08 Tuesday Feb 2022
Snyder, Timothy. “1989: Poland Was First!” The New York Review of Books, December 9, 2009.
Polish History Museum. “The Solidarity and the Fall of the Iron Curtain”.
Wikipedia. “Soviet invasion of Poland”.
Wikipedia. “Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939-1946)”.
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24 Monday Jan 2022
Tags
EU/NATO, New Nationalism, New Russian Imperialism, Putin the Pirate, Russia v NATO, Russia v Ukraine, Ukraine's Frozen Conflict, Vladimir Putin
Well, he stole Robert Kraft’s Sacred Superbowl Ring, so what wouldn’t he steal?
Kraft’s ring now appears on display in the Kremlin’s library, quite a trophy brought home to Moscow by Russia’s Boss of Bosses.
From CNN:
The 4.94-carat ring is in the Kremlin’s library, where all official state gifts are kept, he said. It is worth more than $25,000, according to multiple reports from 2005.
A Kraft spokesman said Sunday the story is a humorous anecdote that Kraft “retells for laughs.”
“He loves that the ring is at the Kremlin and, as he stated back in 2005, he continues to have great respect for Russia and the leadership of President Putin,” said Stacey James, a spokesman for The Kraft Group.
Eshchenko, Alla and Faith Karimi. “Russian president: I did not steal Super Bowl ring.” CNN, June 17, 2013.
No. Putin didn’t steal it. It was a gift!
🙄
***
Will Ukraine be a gift too?
***
Putin the Pirate has done a few things under the table upside-down and sideways over decades to weaken western political coherence, cohesion, and resolve. Start with the KGB’s handling of Zawahiri over the winter of 1996/7. In connect-the-dots fashion, I believe that stay led to the attack by jet hijacking Islamists on 9/11 that in turn goosed the pride of western states in their Christian and independent political cultures and led to what has been referred to as the “New Nationalism”.
When bees sting and flesh swells, the response has not been called “proud flesh” for nothing.
The popular western response in enmity and fear regarding Islam has not been misplaced in relation to Islamic Extremism and related Islamist Terror, but the same has given rise to blood-and-soil nationalism, authoritarianism, and actual autocracy in some EU/NATO states. Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (one nation under Trump for a while) have each seen their open democracies challenged by demagoguery or political perversion.
We may also take note of the “01s” in dates: 1991-dissolve of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy following American intercession opposite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (from which Russia was forced to retreat in 1989); 2001-the September 11 attacks took place on Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday, quite a gift for a Moscow bent on revenge for its losses in Afghanistan-and, no, Putin didn’t do it–it was obviously radical Muslims assembled and deployed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden; 2011-The Horror taking off in Syria that would send millions of refugees into NATO (Turkey, which today hosts about 3.68 million Syrian refugees), the European Union (0.7 million-Germany), and Scandinavia (0.3 million), another goad for the defense of the rightly ethnolinguistic state cultures settled and enjoying the benefits of, well, being themselves, the only problem being a concomitant drift toward the same feudal-medieval worldviews and fascination with authority held by Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, and Vladimir Putin; 2021-Russia’s repeated threats by military feint against Ukraine, a young democratic state seeking NATO accession, and, by extension, NATO itself, but not quite as Ukraine remains without accession.
So hey, Bob (Kraft), George and George, Jr. (Bush), where are you today with Putin (the thief)?
***
Where and when are dictatorships to be stopped?
Is it when one or another has engaged in political repression and breathtaking plunder at home?
Should it be when the security service agents and agent provocateur show up within the borders of one’s democratic state?
Should it be when the tanks roll into a neighboring state struggling for its own sovereignty against barbaric force and the possibility of a return to corrupt, kleptocratic, and tyrannical governance?
Christophersen, Erik. “These 10 countries receive the most refugees.” Norwegian Refugee Council.
Duffin, Erin. “Nationalism in the U.S. – Statistics & Facts.” Statista, March 11, 2021.
Oppenheim, James S. “Syria: The Horror: 2011.” BackChannels, December 29, 2017.
Oppenheim, James S. “Ukraine: A Reminder.” BackChannels, December 7, 2021.
Schuster, Simon. “How Paul Manafort Helped Elect Russia’s Man in Ukraine.” Time, October 31, 2017.
Statista. “Ranking of the largest Syria refugee-hosting countries in 2020”.
The New York Times. “Gerald L. K. Smith Dead; Anti-Communist Crusader.” April 16, 1976.
UNHCR. “Syria Refugee Crisis–Globally, in Europe and in Cyprus.” March 18, 2021.
VOA. “Russia Threatens to Deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons.” December 14, 2021.
Wikipedia. “America First Party (1943)”.
Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.
Wikipedia. “Felix Dzerzhinsky”.
Wikipedia. “Gerald L. K. Smith”.
Wikipedia. “Putin’s Kleptocracy”.
Wikipedia. “Russo-Ukrainian War”.
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28 Tuesday Dec 2021
Miami Herald journalist Julie Brown noted the presence of countless unanswered questions in association with her research into Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita industry. The full accounting of who, what, where, and why would today seem largely absent and sealed by Epstein’s own hanging, but perhaps there’s one aspect that bears further attention in this most distracted age: Epstein’s Russian interests. The powerful personal brands associated with the Epstein vortex range from Alan Dershowitz to Prince Andrew — so how deep and how wide the damage done?
State secret?
Anything’s possible.
Former American President Donald Trump has had his allegiance questioned quite famously in relation to the Steele Dossier, but what of his noted and more accessible financial entanglements with Russian money?
Whether by way of fear of being found out or found guilty of one crime or another, when have the business and political leaders of a nation been compromised enough to accept bridling by the state’s foremost enemy?
***
Should you pick up American Kleptocracy by Casey Michel, you will learn (here cribbing direct from the book’s title) “How the U.S. CREATED the WORLD’S GREATEST MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME in HISTORY”. Forget expensive cars and real estate, at least until one has established sufficient anonymous businesses- as-persons courtesy of Delaware, South Dakota, Wyoming, for a start.
***
Before Maria Butina, the “illegal”, got caught, American Administrations, including Trump’s, had given the boot to Moscow’s spies-under-diplomatic-cover. The question to which only the state, actually the CIA and FBI, might respond would be “How many more Maria’s might there be?” Doing what? How? And where?
***
With respect to East-West Rivalry and Moscow-Washington Relations, just how bad might compromise, corruption, and infiltration serving Russia’s defense and promotion of political absolutism and kleptocracy be here in the United States?
We know of at least one former American President having been up to his eyeballs in Russian money related to real estate (and few will ever forget or forgive his “Helsinki Moment“).
Whatever Washington’s true state of affairs might be with Russia — and a kleptocratic Russia unrelenting in its will to confuse and degrade EU/NATO cohesion and coherence — one may hope the open democracies of the west and their allies will renew their vows (for Americans, see “Basic Training” on this blog) and rediscover and reaffirm their commitments to American and modern civility, ethics, principles, rights, and values without compromise and, always, with compassion, humanism, and reason.
FBI. “Operation Ghost Stories: Inside the Russian Spy Case.” October 31, 2011.
France 24. “US expels 35 Russian diplomats over election hacking.” December 29-30, 2016.
Michel, Casey. American Kleptocracy. New York: Macmillan, 2021.
Michel, Casey. “The United States of Anonymity.” Hudson Institute, November 3, 2017. Separate PDF Report, 44 pages.
Oppenheim, James S. “Basic Training.” BackChannels, February 2, 2017.
Patterson, Thom. “The Russian spies living next door.” CNN, July 19, 2017.
11 Saturday Dec 2021
Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16
אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן
Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman
All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.
More colloquially translated: “Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be made to be cruel to the kind.”
Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php
“Wuhan Flu” or planned Pfizer windfall?
I and thee may never know that answer.
While China had been slow to accede to the multilateral Biological Weapons Convention and expressed interest in biological warfare competition, the world has not committed to the Wuhan Level 4 Biological Laboratory narrative regarding Chinese state culpability. There above (viewable on Amazon Prime Video) is the trailer from a counterintelligence thriller directed by the British auteur Michael Apted and released to the viewing public in 2017, about three years before the natural/unnatural dissemination of the COVID-19 strand and its effects.
So we may not know how Covid-19 got started, but we well know what it has done to our species’ natural biological and social existence, and we know who and what the disease has decimated financially or enriched beyond estimation.
While narcotics are money makers for burgeoning Transnational Crime Organizations as well as stimulus for police and paramilitary counter-narcotics budgets worldwide, the same represent also a form of biological warfare (snorted, swallowed, poked, and smoked into human frames with myriad rationales) that effectively deflects and degrades the energies and lives of untold millions worldwide while facilitating as well cultural and social chaos, decay, and despair. However made, narcotics money percolates upward — or across if sufficiently funded for the experience (Robin Williams: “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you are making too much money”) — and the $1 billion slurried up from Kensington Avenue becomes one Big Billion Dollar Infusion for spending in and around Philadelphia or anywhere else it may care to go.
As biological weapons go, narcotics, not always deadly but nefariously life altering and frequently enslaving, work. Of course, drugs do kill and quite well too — about 100,000 Americans annually.
One cannot underestimate the propensity for ruthless threat and violence on the part of the world’s smugglers nor ignore the impact of the kind of money involved in smuggling — arms, drugs, humans for labor and for sex — all are money (really, just business) to the cartels, freelancers, and gangs involved in inveigling the world in vice and looting it by force. It has gotten so bad that cocaine and funding for terrorism has become a negotiated commodity between statesmen as well as a major headache for intelligence and law enforcement authorities.
Add, perhaps, what goes on behind the curtains.
So what happens to all that dirty money?
As suggested about Philadelphia’s infamous Kensington Avenue narcotics market, what the dealers scrape off the streets moves around and upward into cars and real estate or onward to other criminal or terrorist enterprises (and backwards: no new products, no sales). With bulk purchases (e.g., cars rounded up for export and sales overseas) or luxurious ones, the very next sale cleans the money and into town it goes.
Business and politics in feudal systems structured around Absolute Power, whether of corporation or state, may have features resembling corruption–bribes become incentives, kickbacks rewards, the receiving of less noble hooch and nookie pleasant encouragement for sealing a less private, more notable and admirable business deal. The details may disappear in the vapors of hangovers and lost memories, and that’s the end of the story. Take it a little further, however, and an act of indiscretion, pleasantly offered, may become leverage for blackmail and coercion. Jeffrey Epstein socialized among and with the powerful of the world, and he had his relationship with Putin too: was what he was doing really about an old perv with his own treasury?
Are America’s wealthy in some ways destroying their own national culture for a little bit of business or, perhaps, doing so out of naivete?
You tell me.
*
What happens in El Norte moves into and may add to the chaos and misery known to Latin America in the sway of local and regional “narconomies”.
I have a Twitter trope that I’ll restate here without counting the letters:
North American arms–>south to Latin American gangs and cartels; LA migrants–>North; NA cash–>south; LA illicit everything–>north.
America’s black market arms (see Gaynor and Grillo in reference) are not the only ones reaching Latin America, but that the system has been large and persistent and with much related activity eating away at the country’s ethical, financial, moral, and social integrity, one wonders if it isn’t time for the “authorities” to get smarter and the “bad guys” — or the desperate — to have better options with perhaps a little less ambition before “what goes around” really does return in karmic fashion.
Brown, Julie K. Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story. New York: Harper Collins, 2021.
CDC. “Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Top 100,000 Annually.” Press release, November 17, 2021.
Gaynor, Tim. “‘Iron river of guns’ flows from U.S. to Mexico.” Reuters, July 13, 2007.
Grillo, Loan. “Slow the Iron River of Guns to Mexico.” The New York Times, February 20, 2021.
Hudson Institute Kleptocracy Initiative.
Meyer, Josh. “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.” Politico. 2017.
Wikipedia. “Financial intelligence”.
Wikipedia. “Money Laundering Control Act”.
Wikipedia. “Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication”.
Wikipedia. “Terrorist Finance Tracking Program”.
Williams, Robin. “Cocaine”. The Met, 1986.
Transparency International. “Corruption Perceptions Index.” 2020.
Kleptocracy, or “rule by thieves,” has for too long been disregarded from mainstream foreign policy discussions. It is often overlooked as a peripheral economic development issue: A problem for tax justice advocates and foreign aid workers. Yet it has been shaping international politics and the global security environment for decades. The Biden-Harris administration will have an unprecedented opportunity—and a unique responsibility—to confront this pervasive threat with decisive action.
This chance comes not come a moment too soon. Since the end of the Cold War, corruption has metastasized beyond national borders into a problem of almost unimaginable scale. The United Nations has estimated that $1 trillion are paid in bribes and a further $2.3 trillion otherwise stolen annually.1 Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based think tank, cites corruption as a key factor in $8.7 trillion that vanished from official records of trade between 135 developing countries and 36 advanced economies from 2008-2017.2
Sibley, Nate and Ben Judah. “Countering Global Kleptocracy: A New US Strategy for Fighting Authoritarian Corruption.” Hudson Institute, January 8, 2021.
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10 Friday Dec 2021
Tags
9/11 History, Afghanistan & Taliban, East-West Rivalry, Putin's Diplomacy, Soviet/Post-Soviet Era
As “Russia v Ukraine” heats up for the West’s Christmas Holiday — the significance of historical dates plays high in Moscow’s planning, for the Soviet Union dissolved on December 25, 1991 and you may bet that Vladimir Putin has never forgotten it (nor, for that matter, Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday on September 11, 1877)
Pakistani ISI and some portion of Islam as well appears to walk down both sides of the street. Arms and materiel supplied to the Taliban were in any case of Russian origin — https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/04/24/russia-is-sending-weapons-to-taliban-top-u-s-general-confirms/ (there are other confirming reports online) — and when Kabul fell, the Taliban were quick to guard the Russian Embassy (https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/world-news-russia-says-taliban-guarantees-security-to-its-afghanistan-embassy/391802). Moscow was then just as quick to seal defense sales with Afghanistan’s neighbors who would themselves fear Taliban power: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/russia-says-boosts-arms-supplies-central-asia-amid-afghan-conflict-2021-08-05/ .
Around the world, Putin’s Russia engages in a spectrum of unpleasant activities designed to destabilize its targets, foremost EU/NATO (for its businesses, democracy, humanism, and rule of law), and control and produce power in its own interests. Also, Russia has been long a state about appearances — military and political theater — and the longest looks backward will fine the Viking, Varangians, Slavs, and Rus, and all perhaps have come together in Putin’s mind and the related diplomacy, leadership, strategies, and tactics devised to perpetuate what he may be believe to be Russia’s essential soul.
Recommended for the curious: Kings & Generals on YouTube (“Russian History”); for the politically inclined, “Atlantic Council, Russia”, e.g., https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-is-the-worlds-leading-exporter-of-instability/ (10/19/2021).
—
Regarding my characterization of Putin’s perspective and the related destabilization of EU/NATO: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/world/europe/unit-29155-russia-gru.html 11/16/2020 | https://www.justsecurity.org/64327/countering-russias-malign-influence-operations/ 5/29/2019 | https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/countering-russian-disinformation 9/23/2020 .
Regarding our own rightfully proud nationalism, that too may be traced to 9/11 and the strongly intimated sojourn of mastermind Ayman al-Zwahari in Russia during the winter of 1996 to 1997 (https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6). He would leave for the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal region to produce the compact with Osama Bin Laden that would then culminate with the attack by hijacked jets on the symbols of American and western power.
The American Public, imho, gets the news toward which it gravitates, Fringe Left, Far Left, Left, Center, Right, Far Right, Fringe Right. As we are now familiar with terms like “social media algorithms” and “echo chambers”, we — and others in other nations — may have also an obligation to ask more questions and test and corroborate what we find, so that we ourselves are not digging our own cultural, political, or social holes but rather finding the essential histories and narratives that prove inerrently reliable however criticized or scrutinized.
My own quest as regards perspective: Next Century Post-Modern.
Of course, I hope there is a “Next Century” (not that I’ll be around to care) and that the generations arrive at it with tidily packed away medieval baggage and altogether more appropriate intellectual and language tools as well as integrity (most of all) for addressing the challenges of that day to come as found.
J. S. Oppenheim
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08 Wednesday Dec 2021
Tags
Anti- Anti-Semitism as a Cynical Rhetorical Tool, Anti-Semitism in Modern Ukraine, Russian Agitprop in Ukraine
Herewith the response to a lengthy chatyped lecture on FB involving Russia’s disingenuous “justification” for further brutalizing and dominating Ukraine, her businesses, and her people.
The haunt of Ukrainian anti-Semitism has been a Russian canard used for propaganda, e.g., https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/jews-in-maidan , 2/25/2014 & https://forward.com/culture/202181/my-hunt-for-the-cossacks-in-ukraine/ 7/19/2014 & https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/03/01/ex-idf-soldier-leads-kiev-street-fighting-unit/ 3/1/2014.
Note: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/24/how-a-jew-won-over-the-land-of-the-cossacks-volodymyr-zelensky-ukraine-election-jewish/ 4/24/2019.
Conveniently left out of the history presented: http://holodomorct.org/
A reminder about Euromaidan: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/12/07/ukraine-a-reminder/
Inspired by what I believe to have been a Moscow-manipulated 9/11 (https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6 6/10/2014) as revenge for the bankrupting of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (1989 withdrawal; official disbandment of the Soviet on December 25, 1991), the New Nationalists in EU/NATO have at times gotten on board with Putin’s feudal blood-and-soil theatrical (Russia is deeply multicultural but projected with a revived Russian Orthodox Church and an active undefeated military and related defense and defense-marketing industry) and endorsed the specter of a broadly anti-Semitic Ukraine, an image belied by Ukraine’s own election of a Jewish President (see Higgins, Andrew. “Ukraine’s Newly Elected President Is Jewish. So Is Its Prime Minister. No All Jews There Are Pleased.” The New York Times, April 24, 2019).
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08 Wednesday Dec 2021
Quadratics:
1) three-way “superpower” hypersonic missile race between China (Totalitarian), Russia (Autocratic Mafia State), and the United States (Democracy in Disarray);
2) serious East-West Rivalry for global influence and control of other states, whether criminal, elitist, and thuggish or rooted in democratically distributed power and reliably humanist, lawful, open, and secular;
3) Ukraine invaded and now threatened again by blunt Russian force and related brutish and corrupt business and political practices;
4) A test of the strength of the the West’s civilizational commitment to democratic, egalitarian, secular ethics, principles, and values against corruption and dictatorship, whether communist, fascist, nationalist, or socialist.
The post-WWII order has been weakened by decades of nefarious effort on Moscow’s part to destabilize EU/NATO with every disingenuous and, frankly, evil method at its disposal, Active Measures (agitprop; cyberwarfare; disinformation; infiltrations of spies online and off; etc.) and broadest spectrum Hybrid Warfare (starting with False Flag Operations and Little Green Men) but moving also to dominance in Energy and political leverage through it, control of a North Pole air base and related potential threat projection. Moscow’s presence in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and its innumerable “Frozen Conflicts” plus its relations with Iran and Syria and terrorist enterprises (see “Mikhail Bogdanov, Hamas” or “Russian arms, Taliban”) tell of the kind of world Moscow runs already and would love to sustain with Western complicity.
Well, score one for the British breakthrough and deployment in the Hypersonic Missile arena — and for Great Britain’s possession of a still strong spine.
“The U.K. is very clear: any military incursion by Russia into Ukraine would be a strategic mistake,” she said. “The Russian government should expect significant strategic consequences. The cost of an invasion would be catastrophically high.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson last night held a video call with U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi as Western fears grow.
The videoconference sought to present a “united front” among NATO leaders before Biden holds a call with Putin later Tuesday in which he will warn him against starting another war in Eastern Europe.
Gallardo, Cristina. “UK to Russia: Invading Ukraine would have ‘catastrophically high’ consequences.” Politico, December 7, 2021.
AP. “Russian Navy test-fires hypersonic missile in the White Sea.” Defense News. November 29, 2021.
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07 Tuesday Dec 2021
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BackChannels 