Tag Archives: Putin

FTAC – ‘It’s Not Islam – It’s Moscow’

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iraq, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syria

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Posted to YouTube February 14, 2012.

The response-sparking comment had to do with yesterday’s attack in Nice, France: “Qaddafi was right.”

From the BackChannels side of the awesome conversation:

It’s not Islam — it’s Putin (he who has brought the Russian Orthodox Church back into state favor). Playing ends — Far Right and Far Left — against the middle, he has a special relationship with Islamic extremists. http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

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

The last piece posted in October 2015, and it may need an update. However: having incubated ISIS to blackmail and goad the west, Putin has now the option of demonstrating “revived” Russian military prowess by eating ISIS alive but not too much at a time. Khamenei-favoring Shiite militia in Iraq, long hosting Revolutionary Guard advisors, have also their convenient foil.

As regards Europe, Moscow-(Tehran) favors resurgent nationalism — le Pen or Orban (and Jobbik), which is exactly what terrorism compels or encourages in the states it targets.

It’s hard to imagine the kind of narcissism / malignant narcissism (and cowardice and — what sets off the narcissism — “narcissistic mortification”) that would build such a theater of politics and war as Syria-Iraq and a troubled Europe, but go back to the Cold War, which was supposed to have ended 25 years ago, and drag forward the Soviet / KGB Era methods in manipulating whole “chess boards” — both sides of any conflict to advantage.

Then look again at Moscow.

How has Moscow played both sides of a conflict?

There’s a related history lesson in this gem of a BBC video interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 – 4/7/2016 “The Ogaden War”.

Fast Related Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union – excerpt as viewed August 8, 2016:

Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as “the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide.”[4][5][6] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”[7] He also claimed that “Airplane hijacking is my own invention” and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[7]

Lt. General Pacepa described operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States. According to Pacepa, the following organizations received assistance from the KGB and other Eastern Bloc intelligence services: PLO, National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara), the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, and the Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975.[8]

http://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-russia-crimea-putin-money-bank-national-front-seeks-russian-cash-for-election-fight/ – 2/19/2016;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11515835/Russia-bought-Marine-Le-Pens-support-over-Crimea.html – 4/4/2015.  There may be in these stories the KGB-style “framing” of Le Pen, but the “9 million euro” loan from First Czech-Russian Bank” seems uncontested, so one may ask what such loan approval buys, if anything.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/russia-europe-right-putin-front-national-eu – 12/8/2014 – “We should beware Russia’s links with Europe’s right” (by Luke Harding in The Guardian).

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http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4112/hungarian_neo_nazis_court_russia_as_inspiration_for_attacks_on_gays – 9/5/2013;

https://www.thenation.com/article/decrying-ukraines-fascists-putin-allying-europes-far-right/ – 5/21/2014

https://eu.boell.org/en/2015/05/05/i-am-eurasian-kremlin-connections-hungarian-far-right – 5/5/2015

http://hungarianspectrum.org/2016/01/20/is-the-hungarian-far-right-jobbik-party-financed-by-russia/ – 1/20/2016

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http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016 – Note: ISIS has also served Moscow as a target to which to channel its own Islamists.  In effect, ISIS by existing in numbers in Syria provides a “KZ” or “kill zone” in which to concentrate fighters for later warfare.  HOW such fighters may then come to launch actions against NATO members forms a question beyond the means of this blog to address.

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The last word on this post goes to Stratfor’s Scott Stewart:

In an earlier column, I briefly addressed the similarities between the utopian ideology of the Islamic State and that of the global communist movement. I have also compared the counterinsurgency efforts used against the two movements in the past. But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/what-cold-war-can-teach-us-about-jihadism – 7/14/2016.

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Putin, While Messing With the West, Grows a New Russian Economy

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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Two points of reference:

Medetsky, Anatoly, Matthew Campbell, Yuliya Fedorinova.  “Putin is Growing Organic Power One T-34 Tank-Tomato at a Time.”  Bloomberg, June, 7, 2016.

Shinkman, Paul D.  “Beware Appeasement With Russia.”  U.S. News & World Report, June 9, 2016.

Keep in mind the extreme duality presented by the Concert in Palmyra, for example, and the savaging of Syria by a tyrant accompanied by the incubation and encouragement of ISIS as a useful foil and poker chip for playing over the course of perhaps the World’s Grandest and Most Romantic Political Theater.

While burdening the west (and NATO) with the fallout in refugees and terrorists from the Syrian Tragedy and pestering the same through its activities in Ukraine, an assortment of “frozen conflicts”, and its investment in “information warfare” online, Russia has been also (as Obama long ago suggested) growing its economy, the first fruits of which have been given pretty good play in Bloomberg.

About to this point, the image of a Moscow hard hit by dramatically reduced oil revenues and sanctions and by years of capital flight driven by corruption has held steady, but now we see The Bear has been planting all along.

Neither Russian artistic and intellectual high culture nor developing business success (finally!) can or will ethically or morally offset what Putin’s regime has done to degrade the lifestyles of Russians en masse (so far) nor erase the barbaric and contemptible way it has measured the worth of the lives and freedoms of others in Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere.

For whatever may have happened to Putin early in life, one may glimpse a Putin’s revenge taken against the enemies of the Soviet, perhaps old imperial Russia as well, and what he might brand as traitors to Russia in Eastern Europe — those who have joined with NATO — for while he has delivered refugees and terrorists and the confusions of RT and other state-controlled media operations to their lands and airwaves (and computers), he has placed the productive capacity of the state in the state-controlled private hands, and as the same wish to make a lot money, the tomatoes are going to be pretty good for eating (or throwing).

Note too that in the encouragement of Far Right and Far Left political organizations worldwide, Putin & Co. have blended with the tomatoes a heady mix of hippie values — what could be more pure than tomatoes irrigated by mountain waters? — and fascist nationalist dreams rooted in ethnolinguistic pride.

While NATO may prepare for and block greater Russian imperialist adventure, its more immediate and perhaps more real headache may involve meeting the challenge posed by Moscow’s autocratic, barbarous, and criminal “allowances” within Russia and far beyond its borders.

Posted to YouTube 2/3/2016.

Reference

AFP.  “Millions more Russians living in poverty as economic crisis bites.”  March 21, 2016.

Orttung, Robert and Christopher Walker.  “Putin’s Frozen Conflicts: Each of Russia’s reform-minded neighbors is plagued by separatism.  It’s no coincidence.”  Foreign Policy, February 13, 2015.

Pomerantsev, Peter.  “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.”  The Atlantic, September 9, 2014.

Ragozin, Leonid.  “Putin’s Core Support Begins to Waver.”  Bloomberg Businessweek, June 9, 2016.  (Added 6/10/2016).

Tolokonnikova, Nadya. “Criminal Godfathers and Dirty Birds.”  Huffington Post, February 3, 2016.

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All For Show – Russia’s Comeback – High Culture and Lowest Barbarism

31 Tuesday May 2016

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

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Posted to YouTube 2/8/2014

Posted to YouTube 1/1/2015

While Bashar al-Assad in Damascus must take responsibility for the casualties of 2014 and the shaping of the war to that date, it would seem Vladimir Putin in Moscow — or in Sochi — during that same winter has only sustained in that season the legacy of the Soviet alignment.

Posted to YouTube 5/7/2016

Posted to YouTube 5/6/2016

Related

Ellis, Ralph and Holly Yan.  “Airstrike at Syrian refugee camp kills at least 28.”  CNN, May 6, 2016:

At least 28 people were killed when warplanes struck a refugee camp Thursday in Syria, the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, with many of the dead women and children.

Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the London-based group, told CNN it was not immediately clear whether Syrian or Russian planes conducted the airstrike.

BackChannels — and so BackChannels feels — has been wrong about cozy relationships between dictators, perhaps, but probably right about their colluding in their own practical interests as regards sustaining feudal absolute power.

Kleptocrats, apparently (this inspired by the pieces in the reference section) need not be in love but only realistic about their mutual dependencies.

By incubating the al-Qaeda types in Syria, especially ISIS, by selecting other targets for bombing earlier in the Syrian Tragedy (see in reference BackChannels 2015), Assad and Putin may have developed an unrealistic plan for both blackmailing and goading the west, which appears to be taking refugees, filtering criminals (over time), and fighting ISIS separately.  With “Assad vs The Terrorists” backfiring, the two, Assad and Putin, are stuck with one another and Assad needs Putin to get to an endgame that makes sense.

Frederic C. Hof, whose essay for the Atlantic Council has appeared in Newsweek winds through an excellent and most clinical analysis of the options at hand.  Here’s a little part of that:

Secretary of State John Kerry nevertheless seeks common ground with Russia on political transition involving a non-Assad, negotiated Syrian consensus.

Is common ground achievable when Moscow sees Assad as personifying a state to save, while Washington sees him as a war criminal and ISIS’s top recruiting asset in the region?

Read Hof — for the boys who made the mess, who produced “Assad vs The Terrorists”, there may be no good exits yet in sight.

The slogan “Assad or We Burn It” has won the day, for now much of Syria has been burned, and Assad has only more to answer for and much, much less to claim.

For Mr. Putin’s part in the Syrian Tragedy, the Russian President may not have been able to direct Assad as regards so many “barrel bombs”, but he has control of Russian air power in the space, and perhaps he should use it to spare noncombatants from assaults, Syrian and Russian, that have built antipathy worldwide for the post-Soviet Moscow-to-Tehran arc of power.

Additional, Cited, and Related Reference

AFP.  “Chief Syria opposition negotiator quits over failed peace talks.”  ABC News, May 30, 2016.

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

Hof, Frederic C.  “We Must Reject Putin’s Shabby Deal to Work with Assad.”  Newsweek, May 30, 2016.

Miller, James.  “Putin’s Attack Helicopters and Mercenaries Are Winning the War for Assad.”  Foreign Policy, March 30, 2016.

Petrou, Michael.  “For Canada, standing up to Russia means standing up for a united EU.”  Open Canada, May 31, 2016.

Snyder, Timothy.  “The Wars of Vladimir Putin.”  Three book reviews.  The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016:

When Pieniążek arrived in Kiev in November 2013 as a young man of twenty-four, he was observing the latest, and perhaps the last, attempt to mobilize the idea of “Europe” in order to reform a state. Ukrainians had been led to expect that their government would sign an association agreement with the European Union. Frustrated by endemic corruption, many Ukrainians saw the accord as an instrument to strengthen the rule of law. Moscow, meanwhile, was demanding that Ukraine not sign the agreement with the EU but instead become a part of its new “Eurasian” trade zone of authoritarian regimes.

At the last moment, Russian President Vladimir Putin dissuaded the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, from signing the EU association agreement.

Tilghman, Andrew.  “No U.S. combat advisers for Fallujah invasion.”  Military Times, May 23, 2016.

Trofimov, Yaroslav.  “Russia’s Long Road to the Middle East.”  Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2016:

“The Middle East is a way to showcase that the period of Russia’s absence from the international scene as a first-rate state has ended,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow, which advises the Kremlin and other government institutions.

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Cold War? –> Cold Struggle.

15 Sunday May 2016

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

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Call it “Putin’s Theater”, a publicly viewed juxtaposition of sweetened and soured politics, a program in which the best and the worst have been put up for view at the same time.

The Winter Olympics at Sochi | The Syrian Tragedy Unfolding

The Concert at Palmyra, reported May 5, 2016 | A Refugee Camp Bombing, reported May 6, 2016.

Good and Evil | White and Black | Moscow and NATO

Singular Absolute Power | Representative Distributed Power

In Putin’s world, the “singular absolute”of his feudal realm appears to hold sway over the west’s “distributed relative” approach to managing political power, while the capricious barbarism on display in Syria and the compulsive character of the foray into Crimea may serve as a deterrent to NATO intervention in either place.  The dissolving of the insolvent Soviet may have reduced the scope of Russia’s threat potential, but with Putin in charge, deeply threatening it remains.

The Phantom of the Soviet that lurks in Putin’s revanchist neo-feudal Russia has brought to the fore a variety of terms representing the methods of his state’s aggression plus partiality to corruption and crime.

Ready for look-up when you are:

Putin, Corruption
Putin, Far Right, Far Left
Putin, International Crime

Russia, Frozen Conflicts
Russian Hybrid Warfare
Russian Energy Politics
Russian Information Warfare
Russian Nationalism
Russian Reflexive Control
Russian Passportization

This post may have to be the first of several on the theme, as the editor prefers having (or implying) his say at one sitting.

In reference, readers will find a smattering of discoveries based on searching up the above listed terms.  Each is a gem and possibly telegraphic enough to suggest that Moscow-centric control, corruption, political manipulation, and political theater in service to a despotic feudalism frames the renewal of conflict with NATO, not that NATO has yawned all the way through the Rise of Putin.  There’s more to that story, of course, but the alliance has avoided confrontation in Syria, in essence allowing the tragedy to develop nearly to its full measure in misery, and in Crimea, where Ukraine now struggles to exert sovereignty and move forward with practical governance.

The once hoped for transformation of Russia from the feudal state of other eras appears to have failed with Putin’s ascent from colonel to president to possibly emperor with the full array at his fingertips — the Okhrana to post-KGB FSB, a revived active military presence beyond its borders, and (equivalent to the privileged of the Party) the host of the moneyed and favored by the “vertical of power”.

The west may have gotten a breather at the end of 1991, but it has been challenged this past year with the fallout from events — again: Crimea; the Syrian Tragedy — approved, driven, engineered, or inspired by Moscow.

General Reference

AFP.  “Russia is more dangerous than Isis, says Polish foreign minister.”  The Guardian, April 15, 2016.

Aron, Leon.  “Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union is Wrong*And why it matters today in a new age of revolution.”  Foreign Policy, June 20, 2011.

BackChannels.  “Books — Agnia Grigas Tours Putin’s Neo-Imperial Russian Revival.”  May 6, 2016.

BackChannels.  “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”.

BackChannels.  “FTAC — Synopsis — On the Medieval Struggle.”  December 27, 2013.

BackChannels.  “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.

BackChannels.  “Syndicate Red Brown Green”.

BackChannels.  “The Big Fade — Or Not?  Where Goes the Phantom of the Cold War?”  June 23, 2015.

BackChannels.  “The Russian Section”.

Cooke, Thea.  “Has Vladimir Putin Always Been Corrupt?  And Does it Matter?”  Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, April 16, 2012.

Goble, Paul A.  “Moscow enjoying great success with far left parties in Europe, new study finds.”  Euromaidan Press, April 18, 2016.

Grigas, Agnia.  “Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Grigas, Agnia.  “How Soft Power Works: Russian Passportization and Compatriot Policies Paved Way for Crimean Annexation and War in Donbas.”  February 22, 2016.

Herszenhorn, David M.  “In Crimea, Russia Moved to Throw Off the Cloak of Defeat.”  March 24, 2014.

Krastev, Ivan.  “Why Putin Tolerates Corruption.”  The New York Times, May 15, 2016.

Kofman, Michael and Matthew Rojansky.  “A Closer look at Russia’s ‘Hybrid War'”.  No. 7, Kennan Cable, Wilson Center, April 2, 2015.

Kreko, Peter.  “Putin’s far right and far left friends in Europe.”  Political Capital, Policy Research & Consulting Institute; published as PDF on the Wilson Center site, March 14, 2014.

Miller, Christopher.  “‘Girl who kissed Putin’ warns about rise of Russian nationalism.”  Mashable, January 6, 2016.

Orttung, Robert and Christopher Walker.  “Putin’s Frozen Conflicts: Each of Russia’s reform-minded neighbors is plagued by separatism.  It’s no coincidence.”  Foreign Policy, February 13, 2015.

Snegovaya, Maria.   “Putin’s Information Warfare in Ukraine: Soviet Origins of Russia’s Hybrid Warfare.”  PDF. Institute for the Study of War, September 2015.

Tharoor, Ishaan.  “Europe’s far right still loves Putin.”  The Washington Post, February 18, 2015.

Thomas, Timothy L.  “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military.”  PDF.  17: 237-256.  Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2004.

Wikipedia.  “Passportization”.

Addendum – July 18, 2016

Turkey’s failed and possibly false-flag coup, i.e., an event manipulated by President Erdogan to soak out the last of his capable opposition — has altered NATO’s character for the worse and left some untidy and dangerous “poker chips” beneath the ground:

Schlosser, Eric.  “The H-Bombs in Turkey.”  The New Yorker, July 17, 2016.

BackChannels has just published a post-Cold War comment on the failed Turkish coup in relation to the “medieval vs modern” political processes competition between Russia and NATO: “FTAC – Turkey (and Hungary) – Medieval Absolute Power vs Modern Distributions” (July 18, 2016).

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FTAC – On the Syrian Tragedy

29 Friday Apr 2016

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

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Oil has nothing to do with the Syrian Tragedy. The primary “driver” is the medieval political absolutism exploited and sustained by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei, each of whom relies on feudalism to keep themselves in business.

Note that Putin put $52 billion into the Winter Olympics at Sochi. What Putin has put into Syrian humanitarian aid: $0.00.

Obvious pacifism in the Obama Administration has been balanced some by weakening Putin’s own ability to prosecute his chosen enemies across time and in intensity. The in-and-out demonstration of power in Syria may reflect that reality, although the show worked well in Moscow.  The stalling of the incursion into Ukraine through Crimea also attests to the Russian Federation’s underlying fragility. However, Russia remains a nuclear power, a newly militarized (revived in that aspect) and nationalist state, and a little unpredictable. It may be for that reason that “diplomacy” rather than “confrontation” has so far defined the western limits of engagement in Syria.

No one knows today how it will end, but I believe the west may look back on this period with immense shame for not having done more to block “Moscow, Damascus, Tehran” while pulling Syria — and Syrians — out of the medieval mode and into a modern politics. Results of related efforts on the battlefield appear to me to have been mixed, although one may credit Assad with the incubation of ISIS through the election to bomb other targets and leave Baghdadi’s enterprise to develop.

The themes are now tangled but still coalesce around “medieval vs modern”.

What is “medieval” now?

And what is modern?

Although BackChannels has frequently paired “medieval” with “absolute power” — and as much seems so — it may be more worthwhile at this point to travel into the 21st Century image of deeply medieval political worlds.

BackChannels readers will get to Riyadh, but let’s start with Moscow.

I have used the term in my own work, as well, and I define sistema as a style of exercising power that turns the country’s people into temporary operating resources, against their wills and in breach of their rights.  Sistema is a deep-seated facet of Russian culture that goes beyond politics and ideology, and it will persist long after Putin’s rule has ended.  Sistema combines the idea that the state should enjoy unlimited access to all national resources, public or private, with a kind of permanent state of emergency in which every level of society — businesses, social and ethnic groups, powerful clans, and even criminal gangs — is drafted into solving what the Kremlin labels “urgent state problems.”  Under Putin, sistema has become a method for making deals among businesses, powerful players, and the people.  Business has not taken over the state, nor vice versa; the two have merged in a union of total and seamless corruption.

Pavlovsky, Gleb.  “Russian Politics Under Putin: The System Will Outlast the Master.” Foreign Affairs, May / June 2016 (10-17).

Q: What are the roots of Putin’s ideological worldview?

A: By the beginning of the 1990s Putin had developed almost all the ideas he espouses today. He’d only just started working in St Petersburg, but if we look at documentary recordings of the time, we see that he already had a whole series of attitudes concerning, for example, the idea that Russia’s system of administration should be a unitarian, centralized state, and also his condoning the chinovniki [bureaucrats] taking bribes. That surprised many people, but it’s undeniable that he took a positive view of this. He even shared—and repeated—the scandalous thesis of the then mayor of Moscow, Gavril Popov, that bureaucrats had the right to a commission on contracts.

Pavlovksy, Gleb (Interviewee) and Tom Parfitt (Interviewer).  “Putin’s World Outlook.”  New Left Review, 88, July-August 2014.

And here’s an image from the modern world according to Andy of Mayberry:

Posted to YouTube May 22, 2012.

The “Syrian Tragedy” — I don’t know what else to call it, for it represents in its various facets a bitter revolution, a (medieval) tyrant’s assertions about a family’s outright control and ownership of a state, a civil war but one complicated by multiple sides and the political “flavors” preferred — conveniently, earnestly, momentarily — by the roving bands of the hours — but it is most certainly the result of a consecrated villainy fit to the absence of conscience and the bloody caprice of the worst of kings and emperors of history.

Once tweeted: “Putin, Assad, Khamenei — together they are defending absolute power.”

Pavlosky, in the Foreign Affairs article cited, notes of Putin’s inner circle, “Transformed from a campaign committee into a presidential entourage, the team has changed only marginally in its composition.  These are people who have never once told Putin, “You can’t do that” (p. 12).

In light of that observation, it might be worth taking another look at Andy and Opie and the difference between a quarter earned and three “just because”.

Cited and Related Reference

Pavlovksy, Gleb (Interviewee) and Tom Parfitt (Interviewer).  “Putin’s World Outlook.”  New Left Review, 88, July-August 2014.

Pavlovsky, Gleb.  “Russian Politics Under Putin: The System Will Outlast the Master.” Foreign Affairs, May / June 2016 (10-17).

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Moscow Misrules – Create Chaos – Promise Order – Collect!

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Europe, Regions, Russia

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Posted to YouTube 6/22/2016.

Can you see the tree?  The trees?  The forest?

How about the blight?

Writing about Russia can be like that: Focus on a crime, follow it into more general corruption, arrive at the “mafia state”; overview energy and economics, move on to “hybrid warfare” and other aggressive military and paramilitary activities, and it dawns that there is an imperial state at work; have a glance at history, then get the nose out of the books and have a look around at present Putin & Co. relationships, disinformation, domestic information control, and global propaganda.

What may be most dangerous about Russia today is the slowly developing surround in alliance and axis accompanied by the seduction of the popular mind (in Soviet-speak, “the masses”) by way of the promotion of confusion.

For its part, this blog has pressed the idea that defending Putinism, much less spreading it, devolves to sustaining a deeply feudal-medieval worldview that in turn undergirds the power of state elites: the “New Nobility” that is the FSB; the “Vertical of Power” that is this most singular Russian President around whom other elements revolve; the Oligarchs that produce and enjoy the state’s wealth, albeit with a nod to the permit provided by their political mastermind.

From off that magnificent hub:

  • Putin-Assad-Khamenei (Putin-Khamenei);
  • Putin-Assad-Khamenei-Baghdaddi (together representing medieval absolute power);
  • Putin-Orban.

With numerous stolons — plant-generated surface and underground runners that propagate some of the species that use them — the Moscow hub appears to support an immense array of illicit and licit relationships.

Here’s a nugget pulled from the illicit bin, which, of course, is the one that most bothers the west:

The leaked files suggest that Roldugin is not keeping this wealth for himself, but is funneling the money to Putin’s inner circle, the reports say. Although Putin is not mentioned in the documents, he appears to be at the center of a web of Russia’s most influential and powerful men who owe their posts and fortunes to nothing but their friendship and association with him.

“It’s possible Roldugin, who has publicly claimed not to be a businessman, is not the true beneficiary of these riches,” the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wrote. “Instead, the evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists — and perhaps for Putin himself” (Mirovalev, LAT, April 4, 2016).

How deep go these relationships?

How many are there?

Can you see the tree?  The trees?  The forest?

The blight?

The Syrian Tragedy, as BackChannels refers to that horrific process in which it appears Damascus with tacit approval from Moscow and Tehran pursued a course certain to produce “The Terrorists” by preferentially bombing more moderate Free Syrian Army forces and refraining from curbing the early development of al-Nusra and ISIL, needs no introduction: the human spillover is either encamped or migrating all over the Middle East and Europe.

Posted to YouTube April 14, 2016.

Moscow, however, has been also busy from the Baltic Sea (as depicted in the above naval incident) to the Black Sea.  Crimea and Ukraine, Lithuania, and Moldova, among others moan with the impositions or threats posed by the phantom of the Soviet alive within the Russian Federation.

A note from Moldova (Timpul.md, February 11, 2015):

Given Moldova’s limited economic potential, the country struggles to maintain its defense capabilities. It only allocates 0.3% of its GDP for military purposes, which amounts to about 25 million dollars per year. Furthermore, Moldova presents limited interest to the West. Its strategic and economic importance is negligible. To make things worse, Moldova is highly dependent on Russian energy supplies, export and labor markets. Russian media control a significant share of Moldova’s informational space. Finally, Kremlin has been instrumental in using Russian speaking minorities in Moldova to advocate interest that often go against the will of the majority of the local population.

In earlier and Soviet years, Moscow was not above playing games to irk the west and possibly draw on its coffers and patience, for whom has always to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of so much meddling?  The BBC recently ran an audio clip featuring Somalia’s General Mohamed Noor Galal recounting the machinations that went into setting the course for war in the region between Ethiopia and Somalia known as the Ogaden.  In that misery, the Soviet enticed Somalia to invade the Ogaden and seize it from Ethiopia, and when Ethiopian forces were down on luck and firepower, it intervened to arm Ethiopia, which then recovered the Ogaden.

Somalia, however, has never recovered.

Whatever the Soviet was thinking — arms sales?  Expansion of forced influence? — it sure wasn’t thinking about the lives and needs of either either Ethiopians or Somalis.  In effect, in the promotion of the Ogaden War, The Bear wrapped an arm around the Somali leadership and offered to help the same acquire a fair patch of earth as redress for earlier grievance — and then with that accomplished, it did the same on the other side.

What works, unfortunately, works.

If you now see the Ogaden in history — you have seen one tree.

Nothing has changed: now as then, one may wonder at the character and mentality of the post-Soviet neo-imperial Russian leadership, the same that has treated Russia as it has other states: create chaos and danger, drown the masses in propaganda (ah, those good old Party days are here again!), and for power — and the protection of so many money making enterprises, licit and illicit — promise the super nationalist’s version of greatness, security, and stability.

Note: Putin-Erdogan — politically opposed (there’s that Shiite vs Sunni thing + NATO) but psychologically aligned (and Erdogan has the White Palace to prove it).

Reference

Akkoc, Raziye.  “Turkey’s president is not acting like a Queen – he is acting like a sultan’: Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he isn’t a sultan – rather he wishes to be like the Queen in a constitutional monarchy – but his actions suggest otherwise.”  The Telegraph, February 2, 2015.

Anadolu Agency.  “UN: No record of Russia humanitarian aid for Syria.”  February 4, 2014.

Balazs, Edith and Zoltan Simon.  “Orban Attacks EU Energy Plan as Putin Link Nets Hungary Gas Deal.”  Bloomberg, February 17, 2015.

Blair, David.  “Russia jets make ‘simulated attack’ on US warship in ‘aggressive’ Baltic incident.”  The Telegraph, April 14, 2016.

Farkas, Evelyn.  “Putin is testing Western resolve: Russian incursions into NATO airspace are evidence of Kremlin’s growing aggressiveness.”  Politico, November 25, 2015.

Farkas, Evelyn.  “Trump and Putin: Two liars separated at birth? — No wonder they seem to like each other; they are akin in their abuse of the truth.”  Politico, April 4, 2016.

Farkas, Evelyn.  “What the next president must do about Putin: An open letter from the Pentagon’s former key Russia expert on how to contain Russia’s aggressive autocrat.”  Politico, January 25, 2016.

Grigas, Agnia.  Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire.  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016.

Harding, Luke and Matthew Weaver.  “Barack Obama calls for ‘reset’ in US-Russia relations.”  The Guardian, July 7, 2009.

Jakóbik, Wojciech.  “Peter B. Doran: Atlanticism under threat.”  Interview. Stop Fake, March 30, 2016.

Loiko, Sergei L.  “A Russian horror story: Gang sentenced for 12 murders at family home.”  Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2013.

Melvin, Don.  “Girl asks Putin: Who’d you save from drowning, Erdogan or Poroshenko?”  CNN, April 14, 2016.

Mirovalev, Mansur.  “Putin’s best friend is at the heart of Panama Papers scandal.”  Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2016.

Political Capital.  “The Kremlin Connections of the Hungarian Far-Right.”  Stratfor, April 20, 2015.

Rettman, Andrew.  “Russian propaganda wins EU hearts and minds.”  Euobserver, June 23, 2015.

Shuster, Simon.  “A Failed Russia ‘Reset’ Haunts Obama in Europe.”  Time, June 3, 2014.

Stop Fake: Struggle against fake information about events in Ukraine.  Anti-propaganda website.

Than, Krisztina.  “Special Report: Inside Hungary’s $10.8 billion nuclear deal with Russia.”  Reuters, March 30, 2015.

Timpul.md.  “Moldova’s Security Options following Russian Aggression in Ukraine.”  February 11, 2015.

Traynor, Ian and Shaun Walker.  “Russian resurgence: how the Kremlin is making its presence felt across Europe: Moscow is influencing policy and shaping opinion all over the continent, with ties to both the far right and the hard left.”  The Guardian, February 16, 2015.

Walker, Shaun.  “‘So what if Putin is corrupt?’: Russia remains unmoved by offshore revelations.”  The Guardian, April 13, 2016.

Walker, Shaun.  “The luxury hotel, the family of the top Moscow prosecutor and Russia’s most notorious gang: Video by anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny links family of general prosecutor Yuri Chaika with wife of mobster behind notorious massacre.”  The Guardian, December 12, 2015.

Wolking, Matt.  “Six Years Ago Today: President Obama’s Failed Reset with Russia.”  Speaker of the House: Paul Ryan, March 6, 2015.

Xenakis, John J.  “World View: Mass Protests Force Moldova to Choose Between Europe and Russia.”  Breitbart, January 26, 2016.

Posted to YouTube January 26, 2016 (43:54).

Posted to YouTube May 9, 2014

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Links – On Russian Economic Disaffection

28 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Links, Russia

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The actions of the long haul truckers show this, she says, and others may follow. “What did the government do in this situation?” It made concessions that had the effect of showing that its earlier actions were “unjust” and should not have been taken in the first place. Russians can see that.

“Now, legislation should be very carefully considered, for numerous laws that have been adopted are putting additional burdens on business and on the population. “Unfortunately, in the government, they continue to accept laws” designed to extract more resources from the population and are imposing them to try to cope with the crisis.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/12/russia-may-be-close-to-revolution-but.html – 12/28/2015

The share of poor families in Russia—those with not enough income to buy food or clothing—in the past year has almost doubled from 22 percent to 39 percent, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/12/28/the-number-of-poor-families-in-russia-almost-doubles-in-2015 – 12/28/2015

Freedom, it so happens, carries with it a great many temptations and pitfalls, and no one among Russia’s powerful and propertied today has managed to resist these temptations. Impunity has made it impossible to cure Russia’s corruption with a simple outpatient procedure.

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2015/12/25/opinion-how-russians-became-radicals – 12/25/2015.

Twenty-four years and two days ago, the Soviet Union dissolved itself, a fact of political life and history that today places Putin, the oligarchs, the Russians, and the rest of the world in the 25th year past the monumental failure of the communist experiment.  Today’s apparent “experiment” in place of the last one: feudalism in the form of a medieval revanche harking back to the days of Nicholas II and his establishment of the grandaddy of Russian political police, the Okhrana.

Same old, same old — and the Russian People will bear the costs before the “New Nobility” does (the “Oligarchs” appear to have been already politically compromised, this according to a Dec. 10, 2014 piece by Masha Gessen in The New York Times).

In a possibly Orwellian turn of events, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, so pleasingly pardoned before the Winter Olympics at Sochi has been returned (by Putin’s regime) to the status of an accused enemy of the Russian state, and “arrested in absentia” (the courts and defense are starting to kick around the absurdity — although Putin denies involvement, the state’s reputation developed under his auspices undermines claims to forthright character, i.e., too much has taken place “behind the curtains”).

Addendum

In relation to the expansion of capricious justice in Russia comes this from World Affairs’ “Spotlight on Russia” by Vladimir Kara-Murza: “Putin ‘Outlaws’ European Justice in Russia” (December 24, 2015).

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Putin: Terrorism –> Inspired Nationalism –> Feudalism

15 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal

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Before anything else, search up “Moscow, PFLP”.

Who is for the terrorists?

Who is against them?

Putin’s Feudal Revanche, the One Big Step Backward, involves many moving parts and relationships (e.g., Putin-Assad-Khamenei, Putin-Khamenei, Putin-Orban; Syrian Tragedy, partially enabled by Moscow on behalf of Damascus; a war on the lawful, NATO, and the west masked behind fighting “the terrorists”, which in Syria appear to have been incubated by Assad — and now Russia — preferencing moderate rebel targets over opportunities to slam the al-Qaeda Typicals), but it appears to have as its end the installation of 19th Century Feudalism (“New Nobility” and all) in our 21st Century.  Required: renewed “blood and soil nationalism” — and nationalist fervor — everywhere.

Much to the chagrin of Syrians I know — not those concert goers in Damascus, God bless them for maintaining the more delightful aspects of western civilization, but the refugees of indiscriminate barrel bombs and chemical attacks — Putin may get away with the promotion of his version of KGB Theater, “Assad vs The Terrorists (AKA “Assad OR The Terrorists”) and the related appeal to fascist nationalist urges worldwide, for that is what a body part does when injured: it swells around its wound.

Proud flesh.

Putin, having given the Russian Orthodox Church a front row seat to his State of the Federation address, has gone back to the 19th Century drawing board.  The Soviet is 24 years long gone and the Church is back in business, not such a bad thing with perhaps post-Holocaust updates producing an ambiguous (actual best possibility: Jew-friendly) Cossack community.

Vlad, so one might say, you can’t go home again: even if you drive a whole nation back there, what was there isn’t there anymore except for its ghosts.

Back to the latest in real bloody politik: one may expect Catholic France to rise to this occasion with some increase in anti-Muslim sentiment; however, this time, the French and everyone else have got a new word to place in place of “Muslim”: “Islamist” — and it’s going to be okay getting about the business of detecting and removing “Islamists” from French society.

The “crusader west” might not appear, at least not as expected.

Associated Links

On BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/21st-century-feudal/ (Category)

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/20/ftac-on-separating-from-the-medieval-world/ – 10/20/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/01/16/ali-khamenei-and-the-letter-from-near-mosul-a-speculation/ – 1/16/2015.  In political observation, “certainty” refers to some degree of probability and is seldom 100 percent certain.  Nonetheless, This BackChannels piece provided insight into the manipulation of the Iraq-Syrian Theater to place Daesh where Assad and Khamenei could make the best use of it — north of Baghdad for the most zealous of Iraq’s Shiite Militia, now hosting Revolutionary Guard officers; incubated in Syria to serve as a goad to the west (“Assad OR The Terrorists”) and a sink for related western military spending; and were all to go Putin’s way, as eventual true targets for a show of new Russian military prowess.  Related: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/

Elsewhere On The Web

“It is a lie to say that the Right Sector is anti-Semitic. The anti-Semites are the Russians, who try to recruit Ukrainians to hurt Jews so that they could later on say that the ‘Ukrainian fascists’ did some horrible things.”

http://forward.com/culture/202181/my-hunt-for-the-cossacks-in-ukraine/ – 7/19/2014.

In later writings about the KGB, one former senior agent in the 1990s wrote about the simmering discontent within the agency during Putin’s time there, and the increasingly prevalent disconnect between the intelligence officers, who saw themselves as servants of the “eternal” Russian nation rather than of the Communist Party.

“He’s learned the lessons of the past,” said Gaddy, “and from the failure of the Communist Party to tap the deep support that certain national and nationalist institutions have.”

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/06/09/Putin-s-Calculated-Revival-Russian-Orthodox-Church – 6/9/2015.

Also related in The Fiscal Times: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/05/26/Putin-Isn-t-Reviving-USSR-He-s-Creating-Fascist-State – 5/26/2015;

Blank said the Russian Orthodox Church is “not an autonomous institution.”

“It is used for state purposes, as well as for its own purposes, but it is an arm of Russia’s foreign policy,” he said.

Blank explained that European “integration and solidarity is an ancient threat to Russia, and that is what Putin wants to overthrow.”

http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/putin-uses-church-as-foreign-policy-tool/ — 7/4/2015.

Mentioning what he describes as “left-wing studies about the future of the EU and a possible European superstate”, Mr Orban subscribes to the view that the nation-state as a concept is being eroded and says the European Left and “radical American Democrats” have come up with a theory for this ˝new world˝ idea. He has no doubt that this is connected to the issue of migration.

http://www.euronews.com/2015/11/13/hungarian-prime-minister-talks-about-leftist-masterplan-behind-refugee-crisis/ – 11/13/2015.

NATO has been saddled with two weak partners, one of them friendly to Moscow, and, of course, as suggested by quoted piffle, that one happily deflects blame to the west while embracing and producing a nationalist autocracy himself.

“We are confronted with a collective effort that has been engaged in terrorism,” Erdoğan said as he listed the attacks committed by ISIL in different parts of the world, namely in Suruç, Diyarbakır, Ankara and most recently in Paris. “This act of terror is not only against the people of France but against all peoples of the world,” he added.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/obama-erdogan-say-paris-attacks-against-all-of-humanity-after-meeting-ahead-of-g-20-summit.aspx – 11/15/2015.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s politics as regards Daesh needs its own expanded analysis.  However he may represent “conservative” Islamic political forces in Turkey, and whatever has transpired to this point by way of the passage of Jihadis through Turkey to Daesh — also the transport of black market oil; the election to bomb Kurdish outposts instead of Daesh when first given the opportunity — the NATO bond leans on his own military, the Shiite-backed interests of Syria are not his, and playing ever in the background may be (should be) the Shiite vs Sunni rivalry.  Erdogan, like Orban, may have shoehorned himself into some pretty sweet digs (the “White Palace” thing), but he really cannot bond with the Putin that has aligned as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”.  Instead, Obama gets Erdogan’s business.

 

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