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Tag Archives: Cold Struggle

FTAC – Sideways on Brexit and Putin’s Medieval Theater

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Russia

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Cold Struggle, political manipulation, political theater, post-Cold War, Russia

🙂

A fair part of the world is now The World x multinational business x communication x shipping x transportation, and while sovereign states must control their borders, few are able to ignore their neighbors, their neighbors’ ambitions, or bad habits and bad sectors. Probably the way to think about criminality, as determined by familiar western and modern precepts is to attach it to “filtration” — catch the “bad apples” — and osmosis from ungoverned conditions and space to governed.

At the moment, there’s a feudal-criminal world (psst: Moscow and its assortment of Far Right and Far Left helpers) continuing to drive chaos into the more civil, more “rule-of-law” west. While the west should (must!) push back, it should do so with other than reversion to its own feudal tendencies.

What Moscow / Putin promotes has been on full display between Sochi and Syria — immense accumulations of wealth and power beside the most inhuman of practices and the most thoughtless and provocative real behavior in foreign policy. I know I can’t keep going over how Damascus incubated ISIS, or, in Russia, (or Iran), how criminality / kleptocracy leak down through the justice systems and corrode their entire societies, but all of that is what is actually represented by ISIS and so many Syrian refugees.

I know as an editor (of possibly the world’s most obscure political blog) that similar specialists or academics “get” the post-Cold War “big picture” but for most with more parochial interests, it’s “ISIS” and what Putin’s sayin’ sounds about right — lower the portcullis!


BackChannels has developed a whole image of the “Post-Cold War – Cold Struggle” environment anchored yet in Moscow and Washington.  In getting to this point, it has learned that “research analyst” (self-assigned, autodidact) knowledge and public impression and perception diverge often and quite, which fact of life may suit the treatment of the public as “the masses”, for as much fits with Moscow’s philosophy regarding information, “information space”, and political manipulation via, as with the handling of Syria, political theater writ large.

Related and Highly Recommended Summer Reading

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev, 2014.

Vovochka: The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant by Alexander J. Motyl, 2015.

-33-

Cold War? –> Cold Struggle.

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Cold Struggle, Cold War, Putin, Russia

Call it “Putin’s Theater”, a publicly viewed juxtaposition of sweetened and soured politics, a program in which the best and the worst have been put up for view at the same time.

The Winter Olympics at Sochi | The Syrian Tragedy Unfolding

The Concert at Palmyra, reported May 5, 2016 | A Refugee Camp Bombing, reported May 6, 2016.

Good and Evil | White and Black | Moscow and NATO

Singular Absolute Power | Representative Distributed Power

In Putin’s world, the “singular absolute”of his feudal realm appears to hold sway over the west’s “distributed relative” approach to managing political power, while the capricious barbarism on display in Syria and the compulsive character of the foray into Crimea may serve as a deterrent to NATO intervention in either place.  The dissolving of the insolvent Soviet may have reduced the scope of Russia’s threat potential, but with Putin in charge, deeply threatening it remains.


The Phantom of the Soviet that lurks in Putin’s revanchist neo-feudal Russia has brought to the fore a variety of terms representing the methods of his state’s aggression plus partiality to corruption and crime.

Ready for look-up when you are:

Putin, Corruption
Putin, Far Right, Far Left
Putin, International Crime

Russia, Frozen Conflicts
Russian Hybrid Warfare
Russian Energy Politics
Russian Information Warfare
Russian Nationalism
Russian Reflexive Control
Russian Passportization


This post may have to be the first of several on the theme, as the editor prefers having (or implying) his say at one sitting.

In reference, readers will find a smattering of discoveries based on searching up the above listed terms.  Each is a gem and possibly telegraphic enough to suggest that Moscow-centric control, corruption, political manipulation, and political theater in service to a despotic feudalism frames the renewal of conflict with NATO, not that NATO has yawned all the way through the Rise of Putin.  There’s more to that story, of course, but the alliance has avoided confrontation in Syria, in essence allowing the tragedy to develop nearly to its full measure in misery, and in Crimea, where Ukraine now struggles to exert sovereignty and move forward with practical governance.

The once hoped for transformation of Russia from the feudal state of other eras appears to have failed with Putin’s ascent from colonel to president to possibly emperor with the full array at his fingertips — the Okhrana to post-KGB FSB, a revived active military presence beyond its borders, and (equivalent to the privileged of the Party) the host of the moneyed and favored by the “vertical of power”.

The west may have gotten a breather at the end of 1991, but it has been challenged this past year with the fallout from events — again: Crimea; the Syrian Tragedy — approved, driven, engineered, or inspired by Moscow.

General Reference

AFP.  “Russia is more dangerous than Isis, says Polish foreign minister.”  The Guardian, April 15, 2016.

Aron, Leon.  “Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union is Wrong*And why it matters today in a new age of revolution.”  Foreign Policy, June 20, 2011.

BackChannels.  “Books — Agnia Grigas Tours Putin’s Neo-Imperial Russian Revival.”  May 6, 2016.

BackChannels.  “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”.

BackChannels.  “FTAC — Synopsis — On the Medieval Struggle.”  December 27, 2013.

BackChannels.  “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.

BackChannels.  “Syndicate Red Brown Green”.

BackChannels.  “The Big Fade — Or Not?  Where Goes the Phantom of the Cold War?”  June 23, 2015.

BackChannels.  “The Russian Section”.

Cooke, Thea.  “Has Vladimir Putin Always Been Corrupt?  And Does it Matter?”  Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, April 16, 2012.

Goble, Paul A.  “Moscow enjoying great success with far left parties in Europe, new study finds.”  Euromaidan Press, April 18, 2016.

Grigas, Agnia.  “Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Grigas, Agnia.  “How Soft Power Works: Russian Passportization and Compatriot Policies Paved Way for Crimean Annexation and War in Donbas.”  February 22, 2016.

Herszenhorn, David M.  “In Crimea, Russia Moved to Throw Off the Cloak of Defeat.”  March 24, 2014.

Krastev, Ivan.  “Why Putin Tolerates Corruption.”  The New York Times, May 15, 2016.

Kofman, Michael and Matthew Rojansky.  “A Closer look at Russia’s ‘Hybrid War'”.  No. 7, Kennan Cable, Wilson Center, April 2, 2015.

Kreko, Peter.  “Putin’s far right and far left friends in Europe.”  Political Capital, Policy Research & Consulting Institute; published as PDF on the Wilson Center site, March 14, 2014.

Miller, Christopher.  “‘Girl who kissed Putin’ warns about rise of Russian nationalism.”  Mashable, January 6, 2016.

Orttung, Robert and Christopher Walker.  “Putin’s Frozen Conflicts: Each of Russia’s reform-minded neighbors is plagued by separatism.  It’s no coincidence.”  Foreign Policy, February 13, 2015.

Snegovaya, Maria.   “Putin’s Information Warfare in Ukraine: Soviet Origins of Russia’s Hybrid Warfare.”  PDF. Institute for the Study of War, September 2015.

Tharoor, Ishaan.  “Europe’s far right still loves Putin.”  The Washington Post, February 18, 2015.

Thomas, Timothy L.  “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military.”  PDF.  17: 237-256.  Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2004.

Wikipedia.  “Passportization”.

Addendum – July 18, 2016

Turkey’s failed and possibly false-flag coup, i.e., an event manipulated by President Erdogan to soak out the last of his capable opposition — has altered NATO’s character for the worse and left some untidy and dangerous “poker chips” beneath the ground:

Schlosser, Eric.  “The H-Bombs in Turkey.”  The New Yorker, July 17, 2016.

BackChannels has just published a post-Cold War comment on the failed Turkish coup in relation to the “medieval vs modern” political processes competition between Russia and NATO: “FTAC – Turkey (and Hungary) – Medieval Absolute Power vs Modern Distributions” (July 18, 2016).

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

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 cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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