit to their former secret policing mission and experience. Then too, they would have garnered the cooperation and interest of the post-Cold War peaceful of a productive Europe and North America.

“Why not?” for that as well.

Add condemnation, disapproval, and strong “red line” talk–TALK!–for aggression or barbaric actions undertaken on behalf of absolute power from Chechnya to Afghanistan to Ukraine and the United States (remember the Internet Research Agency!)–all squawk on the part of The West while all remained barbaric and criminal on the part of Moscow and its favored circles of disreputable mediocrities.

Left to grow Russia in his own mafia, mercenary, parochial, post-Soviet, rapacious, and ruthless manner, Putin put Russia’s army and his own demented narcissistic will on the big step into Europe, first Crimea in 2014 in response to the big “Nyet!” and boot given his lackey Viktor Yanukovych, and then the greater portion of the Breadbasket of Europe herself in February 2022.

Have Russians the will or wish themselves to be made criminal, desperate, dumb, and enslaved?

Have the less evident “forces of order” the intent and will to embrace and support those ends?

Perhaps Putin has finally gotten a certain attention secretly craved.

Related Online

Brugen, Isabel Van. “Only 30% of FSB Would Back Putin if Another Mutiny Happens–Exiled Oligarch.” Newsweek, July 6, 2023.

Miller, Greg and Catherine Belton. “Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed.” The Washington Post, August 19, 2022.

–33–

A Dark Mirror in Language

28 Wednesday Jun 2023

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

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The extreme narcissism known to dictators belies an unfortunate process.

More may be involved than being merely vain or having some egotism in need of some judicious but also liberating trimming: most of us–all of us–wish most of all to be what we call “ourselves” at our best, and each according to his own best assessment of abilities–and if we become too full of ourselves (offstage), we may encounter reminders, including from our own self-observing selves, that we are not all that.

Let us sit and sip more quietly.

On the other hand, the clinically (NPD) and politically (malignantly) narcissistic have a tougher self-assignment, and that is to 1) hide the damage done to them when they were helpless or incapable of their own effective defense and 2) cover it with an undamaged and much more competent and greater courageous-heroic image that would be and which becomes their own New Person–The Greatest.

The greater achievement for The Greatest: validation confirmed by love, but a capital-V “Validation!” confirmed by the Applause and Roar of the Crowd–High-Powered VALIDATION!, Limitless and MIGHTY!

We have all the right to transform from children into pretty good adults, but The Greatest want a greatness beyond the boundaries of the good.

Terms one encounters for the malign: delusional, grandiose, messianic.

Behaviors: unconscionable, unscrupulous, ruthless.

In casual description: beyond limits; without boundaries.

Eventually: criminal.

“Those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity,” Mr. Bondarev said in his email. “To achieve that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes.”

Trojanovski, Anton. “‘They basically got everything wrong’: A Russian diplomat speaks out on the war.” The New York Times, May 23, 2022.

In the dark mirror of language, the most primary lie in service to the speaker’s image may be the inverted accusation–on this blog, the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”. The narcissist is always beautiful, good, and right, and the targets unfailingly bent and ugly even though by every objective measurement and view, the narcissist is the evil.

The Greatest must be the greatest as well–not merely pretty good or, son of a gun, lucky!

Image matters and the means to produce it may be obfuscated and covered over, and in the dark mirror, the lies–the lying–really takes off. Putin, poker faced, insists that Russia attacks only military targets.

https://youtu.be/a245RkGUXfk; https://youtu.be/c1xFSCDy8Jo; https://youtu.be/q2nfuIP2tU0; https://youtu.be/8_XCe86resg.

The Greatest lie to aggrandize and enrich themselves, their cronies, families, and networks; to confuse the judgments of others; to perceptually control their fans, marks, and targets–and they lie most of all to hide their crimes.

June 28, 2023.

–33–

A Brief Twitter Exchange on American Themes

23 Friday Jun 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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I’ve been conversing via Twitter with fellow blogger Benjamin Chayes (History is Now; Pertinent Food), and I want to share it here in a more permanently placed showcase for expression for that reason plus basic cogency and, as always with BackChannels, distillation.

My country, the United States of America, finds itself politically divided, rancorous, and stressed today, and there are reasons for that, including Russia’s “Active Measures” and related “Destabilization and Reflexive Control Operations”–Moscow appears to mess with the U.S. first and foremost, but it does it sideways with cyberwarfare and disinformation. Much coverage falls to specialized OSINT (start with CISA.GOV–and then let curiosity and imagination run wild).

Setting The Bear aside, the quick-thought Twitter platform (and here not yet “Blue” and upgraded for lengthier speech) lends itself to the compression of language and a fast but unhurried parlay.

The replay has some fragmentation but I think the main points are together and unified by the exchange.

The America I both experience and imagine has been a Christian majority but secular enterprise, compassionate and inclusive in its cultural and geographic expanse, and it has been practical about balancing its defense and security obligations, foreign and domestic, with the necessity of building up trade and national revenues as well as the treasuries, corporate and public, that in turn define our national lifestyle.

We have in the way of all nations through time our national underbelly where the degradation goes so far down that whatever hasn’t sunk so low needs must look like some kind of “up”.

There has been more in the early conversation, but I will stop here for those whose patience may be similar to mine–that’s part of art as well, i.e., knowing when the painting’s done.

Oh, heck….

–33–

Reference: Journalist, Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm In Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings

03 Wednesday May 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

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Fake News?

If only it existed in the Mainstream Press (Fox News excepted at present).

Fake Presidents?

At least two exist and both have represented rival superpowers.

One has been putting on a clown show in the United States.

One remains in power in Russia.

Meanwhile others in Moscow are still wondering whether there is a domestic political aspect to the crisis and whether rogue elements of the security forces are in some way involved in an attempt to provoke a state of emergency in Russia or the cancellation of elections.

There is absolutely no proof of this, but a little noticed article in the Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda by a respectable journalist Alexander Zhilin is now attracting attention.

Zhilin wrote on 25 August that President Yeltsin’s health was failing and that a plan with the codename “Storm in Moscow” was being hatched in the Kremlin . . . .

Zhilin’s article is interesting because it was written before the bomb explosions.

Waal, Tom de. “World: Europe: Russia’s bombs: Who is to blame?” BBC News, September 30, 1998.

During this fateful summer when Moscow was awash with rumors, I was friendly with a Russian political operative who was well connected to the higher levels of Russian power. When I met him, he told me about the growing fear in the Kremlin about the possibility of losing power and the indications that Moscow would be the scene of a huge provocation. He said that the issue was the security of Yeltsin and his family in the case of a handover of power. He said that if there was no agreement on terms, “they will blow up half of Moscow.”

I sensed the uneasiness but did not know how to assess the prediction of my friend. I had no illusions about Yeltsin and his cronies but it was hard to imagine that a man who came to power as a result of a peaceful anti-communist revolution with massive public support would be willing to murder his own people to hold onto power. Developing events, however, were to change my mind.

At 9:40 p.m. on September 4, a truck bomb exploded in Buinaksk, Dagestan’s second-largest city. It destroyed a five story apartment building, which housed soldiers from the 136th Motor Rifle Brigade.

Satter, David. “How Putin Became President.” American Interest, Hudson, May 19, 2016.

In a curious twist to the story, the liberal bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta published an investigation on Monday into a bomb discovered in the city of Ryazan last year. The FSB eventually said it had planted the bomb but that it was a fake and the incident was part of a training exercise. Local eyewitnesses said the timer and explosives were real.

Cockburn, Patrick. “Russian intelligence produces apartment bombing evidence.” Independent, March 17, 2000.

I’ve ordered John B. Dunlop’s book The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2014) and expect to find some “lovely” devils in the details but no change in the thesis relayed by the above quotations: power in Moscow, Yeltsin’s or Putin’s–or as controlled by Russia’s secret political police, the FSB–has proven itself criminal, ruthless, and unconscionable by bombing apartment buildings in the dead of night while Russian families slept in peace, and they did it in the interests not of real power, but of a display of power, i.e., of their own narcissistic image as controlled in a theater of their own making.

The false-flag operation, “Storm in Moscow”, supported the election of Vladimir Putin (for the length of his life, apparently) and the launching of a barbaric war featuring most of all the brutalizing of Chechen villages, sending the men into the ranks of rebels and putting in control the warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.

The betrayal of ordinary Russian people: unfathomable.

And perhaps ordinary Russians should know the truth.

Cited or Related Online

About Operation “Storm in Moscow” AKA “Moscow Apartment Bombings”

Cockburn, Patrick. “Russian intelligence produces apartment bombing evidence.” Independent, March 17, 2000.

Knight, Amy. “Finally, We Know About the Moscow Bombings.”The New York Review, November 22, 2012.

Satter, David. “How America Helped Make Vladimir Putin Dictator for Life. Tablet Magazine, Hudson, August 30, 2017.

Satter, David. “How Putin Became President.” American Interest, Hudson, May 19, 2016.

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

Waal, Tom de. “World: Europe: Russia’s bombs: Who is to blame?” BBC News, September 30, 1998.

About the Barbaric and Malign Narcissistic Character of Russian State Ambition

Olear, Greg. “Vladimir the Terrible.” Prevail. June 12, 2020.

Politkovskaya, Anna. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Nekrasov, Andrey. Director. Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File AKA The Murder of Litvinenko.

On BackChannels

Oppenheim, James S. “A Note on Tweeting Up Russia’s Barbaric Feudal-Medieval Revanche.” BackChannels, April 12, 2023.

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

Oppenheim, James S. “Malignant Narcissism.” BackChannels web page.

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

Oppenheim, James S. “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.” BackChannels web page.

Russian power appears to lie first and foremost to Russians while maintaining for itself the burden of truths about which it cannot and dare not speak–at least not until found out. Given the work of many journalists possess of abundant curiosity and integrity, Russia’s powerful have been today well observed, investigated, and reported on extensively, and for the top rank, the same would seem today fully found out.

A few brave individuals did try to investigate the Ryazan incident. When the State Duma, which was controlled by the regime, voted three times against opening an inquiry into the incident, an independent social commission was created that included several deputies, among them, Sergei Yushchenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, an investigative journalist with the independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Yushchenkov was shot dead outside his apartment building on April 17, 2003. Shchekochikhin was poisoned in July 2003. Litvinenko and Politkovskaya also investigated the bombings only to be killed. In the wake of these murders, a curtain of fear descended in Russia over the issue of how Putin came to power.

Satter, David. “How America Helped Make Vladimir Putin Dictator for Life. Tablet Magazine, Hudson, August 30, 2017

–33–

Among the Twitterati: Answering Russia’s Big Lies

23 Sunday Apr 2023

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

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Open @clarenafo’s Twitter wall and enjoy the whole well-researched and well-spoken thread from off of this pinned tweet:

Russia’s role in the United Nations seems far out of place to me given its more native habitat: World Peace Council.

Regarding the “situation in the middle east”: “FTAC: Moscow Suffocates the Palestinians” (BackChannels, April 22, 2023).

The inclusion of tweets in blogging helps fix them in cyberspace, for the Twitter River on any subjects moves along rapidly and drowns the last utterance. Anyone’s. Everyone’s. The structure for communicators: the experts in paid professional diplomacy already know the talking points–or what have they been doing otherwise with their careers–and the more general public that cares or might may easily miss the most pointed and succinct analyses on some subjects. In this case, “ClareNafo” (for ease in the transliterating of proper nouns between platforms) has covered five major insults to intelligence in Russia’s array of inventions, lies outright, and disingenuous revisions concerning both Ukraine and NATO. Indeed, “Read the full conversation on Twitter“.

Related Online

NATO. “NATO–Russia relations: the facts.” Last updated April 20, 2023.

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FTAC: Moscow Suffocates the Palestinians

22 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philosophy, Russia

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Remember who handles the Palestinians.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-698736 (“Close ties with Russia stop Palestinians from taking sides in Ukraine war” by Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, February 26, 2022).

Under the guise of “liberation movements”, Russia’s “caretakers”, like Arafat and Abbas, plunder their own communities. The Palestinians remain both too vulnerable as weak parties before western power and its modern character and consequently too egotistical and proud themselves to believe it. In essence, they have imprisoned themselves in the dogma of “resistance”, and there they keep themselves ideologically, intellectually, financially, and, for the most part, physically trapped and suffocated.

“Bogdanov, Palestinians” serves as a useful starting search string on both the assertion, topic, and theme involving Russia’s power of persuasion in keeping the Palestinians hooked on a liberation theology that has no true foundation in anyone’s reality, not even that of the Palestinian leadership. All Russia has known through the 20th and 21st Centuries has been the horror that comes with the “leadership” of delusional thieves, Stalin to Putin with just a moment of post-Cold War sunlight between.

Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/07/26/ftac-palestinian-kgb-the-palestinians-abused-and-plundered-by-their-own/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/02/01/ftac-endemic-russian-anti-semitism-a-note/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/ftac-middle-east-conflict-back-to-max-erwin-von-scheubner-richter-and-forward-to-the-plundering-of-palestinian-misery-by-palestinian-leadership-elites/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/ .

For seriously curious, independent, and industrious Palestinians, there’s a lot to unpack, a lot of Muscovian agitprop (intellectual infection) to address, and then only repairs to be done in relation to community-wide financial arrangements, security, and transparency.

For political philosophy in relation to the bullshit Moscow has been selling for decades to dictators, extremists, and useful idiots all along, I would suggest there is no justice but rather a better and happier side to history, and that it is more the true history of the assertion of human dignity, freedom, liberation, inclusion, and security. For Palestinians, it would be better to cross over to the happier side of history–and the future–than remain mired in the darkest and deepest pools of confusion, hate, and resentment.

Related Online

Byman, Daniel L. “The 1967 War and the birth of International terrorism.” Brookings, May 30, 2017.

CNN. “Yasser Arafat: Palestinian Authority President.” Special Section: Struggle for Peace, 2000.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTACT: Middle East Conflict: All That Doesn’t Exist.” Conflict BackChannels, July 5, 2017.

Toameh, Khaled Abu. “Close ties with Russia stop Palestinians from taking sides in Ukraine war – analysis: PA President Mahmoud Abbas is still hoping that Russia would play a major role in any future peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.” The Jerusalem Post, February 26, 2022.

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