FTAC – Russia’s Hack, Meddling, and Control – Believe It

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America’s law enforcement, intelligence, and military communities — the foundations of America’s national security complex — have long established and maintained themselves as the best in the world.

This is not a partisan issue — and it very much has to do with how the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, the practical translation of our Constitution into law, and the security of our Bill of Rights have been passed from one generation to the next. To believe or even propose that your FBI or DHS or other national security institution has lied to you beggars belief.

Perhaps Allen West understands that patriotic vigilance, now well alerted by so many “Allahu Akbar” terrorist attacks, may also spin into national paranoia.

For those feeling somehow good about Moscow:

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

Do the reading on the Cold War; have a good hard look yourself at the “Moscow Apartment Bombings“; then have a look at ISIL in Syriahttps://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/ — and, oh, with a few minutes for examining the Russian economy, ask yourself: is Putin’s Moscow what you now admire?


I’ve added the URLs back to the above plain text, so it was really left up to Facebook readers to depart from laziness and embark on some research of their own.  It’s a shame, but those pointing the finger and calling others “sheeple” would seem often those who need to point that finger back at themselves.  On the Russian hacking scandal, those defending President Elect Trump’s rejection of firm intelligence findings — again: from the best services in the world — have already swallowed Putin’s poison.

Breaking Reference – Fast Links

The FBI confirmed last night (Friday) that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered a campaign to interfere with the US presidential election. He acted in order to promote US President-elect Donald Trump by blemishing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s name.

http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news/world-news/around-the-globe/putin-interfered-with-us-presidential-election-25800 – 1/7/2016.

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Also in Media: “Milo Yiannopoulos Critics Play into His Hands” | National Review | January 4, 2017

Milo Yiannopoulos is the sort of interloper by whom Americans have long been enamored: Part P. T. Barnum, wrangling the latest circus of novelties; part Sebastian Flyte, flaunting his heathenism in the face of bourgeois mores; and part Frank Abagnale, dashing from con to con. He has never given the impression that he cares for much that could properly be described as conservative. But he cares a great deal about himself, and after his ignominious departure from the U.K. (hounded by accusations that he stiffed contributors to his online tech magazine), he figured out that becoming Ann Coulter’s understudy was a serviceable career move. As he candidly reported at the Republican National Convention, a lifetime ban from Twitter following charges that he used the site to harass Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones had made him “the star of the convention.” “Thanks, Twitter,” he told The Blaze. “You just made me a lot more famous.”

Yiannopoulos is one of that new, unfortunate species: the right-wing Internet celebrity.

Source: Milo Yiannopoulos Critics Play into His Hands | National Review – 1/4/2017.

MaligNarc?

You decide.

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Also in Media: “What Will Donald Trump Face in Iraq?” – Philos Project – January 6, 2016

Current anti-ISIS “strategy to me feels like, as long as you can replace an ISIS flag with an Iraqi flag, you are finished,” Pregent stated, while noting that political demands for a quick success are guiding the current retaking of Mosul. Atlantic Council Senior Resident Fellow Nussaibah Younis said that President Barack Obama wants to “wrap up the liberation of Mosul in a neat little bow to end his presidency with a bang, which is not really how counterinsurgency works. You cannot kill an insurgency; you have to transform an insurgency. You have to reduce the drivers that inspire people to join these groups.”

Source: What Will Donald Trump Face in Iraq? – Philos Project – 1/6/2016.

Also in Media: “Maryam Rajavi appeals to the nation to help Iran’s homeless in the cold season” – January 2, 2017.

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The 18 to 20 million people who live in 2700 shanty towns and illegal dwellings, particularly around major capitals, the rampant phenomenon of trafficking of young women and girls to other countries, the rising number of women who post ads on the walls to sell their infants, and the 30 per cent of the population who according to the admissions of the regime’s officials are starving, are but a few examples indicating how the Iranian people’s lives have been destroyed under the repressive rule of the Velayat-e Faqih, Khamenei.

Such devastation coupled with incessant executions and daily arrests of some two to three thousand people comprise the security the mullahs claim they have provided for the people of Iran by engaging in the slaughter of the people of Syria, Iraq and other countries in the region.

Source: Freedom Lovers 4 Syria & Iran – 1/2/2017.

Also on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/01/18/on-human-rights-day-iran-is-again-covered-in-blood-maryam-rajavi/ – 1/18/2015.  The People’s Mojahedin has had a checkered history in the Iran-Iraq region, but for many years it has been producing the kind of humanist outlook expressed above in the Freedom Lovers 4 Syria & Iran blog.  BackChannels inclines to accept the talk but with some background supplied by earlier efforts with this blog.

 

Also in Media: “2017 THE YEAR WE RECLAIM OUR WESTERN VALUES” – by Diane Weber Bederman

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Let’s talk about the ethic that Donald Trump,Barack Obama and John Adams extol. The Judeo/Christian ethic was in its time revolutionary and in the vast majority of countries today it remains that way. Freedom, democracy, is more than an election of a government. Think of the failure of the Arab Spring. This ethic, which comes from the Hebrew Bible, teaches us that all life is sacred; all people are born with equal intrinsic value; there is no countenance for the caste system or the idea of dhimmitude. It calls for the freedom and the obligation to make individual choices (free–will) rather than merely sit back and submit to whatever fate is handed us by our society or its gods.

Source: 2017 THE YEAR WE RECLAIM OUR WESTERN VALUES – 1/2/2016.

Back to the Ethic Reclaiming Western Values;  www.dianebederman.com themiddlegound.ca

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FTAC – Reflection – Moscow – Terrorism

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Imaginative, Jackson’s movie, but this is more the history I know:

1> http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/05/19/how-putin-became-president/

2> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

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

4> Definitely not yesterday’s news:

http://thediplomat.com/2017/01/how-russia-may-approach-the-taliban-and-afghanistan-in-2017/

Forget about books and movies. Put on the thinking cap. What comes together for you from well known history and the high-integrity independent press?


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FTAC – “Active Measures” – Spinning it Up on the EU

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Source of my aggravation:

https://capx.co/the-european-union-is-heading-for-the-dustbin-of-history-2016/

Is it really?


The contemptuous tone and upside-down spin says something about the writer or about ignorance as regards the Moscow-Tehran nexus in the development of the conflict managed by Damascus. Those who know the truth — and thank God it’s not myself along!   — know that Assad had to work to create “The Terrorists” with which to blackmail and goad the west, and the “producers” would have known that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” would promote a reflexive response (it’s a term of art) in patriotic nationalist sentiment.

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

The eight-year-long show of weakness on Washington’s part with regard to Syria and Ukraine and other matters should tell the European Union (and NATO) that it’s not time to fail but rather to get it together to confront the waves of disinformation, propaganda, and spin coming off a kind of “active measures” front.


“Netizens” around the world will have to swim through an ocean of assumptive remarks, confusion, disinformation, and plain old ugly propaganda before picking up the intellectual cudgels themselves and checking claims and narratives for themselves.

Loosely Related Online – Fast Links

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/ – 9/30/2016.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/putins-real-long-game-214589 – 1/1/2017

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Also in Media: “Miklós Haraszti: I watched a populist leader rise in my country–That’s why I’m genuinely worried for America” – Hungarian Spectrum – December 28, 2016

Hungary, my country, has in the past half-decade morphed from an exemplary post-Cold War democracy into a populist autocracy. Here are a few eerie parallels that have made it easy for Hungarians to put Donald Trump on their political map: Prime Minister Viktor Orban has depicted migrants as rapists, job-stealers, terrorists and “poison” for the nation, and built a vast fence along Hungary’s southern border. The popularity of his nativist agitation has allowed him to easily debunk as unpatriotic or partisan any resistance to his self-styled “illiberal democracy,” which he said he modeled after “successful states” such as Russia and Turkey.

Source: Miklós Haraszti: I watched a populist leader rise in my country–That’s why I’m genuinely worried for America – Hungarian Spectrum 12/28/2016 (Originally published in The Washington Post).