Excerpt: _Stasiland_: How That Life Goes On

11 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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GDR, German Democratic Republic, history, Insiderkomitee, phantom socialism, Phantoms of the Soviet, politics, post-Cold War, Society for the Protection of Civil rights and the Dignity of Man, Soviet / post-Soviet politics

Guardian first book award 2003 – online: MacDonogh, Giles. “The spy’s the limit.” The Guardian, June 7, 2003.

He tells me he worked from 1961 to 1990 at the ministry of Potsdam, exclusively in counter-espionage. He picks up the thesis and reads its title:

The Work of the Ministry for State Security on the Defence Against Intelligence Infiltration by the Secret Services of the NATO States against the GDR. Presented from the Viewpoint of a Member of the Division for Counter-Espionage, Regional Administration, Potsdam.

‘This is a discussion paper I wrote based on my work at the ministry. If you read this, you will learn a lot of what you want to know.’

I flick to the front page, and see that the paper was written in 1994 for the ‘Potsdam Working Group of the Insiderkomitee for the Reexamination of the History of the Ministry for State Security, Inc.’

— In BackChannels experience of the eternal present online (and in the library), herewith a gush —

Author Anna Funder has put together a delightfully cringey-queasy how-it-was — Stasiland, Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, 2011(German Edition, 2006; first published in 2002 as suggested above) — on the German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949-1990), and along with remembrance of assorted adventures and certain manners and methods in suffering comes this eyebrow-raiser.

Insiderkomitee?

1994?

“‘ . . . we have changed our name to the ‘Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and the Dignity of Man’.”

Okay, then.

Here’s a chill —

Moore, Nicole and Christina Spittel. Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic: Reading through the Iron Curtain. Pp. 224-225. London & New York: Anthem Press, 2016

Link to the above on Google Books.

For corroboration here in the open source, another writer, Gary Bruce, has made mention of the same ghost:

The organization of former Stasi officers known as the Insider-Komitee, whose self-styled objective is to restore “balance” to the current literature on the Stasi by writing “objective” history of the Ministry for State Security, assisted me in locating an important Stasi officer for interview.

Bruce, Gary. The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. P. 33. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Link: Google Books.

As resources appear fairly wide open to the curious on the web, BackChannels will wrap up the gawking now that it has stumbled across the tracks of at least a few others, and including those of the author her brave self, for she acknowledges, “My great mistake was to imagine that the stories of resistance, courage and decency would be well received by Germans” — for who would show up at the launching of Stasiland in the ballroom “of the former Stasi Offices in Leipzig”?

The first two rows of seats were filled with ex-Stasi (or perhaps ex-Party) men. I know this because they were in the ex-Stasi (or ex-Party) uniform, which consists of polyester trousers with a nice firm crease, a bomber jacket and a significant amount of Brylcreem. They were sitting in their former ballroom, legs splayed, arms crossed, looking daggers at us.

Funder, Anna. “Sound of silence.” TLS, October 12, 2016.

The same crew would later make a show of walking out on the event.

An observation higher up in the above cited piece precedes the willies and seems more worth remembering:

When I encountered Miriam, Julia, Frau Paul and Klaus Renft, what they told me was deeply thrilling. Not only in the sense of the bravery it took to climb the Berlin Wall or dig an underground tunnel or defy a governmental declaration that you “no longer exist”. The thrill was more fundamental. I felt I was witnessing, alive and breathing and drinking coffee opposite me, heroic human decency.

Referenced and Related on the Web

Betts, Paul. “Socialism, Social Rights, and Human Rights: The Case of East Germany.” Humanity Journal, June 11, 2014.

MacDonogh, Giles. “The spy’s the limit.” The Guardian, June 7, 2003.

The GDR was a furtive and insidious tyranny. Through the Stasi it pried into every aspect of your life. It possessed armies of spies, paid and unpaid. Some estimates run as high as one for every six and a half members of the population. Any attempt to achieve success in East Germany involved a pact with the devil – you paid with your soul if you wanted to attend a university, enter a sports-club, become a lawyer or a clergyman or marry a foreigner – like Funder’s friend Julia. You could only avoid contact with the regime if you opted out, and went into “inner emigration” – not an option for the ambitious.

This was a regime ruled by dour old men – Marxisten-Senilisten.

Wikipedia. “Stasiland” (bold added to excerpt):

Stasiland has been published in sixty nine countries and translated into a dozen languages. It was shortlisted for many awards in the UK and Australia, among them the Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, the Guardian First Book Award 2003, the South Australian Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing) 2004, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2004, and the W.H. Heinemann Award 2004. In June 2004 it was awarded the world’s biggest prize for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize.

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FTAC: Being “Global Elite” and . . . Nothingness

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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authoritarianism, enfranchisement / disinfranchisement, global business and financial elites, medieval v modern, political subjugation, politics

“For the global elite socialism is a tool to control the masses. Use government to provide enough stuff to keep passions in check. If a guy has an apartment, access to free porn and beer he likely won’t revolt. “

Almost “ouch”!

One becomes less interesting as well as pernicious with time and since when has the other been free?

“Soma” and “The Feelies” are the drug and entertainment experience featured in _Brave New World_ (something else I should now re-read).

It’s true that as a nation, we have loaded up on material comforts, which trade produces our economy, so good, and “adult pacification systems”, which may include the downers, uppers, and mellowing agents prescribed by physicians (I want the roll-eyes emoticon for just such phrases) or naughtily accessed by the over- and under-enthused (and generally so for good reasons).

I would argue that business and political global elite are neither capitalist nor socialist nor much of anything apart from immense egos that tend toward authoritarianism in their own right!

Carnegie essentially quit — and then made sure to attach his name to a nation’s libraries . . . .

For touring in political science and with some focus on the Russian civilizational experience, I would suggest strongly that dogma, ideology, and religion serve power by leveraging the enthusiasms of “masses” and mobs.

Free radicals 🙂 are perhaps not so welcomed . . . . 　

Note: I was surprised recently to find the term “liberal conservative” in Pipes’ history of the Russian Revolution, and were I alive then, that is where I would place not only myself but possibly most good willed and responsible Americans. There has been nothing wrong with making ourselves modestly comfortable and being apprised and attentive to the needs of others less well accommodated. Whether we should then lose our heads (a now interesting phrase) to serve a “global elite” at the expense of our “ethics, ideals, principles, and values” — and sentiments! — seems a fair question for asking.

–33–

FTAC: Comey, Lynch – Authority

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Comey, Lynch, politics, Trump, United States

Are all conversations between American presidents and government employees classified?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-other-administration/336985-trump-lawyer-attacks-comey-over-leaks

It appears that the President attempted to leverage Comey’s personal loyalty to take care of an uncomfortable “matter” being investigated by the FBI. Comey then shared the experience with a friend who forwarded the same to the press, and so Comey lost the executive’s confidence. Where was the classification for the memos; where is the nondisclosure covering the conversation?

As AG Loretta Lynch has been relieved of her position, her blocking actions regarding Clinton will probably be ignored, imho. The elections over; she’s over: attention has shifted to where public attention is most needed: America’s political character, Russia’s political character, and the relationship between the two at the highest levels of governance.

The note on Comey’s so-called “leak” may reflect the fact that classification and discretion were within Comey’s authority to call, and given the President’s behavior and the FBI’s mission to defend the Constitution, the antagonism developed between the two would seem to have developed naturally in the defense of the democracy.

Lynch: old news.

Related on BackChannels for any newly arriving from Mars: Moscow’s Rules.

–33–

FTAC: Worlds Closer Together

17 Friday Mar 2017

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

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, geopolitical, geospatial relationships, Internet political impact, politics

Inspiration for the response came from the “blame America first” community intent on demonizing the same for past horrors, and in this instance the horror was the “Halabja chemical attack” ordered by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish community at the end of the Iran-Iraq War.

In the second part, an accusing and conspiratorial view of the United Nations came through in a question about its origins. It’s BackChannels’ opinion that by way of sufficient financial loss and immense suffering, that the UN has provided deflection from “Great War” — not “Low Intensity Conflict” — as so much talk seems to want to precede and inform the same with a significance that matches design. Failing that achievement, we, for the most part, refuse once again to destroy the world despite the common abundance in arms capable of doing so. Instead, at this time, we have one state being eaten alive, as it were, and that would be Syria by way of nefarious design, and then on the western plate is another free state, Ukraine, fending off an aggressor proud of its own criminal mischief in the world, which same has become the consistent cause of the suffering of the greater portion of its population.

— The know-how and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained by Saddam’s regime from foreign sources.[23] Most precursors for chemical weapons production came from Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands (4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and West Germany (1,027 tons). One Indian company, Exomet Plastics, sent 2,292 tons of precursor chemicals to Iraq. Singapore-based firm Kim Al-Khaleej, affiliated to the United Arab Emirates, supplied more than 4,500 tons of VX, sarin and mustard gas precursors and production equipment to Iraq.[24] Dieter Backfisch, managing director of West German company Karl Kolb GmbH, was quoted by saying in 1989 that “for people in Germany poison gas is something quite terrible, but this does not worry customers abroad.”[23] —

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

The Wikipedia entry goes on to cite U.S. involvement, but the basic principle in both geopolitical evil and transnational crime would seem to have applied: people in one place would not care too much about people far removed from themselves x space x culture x time.

Conditions involving boundaries and separation have changed.

—
http://www.un.org/en/sections/history/history-united-nations/

Moscow continues to explore and exploit war evidently believing it pays off financially and redounds to its glory. Here’s a BBC radio piece about Soviet Era manipulation to that effect — http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 .

Today: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/syria-war-showroom-russian-arms-sales-160406135130398.html

A not too long ago yesterday for Ukraine: http://www.holodomorct.org/

Ukraine under assault today: http://uaposition.com/maps/russian-troops-attacked-ukrainian-position-donbas-197-times-past-48-hours-1-soldier-killed-10-wounded/

Greed expressed in lax regulation (first), then corruption outright followed by political or mercenary crime (“transnational crime” — all “black market” all of the time) may turn out the scourge of our own age. Boundaries and limits disintegrate before it where “actors” — engaged as here; powerful elsewhere — lose the internal brakes that involve conscience and empathy in relation to others.

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FTAC – “Lost for Representation” – A Comment on the Plight of America’s Moderate Political Rank

13 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics

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21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, American politics, Brown vs Red-Green, extremism, New Nationalism, political manipulation, Political Polarization, politics, racism, Reflexive Control

Inspiration: the canard repeated by foreign politico that America’s Republican Party represents the white, wealthy, and racist of the nation.

Actually, Lincoln was the Republican way back and the southern states Democrat, and so bad as regards race that it led the front for racial politics for many decades.

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

Credit Texas school teacher, first, and American President, later, Lyndon Baines Johnson and the launching of the Great Society programs with stealing the Republican cause and transforming the Democratic Party into the party best redressing equality issues and fighting toward the modern popular democracy that has proven an inspiration elsewhere — and been surpassed elsewhere as well.

The employment of Islamic Terrorism to drive the New Nationalism — that’s just the way I see it from Moscow’s feudal enterprise — seems to indeed have taken root among America’s conservative Republicans (while the the “Red-Green” response has holed up with the Democrats). Such politics seem foreign to Americans of my advancing age — as a class, we may be appalled with the depth of polarization and viciousness displayed during the past election season, and having our two major parties pushed toward extremes, those of moderate temperament would seem at the moment lost for representation.

–33–

FTAC – When the “Liberator” Turns Out the Oppressor

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Philosophy, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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contemporary totalitarianism, ethical humanism, Far Left, Far Left Politics, independent education, KGB methods, liberal humanist politics, political research, political science, politics, Soviet Era politics

Moscow –

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

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

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

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

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

KGB-style “Active Measures” often target new generations who have little intellectual defense or means for recognizing hip propaganda.

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

In the Soviet Era, many “peace movement” organizations distanced themselves from the Communist Party (Soviet) as they witness the brutality of political repression in the several of the Soviet satellite states whose politics had brought them around to liberation from the Soviet system.

Today’s ultra-nationalist and neo-imperial Moscow have made comprehension of the Kremlin a little more difficult. In Orwellian _Animal Farm_ fashion, the banner of the state has switched to “State Capitalism” and the FSB/KGB, Putin, and the Oligarchs appear to be having a helluva good time! 🙂

Still, with Moscow’s earlier KGB engineering of Yasser Arafat and the PLO more and more known beyond the wonky circles of “Kremlin watchers”, the model for elite kleptocracy driven by Moscow, which is deeply invested in medieval political absolutism and totalitarian control, has been coming into popular view.

Who destroyed Syria by barrel bombing, chemical attacks, relentless and sadistic assaults (http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/22/world/meast/syria-snipers-pregnant-women/) on noncombatants?

Moscow’s behavior has not been limited to middle east conflicts. Here’s a borrowing from Ukraine’s history of Russian oppression:

http://www.holodomorct.org/

The absence of conscience and empathy in leadership needs protesting worldwide.

The old politics in which the apparent “liberator” turns out the oppressor — and gets away with a lot of loot for doing it — needs a complete historic reexamination and overhaul.

Take a lesson from the Somali experience with the Soviet government in the Ogaden:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1

While BackChannels delivers the light version of history — much of what is needed is online — it wonders how to further wean from the Soviet Era experience the many remaining Left-Far Left organizations struggling to update their missions in the long shadow cast by the dissolving of the Soviet Union a little more than 25 years ago.

From the outset, BackChannels has invested itself in liberal humanist politics — look to the left of this copy and down the sidebar: the values promoted by this nonpartisan blog seem to the editor to place the humanity of humanity first and foremost in political thought and to be congruent with the advice suggested in the above invention From the Awesome Conversation: “The absence of conscience and empathy in leadership needs protesting worldwide.”

If you know how and when the Soviet KGB groomed Yasser Arafat for his role as leader of The Palestinians — Jordanian refugees in 1948 — can you still swallow the intellectual poison that has been the “alternative narrative” of the same?

Think about it.

Think about the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars amassed by Arafat and Abbas (both of whom have had KGB histories) while the Palestinians have been showcased for sympathy?

Apply the same to Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, both of them billionaires.

What if the newest of Far Left fist-raising acolytes had the choice between parroting the claims and narratives programmed within his new social climate and that of independently questing and reading for the truth, would he do choose to balance the former with the latter?

We’re going to find out.

Not only are online resources for research extraordinary today, but obtaining books relevant to the study of history and history and revolution, culture and cultural anthropology and psychology, and so on has never been less expensive!

For a quick pick-up on the previous century’s Cold War and related history, BackChannels recommends all of the volumes listed in “The Russian Section” of its library.

For insight into Soviet-style manipulation, BackChannels has a post listing works by KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

Where the adventurous and social rewards associated with “The Movement” — there are so many of them! — prove rewarding, may the reader of this blog consider also the responsibility of being himself an autonomous, independent, informed, and critically reasoning actor in his own political life.

–33–

FTAC – Trump’s Choice and Moscow

08 Thursday Dec 2016

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

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, American, Donald J. Trump, foreign affairs, op-ed, opinion, politics, President Elect, United States of America, USA

1. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-making-inquiry-ex-trump-campaign-manager-s-foreign-ties-n675881 – 11/1/2016.

2. http://uawire.org/news/media-manafort-s-deputy-was-linked-to-russian-intelligence – 9/8/2016.

3. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/08/meet-the-man-who-is-spinning-for-donald-trump-in-russia.html – 8/22/2016.

Alex Jones? “Active Measures” – confusion, disinformation, information warfare, manipulation — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

Track the themes – 1, 2, and 3 – and have your say as I’ve had mine.

Intervening and other variables:

— President Elect Trump may be getting the education through briefings that he seems not to have had when standing before the public as Candidate Trump.

–President Elect Trump has not “stepped off” as President in either action or words.

IF in his foreign affairs he gives NATO full support and continues blocking neo-imperial Moscow at Crimea and continues the struggle with Syria, good, but if he caves to his authoritarian narcissism in the manner of Erdogan and Orban, we may never recover our meaning or stature — and Moscow will happily continue spreading its absolutism and the chaos and destruction it pushes ahead of itself.

Not only America but the free world — EU, NATO, the “democratic open societies of the west” and other democratic societies worldwide — have worries with President Elect Trump.

Those who have suffered beyond imagination in Syria in relation to Bashar al-Assad’s shaping of that war into “Assad vs The Terrorists” exist today inside a purgatory special to totalitarian Hell, a place between Assad’s sadism matched by Moscow’s own and its military presence, and, sigh, “The Terrorists”, whom Assad helped developed (go ahead and click and look over the points and references made the earlier BackChannels post).

Ukraine, which “leaned west” in its revolt against Viktor Yanukovych and his manner of little black book keeping, works with a different problem, i.e., Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, but it has the same worry: what does America mean today? What does and what will “Washington” represent in the spectrum of politics between “political absolutism” — autocracy, fascism, kleptocracy, totalitarianism — and a responsible and responsive democratic governance possessed of integrity?

Reference

BackChannels. “How Assad Helped Develop ISIL”. November 12, 2016.

BackChannels. “Syria — “Assad vs The Terrorists”: How ISIS Defends Assad.” October 2, 2015.

Dilanian, Robert Windrem, William M. Arkin, and Tom Winter. “FBI making Inquiry Into Ex-Trump Campaign Manager’s Foreign Ties.” NBC News, November 1, 2016.

Mak, Tim and Katie Zavadski. “Meet the Man Who is Spinning for Donald Trump in Russia.” The Daily Beast, September 8, 2016.

UA Wire. “Media: Manafort’s deputy was linked to Russian intelligence.” August 22, 2016.

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Putin’s World – Not So Excellent . . . .

01 Thursday Dec 2016

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

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culture, economy, politics, poverty, Russia

Posted to YouTube by The National, April 18, 2016.

According to the updated forecast of Economic Development Ministry for 2016, the decline of Russia’s GDP will amount to 0.6%. According to the basic forecast for 2017-2019, the economy will start to grow: GDP will grow by 0.2% in 2017 by 0.9% in 2018 and by 1.2% in 2019. According to the “basic plus” forecast, that the ministry considered to be the most realistic, the economy will grow by 1.1%, 1.8% and 2.4% respectively in the next three years.

http://tass.com/economy/916092 – 12/1/2016

An average of 19.2 million Russians – or 13.4% of the population – were living last year on less than 9,452 roubles ($139) a month, the minimum subsistence level determined by the Russian government in the fourth quarter.

This figure represents a 20% increase year-on-year, with an average 16.1 million people living below the poverty threshold in 2014.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/22/millions-more-russians-living-in-poverty-as-economic-crisis-bites – 3/21/2016.

Almost one in five respondents (17 percent) have had problems with delayed wage packets, while 16 percent expected delays in the coming months.

Some 18 percent said that that they relied on help from the state — a level not seen since 2008.

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/80-of-russians-feeling-countrys-economic-decline-55476 – 9/26/2016.

New numbers may become available for popular web searching at year’s end, but nothing BackChannels has turned up suggests conditions will improve anytime soon. However, one report (listed in this post’s reference) on Russia’s military economy linked a boost in defense sales numbers to the demonstration in Syria of Moscow’s latest war fighting technology.

Where has Russia’s wealth fled?

Over the course of years, “capital flight” from Russia has been disastrous for Moscow.

2015: $58.9 billion
2014: $151.5 billion
2013: $61 billion

The URL’s go direct to source.

BackChannels has seen President Putin encourage the return of capital to Russia’s internal economy, and, still recent in the news, perceives effort to sell Russian capability to business.

Still, there remain the black marks of “unfreedom” (reference the Freedom House listing for Russia), apparent war crimes in Syria, and obvious aggression in the invention and deployment of “hybrid warfare” — and otherwise conventional enough machinery — in Crimea, Ukraine, which is today, literally, a very tense situation.

If BackChannels were part of a multi-billion dollar enterprise, it too might wish to park some largesse in old fashioned rule-of-law London (along with other wealthy — and wise — of the world).