The Kremlin has returned to the criminal abuse of language in its effort to renew animus with the west and line its oligarch’s pockets with the proceeds attending conflict and contemplated conquest. Basically, the “Vertical of Power” has resuscitated Russian Imperialism.

Inspiration for the comment: an article on Chinese-Russian energy cooperation, which would seem out of left field given plenty of motivation by way of news out of Ukraine and Syria; however, in the back channel behind the back channel (are back channels recursive?), stands the unexplored thesis that the two great superpower dictatorships, Russia and China, understand one another better than they do their treacherous democratic open society partner on the Security Council.

Of course, the two mobsters are going to cut deals to cut out the nice guy.

This BackChannels blog signal travels to at least 112 nations, which provides me with a unique opportunity to pose a challenging question in development and with interest in improvement in the qualities of living across geopolitical space: choose, oh distant reader, how you wish to live: subjugated to economic and political elites whose judgment is capricious and powers strong enough to bend laws to suit their acquisitive, controlling, and unhealthily narcissistic wills?  Or as constituent participants in governments possessed of greater integrity and capable of open public policy and law formulation subject to public or citizen’s audit?

With now state-controlled media and lots of propaganda money spread through the New Old Now Old and Far Out Left, Putin’s Russia will attempt to exploit language to produce renewed anti-American, anti-“western” (i.e., specifically pro-dictatorship) animus and xenophobia.

For the record here, the author of this blog enjoys zero (zilch, nada) political funding, and the only funding I may really want — not that I don’t need money — would be open online journalism or research grant money.  In the universe of institutions, genuinely independent writers, research analysts, and scholars may be made to suffer — I know of no roof today beneath which to seek shelter — but the charm that comes with that fragility is intellectual freedom, a prize without price considering what media mercenaries have demonstrated do for the most tainted of paychecks.

I’ll go a little further to note than I am not the happiest of Americans in acknowledging the role Big Money plays in lobbying for laws and influencing Federal policy, but if, when, and where I may have specific complaint, I have confidence in my being able to research and write about the matter beholden to none and otherwise unfettered.

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