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.”

–33–

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.

–33–

Ukraine: A Scrape on Russian Defections

21 Tuesday Feb 2023

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The scrapes here are dated but cogent. Ukraine has long maintained surrender hotlines for Russian troops intent on surviving Putin’s catastrophe. For defectors, Vladimir Osechkin has been a go-to via his gulagu site–I’d include the .net extension but haven’t been able to reach it myself (related in Wikipedia). What follows: scraped quotes (in no particular order) and additional reference. For philosophy: life is full of leavings, some sad and sweet, some sudden and wrenching.

Note: in the Blogosphere, “scraping” refers to a part of my method, which distills to “Collect, Select, and Opine”–but when one doesn’t “opine” very much, the work amounts to relay with a minimum of commentary, i.e., “scraping”.

So done.

With the Russia v. Ukraine War and Putin’s willful churning of young Russians into fertilizer for Ukrainian soil, Russian motivation for turning against Putin should be powerful in its latency. Indeed, Putin has made his world that of political, practical, and unconscionable criminals making themselves legend for their brutality, dishonesty, greed, ruthlessness, and, ultimately, essential worthlessness.

Caesar said Legion fighters are ideologically diverse but share in fierce anti-Putinism. “Our people hold different views, but we are united in our rejection of the Kremlin dictatorship and the desire to reformat Russia,” he said.

“Our country must become a democratic power, but for this, a reboot of the entire political and social system, lustration, decolonization, de-imperialization and a complete constitutional re-establishment of the state must be carried out.”

Brennian, David. “Russians Fighting for Ukraine Vow to ‘Destroy the Putin Regime'”. Newsweek, October 28, 2022.

Senior Lieutenant at Russian FSB Counterintelligence defected to Europe. Emran #Navruzbekov was to be sent to Turkey & Syria for an operation against Russian citizens wanted by Putin. Instead, he used the opportunity to flee to Europe with a goldmine of intelligence & asked for political asylum.

Emran says the 2nd Service of the FSB essentially controls all criminal activities in Dagestan and Chechnya.

The FSB kidnaps, tortures, & extorts successful businessmen & others who can pay a ransom. The FSB has their own torture chambers across the region for this purpose.

Sushco, Igor. “FSB Counterintelligence Senior Lieutenant defector tells all (Part 1).” The Racecar Driver, December 29, 2022.

“The last 10 years I do a lot of things to protect the human rights and other people. But in this moment, I understood that my mission to help other people created a very high risk to my family,” Osechkin told CNN from France, where he’s lived since 2015 after he fled Russia and claimed asylum. He now has full-time police protection.

He’s become the champion of a growing number of high-level Russian officials defecting to the West, emboldened and disgruntled by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. He says ex-generals and intelligence agents are among their number.

Bell, Melissa, Saskya Vandoome, Joseph Ataman. “High-ranking Russian officials are defecting. This man is aiding them.” CNN, January 25, 2023.

Igor Volobuyev spent two decades working in the heart of the Russian business establishment, first for Gazprom and then for its affiliate Gazprombank, where until February this year he was vice-president.

Then Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine in late February, and Volobuyev decided he could no longer stand living in Russia. He packed a small rucksack of possessions and a stack of cash, and flew out of the country on 2 March, pretending he was going on holiday.

A few days later, he crossed from Poland into Ukraine, where he spent his childhood years. Now, he spends his days trying to convince officials to provide him with Ukrainian documents and allow him to sign up for military service.

Walker, Shaun and Andrew Roth. “‘I’m never going back’: the high profile Russian defectors rejecting war.” The Guardian, May 15, 2022.

The history of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras is rife with elaborate, almost implausible tales of defectors and double agents, sometimes even triple agents, spies who worked for one or more governments simultaneously for love or money or for the simple thrill of leading a hidden life. There are those with access to state secrets, some immeasurably valuable, who betrayed their country for ideological reasons or, as they often rationalize the treachery to themselves, perfectly pragmatic ones.

And now there is a historic first: the enemy spy who came back to the people who caught and released him.

Weiss, Michael. “Exclusive: Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow.” Yahoo News, November 17, 2022.

Related Online

Bell, Melissa, Saskya Vandoorne, Joseph Ataman. “High-ranking Russian officials are defecting. This man is aiding them.” CNN, January 25, 2023.

Brennian, David. “Russians Fighting for Ukraine Vow to ‘Destroy the Putin Regime'”. Newsweek, October 28, 2022.

Bunyan, Rachael. “‘I’m Russian, I kill my countrymen… but they’re criminals’: Soldiers who defected from Putin’s military say they joined Ukraine after witnessing atrocities…and have each killed as many as 18 of their former comrades.” Daily Mail, December 6, 2022.

Dovidka. “Acting in occupied territory.”

“How to surrender: step-by-step instructions for Russians and forcibly mobilized Ukrainians.” Visit Ukraine Today Blog, n.d.

Jackson, Jon. “Putin’s Deserters Poised to Fight Against Him on Front Lines.” Newsweek, February 13, 2023.

Murphy, Matt. “Ukraine War: Russia’s Wagner Group commander requests Norway asylum.” BBC, January 16, 2023.

Pleasance, Chris. “Thousands of Russian soldiers ‘have already called Ukrainian hotline set up to let them surrender’.” October 5, 2022.

Riehle, Kevin. First paragraph: “We are seeing an increasing flow of reports about dissatisfaction among people associated with Russia’s intelligence and security services. Is it just anti-Russian propaganda? Hard to say.” LinkedIn.

Rosenberg, Steve. “Russian army officer admits: ‘Our troops tortured Ukrainians’.” BBC, February 2, 2023.

Stewart, Will. “Officer in Putin’s security service who ‘REFUSED’ to kill Ukrainians and fled to Kazakhstan instead is deported to Russia and now faces up to 15 years in jail.” Daily Mail, December 31, 2023.

Weiss, Michael. “Exclusive: Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow.” Yahoo News, November 17, 2022.

Posted to YouTube on February 20, 2023.

–33–

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?

–33–

A Note on Hersh, Nordstream II, and the Value of Integrity and Truth in an Authentic Democracy

10 Friday Feb 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Political Psychology

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https://twitter.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1624050397512867840?s=20&t=EIfNz1h0gZAWRWboFIx6WQ

Integrity is derived from the Latin word “integer,” meaning whole. A person of integrity is complete, undivided. Sincerity, decency, trustworthy are synonyms of integrity. It’s on our shield because it is the quality that makes possible all the good that we do. Because everything we do requires that we be believed, whether that’s promising a source that we will protect her, telling a jury what we saw or heard, or telling a congressional oversight committee or the American people what we are doing with our power and our authorities. We must be believed.

Without integrity, all is lost.

Comey, James B. “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity: The Essence of the FBI.” Speech. Installation of Director James B. Comey, FBI Headquarters, October 28, 2013.
Confidence in modern governance and its ability to sustain its political coherence, cohesion, and power, within and without, may be rooted in the credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness of the same.

For cause, I believe the Federal government of the United States of America better than supposed by a constituency often less educated, sophisticated, and specialized–or broadly elevated–for understanding its departments, duties, missions, and relationships. Few Americans have privilege and time, much less specific ambition and curiosity, for personally exploring the administrative machinery of the nation in the advancement and defense of the same.

NordStream II

What if Seymour Hersh’s report and analyses prove true?

The truth won’t change the barbaric, criminal, and untrustworthy character of Putin’s regime.

The truth won’t weaken the strength of America’s defenses nor the argument for inclusive, liberal, open democracies and related rule of law as the much better alternative to the ways of capricious tyrants and totalitarian systems.

The truth may force Germany and the German People to revisit the sordid and twisted political discourse of the 1930s and 1940s just to check the conclusions–and then measure the strides made by modern Germany against the feudal and primitive forces and ideas of a deeply defeated generation followed by an as astonishingly renewed and powerful German state.

The truth may be a fait accomplis, and here we are.

RusNazis

“Kill the Jews, Save Russia!” might have a history dating back to the Byzantine Era in which the tribes of Europe acknowledged and adapted to four comparatively new religions: Greek Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Roman Catholic Christianity. The Varangian descendants of the Vikings and later Rus were to displace the Turkic tribes that had at least nominally adopted Judaism and made their protectorate in eastern and southern Ukraine known as the “Khazar Kingdom of the Jews”. In more recent centuries, the Jewish People may thank Russia for the revival of the “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”; for having created the White Russian (loyalist to the czar) Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter who informed Hitler about the Jews before catching the bullet meant for him at the Munich Beer Hall Putsch; for supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) among others to effectively block the spread of western liberalism in the middle east, create and keep the Palestinians corrupted, enslaved, and plundered; for supporting Radical Islam, including Hamas in Gaza but also the Taliban and others as it has suited assorted dictatorships, mafia, and murderous zealots; and now, most cogent and near, for incubating the latest in anti-Semitic white supremacist organizations, Russian Imperial Movement and Wagner Group.

Timing is Everything

Whatever the truth may be, it’s too late with Russia in Ukraine–and positioned elsewhere for assault or heightened threat–for either the invention of or leveraging of a supposed casus belli. It has already in its surreal and psychopathic fashion picked its fight with NATO. However, Tsar #PutinFullTonto may be as ill in body as he appears to be sick in the head, and how far his madness takes his whole circle remains unknown.

Related Online

ADL. “A Hoax of Hate: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” May 1, 2013.

Bauer, Scott. “Trump campaign staff pushed 2020 election lies in newly released audio.” PBS New Hour, February 3, 2023.

Davis, Miriah. “Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly required doctors after becoming ‘weak and tired’.” Sky News, February 6, 2023.

Jewish News Syndicate. “Hamas leaders in Moscow: We are entitled ‘to resist by every means’: The delegation emphasized their support for the Kremlin on several issues, while Russian officials expressed support for Hamas.” September 21, 2022.

Kessler, Glenn, Salvador Rizzo, Meg Kelly. “Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years.” The Washington Post, January 24, 2021.

Morgan, Wesley. “Pentagon looks to restart top-secret programs in Ukraine.” The Washington Post, February 10, 2023.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Endemic Russian Anti-Semitism–A Note.” BackChannels, February 1, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Middle East Conflict: Back to Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter and Forward to the Plundering of Palestinian Misery by Palestinian Leadership Elites.” BackChannels, December 29, 2017.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Palestinian KGB & The Palestinians –Abused and Plundered by Their Own.” BackChannels, July 26, 2021.

Wikipedia. “Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case”. The film also goes by the name “Poisoned by Polonium” and, as shown above, “The Murder of Litvinenko”.

Wikipedia. “Russian Imperial Movement”.

Wikipedia. “Steele dossier”.

Wikipedia. “Veracity of statements by Donald Trump”.

–33–

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.

–33–

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.

–33–

Over Coffee–Opinion, Reading, and Viewing Recommended: Russian Payoffs to European Politicians; Chinese Balloon; Ilhan Omar

05 Sunday Feb 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Great Britain and United Kingdom, International Development, North America, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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Russia Paid Off European Politicians In Relation to Ukraine and Violence Elsewhere

Since Russia launched its brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s overseas aggression has reached a fever pitch. Yet Russia can still rely on the occasional friendly voice in Europe: Last November, for example, far-right Italian local legislator Stefano Valdegamberi penned an op-ed decrying the EU’s decision to designate Russia a terrorist state as “a serious mistake” that “foments conflict by denying historical truth.”

But what Valdegamberi didn’t mention was that he had long been collaborating with a secretive Russian lobbying group with a direct link to the Kremlin. Since at least 2014, that group had designed plans to channel cash to European politicians to help it legitimize Russia’s occupation of Crimea and promote pro-Moscow policies inside EU countries.

Laine, Martin, Cecilia Anesi, Lorenzo Bagnoli, and Tatiana Tkachenko. “Kremlin-Linked Group Arranged Payments to European Politicians to Support Russia’s Annexation of Crimea.” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, February 3, 2023.

Reading Highly Recommended–>

Greg Olear’s 2018 investigation of how the world works between Donald J. Trump, Russia’s political interests, and related mafia and ill-gotten wealth.

America Has Lost Its Objectivity Over “Spy Balloon”, Says Chinese Pundit–And He’s Right

Influential commentator Hu Xijin blamed American “politicization” and “hype” for preventing the incident from escalating, saying that competition to look tough on China meant that the United States “has already lost its objectivity.”

Shepherd, Christian. “China blames U.S. politics for ‘overreaction’to suspected spy balloon.” The Washington Post, February 5, 2023.

In the normal course attending diplomatic incidents, investigations ensue, and with “spy data” presumed already transmitted, there would seem not much point in destroying the technology involved in the overflight. Of course, there was Gary Powers too, so Biden did what ranting Republicans appeared to expect in the way of “tough” leadership. It was not a good decision nor display of national air and space defense–the object should have been addressed and turned or interdicted on or just past arrival in American air space.

China has already apologized for the incident–“On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the balloon was theirs, but called it a “civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes,” that had gone off course. And the ministry expressed rare “regret” for the incident.” Beijing should now follow up with details regarding the research mission and its technology, in general, while the U.S. Navy attempts retrieval of the drowned payload.

The Silencing by Removal of Ilhan Omar From the Foreign Affairs Committee

The angry header displayed this morning in The Jerusalem Post: “Decision to remove Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs Committee was overdue -editorial: What makes Omar particularly dangerous is that while she spews blatant antisemitism, she pretends not to be an antisemite.”

Omar herself had asked (same article), “‘Why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the (National Rifle Association), or fossil fuel industries or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobbying group that is influencing policy?'”

Conservative and liberal Americans have now to ask this question: what else is off the table?

Who hasn’t an ox?

Our American system relies on compassion, education, intelligence, open discourse, earnest problem-solving abilities, and respect, not religious or tribal hate.

Apparently, some Jews–not this one although I have become with experience very much an American of Jewish descent–believe Ilhan Omar’s election and voice should be nullified where it most counts, and suspicion, for that is what is expressed by, “. . . pretends not to be an antisemite”, put in place of of argument, education, and reason. The only lesson imparted: don’t mess with the Jews, even if and when they are wrong.

Posted by PBS to YouTube, February 2, 2023.

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