Mr. Barsamian might enjoy tracing back Moscow’s role in the engineering of the profitable business that has been made of the Middle East Conflict and its efforts to sustain feudal political absolutism throughout the region.

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/

Most Americans — most of the international public — has never heard of “active measures” and “framing” as employed by Imperial, Soviet, and today post-Soviet Moscow, but it may help improve qualities of living worldwide — and help to preserve our ecosystem — if environmental and social progressives were to take stock of Moscow’s autocratic-totalitarian methods proven, so far, consistent across regimes and their revolutions.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council

From KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

BackChannels regards itself as “progressive” but never “those progressives”.  It endorses a fuzzy “Qualities of Living” concept, believes in the husbanding of the earth, counsels resistance to extremism, Far Left and Far Right and Other, and suggests always looking at presentations of problems twice.

Wikipedia also supports a page on “Active Measures”, and included on it is this observation:

“According to Stanislav Lunev, GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the peace movements against the Vietnam War, which was a “hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost”.[3] Lunev claimed that “the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad”.

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

I was young for the Vietnam War and on the draft rolls for just one college semester before Nixon brought to a close America’s role in the tragedy, but it’s easy to recall the “Mobilization Against the War”, the “kids” dressed up in beads and fatigues, in essence the alternative culture of the Baby Boom generation, so here decades later and learning of Moscow’s cynical application of plain old money in producing that zeitgeist comes as a surprise.  Of course, it comes as no surprise that much of the more truly revolutionary and independent Left took note of Moscow’s tanks on the streets of foreign capitals (ref., as noted above, Wikipedia’s recounting of the history of the World Peace Council).

As regards the Middle East Conflict as a pretty good business for Palestinian leaders (Arafat and Abbas: multi-millionaires; Haniyeh and Mashaal: billionaires) but not for Palestinians, there’s much data online regarding corruption in the PLO/PA camp and plain exploitation by Hamas.  Whether made rich by political corruption or bald crime and political repression, the basis for the “political absolutism” may be linked to the sustained feudal character of the societies involved and the related “malignant narcissism” of their leaders.

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