‘Plutonium Blackmail’ – Some Reference

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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To achieve its objectives — getting Washington’s undivided attention, diplomatic recognition and aid — all North Korea really has to do is hide a few nukes and leave Americans to wonder what they’ve got, and whether they are offering it to customers like Al Qaeda or Hamas. Call it the virtual nuclear deterrent.

To Mr. Bush’s mind, this is why it makes sense to take on Iraq first — before it gets what North Korea already has. Yet if confronting Iraq is the first step in Mr. Bush’s war on rogue states with nuclear ambitions, North Korea is the first in his war against nuclear blackmail. And those are very different campaigns.

Sanger, David E. “The World; Next Question: How to Stop Nuclear Blackmail.”  The New York Times, March 9, 2003.

In the above quoted piece from 2003, journalist David E. Sanger will go on to note, ” . . . the United States right now has an opportunity to reorder the world so that it will never again face these kinds of threats.”

That was then.

This is now:

Russia wants the United States to cancel all sanctions and pay compensation for the damage they have caused if Moscow is to resume an agreement on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, according to a draft law submitted by President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Reuters report.

UA Today.  “Plutonium blackmail: Putin demands US pay compensation for his own countersanctions.”  October 3, 2016.

My oh my . . . .

Next: Volker is Kurt Volker, a former ambassador to NATO —

Volker said the suspension of uranium cleanup is meant to sound like a threat against the United States, and meant to get Washington to react.

“The best answer from Washington would be: ‘if you are not going to destroy it, I certainly hope you can control it. Because there are plenty of people in your neighbourhood who would like to use it against you, and plenty of corrupt officials who would be all too happy to sell it to them. We are happy to help you get rid of it — but that is a mutual interest, not a favour you are doing for us. If you don’t want our help, we wish you good luck,” Volker said.

Geropoulos, Kostis.  “Washington, Moscow swap shots, Putin gets first licks.”  New Europe, October 4, 2016.

This from North Korea in defense of its recent nuclear tests has got to come straight from the Department for the Support of the Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation:

Even China, which is North Korea’s main ally, slammed the nuclear tests.

But in response the ruling party’s newspaper Rodong Sinmun said: “Gone are the days never to return when the US could make a unilateral nuclear blackmail against the DPRK.

Sky News.  “North Korea Won’t Submit to ‘Nuclear Blackmail'”.  September 10, 2016.

Thinking ahead:

The PRC is narrowing the conventional military disparity with the US and it seems most likely sooner or later, maybe around 2025, the US is going to have to bring nukes into the equation to make sure it can win a war with China.

That’s what we had to do with the Soviet Union—that’s why we’ve still got those nukes at Incirlik in Turkey—and I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t happen in Asia.

Lee, Peter.  “Nuclear Blackmail and America’s Fantasy War with China.”  Counterpunch, August 19, 2016.

Additional Reference

Lee, Peter.  “RAND’s ‘Unthinkable’ war with China.”  Asia Times News & Features, August 12, 2016.

Iranian officials have claimed that they are preparing to fully restart their nuclear program should the deal fall apart due to inadequate sanctions relief. Atomic Energy Organization of Iran chief Ali Akbar Salehi announced in July that Iran was preparing to reverse its concession if the West violated the nuclear deal. A spokesman later clarified that Iran could reinstall all of its disabled centrifuges in just 45 days. “Tehran feels it can get even more merely by hinting it might walk away,” Ben Taleblu and Toumaj wrote.

The Tower.  “Experts: Iran Maneuvering to Extract More Economic Concessions from West.”  September 30, 2016.

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American Election 2016 – Him or Her? Two ‘Tales’ for Two Scoundrels

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Herewith BackChannels presents reference to the best and most scathing skinny on our two and all too human President candidates, Donald “Braggadocio” Trump, the consummate “Washington Outsider” who . . . well, the list is long and blogger Andy Rhodes of Persuade Me Politics covers it thoroughly, and then there’s Hillary “Trust Me” Clinton, the consummate “Washington Insider” who . . . the list is different but no less worrisome as covered by David A. Graham in The Atlantic.

Because this election is so divisive, so rancorous, and so fundamentally besmirches American ideals and values with some of the worst trespasses known boy and girl scouts as behaviors to avoid in life’s great adventure, BackChannels will reserve its own opinion of the two.

However, this blog has noted that America’s division serves Moscow’s effort to weaken European Union and NATO cohesion: “FTAC – America’s Division Leans Toward Moscow“.

As you read, take into consideration Moscow’s sustained relationships with terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP, emerging history involving the PLO (both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas have had association with the KGB) and possibly al-Qaeda (reference: blogger Kyle Orton’s year-old analysis from London: “How Russia Manipulates Islamic Terrorism”, The Syrian Intifada, September 8, 2015).

Read and read more!

Not one of the sixteen other 2016 Republican presidential candidates would have thought to ban all Muslim immigrants; bully and insult dozens of leaders on all sides as if imitating the most selfish and immature children of elementary school age; pour praise on terrible demagogues like Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong Un and Saddam Hussein; aggressively promote forms of torture worse than waterboarding; advocate for killing terrorist’s families; constantly talk about building a wall across our southern border; display fiercely authoritarian and sociopathic tendencies against anyone who challenges them or if it increases their celebrity in even the tiniest manner; make a wide range of outlandishly racist, misogynist and bigoted statements repeatedly; denigrate Mexicans in a sweeping damnation; sympathize with KKK members and other hate groups; overtly incite violence at campaign rallies and promise to pay legal fees for supporters who act on his pleas; suggest dropping a nuclear bomb on ISIS; deeply question a federal judge’s ability to do their job fairly because of their ethnic background; invoke numerous wild conspiracy theories about other candidates; and effusively and narcissistically praise themselves daily as if worshiping a supernatural god. It’s true that many of those types of things (with the notable exception of the self-aggrandizing techniques) were encouraged and said in hyper-macho, alienating and fear-mongering ways by a whole lot of Republican leaders in recent decades (which puts much culpability on their shoulders for what has happened in this campaign), but no one had ever taken it to the Trumpesque extreme.

Rhodes, Andy.  “Donald Trump: Patriot, Savior, or Tyrant (Part 1).” Persuade Me Politics, October 5, 2016.

With Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to the State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—have fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

Graham, David A.  “From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer.”  The Atlantic, September 23, 2016.

Addendum and Reference

I sat Trump beside Vendela, thinking that she would get a kick out of him. This was not the case. After 45 minutes she came over to my table, almost in tears, and pleaded with me to move her. It seems that Trump had spent his entire time with her assaying the “tits” and legs of the other female guests and asking how they measured up to those of other women, including his wife. “He is,” she told me, in words that seemed familiar, “the most vulgar man I have ever met.”

Carter, Graydon.  “Donald Trump: The Ugly American* (with apologies to William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick)”.  Vanity Fair, November 2016.

Collinson, Stephen.  “Can Donald Trump recover from this?”  CNN Politics, October 8, 2016.

Eichenwald, Kurt.  “Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal.”  Newsweek, October 10, 2016.

From an Earlier Election Season

Mr Clinton should ‘level with the American people on the draft, on whether he went to Moscow, how many demonstrations he led against his own country from foreign soil,’ Mr Bush declared on the Larry King television show.

‘I don’t have the facts, but to go to Moscow one year after Russia crushed Czechoslovakia, and not remember who you saw – I think the answer is, level with the American people,’ Mr Bush repeated.

Walker, Martin.  “Bush challenges Clinton over 1969 week in Moscow.”  The Guardian, October 9, 1992.

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FTAC – Political Philosophy – Moscow, Etc.

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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It’s not Islam — It’s Moscow.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/moscow-the-terror-with-one-reservation/

“Moscow” has chosen a revanchist feudal path for Russia using militarism and patriotism to achieve its aims.

There’s a relevant old saying in the Jewish tradition: “Those who are kind to the cruel will themselves be made to be cruel to the kind.”

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

https://www.britannica.com/topic/absolutism-political-system

Putin’s Russia represents the medieval world revolving around Absolute Power. So does the Syrian Theater — no more true description than theater for that. And so do Hamas and Hezbollah and so many others bent on imposing their will on the free of the open democracies through the application of violence.

The Palestinian platform from within the unsettled territories has long been a Soviet project intended to block the west’s own liberation and security story and produce money for its figureheads and associates, but never the disenfranchised.

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

Stimulus for this post: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9065/europe-good-terrorists

The problem has been Moscow’s connection with 20th Century terrorism and its perhaps cynical leveraging of the same in this still young century.

This 2014 Guardian article about Moscow’s expulsion of journalist David Satter may merely hint at Putin’s considerable success at trying to move Russia forward while turning the clock backward:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/13/russia-expels-american-journalist-david-satter – 1/14/2014.

Related

http://www.hudson.org/research/12507-how-putin-became-president – 5/19/2016.

On this blog: search term “Cold War”.

On this blog: search term “Russia, medieval”.

On Wikipedia and relevant to the long view of Russian history

I would much prefer a book walk me through time (recommendations may be welcomed), but for a browse-and-peruse session, or several, these entries found on Wikipedia provide an arc from the brigands of the feudal world to Putin’s surreal narrative predicated, at least partly, on massive information and perceptual control of the Russians.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. Chief among these was Imperial Russia’s failure, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, to modernize its archaic social, economic and political structures while maintaining the stability of ubiquitous devotion to an autocratic monarch. As historian Richard Pipes writes, “the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter”

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

 

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

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_(1927-1953)

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia_(1991-Present)

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

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Also in Media – On the Soviet and IRA – 1925! – History Ireland

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia

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The IRA was in contact with Red Army intelligence officers in London and New York, and it was in the former that the monthly stipend was handed over. The IRA’s senior officer in London passed along military intelligence, including specifications of British submarine detection sonar and aeroplane engines for bombers, military journals and manuals, and gas masks. In addition he arranged false passports for Soviet agents and even for a communist operative to travel to Romania in the guise of an Irish woollens salesman! It was in New York, however, that the Soviets got the most valuable information, from an IRA agent code-named ‘Mr Jones’. Jones’s sources likely included serving members of the US military, as he was able to provide reports of the army’s chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the navy, air service and army. In Jones’s estimation, Soviet intelligence in the US would have been ‘helpless’ without the information he supplied.

Source: History Ireland

Palestinian KGB

03 Monday Oct 2016

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

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The document, which the University of Cambridge’s Churchill Archives Centre confirmed was authentic, was smuggled in to the UK by a defector called Vasily Mitrokhin.

It is entitled “KGB developments – Year 1983” and Mr Abbas identifies him by the codename “Krotov” or “mole”.

“‘Krotov’ – Abbas, Mahmoud, born 1935, origin Palestine, member of the executive committee of Fatah, PLO, Damascus, agent of the KGB,” says the brief entry.

BBC News.  “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘was KGB agent'”.  September 8, 2016.

The KGB, when I was still connected with it, went to great lengths to transform an Egyptian born Marxist, Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar, into a Palestinian-born Yasser Arafat.  It took the KGB — and my DIE — many years to endow Arafat with a credible Palestinian birth certificate and other identity documents, to build him a new past, and to train him at the KGB Balashikha special-operations training school east of Moscow.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  P. 289.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

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

For those who may read in Russian, the Wilson Center hosts the Mitrohkin Archive at this address:

http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/52/mitrokhin-archive

How much of the intellectual poison delivered by Soviet-borne misinformation persists today in the Middle East Conflict?

Considering the looks of Syria, the miserable psychology shared between the dictatorships — on this blog, have a glance at the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” — and the horrific results, a side by side glance at Hamas behavior in Gaza (x human rights) suggests the same malign narcissistic values continues to course through the governance in both locations.

There may be no longer a need to wonder why.

Reference – Abbas, KGB Coverage

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/palestine-s-prez-was-once-a-kgb-mole.html – 9/17/2016.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/world/soviet-papers-palestinian-president-was-a-kgb-agent/ – 9/8/2016.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37305953 – 9/8/2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/world/middleeast/mahmoud-abbas-israel-palestine-kgb.html – 9/7/2016.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-abbas-idUSKCN11E1U0 – 9/8/2016.

Bergman, Judith.  “The Soviet-Palestinian Lie.”  Gatestone Institute, October 16, 2016: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9090/soviet-union-palestinians 

Reference – Arafat, KGB

Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world’s “kings, queens & despots,” with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai.  “The KGB’s Man.”  The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003.

A little more than four months before the news this week that tests on Arafat’s body in a Swiss investigation showed “unexpected high activity” of polonium, a book co-authored by former Romanian spy chief Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa was published documenting Arafat’s training by the communist Soviet Union and pointing out that the only other known case of polonium-210 poisoning was the death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

WND.  “New Evidence Suggests Kremlin Poisoned Arafat.”  November 7, 2013.

Related

Their report concluded that Arafat’s remains showed levels of polonium 18 times higher than normal.

Arafat’s widow, Suha, has reaffirmed to the BBC her belief that their report proves he was assassinated.

But she said she could not directly accuse anyone, saying that he had many enemies around the world.

BBC. “Arafat polonium findings confirmed by Swiss scientists.”  November 7, 2013.

Al Jazeera Investigative Unit.  “Swiss forensic report on Arafat’s death.” Document, 108-pages.  November 6, 2013.

http://honestreporting.com/plo-still-lying-about-arafats-legacy/ – 8/5/2015.

Yasir Arafat claims that he was born in Jerusalem, but he was actually born in Cairo. He claims to belong to the prominent Jerusalem family of Husseini, but he is at best only distantly related to it. He claims that he turned down a chance to go to the University of Texas, but according to one biographer, the Palestinian-born writer Saïd K. Aburish, it is highly unlikely that he was ever accepted. He claims to have disabled ten Israeli armored personnel carriers in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but Israel didn’t even have ten APCs in the sector he was in. He claims to have made millions as a businessman in Kuwait, but this, too, is almost certainly untrue.

Obviously, Arafat is a congenital liar. But there’s more to it than that: his lies are all designed to create an aura of romance around himself and the Palestinian people.

Brooks, David.  “A Brief History of Yasir Arafat: The PLO leader is a terrible administrator but a brilliant image crafter.”  The Atlantic, July/August 2002.

Reference – Wikipedia

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

The history of Palestine–Russia (and between 1917–1991, Palestine–Soviet Union) relations has been long and complex. For a number of historical and political reasons, it has been deeply interwoven with Russian (and between 1917–1991, Soviet) relations with the Zionist-Israeli enterprise, Palestinian nationalism, and Third World national liberation movements in general. However, at the same time, particularly between 1956 and 1990, Soviet-Palestinian relations were also part and parcel of the then ongoing Soviet-American confrontation, and even after the Cold War ended, the international and ideological role and importance of the Russian-Palestinian relationship always far exceeded its local and regional limitations. This relationship has continued even today. Russia remains an important player in the Middle East peace process and is a member of the Middle East Quartet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine%E2%80%93Russia_relations

The leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the Soviet KGB in the beginning of the 1970s.[9] The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB.

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

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

According to Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992, in early 1970 Haddad was recruited by the KGB as an agent, codenamed NATSIONALIST. Thereafter, in deep secrecy the Soviets helped to fund and arm the PFLP. The KGB had warning of its major operations and almost certainly sanctioned the most significant, such as the September 1970 hijackings. Haddad remained a highly valued agent till his death in 1978.

A letter by Yuri Andropov allegedly confirming Haddad’s role as an agent was independently discovered in Soviet archives by Vladimir Bukovsky and has since been published.

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

Reference – Gaza, Iran, Syria

http://armamentresearch.com/assessment-of-the-khaibar-1-rockets-captured-by-the-idf/ – 3/12/2014.

The Khaibar-1 (Arabic: خيبر-1‎‎) is a Syrian-made 302 mm [1] artillery rocket used by Hezbollah against targets in northern Israel. The name of the rocket was first revealed on July 28, 2006 by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a speech on Al-Manar television station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaibar-1

Related: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/world/meast/israel-intercepted-weapons/ – 3/6/2014.

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-says-hezbollah-hamas-arent-terrorist-groups-50783 – 11/16/2015.

Web search “Moscow, PFLP” also produces results.

Related

In July, Russia’s Federal Security Service, successor agency to the KGB, released a list of 17 organizations the Russian Supreme Court had identified as “terrorist.” The FSB’s counterterrorism chief described all 17 groups as a threat to the Russian state and noted that almost all were linked in some way to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the 17. Hamas, however, was not listed, though it openly describes itself as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and frequently features deceased Brotherhood dignitaries like Hassan al-Banna and Abdullah Azzam alongside Hamas leaders on its posters and pamphlets. The reason for not listing Hamas, the counterterrorism chief explained, was that Hamas was not engaged in violent activity in Russia, nor was it linked to illegal armed groups operating in the North Caucasus. But Hamas supporters do maintain a presence in Russia, and the group does express solidarity with Chechen fighters, including suicide bombers.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/putins-new-friends-moscow-hosts-hamas – 3/19/2007.

http://www.rferl.org/a/soviet-islamist-terrorism-israel-america-disinformation-pacepa/25034290.html – 7/2/2013.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9090/soviet-union-palestinians – 10/16/2016.

–33–

Syria – Moscow’s Show

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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In its post-Soviet alignment with Moscow — “Different Talks — Same Walk” — Syria has been made into a complete medieval theater of politics and war, for the production of “Assad vs The Terrorists” appears to have included the development of the al-Qaeda-type organizations, ISIL much included.

In line with what BackChannels has witnessed in association with the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy, Politico Europe yesterday reported “Vladimir Putin resurrects the KGB”.

🙂

Having cultivated its own “Russian Section” within its in-house library, BackChannels was not surprised: state capitalism may have replaced the promotion of communism in Russia, but the social architecture involving the secret security state, a powerful central leader, and an immensely favored and privileged few appear to have survived the dissolving of the Soviet that took place about 25 years ago (December 26, 1991).

“Let us be clear. Those using ever more destructive weapons know exactly what they are doing. They know they are committing war crimes,” Ban told the Security Council.

“Imagine the destruction. People with limbs blown off. Children in terrible pain with no relief,” he said. “Imagine a slaughterhouse. This is worse.”

http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/syria-hospital-attacks-are-war-crimes-ban-ki-moon-116092900013_1.html – 9/29/2016

Ban Ki-moon was not referring to the primitive “barrel bombs” once dropped on every Syrian noncombatant target imaginable but rather modern incendiary bombs and missiles.

Additional Reference

“Iran has been there a long time,” said Sobhi Zeitun, an opposition fighter who fled Aleppo for Turkey in May. “We could hear them on the radio for a long time. They taunted and mocked. They said they were going to kill us in the name of Ali. This is the face of Bashar, a man who hands over the country to sectarian groups, because he can’t defend it himself.”

As the air attacks on Aleppo intensified this week, a senior Iranian general acknowledged that forces he commands had given targets to the Russian air force.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/29/aleppo-attack-foreign-syrian-fighters-plan-shia-islamic – 9/29/2016.

The recent cessation deal was meant to lead to joint Russian-US air strikes on so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front).

However Russia has complained the US has not done enough to separate the more moderate rebel groups, which it backs, from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. Many of these groups have formed a strategic alliance with the more powerful Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and fight alongside it.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/russia-vows-continue-bombing-aleppo – 9/29/2016.

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

BackChannels

Palestinian KGB

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/02/quote-manipulation-about-the-plo-leader-pacepa-and-rychlak-2013/ – 12/2/2014.  Closely related in major media: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37305953 – “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘was KGB agent'” — 9/8/2016.

Category: Russia

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/regions/eurasia/russia/

Category: Syria

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/regions/middle-east/syria/

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

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

Russo-Syrian Relationship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Syria_relations

Other

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/90s/fall_of_the_soviet_union.asp

http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/syria-hospital-attacks-are-war-crimes-ban-ki-moon-116092900013_1.html – 9/29/2016.

Posted to YouTube by AFP new agency, September 28, 2016.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-hospital-idUSKCN11Y0QG – 9/29/2016

Posted to YouTube by Channel 4 News, September 28, 2016.

By the time it became clear this was wrong, a full-scale war was raging in two Ukrainian regions; a Malaysian Airlines plane had been shot down over Ukraine; the G8 had reverted to the G7; Putin’s closest friends were on international sanctions lists, and Russia was more isolated internationally for the first time since the Afghan war.

Finding himself in a Ukrainian dead end, Putin decided to raise the stakes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/29/how-putins-high-risk-syria-gamble-is-paying-off – 9/29/2016.

–post in progress —

Also in Media – “Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities” « Telos Press – On Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi’s experience as the Palestinian professor who arranged appropriate field trips, one of them to Auschwitz, for both Israeli and Palestinian students

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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As Haaretz reported, “He says the choice of Dheisheh for the Israeli students was not meant to suggest there was an equivalence or even a direct link between the Holocaust and the Nakba. They were chosen as the symbolic events that have deeply affected the psyche on both sides of the conflict.” The aim was to build mutual empathy and understanding through an appreciation of events central to the other side’s narratives and self-understanding.

None of this played well on the Palestinian street. Holocaust deniers asserted that Dajani was trying to brainwash his students by disseminating the fabrication that the Holocaust was real. He was denounced as a traitor and collaborator by students and others and warned not to enter Ramallah. The faculty union cancelled his membership.

Read more about Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities « Telos Press, September 27, 2016.

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