Tag Archives: political absolutism

Also in Media: “Press Release: Aleppo’s Medics Under Attack. SAMS Facilities and Medical Equipment in Eastern Aleppo Seized by the Government” – Syrian American Medical Society Foundation – December 6, 2016

08 Thursday Dec 2016

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For Immediate Release

December 6, 2016

Washington, DC – After more than 100 days of siege, over 2,000 airstrikes, and the closure of all hospitals in eastern Aleppo, it is with a heavy heart that SAMS announces that our facilities and staff can no longer operate in the city. Our facilities have been seized by the government, leaving too many without the critical and life-saving medical care they need.

The brutal aerial bombardment campaign over Aleppo has killed hundreds of civilians, including children and women, and forced over 50,000 people to flee their homes in the past two weeks alone. The humanitarian crisis in the eastern part of the city has reached a tipping point. Hospital have been systematically targeted with impunity. Medical personnel have been struggling to treat patients. Medical equipment and supplies have been depleted. Emergency medical evacuations have been denied.

In November, with attacks on hospitals taking place every 24 hours, all of Aleppo’s hospitals were bombed out of service.

The largest trauma hospital in Aleppo, which was supported by SAMS, was bombed out of operation despite its underground location.

In October, this facility was attacked five times in one week with illegal and unconventional weapons including, barrel bombs, bunker buster bombs, and cluster bombs.

These indiscriminate attacks on hospitals have taken an unimaginable toll on civilians- leaving more than 250,000 people, including 100,000 children, with no access to medical care. As the aerial bombardment campaign has intensified, the number of casualties and wounded civilians has reached the highest number since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. Medical personnel have been treating the overwhelming number of wounded in basements with limited resources. People are using carts to transport the wounded. Bodies of the dead are wrapped in plastic bags and left on the streets because hospitals have run out of coffins.

“A few days ago the nurses out of desperation tried to operate M2 hospital again. They went into one of the remaining basements and started two ICU beds and a small procedure room,” said Dr. Anas Moughrabieh, SAMS’s Telemedicine Chair. “They consulted me about two patients. One had minor injuries and the other one was critically injured. I asked them to prematurely give up on the latter one and I felt bad to tell them it is luxury now to care for patients with this high level of injury with limited resources. However, our medics didn’t give up on him until their location was discovered and attacked by barrel and cluster bombs.”

Since the start of the conflict in Syria, nearly half a million people have been killed, over 20,000 of them children,  11 million have been forced to flee their homes, and over one million live under the horrific conditions of siege. These astonishing numbers paint a grim picture of suffering mothers, fathers, children, and families that have been failed by the international community.

“We are shocked by the inaction of the international community that has allowed such atrocities to be committed against civilians,” said SAMS Medical Staff Member in Aleppo. “Our hospitals continue to be targeted. Now, we are hiding in basements. We feel desperate and abandoned. The UN and the international community have failed Syria.”

For nearly six years, civilians, medical workers, schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods have been the target of unrelenting bombardment. Innocent Syrians have been forced to endure indiscriminate and unconventional weapons that maim, chemical weapons that suffocate, and relentless sieges that starve. These war crimes continue with impunity.

“Throughout these unimaginable conditions and challenges, SAMS has continued and will continue to provide care and alleviate the suffering of civilians across Syria, regardless of their religious or political affiliations,” said SAMS’s President, Dr. Ahmad Tarakji. “Our brave medics have continued to do their job despite constant threats to their own lives. They are the true heroes and our shared duty is to protect them.”

SAMS condemns in the strongest terms the heinous attacks on civilian infrastructure in Aleppo, the inaction of the international community that has allowed innocent men, women, and children to be killed under their watch, and the vetoes from the UN member states of Russia and China of the resolution that would have allowed for a seven-day humanitarian pause. This resolution was meant to save lives. Now, more lives will be lost.

For media requests, please contact SAMS’s Media and Communications Manager, Lobna Hassairi at lobna.hassairi@sams-usa.net.

Source: Press Release: Aleppo’s Medics Under Attack. SAMS Facilities and Medical Equipment in Eastern Aleppo Seized by the Government – Syrian American Medical Society Foundation

Comment: the power sought by Assad, Putin, and Khamenei — the avatars of political absolutism and fair examples of malignant narcissists — is the power to impose suffering on others with impunity.  At this hour, it appears another part of that heinous mission has been accomplished.

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FTAC – Soviet / Post-Soviet ‘Active Measures’ – Elections – Terrorism

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

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The role of the Soviet Union and KGB “Active Measures” — a term of art that may be looked up online — in the amplifying anti-western anti-Semitic animus has been far overlooked by the public focused – by related political manipulation – on Islamic Terrorism. Whether following the timeline from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, the early appearance of Hitlerism, and the Stalin Era or coming forward to the Vietnam War Era or on to this day, you will find the Russian state deeply involved either with the sponsorship of terrorism (see Wikiepedia “Terrorism in the Soviet Era”) or the tolerance of it!

Today, Russia will not condemn Hamas, Hezbollah, or PFLP as terrorist organizations.

Russ-AS-04

Soviet cartoons distributed in the Middle East to leverage “the masses” into the Soviet camp.  This one may date from the early 1970s.

This piece on my blog perhaps needs an update — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/15/ftac-its-not-islam-its-moscow/ — but it’s message remains factual and clear.

When the Soviet Union dissolved 25 years — December 8 (in secret), 25 (public declaration), 26 (Russian tricolor raised above the Kremlin), 1991 — the west may have been both too confident and too eager to establish business and cooperation with the new criminally wild but proto-democratic state, which unbeknownst to the west had already had in place a transition plan to attempt to maintain the architecture and privileges of the Party nomenklatura (reference _Putin’s Kleptocracy_ by Miami University scholar Karen Dawisha).

Vladimir Putin’s complete “pivot” at Syria — not to mention those “little green men” who invaded Crimea — tells of a Russian revanche this time as a feudal, neo-imperial totalitarian and ultra-nationalist state that may manipulate terrorism to suits its ends.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/isil-groomed-for-a-role-in-assad-vs-the-terrorists/

Pat Condell – what binds Putin, Assad, and Khamenei (to lesser extent Putin and Orban plus Putin and Erdogan) is the shared drive for absolute power, or medieval political absolutism, which might remind us of someone else. The malignant narcissists who become dictators — “different talks — same walk!” — appear to have an affinity for one another. As much would seem to inform the world’s code “Brown” “New Nationalism” and the familiar “Red-Green” alliance of old “comrade networks” and the strident among Muslims.

Thank Moscow for once again driving both Far Right and Far Left extremism — and with that, perhaps also our own division today in the United States. The rancor serves to weaken EU / NATO cohesion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

Also in Media – CSIS – “The Kremlin Playbook: Understanding Russian Influence in Central and Eastern Europe”

13 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Posted to YouTube by CSIS, October 13, 2016.

Source: https://www.csis.org/events/kremlin-playbook-understanding-russian-influence-central-and-eastern-europe – 10/13/2016.

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FTAC – Syria, Compressed

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

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This is basic:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

And the confusion in the “battlespace” fails to recognize the true oppositions in the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy.

The correct framing: the 25th anniversary (Dec. 26) of the dissolve of the Soviet Union.

The correct opposition:

“Medieval Political Absolutism” vs “Modern Democratic Distributions of Power”

The medieval axis: Moscow-Damascus-Tehran + others who invest themselves in authoritarian politics. Fair slogan for the kleptocratic dictatorships: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”

The dictators are those who walk all over their own constituents (or subjugated populations).

The modern axis: the United States, NATO, the open democracies of the west and worldwide.

There are a lot of fence sitters — Pakistan may be one — but the medieval world is on full display between Putin, Assad, Khamenei, AND Baghdadi.

I don’t know when the perception of the witness of the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” will kick in, grow, and align within the lovers of broadly distributed freedom and prosperity worldwide, but this blog has been working on that for a while.

By now, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may know the extent to which his enterprise had been enabled in its infancy to service to serve in these ways:

  • A collector of “jihadist” passion;
  • An organization suiting the blackmailing of the west in a political theatrical one might call “Assad OR The Terrorists” — never mind the both operating as tyrants;
  • A goad to the west, especially mixed in with the hapless of Syria’s mass migration;
  • An excuse to destroy (“Assad or We Burn It”) Syria and depopulate the region for the greater political control of the despotic powers.

Those who merely follow each day’s headlines (and Russian post-Soviet disinformation) will not “see” the political reality that is Syria.  They will see the glorious “Assad vs The Terrorist” and witness Moscow’s latest in military technology set loose on the landscape, while those who dig, and those who have memory — all the way back to Daara, 2011 — will get the whole story, understand it, and perhaps be enraged by what it represents.

Related

Like Syria itself, Daraa has been ripped apart by five years of conflict. What began as a local protest movement against the Assad political dynasty slowly morphed into an international proxy war that’s drawn in the United States, Russia, Iran and nearly all of Syria’s neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions are displaced. While it’s difficult to find a Syrian who honestly believes there’s an end in sight, there’s some agreement about where it all began: with Omar’s friends. The graffiti they dared to paint on the schoolyard walls has become an origin myth for Syria’s tragic conflict — not just for the citizens of Daraa, but for the entire country.

By some accounts, the schoolkids were deeply political; they painted dozens of political slogans that day, and eventually set fire to a police kiosk to express solidarity with anti-police protests erupting across the Arab world. Omar remembers his friends a little differently. Sure, they had an eye on Egypt and Tunisia, but Omar says they defaced the school wall because they were teenagers, and it was the rebellious thing to do, not because they were die-hard revolutionaries.

https://news.vice.com/article/the-young-men-who-started-syrias-revolution-speak-about-daraa-where-it-all-began – 3/15/2016.

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Russia Flexes And Goes Hungry

21 Sunday Aug 2016

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

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Posted to YouTube by Caspian Report Aug. 17, 2016.

For Moscow, perhaps more than ever, image drives perception and perception is reality.

Or not.

As Putin flexes Russia’s renewed international political and military presence, a brief look at the character of the same seems in order.

ISIL and Syria

As BackChannels has noted for some time, “ISIL” was going to be Moscow’s “gift” to itself and the world — and now it is.

Baghdadi’s organization has provided Assad with the excuse wanted for depopulating and leveling his state; it has given Putin something ugly to throw westward; and it serves now as a hornet’s nest somewhat defined in space and useful for demonstrating Moscow’s latest in military prowess and technology.

Russia’s stand in Syria — now that Iraq’s no longer a Russian client state and Libya has similarly disappeared in that regard — has become remarkable for the hardware, technology, and troops allocated to “The Terrorists” (while apparently hitting also hospitals —

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/three-syrian-hospitals-bombed-since-russian-airstrikes-began-doctors-say – 10/22/2015 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/31/wave-of-russian-air-strikes-on-syrian-hospitals-leaves-60-dead/ – 5/31/2016 | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-civil-war-assad-russia-air-strikes-deaths-bombing-hospitals-idlib-maternity-clinic-babies-a7163691.html – 7/30/2016 | https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2016/03/syrian-and-russian-forces-targeting-hospitals-as-a-strategy-of-war/ – 3/3/2016

Crimea

 

Russophiles “rescued” by Russia’s incursions in Crimea appear to be learning about their true status as “protected” subjects: prices are soaring while their rubles lose value and their earnings remain flat.

 

Turkey

Russia, having also and apparently won over Erdogan into fulfilling his destiny as Turkey’s next presumptive sultan and guardian of the Moscow-enabled “Turkish Stream” Gas-to-Europe energy delivery system, has also demonstrated the chutzpah of asking permission to use the airbase at Incirlik — as NATO forces now do — for running sorties against ISIL targets in Syria.  President Erdogan assented, not that Putin needs those runways at this moment.

 

European Union and BREXIT

It should be clear by now that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” prods a reflexive nationalism.

Add the refugees pouring out of Syria and flowing into Europe and other potential hosting space, and the backlash forms around a new xenophobia.

The gates and fences go up, first in the form of “defense leagues” and later in potential policy.  BackChannels credits the Soviet / post-Soviet style incubation and later “deployment” of ISIL with goading a brief majority of Brits into separating the island state from the main traffic in commerce and politics associated with the continent.

Russia’s New Nuclear Front

This excerpt comes from the Free Beacon article published last week and cited in the “Links” section of this post:

Russia is engaged in a major buildup of strategic nuclear forces, building new missiles, submarines, and bombers. A State Department report on Russian activities under the New START arms treaty stated in the spring that Moscow added 153 strategic nuclear warheads to its arsenal under the treaty.

The increase in warheads is said to be the result of the deployment of new SS-27 Mod 2 intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads and SS-N-32 submarine-launched missiles.

Cold War?  Cold Struggle?

We might haggle about missile defenses in Poland and Romania, but Russian efforts in the field may be focused on defeating NATO’s nuclear defenses, and that according to Putin’s own statements about related nuclear balance of power.

For all such statements made — fighting the terrorists in Syria; co-opting Turkey against its European and NATO interests; spooking the Brits out of the EU; and redeveloping the nuclear-obsessed Cold War mentality, Putin may nonetheless be working with a low stack of financial chips.  Even though he may offset that with appeals to blood-and-soil nationalism and related sacrifice, one wonders how much room for play he has with the oligarchs who may be expected to pay either for ambitions now or their aftermath later.

A glance at posts like this one and its sources also suggests that while Putin has indeed brought Russia to its feet with the immense theatrical prowess that produces both the Winter Olympics at Sochi and the spectacle of a ruined Syria, it’s the latter on which Russians, poor or wealthy, connected or well outside the system of patronage, and “Russophones” in the “Russian near abroad” may wish to dwell.

Related:  https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/experts-proclaim-lost-decade-for-russias-stagnating-economy-55039 & http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/21/russian-stocks-boosted-by-stabilizing-economy-may-surprise-analysts.html

Links

MOSCOW — Russia flexed its muscles again over Syria on Friday, for the first time launching cruise missiles at targets from warships in the Mediterranean Sea days after beginning bombing runs from a base in Iran.

Taken together, the new military moves appeared to be a demonstration that Russia has the ability to strike from virtually all directions in a region where it has been reasserting its power — from Iran, from warships in the Caspian Sea, from its base in the Syrian coastal province of Latakia and now from the Mediterranean.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/middleeast/russia-syria-mediterranean-missiles.html – 8/19/2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/world/europe/russia-bolsters-submarine-fleet-and-tensions-with-us-rise.html – 4/20/2016

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/21/politics/us-warns-syria-russia-on-attacks/ – 8/21/2016

“Russian doctrine states that tactical nuclear weapons may be used in a conventional response scenario,” Scaparrotti said on July 27. “This is alarming and it underscores why our country’s nuclear forces and NATO’s continues to be a vital component of our deterrence.”

Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policy official, said Russia’s new national security strategy, which was made public in December, discusses increasing civil defenses against nuclear attack, an indication Moscow is preparing for nuclear war.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-building-new-underground-nuclear-command-posts/ – 8/15/2016

Ankara has given Russia the go-ahead to use its Incirlik air base for operations in Syria, though no official request from Moscow to use the strategic military facility has been made, Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/turkey-pm-russia-can-share-incirlik-airbase-with-us-if-necessary/ – 8/21/2016

More than two years after Russia annexed Crimea and promised its 2 million people a better life, residents say prices have soared, wages and pensions have stagnated and tourists have fled.

The sunny and mountainous Black Sea peninsula is back in the news, with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing Kiev of sending infiltrators across the border to wreck its industry. But locals say the damage has already been done by Moscow’s neglect.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-crimea-idUSKCN10W0EM – 8/21/2016.

Over the last week, the number of heavy weapons deployed near the front lines in eastern Ukraine has doubled, part of a pattern of Russia ramping up its military presence in the region throughout the summer. An estimated 40,000 soldiers have been stationed there, on top of aircraft and the anti-missile defense system.

All of this has been stoking fears Russia could be planning another invasion, two years after it formally annexed Crimea, as peace talks crumble. It’s Putin’s first visit to the territory since March.

https://news.vice.com/article/putin-touches-down-in-crimea – 8/19/2016

The Russian military has test fired the short-range nuclear-capable 9K720 Iskander-M (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone) ballistic missile during a large-scale military exercise in Russia’s Far East this week, according to local media reports.

http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/russia-test-fires-nuclear-capable-ballistic-missile-in-far-east/ – 8/19/2016.

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FTAC – Muslims – “No to Hatred, No to Violence, No to Terrorism”

17 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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On Monday, The Independent had run a piece online by Matt Payton titled, “More than 30,000 Muslims from across the world meet in the UK to reject ISIS and Islamic extremism” (August 15, 2016).  Some in the Awesome Conversation were pleased by the sight of women in full abaya holding placards reading

NO TO HATRED
NO TO VIOLENCE
NO TO TERRORISM

The things the “Islamists” do go against the grain of humanity — that’s just how I feel about that criminality — and the appropriate response by Muslims is repudiation.

What next?

Cultural blending, differentiation, and separation — there’s wisdom in recognizing and maintaining boundaries and margins in a world supporting about 7,000 living languages and what each represents. (Note that Putin plays the ethnolinguistic cultural defense and evolution card _against_ political boundaries, effectively violating margins. Also: Back-Channels credits Assad with the incubation of ISIS through deselection for bombing and combat earlier in Syria and also notes that Russia continues to maintain Soviet Era relationships with at least Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP. Muslims have not only to repudiate the fascist ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood organizations — that’s in that “No” to hatred, violence, and terrorism — but also to grasp Moscow’s role in the grooming and manipulation of such organizations as weapons focused toward the modern democracies).

https://youtu.be/3dn0EgX9RiU

Posted to YouTube by the Daily Mail, Aug. 4, 2016.

BackChannels argument that Assad incubated ISIS rests on a Newsweek report and successive and validating news coverage coming out of the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy.

In the following video clip, President Putin notes, “That if you would like to stop the flow of migrants into Europe, if you want for them to live in their own countries, then you must return sovereignty to those countries where it has been taken away.”

Think about that.

Under whose sovereign command were Syrian children arrested and tortured in 2011?

Whose sovereign air force “barrel bombed” Syrian noncombatants?

Because of the incubating of ISIS as useful tool, BackChannels has long regarded the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” as a complete theater of politics and war managed off the post-Soviet Moscow hub, i.e., by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei, and by each to their own advantage but the common cause of sustaining medieval political absolutism in their respective states.

Different Talks?

Same Walk.

Perhaps this is where that “walk” always leads:

Posted to YouTube by RT, January 20, 2016.

Under whose sovereignty were the airplanes flown, the tanks driven?

At time mark 1:44 on President Putin’s April 2016 St. Petersburg address, the President says of western criticism and opprobrium associated with both the incursion in Crimea and the conduct of the Syrian Civil War, “They realised that such destructive behaviour against our country was never going to work but nevertheless they’d like to silence our success.”

With a small nod toward conciliation, one may note of the YouTube video of Homs and the link immediately following that leads to an L.A. Times piece about the city that it had indeed been occupied by rebel forces and would be subject to state assault.  Nonetheless, the intertwined battles for Syria and against the open democracies of the west have not gone so well for Moscow and its clients IF measured by areas of control, community wellbeing, and economic contribution or so many other benchmarks familiar where peace prevails and governments abet development.

Links

http://www.businessinsider.com/nearly-80-of-russias-syria-strikes-dont-target-isis-2015-10 – 10/22/2015

http://syriadirect.org/news/russian-jets-purportedly-target-relatives-of-fsa-affiliated-fighters-on-jordan-border/ – 7/13/2016:

“There were families members of Usud a-Sharqiya there,” said spokesman Younis Salama. “But does that justify them bombing the camp?”

Jaysh Usud a-Sharqiya primarily fights the Islamic State in Syria’s eastern desert region.

Last month, Russian aircraft reportedly targeted another FSA group, the New Syrian Army, in Deir e-Zor province. Moscow did not comment on either attack.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-schoolboys-began-the-syrian-revolution/ – 4/26/2011:

The local secret police soon arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15, detaining them under the control of Gen. Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.

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

–33–

 

Links – Russia in Syria – Medieval and Absolute Dictatorship

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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Despite strong denials from Moscow, Russian airborne troops are preparing to land in Syria to fight Islamic State forces. The surprise attack on Monday, Aug. 31, by ISIS forces on the Qadam district of southern Damascus, in which they took over parts of the district – and brought ISIS forces the closest that any Syrian anti-Assad group has ever been to the center of the Syrian capital – is expected to accelerate the Russian military intervention.

http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/09/02/debkafile-russia-gearing-up-to-be-first-world-power-to-insert-ground-forces-into-syria/ – 9/2/2015.

Location: Syria’s Theater of the Real.

Producers: Putin, Assad, Khamenei.

Title of the Show: “Assad vs The Terrorists”.

Cast of extras, dead and alive: 250,000 dead; 9 million displaced or refugee.

Most Memorable Set Design: Homs, fashioned by barrel bombing to look like Hiroshima the day after.

Casting Dilemma: Getting Baghdadi’s fighters and other al-Qaeda-type elements to play their parts without knowing it.

Method: Bomb the al-Qaeda units less than ordinary Syrians.

Why: For Putin, post-Soviet Russia becomes neo-feudal Russia, and he’s the boss; for Assad, in the age of the “War on Terror” no spectacle could be more glorious than playing the lead in “Assad vs The Terrorists”; for Khamenei, a grand and sustained Shiite vs Sunni Battle perpetuates the medieval justification for his authority, however much he may care to abuse it.

CAUTION: From the Second Row Seat to History

Journalists in-country have an observation deck limited to their eyes and ears, but they may with accuracy report what they see and what they hear; journalists scouting the web for opinion and news in any area of interest necessarily receive all information one step removed from Being There and may be vulnerable to disinformation, in this instance information intended to change the character of the Syrian Tragedy — AKA either “Assad vs The Terrorists” or “Assad vs A Good Portion of the Syrian People” — and draw opposed powers into the field.

That noted, the world has seen also its share of barrel bombing videos and stills, read multiple reports involving at least one period of chemical warhead deployment — and seen Russia agree to neutralize and remove those munitions — and followed either the development of large Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon or Turkey, or, this week, witnessed the aftermath of drownings of ordinary people and their children, real people, Syrian refugees.

The world may also recall watching another production — the $52 billion Winter Olympics at Sochi during February 2014.  However, probably overlooked by the public at large that month (February 10, to be exact) was the headline and lede in The New York Times: “Russia and China Skip Security Council Meeting on Humanitarian Aid to Syria”:

UNITED NATIONS — The morning after an aid convoy came under fire when it tried to reach a besieged Syrian city, a meeting here on a draft resolution that would force all parties in the bloody conflict to allow access for humanitarian organizations fell apart when representatives from Russia and China failed to show up, United Nations Security Council diplomats said.

Perhaps Syrians would do well to borrow some mid-20th Century Jewish wisdom: Never Forget.

New evidence proves Russian military directly engaging in Syrian Civil War

The regime’s offensive in the Lattakia Governorate continues to reveal previously unknown details about Russia’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Apart from the sighting of recently delivered Russian BTR-82A infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), new evidence now confirmes Russian military personnel has a key role in leading the offensive on the ground.

http://spioenkop.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-evidence-proves-russian-military.html – 8/29/2015.

“We are aware of reports that Russia may have deployed military personnel and aircraft to Syria, and we are monitoring those reports quite closely,” said spokesman Josh Earnest.

“Any military support to the Assad regime for any purpose, whether it’s in the form of military personnel, aircraft supplies, weapons, or funding, is both destabilizing and counterproductive.”

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-monitoring-reports-russian-military-syria-213836626.html – 9/3/2015.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131573 – “Syria conflict: How far is Russia prepared to bolster Assad?”  — 9/2/2015.

On August 22, the Bosphorus Naval News website showed the Alligator-class Russian ship Nikolai Filchenkov, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, two days earlier passing through Istanbul’s famed waterway en route to an unknown location in the Mediterranean (hint, hint).

But what was remarkable about the Filchenkov was that military equipment was visible on deck . . . .

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/russia-puts-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria.html – 9/1/2015.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696268,00.html “Russian jets in Syrian skies” – 8/31/2015.

http://www.newsweek.com/why-putin-sending-troops-syria-368436 – 9/3/2015 – (by Elliott Abrams).

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c417e912-5479-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html#axzz3kz4QStb1 – “US voices concern to Russia over military moves in Syria” – 9/6/2015.

Sideways Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/02/quote-manipulation-about-the-plo-leader-pacepa-and-rychlak-2013/ – 12/2/2014.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/05/20/link-yarmouk-played/ – 5/20/2015.

Update: September 29, 2015 – From the Daily Beast, Aug. 23, 2015

Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions. In other words, Russian officials are adding to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/23/russia-s-playing-a-double-game-with-islamic-terror0.html – 8/23/2015.

Update: October 19, 2015: From The New York Review of books, July 11, 2012 – By Michael Ignatius

The Syrian conflict has triggered something more fundamental than a difference of opinion over intervention, something more than an argument about whether the Security Council should authorize the use of force. Syria is the moment in which the West should see that the world has truly broken into two. A loose alliance of struggling capitalist democracies now finds itself face to face with two authoritarian despotisms—Russia and China—something new in the annals of political science: kleptocracies that mix the market economy and the police state. These regimes will support tyrannies like Syria wherever it is in their interest to do so.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jul/11/syria-proxy-war-russia-china/

Update: October 20, 2015: From The Guardian, October 3, 2015

Another FSA officer, Colonel Abdulsalam Almerei, commander of Talbeissa operations in northern Homs, told me two days ago after his brigade was attacked by Russian aeroplanes: “We have no Isis here, we are fighting for our freedom and dignity. We want a united Syria for all Syrians. We do not want to oppress any sect or change one tyranny with another.”

Assad and his backers have jeopardised the national and territorial integrity of Syria. Many Syrians have lost faith in the UN; they feel that the international community has abandoned them to the barbaric killing machines of Assad and Isis. The international law states that the principle of responsibility to protect civilians overrides the principle of sovereignty of states when a government kills its own people.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/04/syria-russia-assad-isis-conflict

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FTAC – Troika – One Last Time

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Politics

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It hasn’t occurred to the world that Gaza and Syria both suffer deeply beneath the boots of those sharing the same feudal mentality. Putin, Assad, and Khamenei may be blamed for Syria, which for the Obama Administration may represent the final chapter on the dissolving of the Soviet Union about 25 years ago. Khamenei’s interest in feudal absolute power has its mirrors in Sunni Islam, not uniformly or officially, but nonetheless those with a medieval mentality sponsor Hamas to continue the brutalization and exploitation of the residents of Gaza.

While what is represented by the above image was taking place, Putin mustered up about $51 billion for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and he paid some to transfer Russian nationals living in Syria back to Moscow.

How’s that for humanism?

We all suffer with Syrians whose lives have been swiped like knocked over chessboard pawns, but we may keep in mind too that the origins of the tragedy reach back to the Cold War and, in fact, have been sustained by threat on the post-Soviet neo-feudal side. Today, I believe that side is hurting, or has been hurt, by Saudi-aided reduced oil pricing, sanctions, in-state piracy by both Moscow and Tehran, and by “hybrid warfare” and “war by proxy” aggression and the financial and political costs attending each. Those old friends, official Russia, Syria, and Iran have been playing losing hands, but they’re taking their constituents down with them while “living large and in charge” of their small but special space.

If the repetition of themes times me, I know the same will tire readers.

The prompt for the post: an image of suffering from Syria — a boy in pain on a gurney located close to the latest fighting — and the wish the people would genuinely care as much about Syria as the “fake Palestinian cause”.

Fair enough.

While the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left may embrace the old KGB-PLO relationship and other might come to appreciate what the Hamas billionaires (Haniyeh and Mashaal both qualify) really represent in the brutal occupation and repression of the people of Gaza — well, most of the resident because some have made some pretty good money off the sustained conflict and related local exploitation and repression — most in the anti-Semitic bunches simply don’t know the history well enough to avoid their own seduction by feudal — also absolute, fascist, and ruthless — powers.

Related Reference

Dandachi, Aboud.  “Three lessons learned from the Syrian conflict.”  Daily Sabah, December 4, 2014.

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