Blame Berezovsky (the wealthy man who effectively upgraded Putin’s political clout — http://www.thedailybeast.com/…/how-boris-berezovsky…). The Russians, as a people, and Afghanistan as a financial black hole for military expansion, managed to derail the Soviet (dissolved December 26, 1991); however, hardline privileged had already produced a plan to outlive the Soviet (reference: Karen Dawisha – http://www.miamioh.edu/…/cultural…/putins-russia/ – and the results of that today plus the Islamist stance of the opposition (Assad needed “the terrorists” for his play, “Assad vs The Terrorists”) has led to today’s mass murder and destruction in Syria.
Compression and distillation matter.
The ability of the average victims of fascist and feudal sociopaths may depend on a quick pickup on critical information — accurate, clear, complete (delivered honesty and with the highest integrity) — and the independent discernment and both personal and public political decision making it enables.
A good telegraphy should open on to new worlds, truth revealing and trustworthy.
For those with the necessary time and resources (and intellectual freedom), the Russian Section of the Library of this blog provides ample reference for seeing the Putin machinery as it worked across the president’s years in power and across the arc of the impositions of the Soviet Era.
For those horrified by the destruction wrought by Assad in Syria and determined to address it, BackChannels suggests addressing first endemic Syrian anti-Semitism and anti-westernism, which may contribute to blocking greater western intercession — actually, at the moment, any intercession — in Syria.
“. . . we trust the Russians. They proved throughout the crisis, the last four years, they proved they are honest, transparent, and have principles . . . .”
Without Putin, Bashar al-Assad as a dynastic leader would have been finished in 2011. However, instead of appropriately responding to Syrian complaints at the time and the yearning for a voice in their own governance, Assad chose to arrest and torture children. All that has changed in the past four years has been the scope in breadth and cruelty of the punishment meted to noncombatant Syrians.
At the outset, President Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia presented a block to the start of the erosion of the Assad family’s absolute ruling power; next: Assad cultivated ISIS by selectively not bombing the al-Qaeda Typicals in their infancy, which then dealt to himself a glorious piece — in his warped eyes — of political theater, “Assad vs The Terrorist”. Putin, Assad, and Khamenei each knew “The Terrorists”, which have largely turned out to be ISIS, although many other and similar organizations exist in the field, would present an even more difficult challenge to the west.
For Khamenei, nothing could sustain an Islamic theocratic tyranny in Iran quite like the prospect and reality of a continuous Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle, for which ISIS would conveniently serve as foil to the further expression and regional projection of Iranian Shiite power.
For the west, perhaps, there is less of “reset” in what has taken place in Syria and more of pressing the collapse of Soviet-style “state capitalism” in the form of an oligarchy — a “new nobility” — brought into existence and managed by Putin. From that perspective, Russia has stalled in Syria and Crimea — and given the price of oil at the well these days — or the evident callousness of the Russian leadership — it may not want the burden of settling either conflict or reconstructing that which it has helped destroy, both “hot spots” being more effective at bleeding the west of financial resources and focus. With U.S. President Obama shrugging away much of that form of challenge — or seeming to do that — that tack may not be going so well.
Similar observations may be made in regard to Iran’s position.
Even though it will see immense cash flow for the “nuclear deal”, the regime will have to deal with greater greed around itself as well as its unpopular extension through wars by proxy in the region.
Who knows but that Hezbollah will tire of its men dying for the ambitions of the Ayatollah.
Still, nothing will change all that fast.
While Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together defend “absolute power”, the suffering accompanying that psychology — and what ISIS means to bring to Syrians, i.e., greater tyranny in the name of God, will be even worse — will grow worse: the “Eye Doctor” has lost himself in his own inverted fantasia, a world in which Putin’s Russia has proven “honest, transparent, and principled” (tell that to Ukrainians) and Syrians suffer primarily at the hands of “The Terrorists” and not beneath the barrel bombs dropped on the most helpless of them by Assad’s own air force.
The “additional reference” section may be at this point outmoded by a very good and quick Google search engine. We can find what we may want to read in flash; whether we can find the conversation we need to have as quickly remains to be seen.
It hasn’t occurred to the world that Gaza and Syria both suffer deeply beneath the boots of those sharing the same feudal mentality. Putin, Assad, and Khamenei may be blamed for Syria, which for the Obama Administration may represent the final chapter on the dissolving of the Soviet Union about 25 years ago. Khamenei’s interest in feudal absolute power has its mirrors in Sunni Islam, not uniformly or officially, but nonetheless those with a medieval mentality sponsor Hamas to continue the brutalization and exploitation of the residents of Gaza.
While what is represented by the above image was taking place, Putin mustered up about $51 billion for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and he paid some to transfer Russian nationals living in Syria back to Moscow.
How’s that for humanism?
We all suffer with Syrians whose lives have been swiped like knocked over chessboard pawns, but we may keep in mind too that the origins of the tragedy reach back to the Cold War and, in fact, have been sustained by threat on the post-Soviet neo-feudal side. Today, I believe that side is hurting, or has been hurt, by Saudi-aided reduced oil pricing, sanctions, in-state piracy by both Moscow and Tehran, and by “hybrid warfare” and “war by proxy” aggression and the financial and political costs attending each. Those old friends, official Russia, Syria, and Iran have been playing losing hands, but they’re taking their constituents down with them while “living large and in charge” of their small but special space.
If the repetition of themes times me, I know the same will tire readers.
The prompt for the post: an image of suffering from Syria — a boy in pain on a gurney located close to the latest fighting — and the wish the people would genuinely care as much about Syria as the “fake Palestinian cause”.
Fair enough.
While the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left may embrace the old KGB-PLO relationship and other might come to appreciate what the Hamas billionaires (Haniyeh and Mashaal both qualify) really represent in the brutal occupation and repression of the people of Gaza — well, most of the resident because some have made some pretty good money off the sustained conflict and related local exploitation and repression — most in the anti-Semitic bunches simply don’t know the history well enough to avoid their own seduction by feudal — also absolute, fascist, and ruthless — powers.
The wealth tied into the feudalism that drives the middle east dispute may be difficult to imagine for most. On the Shiite side, Ali Khamenei and his brother control in private portfolio about $57 billion. Reuter’s “Assets of the Ayatollah” (easy lookup) tells how that came about. At least two of the Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, have developed reputations as billionaires also. Basically, “the terrorists” (the leaders) are not being spoiled: they are living the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed.
Israel’s medical ethic, which stems from the Hippocratic Oath, has been always to leave the politics at the door and attend to the needs of the injured and sick. I think that ability to separate issues and focus on challenges in separate dimensions may be expressive of the modern mind as the medieval appears less able to set abstract and just boundaries.
The feudal mode in thought and governance may also dominate Sunni politics, which is complex. Erdogan, the Turkish leader, has moved into his immense “White Palace” and proven reluctant to destroy ISIS at this time. He appears to prefer beating back Kurdish hopes for independence to stalling the ISIS project. He would (I believe) align with “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” if not for his Sunni identification. Still, overarching Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Erdogan, and some others is the devotion to “political absolutism” or the concentration of “absolute power” in a single leader. As much works against the democratic and humanist distribution of power throughout populations.
Stimulus: Israeli doctors have been treating an Hamas terrorist recently, and the poster had asked whether the modern workspace was luxurious enough to spoil him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko: “Russia’s Investigative Committee insists she crossed the border voluntarily, without documents and in the guise of a refugee.[20] Russia’s pro-Kremlin TV channel NTV, however, reported on June 20 that Savchenko had been captured by “rebels” and then handed over to the Russian authorities.[21] Ukrainian officials said she had been illegally taken to Russia by Russian intelligence services in collaboration with pro-Russian rebels.”
http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1437143184 – 7/18/2015 – “New attempt to keep Nadiya Savchenko trial secret” — “Russia is insisting on holding the trial of captured ex-pilot Nadiya Savchenko in a Russian city bordering the area of Ukraine under Kremlin-backed militant control. There are no legitimate grounds for this move which will seriously hinder access to the trial, and could, Savchenko believes, put her mother and sister in danger. Her formal appeal* to Russia’s Prosecutor General to move the trial to Moscow where all investigative activities and assessments were carried out has effectively already been rejected. One of her lawyers announced late on Friday afternoon that Savchenko has already been moved from the remand prison in Moscow and is on her way to the Rostov oblast.”
http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1435707020 – 7/2/2015 – “Savchenko material shows how Russia concocted ‘case’ and what it can’t conceal” – ” The key problem in the investigators’ case is Savchenko’s irrefutable alibi however there are also a number of other obvious flaws in their version which do not go away despite being assiduously ignored..”
Posted to YouTube 7/7/2015
This patriot, made a Hero of Ukraine by President Poroshenko on March 2, this Joan of Arc detained in spite of the diplomatic immunity to which she has been entitled since her election to the Rada and as Ukraine’s representative to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, has become simultaneously the symbol of Putin’s arbitrary exercise of power and of Ukrainian resistance.
As Russia celebrated with great pomp and ceremony the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, one might have hoped that Putin would make a gesture.
Here in Moscow she has been charged as an accessory to murder, linked to the death of two Russian journalists covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the rebels and government troops.
But the BBC has seen mobile phone data from the day they died, that her lawyers argue proves her innocence.
Imprisoning a Ukrainian officer, who disappeared while on duty last month in the battleground region of Luhansk, will make it hard for Russia to maintain its claim that it is not in league with the separatist rebels. According to the Ukrainian government, the rebels captured Savchenko in June and illegally smuggled her across the border into Russia, where authorities not only arrested her but took her hundreds of miles to the city of Voronezh, a provincial capital in the heartland of western Russia. Diplomats and top officials in Ukraine, as well as their U.S. allies, have already cited the case as among the clearest pieces of evidence so far that Russian security services are working in concert with the rebel fighters. That means the case is sure to bolster the Western argument for another round of sanctions against Russia this month.
Russia agreed to immediately free all hostages and illegally held persons. Yet Russia and the separatists it backs continue to hold at least 500 hostages. They include Savchenko, as well as Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, both of whom were captured by separatists on Ukrainian soil and illegally transported against their will to Russia.
We continue our publication of the prison writings delivered to us by Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was abducted by pro-Russian separatists on June 18, 2014, and who has been in prison ever since. La Règle du Jeu, in partnership with Kyiv Post, Ukraina Pravda, The Huffington Post/WorldPost, and other magazines and newspapers, is launching a double appeal: Do not forget Nadiya, and do everything you can–everything–to obtain her release.–Bernard-Henri Lévy
When it comes to the perception of brute force in power, the language play in the invention of the term “21st Century Neo-Feudalism” proves more convenient than earnest and popular political science on the matter, so suggests a cursory glance at related Google search results, which frequently lists this blog as the term’s proponent. Nonetheless, as witness through Internet-borne media to Nadiya Savchenko’s abduction and imprisonment in relation to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid warfare” (by proxy thugs) in Ukraine, the term would seem well applied.
Typing here from the sidelines, the lawlessness of the feudal world — in effect, the caprice of the senior mafia running the show — concentrates power in a titular head, who may actually have it, and a surrounding bulwark of favored and patronized nobility. Against that model, the lawful of the democratic world — also argumentative, bureaucratic, responsible, responsive — tend to distribute power across a magnificent quilt of private and public and local to international interests. Adventurous and bright, the very tough Nadiya Savchenko appears to have managed to become selected for being trapped between the two worlds.
Putin’s message: I have captured and caged the brave Ukrainian bird; come and get her.
That’s absolute power.
I have long suggested here and elsewhere that that kind of power becomes the power to make others suffer with impunity — and Putin, among others, have demonstrably got it.
What power have the democracies against “political absolutism”?
The power of international law as invested in western institutions?
Talk, talk, talk.
The ogre keeps the stolen bird caged.
Old tweet: “Putin, Assad, Khamenei — together they are defending absolute power.”
Posted to YouTube 7/15/2015
Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue slaughtering or displacing all Syrians who disagree with his ownership — absolute control — of Syria and dominion over the lives and property of all who inhabit his realm?
Nothing has diminished his power where he may still project it, and, in fact, the political theater produced by “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and to which I refer as “Assad vs The Terrorists” has positively contributed to his power. Assad appears to have forked Obama’s policy on Syria (whatever it might have been), for the American has had to have his military fly sorties against Daesh, everyone’s enemy, but also — and mostly so — Assad’s enemy.
Assad didn’t always have “The Terrorists”, but through sufficient selective bombing and fighting, he achieved the incubation of the “Al-Qaeda Typicals”, and now he has them, and he has got Washington bombing them at Washington’s expense!
Oh, the glory.
Posted to YouTube 7/18/2015
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei too has gathered power unto himself without limit, and he too appears to have going “hybrid warfare” and “war-by-proxy” in several districts, from Yemen today to the Gaza Strip, and these too continue with just enough impedance to hold them in place. If Tehran keeps its part of the “nuclear deal”, it will find itself with tens of billions of new or recovered dollars to earmark for throwing its weight around the region.
Why not?
Khamenei has met no lasting opposition within Iran — the world knows how that works — and within the region, whether manipulating the Al-Qaeda Typicals or the Hezbollah Virulence, sending Revolutionary Guard to battle Daesh with Iraq’s Shiite militia or cheering the Houthis as they bring wreckage and ruin to Yemen, none have yet curtailed his influence or meddling.
No “off button”; no “reset”; no brakes: that’s theocratic dictatorship — and that’s been Khamenei’s thing for a while now, and it’s working.
It would appear that “absolute power” needs no ethical, humanist, moral, or religion defense, for whether practiced by Putin, Assad, or Khamenei — different talks: same walk — all that is needed is unyielding relentless assertion.
What does Putin say?
I have got your most ambitious, darling, and high flying bird in my cage.
What does Assad say:
I have committed crimes beyond imagination and destroyed children’s educations, their homes, and their parents’ lives by the millions — but I am still here, President of Syria.
What does Khamenei say:
Khamenei doesn’t say anything, for Khamenei laughs.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has prepared a dossier laying out evidence for what it calls “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
The report alleges there are some 9,000 Russian troops deployed in Ukraine, forming 15 battalion tactical groups. The force includes about 200 tanks, more than 500 armored fighting vehicles, and some 150 artillery systems, according to the dossier.
In today’s Washington Post, Jackson Diehl notes Russia’s suspension of gas deliveries to Ukraine and the west’s distractions with Greece and Iran, asking at the end of his piece “Will this be remembered as the summer when the West let Ukraine die?”
I won’t give away his answer.
My hope: I hope not.
Remember Yanukovych Leaks and the state-borne internal piracy that drove Ukrainians to give Putin’s stooge the boot.
Remember Putin’s $52 billion Sochi Winter Olympics, which obscene spending ignored and masked off the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria and the nearly 10 million displace while Putin-Assad-Khamenei fairly cultivated “The Terrorists” for Assad’s Big Political Theater and Khamenei’s teleological commitment to bringing forth the Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle.
“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets,” she said to the global audience, her voice full of feeling. “There is only one reason: They want to be free from a dictatorship. … We are civilized people but our government are barbarians. This is not a Soviet Union.” The video has since been seen by more than 8.3 million people.
Remember Milan Kundera’s famous statement about remembering: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
The main purpose of keeping the Donbas conflict in a smoldering state is to let Putin remain in power. The Donbas war will distract the Russians and help Putin stay in power, the ex-FSB officer said.
The BackChannel’s term for what Putin (and Putin and Khamenei together) represent in contemporary political possibility: “21st Century Neo-Feudalism”.
Dzerzhinsky may be a Communist saint, but the symbolism of the prince’s statue is inescapable. It will celebrate the new Vladimir, not just the old one. This may be obvious, but the subject is avoided in polite conversation.
There are other topics — rising prices, the fighting in Ukraine, the shape of things to come — that people don’t like to think about, even though these subjects are at times unavoidable. The economy is entering “a full-fledged crisis,” former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Parliament recently. He warned that Russia’s gross domestic product is forecast to be 4 percent lower this year than it was in 2014. Meanwhile, food prices are rising. Official figures indicate a 23 percent jump for the year ending in March, but an informal survey of grocers in my neighborhood suggests a 30 percent jump is more realistic.
But Vyrypaev’s wider summing-up was admirably succinct: “This means that [the state] has the right to intervene, to control, direct, grow, regulate, monitor, and finally to develop the cultural process. It means that the state assumes the role of a kind of spiritual and educational shepherd for the people.”
While Obama has for the public paired Putin with Soviet revanche, it’s not the Soviet that Putin (and the KGB cum FSB organization) have brought to Russia: “feudalism”, “state capitalism”, “neo-feudalism” better describe what Putin has done — is doing — to the Russians.
Avedissian, Karena. “The power of Electric Yerevan.” Open Democracy, July 6, 2015: “The corruption and mismanagement of ENA reflect wider problems of governance and the political environment in Russia. When Russian state-owned companies (in which theft is not the exception but the norm) take over infrastructure in neighbouring countries, this is, in effect, ‘exporting corruption’.”
Popova, Polina. “Freedom of speech under fire in Ukraine.” The Hill, June 16, 2015. (The story becomes convoluted as official Ukraine responds to the assault of Russian propaganda: writes Popova, “Some journalists fear that the ministry was actually created to muffle internal opposition, rather than tackling Russian propaganda. It’s not surprising that it has earned the Orwellian nickname “the Ministry of Truth”).
Not a few Russian intellectuals, depressed by the Orwellian state of Russian public discourse, have come to see Ukrainian cities as the hope for the future of Russian culture. In this light, the Russian invasion of Ukraine to protect freedom of speech in the Russian language is perhaps better compared to America invading Canada to save the welfare state or North Korea invading South Korea to protect capitalism.
Sanctions have been up for a while; oil prices have been down for a while: such broad conditions brought about by large maneuvers, like “North American energy independence“, may have effects.
As a trading partner, Erdogan may have a little more edge with Putin these days; as a Sunni Muslim looking over the border and watching Daesh and other al-Qaeda-type groups continuing to rough up and tear apart Syria’s landscape, he has cause to let the scouring continue. The teleology on which he has campaigned pits him against Putin-Assad-Khamenei’s interests on the Hezbollahian (militant Shiite) side of the great divide most immediately applicable to the continuing Great Struggle of Evil Against Evil in Syria, the modern and moderate, whoever they may be (ye shall know them one still distant day by their pro-Semitic / pro-Zionist lingo), having been killed, dispersed, rendered irrelevant, or otherwise sidelined for some years now.
While generally attaching Erdogan to Putin-Khamenei as another medieval-minded autocrat with strong interest in sustaining feudal models of power against the democratic west, there may be some unraveling within this drift as depressed oil revenues (for Russia), other punitive measures (like sanctions), and some military repositioning take place in response to Russia’s aggression in Crimea. For Erdogan, whether he likes it or not (I’m starting to appreciate that phrase), Turkey remains a NATO member with a significant modern constituency. While Erdogan wants his White Palace — I think he’s moved in, I’m not sure — the whole world is watching in an open and robust global information environment. For that, both leaders may have a little less operating room as despots than they may have had 25 years ago.
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The “big picture” — how the feudal world may change as the modern one moves around it — is easier (for me) to see today than was the case just a few years ago.
From an amateur’s perspective, the smaller pictures might require country specialization and language ability. It’s just easier following heads of state than the numerous personalities, agencies, and committees involved in producing the world’s political landscapes and their narratives.
In September 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that he could, at will, occupy any Eastern European capital in two days. This apparently spontaneous utterance reveals, probably more than Russia’s new official defense doctrine, Moscow’s true assessment of NATO’s capabilities, cohesion, and will to resist. In an echo of Soviet tactics, it also reflects Putin’s reflexive recourse to intimidation—e.g., unwarranted boasting about Russian military capabilities and intentions—as a negotiating strategy. In 2014 alone, Moscow repeatedly threatened the Baltic and Nordic states and civilian airliners, heightened intelligence penetration, deployed unprecedented military forces against those states, intensified overflights and submarine reconnaissance, mobilized nuclear forces and threats, deployed nuclear-capable forces in Kaliningrad, menaced Moldova, and openly violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987.
Such combat proves not a fast game but an agonizingly slow grind.
Where the finger-pointing takes place — how could it not be taking place offstage? — some portion must point back to Moscow and Tehran — Putin and Khamenei — for perverting a mild people’s revolution in Damascus to hold together the Ghosts of the Soviet and the maintenance of old and new privileged through time-honored and familiar but perfectly despicable feudal practices.
“My Ecuador” is likely to remain virtual and experienced through Windows.
However, for my correspondent, Ecuador is home, and when he writes in relation to, ” . . . the soldiers try to occupy the strategic places, highways, bridges, airports, refineries, power generation stations, generating dams . . .” and says “we will close the office now and . . . try to buy food in the supermarket, store, and black market . . . .” I’m inclined to believe him.
As has happened in other spaces in relation to the post-Soviet neo-feudalism, reliance on oil revenues and the tumble in wellhead rates has turned out a big kick in the seat of the pants.
It appears that what has brought Ecuadorans out into the streets en masse is not primal hunger and resentment of the capitalist yankee running dog pig — China’s deep into the state these days — but the fearsome will to bequeath hard-earned private gains to progeny without fear of plundering by the state!
According to my source, some military appears to have mobilized, but the arguments and resolution of economic issues to come may play behind the increasingly pale phantom of the bankrupt Soviet, the revanche neo-feudalism in place in Moscow today, and the teetering of the Maduro regime in Venezuela. Clearly, the authoritarian experiments dressed up in socialist talk have failed their states.
The shame is the same: some affected states, Ecuador among them, are simply rich in cultural charm, labor, and natural resources but burdened by leadership that fails to grow the kind of internal economy that might make short work of living comfortably on the land while producing the craft-for-export industries certain to at least help fill in the shortfalls from the gross export of mineral wealth.
BackChannels 
