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Tag Archives: East-West Rivalry

#DJT The Success! (At Failing): Two Tweets

27 Tuesday Sep 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

East-West Rivalry, medieval v modern, Medieval v. Modern, Putin, Trump, TrumpPutin

Ain’t he neat?/ See him working up a tweet/ Hasn’t had his breakfast yet/ That helps with workin’ up Donald’s debt/ ain’t he neat?

๐Ÿ™‚

Humor helps.

And it’s evident (old bachelor, empty apartment), sigh, that I must say so myself (attaboy)!

Sad story, this guy “The Donald”.


Previous tweets-#AmericaWorks #DJT doesn't-e.g., https://t.co/dG0PCOTRHC; https://t.co/TojuSPAHwH; https://t.co/nUNbtLJeQj; https://t.co/ZxoolG2g6A; https://t.co/v7PwUPk3er; https://t.co/sW9dyYa0At; https://t.co/4X7D7s7Zyv; https://t.co/b88PdIkZ0A; https://t.co/PYl7VNglTu. Done

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) September 27, 2022

#DJT and related to previous epic ๐Ÿ™‚ tweet-https://t.co/ifJZMVbxnl; https://t.co/lvK2y9x9zR

America understands #AmericanCharacter but it appears to have some problems discerning sophisticated criminality (fraud & theft), #MaligNarcs, and #PoliticalCriminals like #DonTheCon.

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) September 27, 2022

Possibly, from Donald Trump’s perspective, he only loses or takes other people’s money (without return), and rather like the feudal-medieval king he’d like to be in the still revolutionary and evolving modern United States of America, he expects the ginormous junkyard of disappointments left to others to just go away.

How did we get here?

It appears to me that Moscow had a revenge story for the bankrupting of the Soviet Union: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/ .

I has appeared to The Guardian that Moscow had also a “Manchurian Candidate” in Donald John Trump: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book .

It has occurred to BackChannels (sometimes I growl and whine after saying “ChewbaccaChannels”) that KGB, FBI, TS/SCI boxes, folders, and whatnot may have a bridge with Registered Foreign Agent and Trump’s lawyer Christopher M. Kise via his relationship with the Russia friendly Maduro regime in Venezuela, happy host in the Western Hemisphere to Russian nuclear warhead ready TU-160 jets.


###

A Few Keys Related to ‘East-West Rivalry’

02 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Epistemology, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, East-West Rivalry, political psychology, Post-Cold War History, Russia, Russia Takes Revenge for '89 and '91

As a blogger drifting along the contours of institutions and media concerned with defense and national security, I’ve encountered two primary challenges: how to condense, distill, and package strong material for public overview and impact; and, sigh, how to give the “pebble” sufficient weight to get a firm small wave bouncing back and force across the Internet pond.

Without further ado . . . .

.Felix Dzerzhinsky, born September 11, 1877
.Dawisha (RIP) Soviet Nomenklatura Mid-1980s Transition Plan for the Distribution of State Assets
.Nekrasov’s documentary
.Zawahiri in Russia, ’96-7
.Satter On The Moscow Apartment Bombings
.9/11 Reflexive Control->New Nationalism EU/NATO
.Sustained Active Measures | Russian Mafia State | Syrian Barbarism | Trump Ascendancy
.Ukraine, 2014 Crimean Annexation, Invasion 2022

*Section mentioned in “Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State” (BackChannels, June 28, 2022) and lightly edited for presentation in this post.

Do you see what I see?

Of course not.

You haven’t been on my specific poli-sci/poli-psy/poli-spy tour, but the clues in events and personalities don’t reside only my mind: they are all here on the web. My guess: the knowledgeable, say at GCHQ or NSA, have already put them together (well, those cats have got to have better resources and more interesting conversations), but the ordinary public appears to me to be struggling with what has happened–and with what may be happening if it doesn’t come to grips with a strong true representation of cultural and political reality.

Premise-Thirty Years Revenge for ’89 and ’91

I believe Bolshevik criminal elements within the Soviet KGB wasted little time prying their way back into power and prestige sufficient to bend the Russian Federation’s democracy and justice to their own will and for their own ends (ref.: Nekrasov documentary on Litvinenko, Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case AKA Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File).

In addition to focusing on self-enrichment and power, the cohort appears to have been bent on vengeance for the Soviet Army’s defeat in Afghanistan in 1989 and the dissolving of the Soviet Union itself at noon on December 25, 1991, an implication drawn by the manner of Vladimir Putin’s ascent to Russia’s presidency, his legendary affection for Felix Dzerzhinsky, Joseph Stalin, and Soviet Era Russia, and the inadequacy expressed through his “malignant narcissism” (see “Liar, Thief, and Tyrant”, February 20, 2022, on this blog) and related devotion to supporting his own Russian messianic heroic image through artifice (because that’s all he really has). The emperor may have no clothes but neither Russians nor the west are dwelling on that as he has Russia focused on his greatness (or else!) and everyone else his destructive threat.

Moscow’s Development of the East-West Rivalry Narrative

I believe conventional western financial and political leadership took the familiar tack of wanting to help the defeated get back on its feet through the extension of capital, the hand of cooperation, and patient tolerance or understanding for the Russian travail that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Only at the turning point of the Syrian Civil War (2011) did western detente return to play–and then containment. Today, for having accepted the position of responding to Russia’s initiatives and rollout of its own and quite evil narrative arc, EU/NATO have found themselves in various ways somewhat compromised; a little incoherent about corruption, legacy, power, and realpolitik in each state’s own way (for related review, have a look at authoritarianism or nationalism in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States) ; and finally brought to face once again a most dangerous confrontation with Moscow and its criminal Soviet-post-Soviet character now on full display in the ethnic cleansing and “rubbling” of Ukraine.

Perhaps Washington thought it progress to have worked on the “War on Terror” with Moscow, but in the end, the Pentagon and State Department found the Taliban kept in business by Russian arms and materiel–and both would leave Afghanistan with the Taliban guarding Russia’s embassy in Kabul.

Avarice, Inferiority, and Greed–Russia and Trump

Russia and Russia’s leadership may have a “special” narcissism and enormous compensating vanity, but I am certain that among nations and their full collection of political experiments that it has no “special truth”, for at every opportunity, Moscow has supported criminals, dictators, fanatics, and terrorists–and it has through its Active Measures and destabilization operations put to work similar elements in its targets.

The poster displayed in this tweet appears to have been a gesture of support from within Russia following Trump’s 2016 election win. One may take it as a comment on the medieval mentality and related methods popular with both leaders and their respective followers.

@AccountableGOP @ProjectLincoln @RpsAgainstTrump@AmbDanFried @NSLforBiden @natsechobbyist @SenatorDurbin @SteveScalise @Ink8Judy
2016
–https://t.co/TpcoyQ6Ij3
–https://t.co/MwCurViW3I
–https://t.co/Me2afiVrKl
–https://t.co/asnQEvnT3E
–https://t.co/68kbZtcmq6

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) March 15, 2022

Donald John Trump as Malignant Narcissist

The steps and terms-of-art I’ve picked up in relation to “Malignant Narcissism” have been these, and while practically self-explanatory, academics and analysts have spent serious verbiage on each. I’ll step in most informally to convey the gist.

Narcissistic Mortification: experiences of humiliation or shame to the extent that the identity and self feel damaged, impotent, and small. The discomfort–for what it is to do to the person–may be considered remarkable.

Covering/Splitting: “Covering” refers to the hiding of the damaged self and the packing away of an awful experience; “splitting” refers to the creation of an heroic undamaged self to be both asserted and defended at all costs. With “MaligNarcs”–expressed through authoritarian, dictating, and sociopathic manipulation–the appreciation or recognition and respect for normal boundaries and limits fade before the objectives of the self in hiding damage and asserting extraordinary power.

Control of the Experiences and Perceptions of Others: most well known: “gaslighting”. However, add deceptions and lies without ends or limits. Whatever works . . . works.

Messianic Delusions of Grandeur: Although the MaligNarc creates the chaos–no different from the fireman who sets the fire, so he may show up and put it out as a hero–the vision is to stand astride the same heroically saving his class, creed, gender, race, and religion from all who would diminish any part.

Unlimited Narcissistic Supply: adoration and love unlimited.

The best example I’ve read and repeatedly distributed in relation to Vladimir Putin has been David Satter’s investigation in the National Review — “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power” (August 17, 2016). For Donald John Trump, one may explore the web for “Trump, Malignant Narcissist” and find the long list of both learned and light psychobabble. Here’s a passage just plucked off the web:

According to psychologist John Gartner, Trump clearly exhibits four key symptoms of malignant narcissism — the “most destructive” personality type — including paranoia, narcissism, antisocial personality disorder and sadism. “

This type of leader pops up all throughout history, and they’re always extraordinarily disruptive,” Gartner told AFP, noting that the same label has been applied to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

“What is so strange is that we’re not used to seeing this type of leader in America.”

Raynaldy, Romain. “Psychologist-backed documentary labels Trump ‘malignant narcissist’.” The Jakarta Post, September 1, 2020.

You can tell the condition’s gotten really bad when it expresses as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“, which has been myself just calling it as I’ve seen it.


PBS, June 28, 2022.

And for political theater . . .

This was January 6th.
This is not โ€œlegitimate political discourse.โ€ pic.twitter.com/lKgbVyVcJr

— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) February 4, 2022
That’s a mob–or it was a mob, a heavily armed one too.

Medieval leaders love mobs, also secret gangs, behind-the-curtain deals with other “nobility”, dumb but loyal armies, and the idea above all of being as if gods, blessed by religious power, and free to define the law of the lawless land–and in Russia’s absolute “patrimonial authoritarianism”, apparently free to treat persons and property as alike and to destroy either at will and with impunity.

Modern leaders do all they can to minimize and eliminate that mentality from their districts, regions, and states, for the modern world in every facet relies on complex cooperation and the integration of large systems. It may help if they’re devoted to the health and well being of their respective constituencies and not solely the representatives of one patrician class or another.

Thematic on this blog has been “Medieval v Modern”, and, of course, it or I, or the same ๐Ÿ™‚ , has posed the question, “In which world do you wish to live? Medieval? Or Modern?”

As the European Union and NATO see more clearly what Moscow has “accomplished” with its barbarous medieval ambitions (or delusions) over the past 30 years of support for the post-Soviet but still Soviet spheres of control and influence–and, finally, in the so-far “ethnic cleansing” of Ukraine–both will have to determine to take apart the Putin’s Olde Regime and nurture in its place a modern Russia that Russians too (as it dawns on them what has been and is being done to them and their children) might appreciate and embrace. In this passage where every day is agony for Ukrainians and an eternity for diplomats and politicians, that day’s on a seemingly far horizon, but it’s there and will become more visible with time. So-called “leaders” like Putin and Trump have made themselves impossibly archaic and in cultural, ethical, and moral terms, if not financial (yet), bankrupt.

Truth be known: neither Putin nor Trump has anything–apart from a little money or laundering service–to offer anyone.

–33–

FTAC: Moscow’s Poor Manners, 9/11 to the Present

10 Friday Dec 2021

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

≈ Leave a comment

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/ .

https://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/13637-russian-taliban-payments-underscore-moscow%E2%80%99s-afghan-challenges.html

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.


It’s All Good — Or Is It? About Information and Popular Public Perception

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


Posted to YouTube by HistoryPod, December 25, 2015.

–33–

FTAC: Palestinian KGB: Another Remark

11 Thursday Feb 2021

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

East-West Rivalry, MEC, middle east conflict, Palestinian KGB

From the Awesome Conversation


I harp on this point with the hope that it will lead to insight into the Palestinian role in more general and profound “east-west relations” — https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html As Moscow has remained “politically absolute” in relation to power, so it has supported corrupt dictatorships around the world and blocked the spread of western liberalism and democratic self-determination and inclusion. The Middle East Conflict remains but one of many now post-Soviet frozen conflicts energized by its defunct Soviet Era framing and covered by the “liberation movement” banner.


From Arafat to Abbas to whoever comes next, Palestinian leaders have been puppets with their string attached to the Russia’s political police services.

–33–

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Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
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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

ืื›ื–ืจื™ ืกื•ืฃ ืฉื ืขืฉื” ืื›ื–ืจื™ ื‘ืžืงื•ื ืจื—ืžืŸ

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
โ€œThe 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.โ€

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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