Tag Archives: dictatorship

The “Active Measures” Links Page

01 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Links, Philology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Vocabulary Lesson

Active Measures

Disinformation

Fake News

Hybrid Warfare

KGB Theater

Information Warfare

Kompromat

Orwellian

Perceptual Control

Reflexive Control

Troll Farm

Now there’s New Speak indeed!

And much better than “Newspeak” (revisit Orwell): how dumb I / you / and we may be may be entirely up to ourselves!

We may wish to become aware, however, of our own “dumbing down” through allocation and curriculum priorities in general education and perhaps through our own penchant for entertainment without much critical demand on our own part except to be . . . well, entertained far more than informed or otherwise intellectually engage.

That’s okay, of course

Allowing ourselves to be entertained is part of how we retreat from other engagements and find rest and restoration for the mind.

Still, perhaps all good citizens would do well to apprise themselves of the following concepts in greater depth as we globally ride out squawking of the discreditable, dishonest, disingenuous, despicable, and entirely disreputable (scorecard: D) among the world’s politicians and their hacks.

Active Measures: from Russia with the high-handed contempt associated with imperious narcissistic state leadership personality, think of “active measures” as the full suite of assaults on the cultural and intellectual framework of the liberal democracies of the world (and nix the “illiberal democracies”, even if members of NATO, for there ain’t no such thing as an “illiberal democracy”).

So there.

🙂

Active Measures Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

Disinformation: what comes of defaming, framing, lying, misguiding, spinning.

Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

KGB defector providing best insight into the dark art of creating and sustaining mass illusions: Ion Mihai Pacepa.  On BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

Fake News: banner term relating well to the American homily that he who points the finger . . . .

Related Online

https://www.cjr.org/
http://ethics.npr.org/
http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=Integrity
https://www.poynter.org/
https://www.publicintegrity.org/
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
http://www.timewarner.com/company/corporate-responsibility/telling-the-worlds-stories/journalistic-integrity

https://www.britannica.com/topic/agitprop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

State Controlled Press History

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007655
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17840134

Hybrid Warfare: every form of sub-nuclear and sub-conventional warfare that might be (is) launched against a target (like Ukraine) so as not to resemble “direct engagement”.  From the fielding and infiltrating of agent provocateur to mixing armed men without insignia (“Little Green Men”) in with partisan recruits to denying aggression at all . . . it’s all perfectly surreal bullying and combative bullshit that must draw a firm response from the land and people (and state) so viciously assaulted.

KGB Theater: political events, especially warfare, treated as a show one may produce and control for the delectation of military and political elites.

Reference on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

Information Warfare: if you’re here, you’re in it.

Kompromat: see online “Felix Sater“.  Applicable American homily: “Sleep with dogs — wake up with fleas.”  If in office, wake up under investigation.

Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat

Orwellian: what happens when powerful political elites rule the world so as to forestall change, manage war as if it were a fireplace, dispense with the very idea of human dignity, and wreck forever even the hope of freedom, free will, and the possession of dignity and integrity.

Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian

Nifty Ted-ed —

Perceptual Control: political rhetoric and stagecraft produced so effectively and pervasively as to channel public perception where the politician — or, perhaps tomorrow, the “political technician” or “political technologist” — may with fair predictive capability produce effects as desired.

Fair example: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible

Recommended supplemental reading: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3617244.html

Reflexive Control: sneak up on someone working quietly in their own little world and say . . . “Boo!”

Fair example by way of BackChannel’s observation: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

There is as yet no primer for “Reflexive Control” as the same has been a term of military art involving getting one’s enemy / target to behave in a desired fashion.

As now often noted on BackChannels (or on Facebook), the technique has been used to amplify or reinstall the feudal mentality and related political processes in the EU / NATO states in order to produce the kind of world in which autocratic systems — flat out or my measures — may thrive.  In the KGB method as perceived by BackChannels makes short work of manipulating Islamic Terrorism to produce in targeted states a “New Nationalism” (strong reflexive patriotism) suited to the political absolutism of the medieval world.

Troll Farm: Moscow-sponsored factories for financially enslaved writers.

Related: “Ministries of Truth”.

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-trolls-headquarters-media-internet-insider-account/26904157.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house – 4/2/2105

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

–33–

 

 

Also in Media: J. Michael Waller-“Weaponizing Ridicule” | Military Review | September-October 2017

01 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Philology, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Dictators, terrorists, and totalitarian ideologues, almost by definition, cannot tolerate being laughed at. Nor can anyone with an inflated ego and thin skin. Ridicule is their Achilles’ heel. And, humor is a robust underground phenomenon in any society. The Soviet leadership was so fearful of humor that the KGB had what Russian comedian Yakov Smirnov called a “Department of Jokes.” That was not the real name of the department, which had a more anodyne designation as a subunit of the KGB’s political enforcement section, the Fifth Chief Directorate, but Smirnov’s nickname for it made the KGB look all the more weak and bizarre (although all jokes still had to be KGB approved).6

Source: Waller-Weaponizing Ridicule

–33–

FTAC: MEC: Russia’s Earlier Influence of the Palestinians

13 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

I’ve harped on this answer around Facebook, and may have gotten a bad rep for it, but I stand behind what I have found in relation to the middle east conflict and the political history of the 20th Century:

The west and the Palestinians (together) have been duped by Moscow!

Repeat it twelve times — because it’s true.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

I know that Arafat and Abbas are deeply admired figures in the Palestinian territories, but I / we also know that the Palestinians have been deeply controlled by the powerful management of their information space accompanied by political repression.

None may have peace without integrity and none may have integrity without full acknowledgement and comprehension of how Russia’s history and political culture contributed to Nazism and to the later formulation of Palestinian “liberation” rhetoric — and then the raiding of the proceeds of the business.

Regarding the path of the forged “Protocols” and their transfer into Germany in the 1920s:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

The Palestinians may not know it, but they’re in good position, professor Dajani especially, to become the world’s leaders in bona fide intellectual history IF they can get The Bear off their backs.

That’s something to think about.

In the interest of peace, one may also lend consideration to whether evolving and modifying the systems of infantilizing disinformation (for “the masses” who would fare better being treated like human beings) and related loyalty and patronage should be changed quickly or slowly — but they have to be changed IF the Palestinians and their advocates (or interlocutors) genuinely wish for better lives — real dignity, real freedom, honorable prosperity — all the way around.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

Repressive, selfish, and totalitarian regimes hide what they do by shielding their followers from cogent and legitimate information. They basically keep their own in order — loyalty to powerful narcissists — by keeping them deprived of knowledge.

The officials who continue to harp on Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and countless rumors that serve as “blood libels” should be of another day a long time ago.

Those who sustain such practices with their mouths should be regarded as phantoms by Israelis and Palestinians equally.

The prompt for the rant had been reference to a Palestinian Authority “leader” talking up the forgery that was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the question raised was what to do today about that kind of baldfaced lying.

BackChannels shorter answer: drag it out into the sun where all may see it.

–33–

FTAC: A Note Involving C. S. Lewis, Bush in Iraq, and the Updating of the Modern Apprehension of Character in Leadership

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Prompt:

My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position [imposing “the good”] would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time likely to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on the level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The C. S. Lewis quote met a rejoinder involving the Bush Era war in Iraq.

Ask hungry children, also the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs about Saddam.

Bush and the neocons did the right thing but focused too much on “regime change” and seemingly not at all on cultural transition. In the long run, which now characterizes what I believe Iraq has been about all along, natural cerebral and less natural political evolution have a codependent relationship, i.e., the more intelligent we become as a species, the more empathetic, reasoning, and thoughtful we must become as well — or perish in our own nuclear plasma.

C. S. Lewis may not have known that he was addressing a recognizable kind of evil in “good” character, and that would be the do-good messianic character of the malignant narcissistic (related look-ups: bipolar disorder; narcissistic personality disorder. In such people, power becomes the power to visit suffering on others with impunity. This is something that made the Soviet Era Communist Party and its machinery so execrable; it is also the same thing that has made the “Islamists” and their zombie-think intellectual machinery and very real criminal muscle also deeply repugnant to mankind. One may note similar cause and narrative in the Christian “inquisition” and numerous royal and sectarian conflicts.

Let’s not take the words of great writers such as C.S. Lewis as being beyond reproach by way of improved knowledge and new observation and updating.

Regarding Islam’s internecine issues and political psychology: the rancor should come down in geopolitical numbers and scope as feudal methods in power and the medieval worldview become more difficult to “sell” against the full suite of modern administrative alternatives and their presence in the fast becoming archaic fortresses of the medieval mode.

–33–

Ukraine – The American March, Washington, D.C., May 20, 2017

22 Monday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Over there?

BackChannels readers have enjoyed a glimpse of the relationship between Moscow and terrorism.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

The same have witnessed the destruction of Syria by Bashar al-Assad as flanked by Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei and how the casualty, IDP, and refugee figures have mounted on the chaos and mass destruction of warfare overseen by Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran.

The ambitious in research have figured out that the three dictatorships would rather fight the west than “The Terrorists” and then use the terrorists — al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and others — in their own interest in sustaining feudalism far into the 21st Century.  They should also know of the former Iraqi Baathist officers, those who once served Saddam Hussein, and their role in the creation and “handling” of ISIS.

If you think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a separate issue . . . think again.

The organizer of the march for Ukraine in Washington, D.C., Ed Skibicki reports that the Ukrainian-language version of the march has pulled more than 120,000 views.

In BackChannels’ opinion, these videos and related material should be pulling hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide as Ukraine serves — and as it has many times in history and too much in modern or “post-medieval” history — as a front line state standing against the barbarism, iron rule, greed, malign narcissism, and ruthlessness put on full display in Syria and Crimea by the once “Red-Green” phantoms of the Cold War.

–33–

 

Mahmoud Abbas: KGB and Groomed to Lie

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Islam orders the Muslim to be honest to himself and others. This order repeatedly comes in the Noble Qur’an and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (SAWS). Islam orders the Muslim to tell the truth even if it is against the teller’s interest. Orders him not to cheat or deceive other people. A Muslim is ordered by Allah to be honest in his words and deeds, privately and publicly alike.

http://www.islamawareness.net/Honesty/honesty_article003.html

Portions of The Other Side have been considered as Holocaust denial by some critics,[8] especially the parts disputing the accepted number of deaths in the Holocaust as well as the accusations that Zionist agitation was the cause of the Holocaust,[9] a charge that Abbas denies.[10]

When Abbas was appointed the Palestinian prime minister in 2003, he wrote that the “Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind” and that he does not deny it,[11] and said that “When I wrote The Other Side … we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks”.[12] More recently, in 2013 he reasserted that part of his thesis that “the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis”.[13][14] In 2014, he stated the Holocaust was the “most heinous crime in the modern era”.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side:_The_Secret_Relationship_Between_Nazism_and_Zionism

Apparently, Mr. Abbas spreads lies when at war with Israel but shrugs through the truth when its suits him.

Or perhaps when it suits his family’s wallet.

These documents, reports from senior Fatah officials and Palestinian social media reveal extensive corruption at the highest levels — the Abbas family and a Palestinian elite manipulating the political and financial systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the people.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/306179-palestinian-kleptocracy-west-accepts-corruption-people

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

The architect of the Holocaust, Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann, was one of the first to deny its existence. While escaping the Nuremberg trials and evading international law, Eichmann befriended Nazi supporters in Argentina who published an anti-Semitic magazine titled “Der Weg,” or “The Way.” The magazine aimed to disprove what they called “the falsehood of the 6 million.” The magazine claimed the Holocaust was nothing but a libel, that there were never any gas chambers in Hitler’s Europe and that the Jews collaborated with the Third Reich in order to have another country for themselves after thousands of years in exile. According to Eichmann and the magazine’s publishers, the Jews were willing to sacrifice themselves to gain a national homeland.

Many Arabs were enthralled by this theory, and a young doctoral student by the name of Mahmoud Abbas, now the president of the Palestinian Authority, even wrote a dissertation on the subject titled, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism,” which opened the door for several different conspiracies on the subject of the Holocaust to develop.

The Arabs were among the first Holocaust deniers to adopt Eichmann’s theory.

Cohen, Edy.  “Adding Insult to Injury.”  Israel Hayom, April 23, 2017.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

In the proverbial east, so it would appear, what may not be accomplished honestly may be accomplished through guile — and if not guile, plain lying and force.

One social trope BackChannels has heard regarding lying: “Any who lie to you don’t respect you.”

Fair enough.

BackChannels wonders to what extent those who lie to others, especially Palestinians who lie to Palestinians, respect even themselves.

Posted to YouTube by Human Rights Watch, August 29, 2016.

Related

http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/29/palestine-crackdown-journalists-activists

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/israel/palestine

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/palestine-state-of/

http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/topics/palestinian-violations

Expect updates to this post as more material comes together on Abbas representative of the end of a long cycle of totalitarian dictatorship — perhaps more gently, “authoritarian governance” — comes into view on the world stage.  Today’s political crooks get covered in global media and come to look exactly as they have painted themselves throughout the course of their careers.  Mahmoud Abbas?  KGB — he has the record of it, and once marked is marked forever with that organization — so whose interests, apart from his own, is he really representing?

Abbas has also made for himself a record as a Holocaust denier although he has backed away from that lunacy — still, one may wonder how many unwarranted words — assertion of fact that just aren’t true — he has still to recover.

–33–

FTAC: The Yankee Responds

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Article of Interest: 

https://www.eu-foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/21/analysis-from-the-su-24-crisis-to-the-moscow-ankara-rapprochement-leadership-and-foreign-policy-doctrines/

Passage of Interest: 

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.

Additional Reference

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/russia

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/turkey

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

https://rsf.org/en/russia

https://rsf.org/en/turkey

–33–

FTAC: Syria – “Expect ‘Mission Creep'”

08 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Posted to YouTube by The New York Times, April 7, 2017.

Comment:

The public presentation of conflict may attempt to keep separate Syria, Ukraine, Russia, and Iran, but I don’t think the Kremlin (this is a good comment for Kremlin Watch) has an “Off” button in association with the defense of the autocratic feudal past that each dictatorship represents. Expect “mission creep”.

The inflammatory header now running in the UK’s The Sun: “‘ONE STEP FROM WAR’ Furious Russia warns Trump he has ‘completely ruined’ relations with Moscow after Syria gas attack revenge bombing – as Putin sends warship to the Med” – https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3275613/donald-trump-us-attacks-syria-chemical-attack-sarin-latest-news/

And at this time in the more moderate European News:

http://www.euronews.com/2017/04/08/un-urges-restraint-as-washington-and-moscow-clash-over-syria

–33–