Also in Media: “Russian military intelligence and the Hungarian National Front” – Hungarian Spectrum, October 27, 2016

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Several small extremist groups are active in Hungary, but MNA is unique in that it has extensive ties with Russian military intelligence. I dealt with this extremist group only once, in September 2014. It was in connection with a lesser-known right-wing portal called Hídfő (Bridgehead), which broke the story that Hungary was secretly supplying tanks to the Ukrainian army. Soon enough the Russian foreign ministry published an official statement stating that “weapons supplied to Ukraine by the EU-member countries … violate legally binding obligations—the Arms Trade Treaty.” The Russian foreign ministry was well-informed on the details: “Hungary’s Defense Ministry is supplying Ukraine with armored vehicles, including T-72 tanks, through a ‘proxy agency.’” It turned out that Hídfő was the official website of Magyar Nemzeti Arcvonal. For some time it has served as a vehicle of Russian disinformation, a growing concern in Europe and elsewhere. In fact, by now, at least according to national security officials, Hídfő is entirely under Russian direction, either directly or indirectly. The best summary of the history of MNA and its activities can be found in an investigative piece written by András Dezső and Veronika Munk of Index.

Source: Russian military intelligence and the Hungarian National Front – Hungarian Spectrum – 10/27/2016

Related

The National Bureau of Investigation ( “National Bureau of Investigation,” the Hungarian FBI) was Supposed to search Stephen Györkös’s house Earlier this week, but When The officers Showa up at his home the 76-years-old man opened fire at THEMIS , and the 46-years-old police officer died in the shooting immediately.

Russian Diplomats and members of the Russian military intelligence, GRU have been around the the Hungarian SubCulture militant for years, albeit not only around MNA. This started well before the eruption of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The Russians Were Trying to do it in a smart, less ostentatious way.

http://index.hu/belfold/2016/10/28/russian_diplomats_exercised_with_hungarian_cop_killer_s_far-right_gang/ – 10/28/2016.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/11/14/a-note-on-hungarys-progressive-relationship-with-iran/

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FTAC – Oh Jerusalem -‘Cold History’ – Fast Reference – Touch Points

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Clinically speaking, the Hebrews appear to have produced legends in fact enshrined in scripture.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/The_Temple.html

More faithfully and sentimentally, whence comes the urge to delegitimize Hebrew / Jewish history and spirituality?

Of course, time being time and measurable and describable thousands of years in reverse, there is what might be called the “cold story” of the region — the story told in the earth.

With just a few minutes of looking, I’ll list what curiosity has dredged off the web:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jerusalemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jerusalem

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/amarnaletters.htm

http://biblehub.com/topical/a/adonizedec.htm

https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?qs_version=KJV&quicksearch=Jerusalem&begin=1&end=46&limit=25

http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16498/jewish/Chapter-1.htm (if the finger must be pointed, point it at King Cyrus of Persia, which today, of course, would make a rather ironic point about the evil of undoing a decision made by he who composed the famous cylinder).

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


BackChannels appreciates the general import of the observation that when Cleopatra was young, Egypt had already an ancient history.  So it goes for Jerusalem and both the poetic and scholarly histories of its existence far back into the Bronze Age at least.

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FTAC -A Progressing Jerusalem

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The other writer stated the following:

“Jews who deny Muslim and Christian attachment to Jerusalem pave the way for Muslims and Christians to deny Jewish attachment to Jerusalem.”

Hmm.

“Muslims who deny Jewish and Christian attachments to Jerusalem pave the way for Jews and Christians to deny Muslim attachment to Jerusalem.”

“Christians who deny Jewish and Muslim attachments to Jerusalem pave the way for Jews and Muslims to deny Christian attachment to Jerusalem.”

It’s funny how the assignment of culpability works within such a statement.

Truth to tell: in 12th Century Christian Hungary, laws devised to discriminate against Jews were upon activation applied equally to Muslims (source: Raphael Patai, _The Jews of Hungary_).

The bogey: jealousy and resentment (perhaps) and supersessionary ambition (no question).

What is it about the medieval world and worldview — apart from concentrating ill-gotten wealth in thuggish elites — that keeps so many of the Soviet / post-Soviet arc trapped within it?

Perhaps post-Holocaust, the arguments are shifting from hidden and shameful supersessionary wishes (I thought that was done with in 1964) and “recognition of ‘the other'” (who isn’t “other” for somebody?) to the differences between medieval perception and rhetoric (and absolute power) toward the modern comprehension of political conditions, greater recognition of mutual obligations, and interest in the peaceful interweaving of complex and varied cultural and economic systems.


What may the medieval world have looked like?

Crimea.

Syria.

And thank the same system of thought so slyly — ah, but obviously — singles out the Hebrews as the source of all troubles.

Leadership, cultural mentality, and political power have a relationship in which the medieval of mind invests energy in the command and control of mobs.  Frame-ups, innuendos, lies, rumors: snookering the marks is what political dishonesty has been all about.

In and around the Middle East Conflict, the Palestinians — who having suffered Arab apartheid and gross isolation and misguidance for decades — have paid the highest price for their once unwitting subordination to a mixture of Nazi- and Soviet-promoted images of the surrounding world, and that starting with the demonizing and scapegoating of the Jews.

The Soviet Era cartoons from the late 1960s and early 1970s suggest what Moscow used to inveigle the Arab World in its unholy designs, for back then, Russia was avowedly and godlessly communist as well as deeply anti-Semitic.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/ – 10/3/2016

Related on the Internet

Timmerman, Kenneth R.  “Former Soviet Spy Sees the Long Arm of the KGB in Today’s Muslim Anti-Semitism.”  Tablet, August 7, 2013.

Palestinians and others — and this plainly demonstrated in Syria, and nowhere more so than with Yarmouk, the once Palestinian camp and refuge — will never know authentic freedom and self-determination while bent to the will of a still medieval and excessively controlling — and kleptocratic (and today “ultra-nationalist”) — Moscow.

Additional Reference

Corre, Addam.  “Hamas Leaders Worth Millions of Dollars from Allegedly Skimming Donations and Extortion: Is Anyone Surprised?”  Inquisitr, July 18, 2014 (updated July 22, 2014).

Danan, Deborah.  “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires — How Hamas’s Leaders Got Rich Quick.”  Algemeiner, July 28, 2014.

Mitsotakis, Spyridon.  “Russia: Hamas and Hezbollah are Democratic, Not Terrorists.”  Breitbart, November 17, 2015.

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FTAC – Moscow – The Drift

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/russia-voted-off-un-human-rights-council-amid-mounting-allegations-of-syria-war-crimes-a7385766.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vladimir-putin-russia-news-media_us_56215944e4b0bce34700b1df

http://www.stopfake.org/en/news/

http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/russian-hybrid-warfare-and-other-dark-arts/

And so on.

The truth of the matter is Moscow-Tehran with baby Damascus chose to sustain a barbaric “medieval political absolutism” in Syria intent on fighting western ideas, actually, while incubating and using as tools the al-Qaeda types, including ISIL.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/isil-groomed-for-a-role-in-assad-vs-the-terrorists/

With its familiar “Active Measures”, Russia dupes vulnerable leaders and whole populations, including the Palestinians.

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

Moscow’s conversational tone may be firm, but the site of what the “troika” — Putin, Assad, Khamenei — has done to Syria — and the most innocent of the Syrian constituency — awareness of Moscow’s continuing relations with Hamas and PFLP, and its planting of those “Little Green Men” in Crimea speak brazenly for a Moscow more interested in thuggery and empire than in freedom, peace, and prosperity, and that whether at home or abroad.

Putin & Co., appear to be making an effort to stand on familiar old evils, which includes the encouragement of greater Far Left and Far Right extremism in the world and consequent chaos and violence. I suspect western diplomats apprehend what has been “reset” before them and are taking measures to respond appropriately.


Inspiration for the note: an assertion that Puton, Lavrov, and Churkin have been always firm in their speech, never belligerent.  

Fair enough.

However, set the tone of the talk against the results of Moscow’s policies over many years and the juxtaposition looks ugly — bipolar; black and white; glittering Sochi against atrocities — including the sniping of pregnant women — taking place in Syria; the patriotic and rousing concert at Palmyra placed in time less than a day before the Russian bombing of a Syrian refugee camp; and so on.  


Found on Twitter this morning from Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs —

Ukraine-MFA-161027-Tw.jpg

Also Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/15/cold-war-cold-struggle/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/

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Also in Media: Ynetnews News – “The KGB’s Middle East Files: Leaking thousands of documents” – October 28, 2016

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Within a short period of time, the MI6 launched a secret operation in which Mitrokhin and his family were smuggled to Britain. They landed in the country along with the KGB’s top secrets: tens of thousands of documents that Mitrokhin had copied and hidden in milk barrels and other containers in the floor of his two dachas, one of them in the suburbs of Moscow. Only a few people in Britain—led by then-Prime Minister John Major, who personally approved the operation—were aware of the package that had landed in their country that day.

This took place in 1992. Intelligence experts began analyzing the documents immediately and uncovered more and more revelations from Mitrokhin’s milk barrels. They included the wiretapping of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s phone, stolen US nuclear secrets, and the deep and incredible infiltration of Germany and France’s political leadership.

As a result of these documents, KGB agents were apprehended all over the world, secret operation methods were exposed, and espionage operations—some dating back many years—were thwarted. The impact in Britain, the United States, and countries across Europe was immediate. The intelligence tumult that broke out affected Israel as well, but most of Mitrokhin’s documents about the KGB’s extensive activity in Israel have never been published. Until now.

Source: Ynetnews News – The KGB’s Middle East Files: Leaking thousands of documents – 10/28/2016.

Ukraine – Moscow’s “Active Measures”

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While Russia’s hand in Ukraine has hardly been a secret, the emails, if genuine, provide fine-grained detail of Mr. Surkov’s office in setting up separatist enclaves in Ukraine’s east.

They also shed light on the workaday activity of a propaganda shop, including a rare example of a draft text apparently edited in Mr. Surkov’s office that can be compared with a final version.

The Ukrainian group, calling itself CyberHunta — a mocking reference to the Russian assessment that the Kiev government is a fascist junta — released 2,337 emails from the address prm_surkova@gov.ru, many from 2014 as the eastern Ukrainian separatists established their mini-states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-emails.html – 10/27/2016.


BackChannels inclines to trust the Atlantic Council before anything coming out of the maw of Moscow.

Why?

On Soviet Era “Active Measures”

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

https://www.spymuseum.org/education-programs/news-books-briefings/background-briefings/active-measures/;

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/26/putin-s-wicked-leaks-didn-t-start-with-the-dnc.html;

http://fas.org/irp/world/russia/kgb/su0523.htm;

http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-active-measures-modernised-tradition

Now Back to the Chaos

Posted by wearepussyriot, October 27, 2016

Posted by WeAreChange, October 27, 2016

Who needs “Active Measures”?

Related (sigh) —

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/29/ftac-americas-division-leans-toward-moscow/ – 8/29/2016.

Perhaps most frightening is how Pussy Riot sees Moral America, which is actually pretty good as regards the creation of the civil society that the deeply anti-authoritarian Pussy Riot needs as audience and consumers of its entertainment.  Nonetheless, it too appears to have perceived in Presidential Candidate Donald Trump’s demagoguery similarities with Putin’s now rapidly developing ultra-nationalist politics.

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FTAC – About that Image of Israeli Girls Signing Rockets

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About that picture of Israeli girls signing rockets —

The photograph was taken on July 17, 2006 by AFP photographer Pedro Ugarte or AP photographer Sebastian Scheiner*, who was then covering Israel’s defensive war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It appears to have been taken up by the Far Left (New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left, has been my trope for a while) in 2012, in which year it was exploited by The Electronic Intifada and others —

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/i-picture-dead-arab-disturbing-video-israeli-childrens-words-echo-indoctrination

http://americantribune.org/?p=14646

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may082012/israeli-missiles.php (note the anti-Semitic caption — a bald lie — invented for the presentation of the image).

Israel Images may provide the most accurate and blunt caption for the true when-where-and-what: http://www.israelimages.com/see_image_details.php?idi=8814


The image was put to use by “Stop The Wall” on July 20, 2006 and on the next day used in a cynically demonizing “message received” way — with pictures to prove it — by “22dollars” — “Dear Lebanese, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christians Kids – Die with love. Yours Truely, (STET) Israeli Kids.”

When The Electronic Intifada had recycled the same image on its site in 2012, the caption had shifted to crediting Pedro Ugarte, possibly a ploy to keep AP and Scheider from noting the later use of the image.

The issue — who took that picture?  — has come up because writer Gal Beckerman, today Editor of The New York Times Book Review, had posted a similarly titled piece about the picture in the Columbia Journalism Review (July 20, 2006): “About Those Photos of Little Girls and Artillery Shells …: Photographs of Israeli children doodling on artillery rockets have inspired strong reactions across the world. But what’s the story behind the photos?

Gal’s piece says Scheider took the picture.  I believe it.  Those are the captions that appear in 2006.

Related Reference

On Soviet Era “Active Measures”

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

https://www.spymuseum.org/education-programs/news-books-briefings/background-briefings/active-measures/;

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/26/putin-s-wicked-leaks-didn-t-start-with-the-dnc.html;

http://fas.org/irp/world/russia/kgb/su0523.htm;

http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-active-measures-modernised-tradition

On the Soviet KGB and the Palestinian Cause

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


 

Also in Media: “Kremlin Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures by Other Means” – Stop Fake – March 21, 2016

Upcoming in Estonian Journal of Military Studies, the journal of the Estonian National Defense College (ENDC)  By Yevhen Fedchenko ABSTRACT This article traces the evolution of Russian propaganda as part of active measures from Soviet times  through Russian occupation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine in Donbas  as the climax in use of propaganda and media manipulations. Fakes and forgeries are a part of active measures conducted by the Kremlin and amending its military capacity and diplomacy efforts to cover it up. The manufacturing of fakes is characterized by centralized and systematic approach to manufacturing and distribution of fakes, their coherence and connection with the Kremlin policies and talking points. The article concludes that the use of media-related active measures is not a new phenomenon and was widely used by Soviet Union before as an instrument for conducting its foreign policy by clandestine means. Through examination of more than 500  items from Russian

Source: Kremlin Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures by Other Means – 3/21/2016.