Tag Archives: Putin

FTAC: Putin, Terrorism, Autocracy, and the New Nationalism

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Hungary, Middle East, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia, Turkey, United States of America

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When Russian jets first overflew Turkish airspace in 2015, Erdogan stood fast in his refusal of apology.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/26/middleeast/syria-turkey-russia-warplane-shot-down/index.html

Six months later, he did what Netanyahu had done in relation to the Mavi Marmara: he apologized.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/27/kremlin-says-erdogan-apologises-russian-jet-turkish

Setting aside the Israeli story a moment, points of leverage may have involved the “Turkish Stream” energy project, a piece of “realpolitik”, and an appeal to the narcissistic concept of cultural leadership and state in which the “Great Leader” is the embodiment of the living state concept _and entitled_ to aggrandizement and glory without limit (or, clinically, “unlimited narcissistic supply). Putin’s vision appears to me to be that of the medieval world sustained with raw power put in place of democracy.

The look of the mode — big palaces, nepotism on a royal scale, confusion in relation to the boundaries of person and state (and the state’s treasury) — marks the medieval mind and related revanche.

Men like Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Erdogan, Orban may consider true popular democratic government as impeding their own authority, sovereignty, and will. While the term “autocrat” sounds quite bureaucratic, similar concepts — caliph, emperor, king, sultan — fit these guys.

Because we know of the “Moscow Apartment Bombings” and that Russia has been arming the Taliban in Afghanistan — and there’s more back there with Zawahiri and others — it may not be too far fetched to suggest that Moscow has manipulated terrorism to induce in struck targets a predictable patriotic new nationalism and that “the terrorists” — ISIS or PKK — now provide a platform for conflict, all against all, and without end. Where Putin has held sway, he has turned back history’s clock.

Our President Trump has had no issues bearing and wearing the mantle of authority, but it would be facile to say he hasn’t had some issues with the “Estates” of a matured democracy.  In that regard, he may fit the world to which Putin has wished to return the world.

Inspiration for the above note:

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FTAC: A Thought on Powerful Global Elite and America’s Own Holy War in Defense of Democracy

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

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

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Our (American / EU / NATO) failure to so far address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Russo-Iranian support for tyranny in Syria and war by proxy in Yemen, and our manner of perhaps chiding China (and trying to talk down North Korea off its military nuclear-development platform) may signal both result and cause for ceding the fullness of an authentic (!) democracy to the capricious will of politically absolute (authoritarian / dictating) elite and joining that at the expense of democratic constituencies.

Theresa May isn’t having it with Russia, but have a look again at what Tayyip Recip Erdogan has done to “NATO” member Turkey and at how Viktor Orban in Hungary has attached himself and family to state patronage.

Who else?

The American Jihad — why not appropriate the term and really confuse some issues? — may be to struggle against the extremist politics that divide us and to struggle against the “absolutism” or fascism and chimera of “national socialism” that may be in the process of being forced upon all of us.

I’m not sure the note was even relevant to the prompt, for the words came to mind after watching this June 2017 BBC documentary focused on Vladimir Putin with side trips into his relationship with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:

As the Phantoms of the Soviet loom over America’s international affairs, two other BackChannels posts may be worth a look as regards reminding ourselves just how audacious totalitarian manipulation can be:

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

BackChannels believes that Moscow / Moscow-Tehran account in large measure for the contemporary experience of Islamic Terrorism and continues to promote the idea that Syria’s tyrant Bashar al-Assad incubated ISIS to deal himself the tool of a most useful enemy.  If you have a device that can prick or sting the body politic of a target state, then that same tool may become a part of bending your enemy’s political and security cultures to your own authoritarian will:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

Check the references.

Check the fit with other high-integrity and decidedly UnFake News.

–33–

 

 

FTAC: Kurds, Trump, Democracy

10 Saturday Jun 2017

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

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The gang was indulging in Trump bashing and only loosely discussing the surfacing of the “Kurdish Question” — should Kurdistan become a state representing the autonomous self-determination of 35 million souls now subjugated in suzerainty across five states: Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey?

Not to poop on the party, but you know that’s what I’m going to do. 😦

Prepare.

🙂

On the surface and pro-Kurdistan:

–The Kurds have been producing a rapidly developing and modernizing society;

–The Kurds appear inherently communal and tolerant in their views of themselves and others;

–Of course, the Kurdish Peshmerga and separate men’s and women’s defense units form the advanced line against ISIS in Iraq and Syria;

–For a glimpse of Utopian values in place, it would be hard to beat the experience of Rojava (enjoy the look-up).

On the surface and negative:

–Since we’re all just one big family, what’s your may be theirs, at least in the minds of remote brigands;

–The suzerainties (Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey) support about 35 million people governed by many chiefs. Having been defeated by the arms of militarized states, they’re seeking a sub-state state of confederation, which may work for peace and prosperity but remain far from the American and other western experiences;

–Finally, the push-back against stronger states involved a guerrilla movement / terrorist organization aligned with the Soviet Union (1978) known as the PKK, and although the organization has been displaced by updated banners, it may be that the same personalities continue the good fight for autonomy and statehood. (Look-up Kyle Orton’s piece in The New York Times).

I explore a little bit at a time from the desktop; try to get in some background reading; and certainly try to “meet” (virtually) personalities much closer to the politics at hand.

The United States has betrayed the Kurdish desire for independence numerous times; however, noting that, the Kurdish leadership has also leaned back toward Moscow — effectively a dictatorship today — in its development politics, rather like India and Pakistan in earlier days playing east against west and back and forth, the ambivalence of the west would seem understandable.

http://www.nrttv.com/EN/birura-details.aspx?Jimare=6333 – “A Russian Revolution: Can the Rosneft Deal Reverse Kurdistan’s Fortunes?” by Megan Connelli. 

Between the Feudal and Modern Worlds

I’ve gotten the impression that the Kurds in earlier days had used the mountains as their defensive barrier against the barbarism of others, but the greater world and changes in the technology of martial force have put them in the position of leveraging decent ideals and values, would that they would keep to them.

Those who patiently make their way through my words (more than once) know that I regard Putin’s Russia as representing feudal absolute power bent on compromising the economies, ideals, and values of the EU and NATO states, and toward that end, Russia has gotten its way with Erdogan in Turkey, a NATO signatory but no longer NATO in at least official spirit. Putin’s preference in leadership has involved other autocrats, and not so much for exacting cooperation, which he gets, but most for reinstalling the feudal and medieval worldviews in the modern democracies.

Now: tell me how Putin has done so far and where Donald J. Trump fits in that scheme.

That, I believe, is what the fussing is all about in Washington.

Do Americans want a real democracy and greater cohesion around it or rather another of the world’s sham democracies masking elite governance and kleptocracy (that’s how things usually work out with autocrats)?

You decide.

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FTAC – Syria and the Checking of Feudal Political Absolutism

07 Friday Apr 2017

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

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Leave the Left (and Far Right) alone!

Post-Soviet “Active Measures” and related infiltration into EU / NATO intellectual assets may account for the promotion of polarized “Brown v Red-Green” politics.

The post-Cold War narrative arc spans American Administrations, but the general public (I’ve become accidentally a little bit specialized) tends to see the moment, i.e., a span of months to years, when it should be seeing decades of process in removing the holdovers from the Soviet Era.  For good reasons, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi are gone, but it’s at Assad’s Syria, the gateway to Iran in the old politics coming apart, that Putin visibly returned to the old KGB walk and the reinforcement of old relationships. As no one in the west has wanted another “cold war” or a strong “Moscow” on the tracks that it’s on, the purchase of time combined with sanctions and deflated oil pricing has substantially weakened the Moscow-Damascus-Tehran (more truly, “Moscow-Tehran” axis).

Now: enter Trump.

Just so it’s known: Moscow’s cash reserves have been deeply drawn down not only by years of reduced oil revenues and political sanctions but by the regime’s own abuse of the nascent Russian business system and the flight of capital from it. Most of what isn’t at hand has been parked in the western (rule-of-law) banking system or similarly stable high-value assets (most obviously real estate), and that may add to the discouragement of Moscow’s propensity for armed aggression. However, Putin is a bit of a wildcard as regards his own behavior, and he knows that when faced with a nuclear gambit, the United States will stand firm but elide the issue, returning that aspect of war to equilibrium.

For the Cold War days, moving “Jupiter rockets” sufficed to fully resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/moment.htm

In this day, NATO may have forward dual use conventional-nuclear warheads, giving paranoid Moscow perhaps some legitimate fits as regards its own state of risk. Here is the kind of article one runs into when encountering the nuclear arms control field:

http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/02/07/progress_on_strategic_arms_control_110760.html

To stay (in the old sense of that word) the course toward nuclear exchange, diplomacy and indirect confrontation have held off the contemplation of direct conflict engagement between Russian and NATO and western forces, but as history tells time and again with despots, that kind of leadership busts through its own boundaries, internal, psychological, external, political until firmly checked.

I think what you’re going to see in Syria will be the “checking” of Moscow’s revanchist (Soviet-style) ambitions and encouragement for it to engage the west in a once again responsible fashion.

It may help to keep in mind, whatever conclusions may be drawn here, that Russia has its own robust internal politics now forming up some challenge to the regime even though the regime holds the strong hand in its expression of absolute power.

The Obama Administration for both political and practical purposes put off confrontation in the field with the “phantoms of the Soviet” most likely to buy time, encourage change, and both financially and politically weaken the regimes that require politics in the feudal mode to sustain their own kleptocracies (“Different Talks — Same Walk!” is the BackChannels trope for how those relationships hold together).

Arguments about the legitimacy of political power are arguments about the future:

“What is to be done?”

“How are we to live?”

“Moscow”, the metonym for the Russian State as devised and held together by President Putin, knows how to make itself look good in superficial ways, but its less remarked positions have not been so wonderful.

Web search “Russia, Economy” brought up these three news pieces a few minutes ago:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/07/news/economy/russia-us-syria-economy-sanctions/

http://rbth.com/business/2017/04/05/poll-the-economy-is-now-more-important-to-russians-than-crimea_735282

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/feb/21/anthony-tata/how-have-sanctions-impacted-russias-economy/

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/12/also-in-media-an-economy-that-did-not-want-to-grow-the-russia-file-kennan-institute-blog/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/16/russias-nuclear-scarum/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/09/russias-pr-cocktail-new-nationalism-meets-falling-reserves-with-religion/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/21/russia-flexes-and-goes-hungry/

Related Opinion

http://www.russia-direct.org/opinion/why-does-russia-continue-protect-assad-syria 4/20/2016

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FTAC – On the Taming of the Wild Press

17 Friday Feb 2017

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

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Unlike Sputnik, which serves Moscow, the American press is free and not in the flattery business.

Many journalists who achieve a decent wage from a major newspaper have done so on their investigative doggedness and straightness.

American presidents both craft but also inadvertently create their own image – and thinking Americans (aye, there’s the rub) don’t rely on just one news presentation or “cut” on an important story to produced in their own minds at least a seemingly reliable image of a state of affairs.

In government, of course, the stakes rise and the accuracy of intelligence becomes even more critical to power.

In Moscow: for President Putin, the world is – or is made – as he wishes to see it, and he himself is seen as he would have the public know him. There the press has been intimidated, steered, and trained, and from time to time “disciplined” by murder.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/ten-years-putin-press-kremlin-grip-russia-media-tightens

Elementary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2015/russia (2015)
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/28/putin-now-seeking-to-intimidate-journalists-into-not-covering-his-opponents/ – 6/28/2016
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/20/putin-rebuilding-the-iron-curtain-in-his-typical-hybrid-fashion/ – 6/20/2015
http://www.gq.com/story/journalism-in-vladimir-putins-russia – 1/13/2017

“The situation in Khimki is not normal; this is a kind of military dictatorship,” says Yevgeniya Chirikova, a member of In Defense of Khimki Forest, a local environmental group. “Journalists and public figures are constantly being threatened. It’s as if our local authorities cannot accept any different way of thinking.”

Over the past year there has been a series of violent attacks on independent journalists here, culminating in the controversial death in late March of newspaper designer Sergei Protazanov, who had been preparing an issue of the oppositionist Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye devoted to electoral fraud in Khimki’s March 1 mayoral contest. That election was won by the candidate of the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party.

Weir, Fred.  “Russian Journalists Face Violence, Intimidation.”  The Christian Science Monitor, April 28, 2009.

Addendum

When asked by journalists of contacts between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives, he deflected the questions and put the focus instead on what he described as “illegal” government leaks and “dishonest” media coverage.

“The press is out of control,” he said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control,”

After weeks of disclosures in newspapers over turmoil in his administration, he told one reporter to “sit down” for a rambling question.

“Tomorrow, they will say: ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press,'” Trump said. “I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people . . . .”

Holland, Steve.  “‘I’m not ranting and raving.’  Trump on defensive in first solo news conference.”  Reuters, February 17, 2017.

In a Twitter rant that extended into work hours, Mr. Trump at once dismissed the entire Russia story as “fake” and made up, and pledged to hunt down the officials in the government who have supplied the details. He demanded an apology from the “failing” New York Times and accused the news media of making up stories and sources, even as he said he wanted those sources apprehended.

Weisman, Jonathan.  “Trump Denounces ‘Low-Life Leakers,’ Pledging to Hunt Them Down.”  The New York Times, February 16, 2017.

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Trump’s Alleged “Kompromat”

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Journalism, Philology, Political Spychology, Politics

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A spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday denied Russia has collected compromising information on Trump and dismissed news reports as a “complete fabrication and utter nonsense”.  Dmitry Peskov insisted that the Kremlin “does not engage in collecting compromising material”.

In the material quoted, the URL goes directly to The Guardian article in which both denials appeared.

Well, here’s a still recent header that contradicts the point: “Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them” (The New York Times, December 9, 2016).

“The whole affair is Kafkaesque,” Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. “You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent.” He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K.G.B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material.

Old-style kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K.G.B., and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques.

In Reference, the RAND article, “Beyond the Headlines: RAND’s Christopher Paul Discusses the Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood'”, December 13, 2017, contains a summary of KGB/(FSB) methods in Russia’s massive perversion of information intended to scramble reasoning and politically divide and diminish political coherence in the EU and NATO states.

Incidentally, BackChannel’s sources have suggested the Kremlin employs more than 800,000 Russians in its Information Warfare capacity.  What that may mean for those invested in integrity and truth-telling worldwide, and whether for business, government, or personal conscience, is that Russia maintains a veritable army of professed liars whose paid mission is to confuse, disinform, and disrupt the processes of reason itself in each mind across hundreds of millions of souls.

For near corroboration of the above-cited figure, BackChannels directs the reader to Owen Matthews article in Politico: “Vladimir Putin resurrects the KGB” (September 28, 2016).

Shadows

In the world in which the latest Trump scandal is unfolding, there appears both a natural limit to what the public may know with certainty and a stranger-than-fiction aspect that fairly begs credulity.  Nonetheless: as regards President Elect Trump, the American electorate certainly heard the ” . . . grab them by the pussy” comment released as an information grenade only weeks before the general election, and it has by now accumulated awareness of the President’s character in business in ways possibly unsurpassed in history.  If ever an American President were examined like an organism, this one has been diced, sliced, smeared, and laid out on the slide bed of the highest resolution political microscope ever imagined.

The multiple images of damage — offhand remarks; a relationship with the world’s foremost political consultant to dictatorships (Paul Manafort); family relationships that go back to the Soviet Era and include fluency in Russian — then too, the family is immensely gifted with multilingual talent; possible Russian real estate interests as a matter of “business empire” deeply invested in real estate development — may continue to accumulate even though the truth remains sketchy — or held close by governments plunged into a different kind of war.

Trump’s “Russian Phantoms” — Manafort, Manafort-Kilimnik (relationship), Millian and any related business that has or may come to light — have already dogged the incoming Administration, and more may come to light as the Inauguration approaches.

Searches applied while developing this post: “KGB, Kompromat”; “Russian Influence Operations”; “Trump, Compromised”; “Trump, Russian Fluency”; “Trump Family, Russian Fluency”.

Reference

Bilingual Kidspot.  “President Donald Trump and his Multilingual Family.”  November 9, 2016.

Borger, Julian.  “John McCain passes dossier alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts to FBI.”  The Guardian, January 11, 2017.

“The ultimate goal of Kremlin hostile influence and disinformation operations is to weaken its opponents’ will to resist,” Jakub Janda, deputy director of nonpartisan think tank European Values, explained in an email from Prague. “Simply to manipulate the West, its politicians and its societies to stop resisting invasions of the Russian Federation to foreign countries.

In Europe, the East StratCom Task Force issues a “Disinformation Review” every week, giving a round-up of pro-Kremlin disinformation in Europe and beyond.

Eakin, Britain.  “Experts Dissect Russian Disinformation in the U.S. Election.”  Courthouse News, January 10, 2017.

In its most lurid allegation, the report alleges that Trump defiled a hotel suite in which the Obamas had stayed during a Moscow visit. Trump allegedly brought prostitutes to the Ritz Carlton suite, bugged by the FSB, the KGB’s successor. There, Trump allegedly ordered the prostitutes to perform “golden showers” in front of him.

Groll, Elias.  “Explosive, But Unsubstantiated, Intel Dossier Alleges Russia has “Kompromat” on Trump.”  The Cable, Foreign Policy, January 10, 2017.

“The whole affair is Kafkaesque,” Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. “You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent.” He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K.G.B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material.

Old-style kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K.G.B., and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques.

Higgens, Andrew.  “Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them.”  The New York Times, December 9, 2016.

Holland, Steve.  “Trump says Russia did not try to compromise him, assails spy agencies.”  Reuters, January 11, 2017.

Landay, Jonathan and John Walcott.  “Trump given unverified reports that Russia had damaging details about him.”  Reuters, January 11, 2017.

Levitz, Eric.  “Intel Chiefs Presented Trump With Claims That Russia Has “Compromised” Him.” New York, January 10, 2017.

Matthews, Owen.  “Vladimir Putin resurrects the KGB.”  Politico, September 28, 2016.

RAND Corporation.  “Information Operations” & “Beyond the Headlines: RAND’s Christopher Paul Discusses the Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood'”, December 13, 2017.

West, Tara.  “Melania Trump Makes History as First Immigrant First Lady, Fluent in Five Languages.”  Inquisitor, November 9, 2016.

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Also in Media: “Putin’s Real Long Game” – POLITICO Magazine | Molly K. McKew | January 1, 2017

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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What both administrations fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.

Those on the Russian frontier, like my friends from Ukraine and Estonia, have already seen the Kremlin’s new toolkit at work.

Reading highly recommended: Putin’s Real Long Game – POLITICO Magazine – 1/2/2017.

Related in Media

4. Don’t listen to “realists.” Self-described “realists” have suggested that Russia be given a free hand in the former Soviet republics in return for cooperation on issues that are vital to U.S. and Western security. This call to make a “deal,” in addition to its blatant immorality, ignores the fact that it makes sense to reach an understanding only with those who will keep their side of the bargain. The fact that the Russians are seeking to deny the former Soviet republics their rights as sovereign nations is all the indication one needs that an unenforceable “gentleman’s agreement” to cooperate with the West will be violated the minute it ceases to be to Russia’s advantage. The rejection of a moral framework for relations, meanwhile, will set the stage and help provide the justification for new and more outrageous Russian demands in the future.

Satter, David. “Obama and Russia.”  Forbes, November 24, 2008.

–33–

Also in Media: “András Kósa: The speech of the chief, Őszöd ten years later, Part III” – Hungarian Spectrum – December 24, 2016

26 Monday Dec 2016

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. . . it has to be noted that in the mid-to-late 2000s, the European Union and the Obama administration viewed Putin as a leader who was democratizing cautiously. During his first visit to Berlin, the entire Bundestag gave him a standing ovation. Then, in the Russian parliamentary elections in the fall of 2011, he had to pilfer 17 percentage points to be able to win. In the spring 2012 Presidential election, he again needed to cheat to attain a “victory,” though less so this time. I think these things have changed Putin. He realized that the policies he had pursued up until then did not automatically expand his power, so he launched a campaign of harsh repression at home (including the killing of journalists and political rivals, remaking the Russian criminal code, and restricting the freedom of assembly), and again began to assert the conquering pursuits of Great Russia.

Reading highly recommended!

András Kósa: The speech of the chief, Őszöd ten years later, Part III – Hungarian Spectrum – 12/24/2016.