As French satellite company Eutelsat’s threat to shut down Stêrk TV, News Channel and Ronahi TV which broadcast over satellite from Europe continues, protests from Kurdish media continue to rise. Journalist Maxime Demiralp said the events were scandalous and that “Eutelsat is committing a crime with their compliance with Turkey and thus the administrators of the company can be put on trial.”
Demiralp stated that Turkey is going back every year in regards to press freedom and freedom of expression and protested Western institutions, saying: “Despite all these, if the West doesn’t speak out, that shows that democracy is also in regression. Because this isn’t just an issue about the Kurds. This is an issue of democracy in general. Democracy is in regression throughout the world, as apparent in the West. We can see this very clearly by the company Eutelsat.”
Demiralp stated that Eutelsat has serious relationships with Turkey and said: “This company has serious alliances. The military and police communications infrastructure is done by this company. The Kurdish media is sacrificed to this. That is the financial side of things. The political side is that the states are silent in the face of this dirty alliance. This silence shows the political side of things.”
The Kingdom is not a NATO member, much less one applying for European Union accession. It’s alliance with the west may be based on its defense of its own power and prestige in Sunni Islam (vs the Shiite anchorage in Iran) and on related defense, development, and trade needs.
Turkey no longer teeters on the “brink of Islamization”.
Over the course of many years, President Erdogan has managed to eviscerate the pillars of the westward-leaning government developed by Kemal Ataturk, starting with the neutralization of the generals and ending just about with the throttling of Turkey once free press. When President Putin leveraged Erdogan into an apology over the shooting down of a trespassing Russian jet, that signaled the end of common western interest within Ankara as regards the NATO agreement.
This one video clip foreshadows more recent events and serves as illustration of Moscow’s deal making realpolitik:
So Moscow has won, eh?
Not necessarily.
The anachronistic feudal systems that Putin (and Khamenei) wish to sustain in services to their own politically absolute power (dictatorship / kleptocracy) have ways of losing money and pissing off modern constituents. Moscow has been running down its state cash reserves for some time by way of criminal behavior that has spurred capital flight for years, induced the west into the application of sanctions, and promoted alternative energy sourcing that has driven down the oil revenues on which Moscow had counted for growth. Here’s the kicker: the less immediately fluid wealth of the Russian Federation has been parked in WESTERN banking institutions and valuable assets protected by rule of law!
Russia cannot expect to move to conventional war. It hasn’t the money to support related industry and troops. Instead, if offers its nuclear threat, which is a potent headache for everyone, and the more criminal and insidious permutations of combined “hybrid warfare”, which really combines the most underhanded methods in the subversion of target states while also totally managing the image of conflict and enjoy the benefits of transnational crime.
🙂
I smile because I — and you — should cry.
As I tire of making the same assertions over and over again as regards the “end of the end of the Cold War” (but we would like to avoid a “hot war”, right?), I may only suggest here a visit to my blog — https://conflict-backchannels.com/ — and perhaps spending some time with Agnia Grigas’s book on Crimea — http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?k=9780300214505.
The world on display in the Moscow Grand Mosque video is the one held together by President Putin and arrangements he’s made that serve the interests of a now privileged social set using hyper modern tools of political repression. They have gone back to secret police, centralized power, and both a nervous and reactionary class of immensely patronized wealthy.
The People?
Who cares?
In the feudal states, The People will have their patriotism and religion, just like in the olden days . . . .
Reference: The Power of Money
Several of the following news reports appear to feed from the same source but with each their own flavor. No matter. The point made here is that Russia’s easiest money has been hit hard by time: capital flight; reduced oil revenues; sanctions –> depleted ready cash. Other wealth rides in banks, luxury assets, and markets, but for both western conflict analysts and Russian citizens outside of the “systema”, the money appears to be running out and domestic hardship appears already in the numbers.
Here’s an excerpt from observations published over the winter:
According to the Russian Finance Ministry, only 10 of Russia’s 85 official regions — most of them commodity producers and metropolitan areas with substantial tax bases — are economically or financially stable, down by half since 2015. Of the country’s remaining regions, 30 manage to scrape by because direct federal subsidies make up at least 33% of their revenues. Half of the $3.5 billion in subsidies that the Kremlin disburses each year goes to just 10 of those regions: Dagestan, Chechnya, Yakutia, Kamchatka, Crimea, Altai, Tuva, Buryatia, Stavropol and Bashkortostan. That leaves more than half of Russia’s regions struggling to fulfill their social obligations and meet the federal government’s demands for funding.
Seventy of Russia’s regions send 63% of the income they generate to the federal budget, keeping only the remaining 37%. The federal government, meanwhile, returns at most 20% of the money by way of subsidies and intergovernmental transfers.
As the fabulously wealthy – such as Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich – buy ever bigger yachts and build ever bigger mansions, the average Russian is becoming ever poorer.
Many ordinary men and women live in desperate conditions and last year a staggering 19.2 million people – or 13.4% of the population – were officially living in poverty .
Belarus, Chechnya and Russia are virtual “mafia states” and Ukraine is going to be one. For each of those countries, one cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and organized crime groups. Economic influence, sooner or later always reaches political power. a key factor in a government’s ability to combat OC depends on the extent to which the country’s best attorneys and law firms represent the mafia.
The vory v zakone do not engage in racketeering and murder, preferring to distance themselves from this activity and focus on crimes that are further up in the hierarchy, such as corruption of high-level ministers. The level of power that vory v zakone operate at is indicated by their level of interaction with these public servants, because cabinet-level officials do not spend time with unimportant people and cannot be tempted by those who do not have something important to offer.
What happens when friends talk and compare notes, and discover they’re no long “on the same page”?
Attitudes rest on beliefs, and beliefs don’t always rest on empirical evidence nor good conscience and empathy. Beliefs may be grown on lies, and when it comes to the once Soviet-engineered “middle east conflict”, there is a cultural Petri dish loaded up with lies to induce, motivate, and sustain anti-Semitism in the Arab world and in the world at large with a focus on Zionism.
When a friend changes the conversation so abruptly, the conversation has a chance to change.
The sun did not revolve around the earth.
And the earth was found to be other than flat.
Lo and behold . . . .
In addition to the early and academically relaxed BackChannels page on “Social Grammar” — how we learn the ropes around family, clan, tribe, and nation in the process of language uptake and with it the ingestion of the culture into which we have been borne, there are couple of other pieces quietly alluded to the in above note from the awesome conversation:
Around the world — and not least in the United States with President Donald J. Trump’s rants about “Fake News!” — the world may be having a quiet conversation — a social back channel consideration of which this post is a part– behind the storms of news that concerns itself with the authenticity, validity, and reliability of what is delivered to it in media.
For a few moments “back there” in time — perhaps only some months to years — I was getting word of a “post-constitutional America” and coming across such “lovely” (bogus) concepts as “illiberal democracy” (ain’t no such thing as the first principle in the establishment of democracy has been and remains that of embracing “classical liberalism”, a dignifying, loving, magnanimous, and magnificent view of humankind that speaks to every person’s potential nobility in freedom and in power) and “post-fact” world (facts, like red traffic lights and the dangers of leaping from heights) appear to persist despite their “post-modern” dismissal.
Democracies are not illiberal.
The world is not “post-fact”.
And while Muhammad may have had the final word on God as enforced by war in his place and in his day, the world with its nearly 7,000 living language cultures persists in proving greater than any one perspective on God, nature, and the universe or the many curses and miracles that accompany our human experience. The evolution of our species — Homo Sapiens sapiens in its totality — and within it the emergence of human awareness, self-awareness, and the development of conscience may prove a thing greater than the observations and arguments of the many prophets and shaman who have accompanied and determined mankind’s cultural history.
From our comparative analysis, it emerges how both Russia and Turkey present astonishing similarities in their leaderships styles. It is important to outline such feature of the nations’ political life because, being both “leader-politics” countries, the style of their leaders influences greatly the shaping of the national political agenda and the strategies used by the states to pursue such agendas.
To sum up, one could say that all the facts taken into account here highlight the presence in both countries totalitarian democracy regime, centred on the figure of the all-powerful leader. None of the leaders actually ever rejected the principles of the pluralistic state. In the official national narrative, both of them could be overthrown by a democratic election. But why should this happen, when they embody the essence of their national identity. Just like Putin is THE Russian man, Erdogan image is moulded on THE Turkish one.
“In the official national narrative, both of them could be overthrown by a democratic election. But why should this happen, when they embody the essence of their national identity. Just like Putin is THE Russian man, Erdogan image is moulded on THE Turkish one.”
Perhaps if each were more secure with such an assertion, the press in each state would be free (it’s an easy look-up as to how they are not) and their political rivals less often inhibited, jailed, muzzled, or murdered.
The truth is each may be wrong about himself (there’s also an interesting psychology at play in their “malignant narcissism” and respective kleptocracies), and that’s why open and vibrant national conversations supported by “fair and free elections” matter in democracies — and not at all in dictatorships.
“At the end of the day”, which has come this day to Istanbul, Turkey will have as “Presidential System of Government”, i.e., as suggested by the above video from Moscow, another state featuring a paranoid “centralized government” featuring an autocrat, his military, including secret police, and his aristocracy.
The amendments were received with heavy criticism from opposition parties and non-governmental organisations, with criticism focusing particularly on the erosion of the separation of powers and the abolition of parliamentary accountability. Constitutional legal experts such as Kemal Gözler and İbrahim Kaboğlu claimed that the changes would result in the Parliament becoming effectively powerless, while the executive president would have controls over the executive, legislative and judiciary.[36][37] On 4 December, the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD), Association for the Support of Contemporary Living (ÇYDD) and the Trade Union Confederation held a rally in Ankara despite having their permissions revoked by the Governor of Ankara, calling for a rejection of the executive presidential system on the grounds that it threatened judicial independence and secular democratic values.[38]
“Those who report critically land behind bars,” stated Carl-Eugen Eberle. The media law expert heads the German branch of the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of publishers, journalists and industry insiders. IPI actively supports press freedom and, like similar organizations such as Reporters Without Borders or Writers-in-Prison, it appeals to political leaders, sends letters and travels to problematic countries.
Since the coup attempt in July 2016 and the resulting state of emergency in Turkey, the state of freedom of press in Turkey has drastically worsened, according to IPI. Reporters Without Borders has spoken of “repression on an otherwise unknown scale.”
Old message on this message but perhaps new distillation.
The prompt for conversation was a Henry Farrell piece appearing in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/10/hungarys-government-wants-to-shut-down-its-most-prominent-university-that-may-be-backfiring/ —
Lines of compatible feudal power: Putin –> Assad, Khamenei; Putin–> Orban, Le Pen; Putin –> Erdogan; Putin –> Donald J. Trump.
Putin is not asking for cooperation, imho, but rather for a revived feudal politics pitting all against all for time while Russia ramps up its own military-industrial complex as a major driver of its internal economy.
The sweethearts of EU and NATO who promote greater international cooperation and integration through shared humanist principles plus open passage plus trade haven’t perhaps relayed to their populations the complete criminal character of Moscow’s intentions and its methods, including the channeling, I believe, of Islamic Terrorism in target states to produce reactionary politics.
BackChannels believes Putin’s Moscow has encouraged political polarization in its targets by using “active measures” to produce the “New Nationalists” (like Le Pen, Orban, and Trump) and sustain a still strident “Red-Green Alliance” — Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists — in the west. The main thing has been to get the “Brown vs Red-Green” extremism going while working with its destabilizing effects on true democratic politics.
Mission accomplished?
Yes — but at the same time, Moscow’s grand scheme may be close to being found out.
Related in the News
Moscow’s demonstrations of barbarism in Syria and Ukraine may underscore the direction of its internal intents.
Kleptocracies are the cancers of states, and Putin, the KGB/FSB, and Russia’s “oligarchs” have had a field day enjoying the full flow of Russia’s productive assets far at the expense of Russians separated from the circles of centralized power. Toward the end or as declining cash reserves produce hardship throughout the state, wartime spending may become the heavy dessert found at the bottom of the devil’s barrel, for fear plus the intimidation that coincides with tests of loyalty may open pockets.
“Washington”, a metonym used the same way here as “Moscow” to represent the state and its leadership, knows that the Moscow-Tehran axis lies and, quite possibly, that it channels — through indirect manipulation — Islamic Terrorism (by choosing to fight the west and western-backed or western-endorsed everything first — “Moscow” cannot abide classical liberalism; by using old communist cadre and Islamists to sow the chaos in the world that it may then claim to stand as champion against (!) — convenient look-ups: “Terry Nichols, Philippines”, “Zawahiri, Russia”, and “Moscow Apartment Bombings” (HUGE false flag, that one): and of course there’s no questioning the existence of the “Moscow-Tehran” nexus in power and the continuing relationships both have with Hamas and Hezbollah and others (start with PFLP).
BackChannels believes that Washington has known all along that deals with Moscow and Tehran would not prove worth the ink used to sign them.
Moreover, if BackChannels and others believe Moscow complicit in the incubating of ISIS in Syria (look up Kyle Orton’s work on the matter), then it only makes sense to cut out the nonsense implied by the prospect of “cooperating” with Moscow in the projection of its related totalitarian narrative.
Also contributing to the above thinking: Russia has nearly 100 years of combined 20th and 21st Century history as an entity approving of or inured to terror as a political tool.
Post-Soviet “Active Measures” and related infiltration into EU / NATO intellectual assets may account for the promotion of polarized “Brown v Red-Green” politics.
The post-Cold War narrative arc spans American Administrations, but the general public (I’ve become accidentally a little bit specialized) tends to see the moment, i.e., a span of months to years, when it should be seeing decades of process in removing the holdovers from the Soviet Era. For good reasons, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi are gone, but it’s at Assad’s Syria, the gateway to Iran in the old politics coming apart, that Putin visibly returned to the old KGB walk and the reinforcement of old relationships. As no one in the west has wanted another “cold war” or a strong “Moscow” on the tracks that it’s on, the purchase of time combined with sanctions and deflated oil pricing has substantially weakened the Moscow-Damascus-Tehran (more truly, “Moscow-Tehran” axis).
Now: enter Trump.
Just so it’s known: Moscow’s cash reserves have been deeply drawn down not only by years of reduced oil revenues and political sanctions but by the regime’s own abuse of the nascent Russian business system and the flight of capital from it. Most of what isn’t at hand has been parked in the western (rule-of-law) banking system or similarly stable high-value assets (most obviously real estate), and that may add to the discouragement of Moscow’s propensity for armed aggression. However, Putin is a bit of a wildcard as regards his own behavior, and he knows that when faced with a nuclear gambit, the United States will stand firm but elide the issue, returning that aspect of war to equilibrium.
In this day, NATO may have forward dual use conventional-nuclear warheads, giving paranoid Moscow perhaps some legitimate fits as regards its own state of risk. Here is the kind of article one runs into when encountering the nuclear arms control field:
To stay (in the old sense of that word) the course toward nuclear exchange, diplomacy and indirect confrontation have held off the contemplation of direct conflict engagement between Russian and NATO and western forces, but as history tells time and again with despots, that kind of leadership busts through its own boundaries, internal, psychological, external, political until firmly checked.
I think what you’re going to see in Syria will be the “checking” of Moscow’s revanchist (Soviet-style) ambitions and encouragement for it to engage the west in a once again responsible fashion.
It may help to keep in mind, whatever conclusions may be drawn here, that Russia has its own robust internal politics now forming up some challenge to the regime even though the regime holds the strong hand in its expression of absolute power.
The Obama Administration for both political and practical purposes put off confrontation in the field with the “phantoms of the Soviet” most likely to buy time, encourage change, and both financially and politically weaken the regimes that require politics in the feudal mode to sustain their own kleptocracies (“Different Talks — Same Walk!” is the BackChannels trope for how those relationships hold together).
Arguments about the legitimacy of political power are arguments about the future:
“What is to be done?”
“How are we to live?”
“Moscow”, the metonym for the Russian State as devised and held together by President Putin, knows how to make itself look good in superficial ways, but its less remarked positions have not been so wonderful.
Web search “Russia, Economy” brought up these three news pieces a few minutes ago:
BackChannels may have hit this general topic area — i.e., the relationship between the promotion of anti-Semitism and the experience of fascistic and feudal political cultures. Nonetheless, if one may get a complex of thoughts into a very small box, well all the better in our harried Internet Age.
Discrimination has been part of Islam — and in some ways defines Islam — since Muhammad chose to divide the world in the black-and-white differentiation between believers and unbelievers with Christians and Jews made to occupy a lesser but middle space, just one up from infidels (I’m really an amateur at this, so please forgive any over-simplifications nonetheless suited for discussion. That ability to smear competition has long been part of the medieval mentality and may well define it considering the “enthusiasm” for religious warfare not so long ago.
It may interest Muslims reading this thread to know that in Christian states, well, at least Hungary, 12th Century, laws designed to discriminate against Jews were upon activation applied equally to Muslims.
—
I think Edward Said published _Orientalism_ in 1972, and the same has become a staple in higher education representing politics on the Left / Far Left / Far Out Left.
I have it “on deck” today in my own library, so I’ll reserve comment on it but to convey two related URLs:
The Russian Soviet Era effort to “pick up” difficult undeveloped states and exploit them by way of a “liberation theology” — as with the Palestinians — that produced sweet promises — as with the contemplated destruction of Israel, or the elimination of whites from states like Zimbabwe (now Zuma in South Africa is using the same ploy) — that would in fact install dictatorship (absolute power) and exploit The People has been accompanied in “Active Measures” fashion by way of inserting the poison into the intellectual assets of foreign states.
I write long enough as is, but any reading may pick up on the questions that develop from my assertions.
BackChannels 