Before anything else, search up “Moscow, PFLP”.
Who is for the terrorists?
Who is against them?
Putin’s Feudal Revanche, the One Big Step Backward, involves many moving parts and relationships (e.g., Putin-Assad-Khamenei, Putin-Khamenei, Putin-Orban; Syrian Tragedy, partially enabled by Moscow on behalf of Damascus; a war on the lawful, NATO, and the west masked behind fighting “the terrorists”, which in Syria appear to have been incubated by Assad — and now Russia — preferencing moderate rebel targets over opportunities to slam the al-Qaeda Typicals), but it appears to have as its end the installation of 19th Century Feudalism (“New Nobility” and all) in our 21st Century. Required: renewed “blood and soil nationalism” — and nationalist fervor — everywhere.
Much to the chagrin of Syrians I know — not those concert goers in Damascus, God bless them for maintaining the more delightful aspects of western civilization, but the refugees of indiscriminate barrel bombs and chemical attacks — Putin may get away with the promotion of his version of KGB Theater, “Assad vs The Terrorists (AKA “Assad OR The Terrorists”) and the related appeal to fascist nationalist urges worldwide, for that is what a body part does when injured: it swells around its wound.
Proud flesh.
Putin, having given the Russian Orthodox Church a front row seat to his State of the Federation address, has gone back to the 19th Century drawing board. The Soviet is 24 years long gone and the Church is back in business, not such a bad thing with perhaps post-Holocaust updates producing an ambiguous (actual best possibility: Jew-friendly) Cossack community.
Vlad, so one might say, you can’t go home again: even if you drive a whole nation back there, what was there isn’t there anymore except for its ghosts.
Back to the latest in real bloody politik: one may expect Catholic France to rise to this occasion with some increase in anti-Muslim sentiment; however, this time, the French and everyone else have got a new word to place in place of “Muslim”: “Islamist” — and it’s going to be okay getting about the business of detecting and removing “Islamists” from French society.
The “crusader west” might not appear, at least not as expected.
Associated Links
On BackChannels
https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/21st-century-feudal/ (Category)
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/20/ftac-on-separating-from-the-medieval-world/ – 10/20/2015.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/01/16/ali-khamenei-and-the-letter-from-near-mosul-a-speculation/ – 1/16/2015. In political observation, “certainty” refers to some degree of probability and is seldom 100 percent certain. Nonetheless, This BackChannels piece provided insight into the manipulation of the Iraq-Syrian Theater to place Daesh where Assad and Khamenei could make the best use of it — north of Baghdad for the most zealous of Iraq’s Shiite Militia, now hosting Revolutionary Guard officers; incubated in Syria to serve as a goad to the west (“Assad OR The Terrorists”) and a sink for related western military spending; and were all to go Putin’s way, as eventual true targets for a show of new Russian military prowess. Related: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/
Elsewhere On The Web
“It is a lie to say that the Right Sector is anti-Semitic. The anti-Semites are the Russians, who try to recruit Ukrainians to hurt Jews so that they could later on say that the ‘Ukrainian fascists’ did some horrible things.”
http://forward.com/culture/202181/my-hunt-for-the-cossacks-in-ukraine/ – 7/19/2014.
In later writings about the KGB, one former senior agent in the 1990s wrote about the simmering discontent within the agency during Putin’s time there, and the increasingly prevalent disconnect between the intelligence officers, who saw themselves as servants of the “eternal” Russian nation rather than of the Communist Party.
“He’s learned the lessons of the past,” said Gaddy, “and from the failure of the Communist Party to tap the deep support that certain national and nationalist institutions have.”
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/06/09/Putin-s-Calculated-Revival-Russian-Orthodox-Church – 6/9/2015.
Also related in The Fiscal Times: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/05/26/Putin-Isn-t-Reviving-USSR-He-s-Creating-Fascist-State – 5/26/2015;
Blank said the Russian Orthodox Church is “not an autonomous institution.”
“It is used for state purposes, as well as for its own purposes, but it is an arm of Russia’s foreign policy,” he said.
Blank explained that European “integration and solidarity is an ancient threat to Russia, and that is what Putin wants to overthrow.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/putin-uses-church-as-foreign-policy-tool/ — 7/4/2015.
Mentioning what he describes as “left-wing studies about the future of the EU and a possible European superstate”, Mr Orban subscribes to the view that the nation-state as a concept is being eroded and says the European Left and “radical American Democrats” have come up with a theory for this ˝new world˝ idea. He has no doubt that this is connected to the issue of migration.
http://www.euronews.com/2015/11/13/hungarian-prime-minister-talks-about-leftist-masterplan-behind-refugee-crisis/ – 11/13/2015.
NATO has been saddled with two weak partners, one of them friendly to Moscow, and, of course, as suggested by quoted piffle, that one happily deflects blame to the west while embracing and producing a nationalist autocracy himself.
“We are confronted with a collective effort that has been engaged in terrorism,” Erdoğan said as he listed the attacks committed by ISIL in different parts of the world, namely in Suruç, Diyarbakır, Ankara and most recently in Paris. “This act of terror is not only against the people of France but against all peoples of the world,” he added.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s politics as regards Daesh needs its own expanded analysis. However he may represent “conservative” Islamic political forces in Turkey, and whatever has transpired to this point by way of the passage of Jihadis through Turkey to Daesh — also the transport of black market oil; the election to bomb Kurdish outposts instead of Daesh when first given the opportunity — the NATO bond leans on his own military, the Shiite-backed interests of Syria are not his, and playing ever in the background may be (should be) the Shiite vs Sunni rivalry. Erdogan, like Orban, may have shoehorned himself into some pretty sweet digs (the “White Palace” thing), but he really cannot bond with the Putin that has aligned as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”. Instead, Obama gets Erdogan’s business.
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