25 Friday Apr 2014
Ukraine Is Finally Ramping up Its “Anti-Terrorist” Mission in the East
Speaking before his cabinet on Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said, “The world has not yet forgotten World War Two, but Russia already wants to start World War Three.”
07 Monday Apr 2014
Bloomberg: “Ukraine Accuses Russia as Protests Seize Offices in East.” 4/7/2014.
Bloomberg: “Putin Stirs Azeri Angst That Russia Is Set to Extend Sway.” 4/6/2014.
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President Vladimir Putin, condemned by NATO for annexing Crimea, is now defying the U.S. in Syria by sending more and deadlier arms to help Bashar al-Assad score a string of advances against insurgents, military experts say.
Bloomberg. “Putin Defies Obama in Syria as Arms Fuel Assad Resurgence.” 4/3/2014.
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In the middle east, I have for a while characterized the western opposition as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”; for eastern Europe, I now may blurt “Putin-Napoleon” (in lieu of “Putin-Yanukovych”), for the “vertical of power” appears to be spreading horizontally and quickly using predictably feudal (one almost hears, “Deploy the thugs”) methods.
Putin behind the curtain in Syria has reportedly improved the qualities of arms reaching the Assad regime with the intention of discouraging continued resistance in a convincing way. In Ukraine, The Bear has squatted on Crimea and made camp sufficient to throw around some weight:
A new, leaner and meaner Russian Army has been on display in Crimea and war-gaming on the Ukrainian border over the past month or so. Its vanguard is now made up of just a few elite divisions of highly-motivated, well trained, and fully equipped volunteer soldiers, capable of deploying swiftly anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the Kremlin’s command.
Christian Science Monitor. “Russia debuts new, sleek force in Crimea, rattling NATO.” 4/3/2014.
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25 Tuesday Mar 2014
Tags
The dueling narratives in Crimea appear to pit ethnic security against western freedom, i.e., Crimea’s Russians belong with Russia and Ukraine, so far, can go to hell.
— Russia for Russians and Russian Security in Crimea —
However, the apparent basis for Ukraine’s recent revolution appears to have been resistance to Russian domination associated with Putin’s kleptocracy, which was then signaled in the person of Viktor Yanukovych by way of his excessively self-aggrandizing spending — or, alternatively, by his setting the example of the “new nobility” assembled by “men of respect”, but, perhaps, for himself either rejecting what he might have had to do to hold his position or simply not having the power to hold it.
— Russia for Russians and Russian Security in Crimea —
vs
— Putin’s Russia and Piratical Government in Ukraine —
Discussion of the recent Russian annexing of Crimea often seem to revolve around the legality and propriety of Putin’s initiative and not around Putin’s character. However, the imbroglio, from the intimations of revolution forward, has been about the character projected by Russia’s president’s leadership. From the new Russian Security State, one that features FSB staffing at a higher level per capita than ever achieved by the KGB to state-controlled media, from cooperation and support of the Assad-Khamenei axis, which support appears to have transformed legitimate “Arab Spring” challenge into a blood bath, to the $52 billion development effort to produce the Olympic Games at Sochi, the tone set has been that of piratical control.
If one has wished for Russia to attend to Syria as within its sphere of influence and to do so in the most aboveboard and humanitarian way, that wish may be dismissed with the chain of dictatorship having by now been made appallingly clear (and so I have made “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” a BackChannels trope).
In the Russian projection, Crimea has been made to look like its about simmering ethnic animus and divided loyalties across a large constituency.
Look again.
Look again at the mansions and hunting lands acquired by Viktor Yanukovych: Crimea, by extension, turns out an argument about the validity of dictatorship, and not necessarily Putin’s dictatorship alone.
Yesterday, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen noted of President Putin the following:
Russian nationalism is an indigenous force, and Russian grievance is somewhat the same. But another leader may not have fanned either one. A non-Putin, in fact, may not have felt either emotion so intensely. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now the prime minister, probably would not have seized Crimea. Nothing about him suggests otherwise. He is no Putin.
But Putin is. The tautology has become plain. The reformer has become the uber nationalist and expansionist.
If there’s a basis for arguing the assertion untrue, one wonders what it might me. In fact, I’d go further and suggest that Cohen’s “uber nationalist and expansionist” is more than that: Putin would seem to be the dictators’ dictator, the standard bearer of a class.
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25 Tuesday Mar 2014
With the annexing of Crimea, Great-Leader-for-Long-Time Putin has driven himself closer to the wall that stands beneath the banner, “No Farther.” From Syria to Ukraine, the Statesman of Respect, the same that continued arms deliveries to the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, thereby sustaining also the projection of influence paid for by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, has enjoyed and employed power at egregious cost to the humanity of the states concerned.
What have Russians gotten out of Syria other than the identification of their state with a monster?
While Crimea’s Russian contingent has obtained some measure of Slavic assurance and validation, one might ask whether as much was at all needed, and then, given former President Yanukovych’s kleptocratic display, whether ethnic vanity has not been served much at the expense of an improved economic future and peninsula-wide political stability.
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The peninsula’s native population, the minority Crimean Tatars, boycotted the vote wholesale, as did many ethnic Ukrainians. Authorities have already begun asking Crimean Tatars to vacate their property; one Tatar man, who opposed the Russian takeover, has turned up dead, his body bearing marks of torture.
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. . . the main thrust will be to attack Russia’s ambitions to be increasingly influential and respected in the world by freezing it out of bodies such as the G8, and projecting it as a gangster state. Russia longs for respectability and to become a super-power once more, but the Crimean adventure has scuppered that.
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This bland description of what happened to the Tatars is appalling. In May 1944 the whole Tatar population of Crimea was rounded up in days and transported to gulag-style slave labour in the eastern USSR: ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Stalin against fellow Soviet citizens.
Crawford, Charles. “Vladimir Putin, Crimea and ‘Double Standards’.” The Commentator, March 21, 2014.
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The conflicts I’ve looked over, so far, are loaded with disingenuous speech, for there is no other way to sustain a dictatorship that barrel bombs children except by lying about every facet of it, nor for that matter, is there any good way of maintaining one’s warm water naval station and kleptocracy with absolute certainty and control except by promoting and establishing the pretext for stealing it.
This blog has now a small assembly of nifty concept widgets addressing the mentality that abets and drives dictatorships.
Start with “malignant narcissism“.
It does not yet have an off button for them.
However, there is an “off button” in global political reality, and it is simply insistence on integrity in governance and related speech.
As much may be enforced by a free press, presuming the mass of it has some integrity itself, the many peccadillos of scribblers notwithstanding.
For various internal reasons — reasons known only to themselves — dictators fear honesty, starting with themselves. In their own heads, they must be great beyond imagining, and then in their social surrounds, that greatness wants its equal in validation.
Remember: the (malignant) narcissist is never wrong.
While one may wonder what enables a man to deploy — or maintain the deployment of — snipers intent on crippling children, one may go on to question the ethics and humanity of any anomic enough to keep the same interminably propped.
Comrades in crime?
Yes.
But oh what crimes!
A little bribery, corruption, graft?
Piffle.
Those things: apologize to the public, perhaps; do some time, maybe; retire to the marina; hang out at the mansion; mix with the beautiful people until the sun sets.
To do what the Great Bad Boys do — start by making an unmistakable statement!
Arrest children at the local people’s protest; move on to murder and torture (see, for example, “Children of the Syrian Revolution” [2012]).
Initiate an indiscriminate bombing campaign against communities primarily up in arms about jobs and local services.
Set loose one’s hired thugs and laconic snipers, the kind who shoot to kill their “enemies” while still in the womb.
Take it up a notch: while claiming to be fighting “the terrorists”, drag in the real McCoy — and work with them!
Get to a place from which one cannot retreat or recover, the scope and viciousness of the criminal misjudgment — or criminal assertion of a sadistic bent — being too great.
And bond with like-minded others, the kind that like Yanukovych my write their reflections — also their blackmails, bribes, loans at high interest, perhaps — in diaries and memos.
The enormity of the crimes political and the blood spilled with them may be what bonds Putin-Assad-Khamenei and Putin-Yanukovych and Chinese political elites with Nicolas Maduro and his new hires who seem to know how to shoot while rolling on two wheels.
Thugocrats love Vesparados.
Once firmly on that track, the only “off switch” is what others may do to derail that black locomotive of a personality in its every facet.
And afterward, should the good prevail, God willing, the good may demand integrity from the next empowered politician arriving at “reset”.
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25 Tuesday Mar 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Cohen on Putin – “The power of one man: Great men matter — and so do evil ones”
. . . but the fact remains that if Princip had hesitated, if he had missed, if he had not wandered to seek a sandwich at Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen when Franz Ferdinand’s driver had taken the wrong turn, the Great War might not have happened.
And neither would have the swift collapse of four empires . . . .
24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
From Russia with Smarts (3-14-2014) — “Why America doesn’t understand Putin”
Sovietology may be as defunct as the Soviet Union itself. But the need for a dedicated and deep understanding of Russia — especially the motives and machinations emanating from the Kremlin — is as critical as ever.
21 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia
19 Wednesday Mar 2014
Tags
Ahmed al-Jarba, anti-Semitism, cynical rhetoric, political, politics, propaganda, Putin, Syria, Ukraine
“The Diaspora” (Al-Shatat), a Syrian-produced TV series, aired last year during the Ramadan on Al-Manar (Hizbollah TV) is now being aired on Iranian TV. The series covers the period of the Zionist movement, and is primarily a depiction of the classic anti-Semitic libel that attributes to Jews the desire for world domination. The series revolves around the “Secret Jewish World Government . . . .”
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The Syrian National Coalition recently released a statement denouncing what it perceived to be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media exploitation of Israel’s medical care for wounded Syrian in the Golan area.
Calling it “nothing more than a publicity gimmick”, the statement from the SNC’s media center went on to say that “the Israeli entity stood against the Syrian uprising from the start”, and that wounded Syrian civilians were “forcedly [sic] taken to Israeli hospitals and are being employed today for marketing their political agenda”.
For the Sake of Syria, the Political Opposition Has to Grow Up » From Homs to Istanbul – 2/20/2014.
Remember the unholy troika: Putin-Assad-Khamenei.
Khamenei’s regime appears to enthusiastically endorse the most libelous and medieval of depictions of The Jew, but today with a television show.
One may have hoped that the “moderate” revolutionary side would prove itself more enlightened, idealistic, and just in relation to its views about Jews and others in contrast to the rants and slants of Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei — and the helpful Russian who keeps his mouth wisely shut in this regard even as he maintains the post-Soviet architecture that has so far lengthened Assad’s tyrannical stay.
While Syrian National Coalition leader Ahmed al-Jarba calls for arms supply from the west, sustaining the self-defeating anti-Zionist creed and its correlates would appear to sustain also the coalition’s agony.
If Jarba’s begging arms while remaining anti-west, anti-Jew, anti-Israel, he may continue begging because those interests — democratic, modern, west, also informed by Jewish minorities in concert with others, also represented in the day-to-day politics and spirit of the Jewish State of Israel (which treats Syrian casualties as injured persons, ethically disregarding their politics while in care) — may also wish to be represented in the greater international community arrayed against Assad’s dictatorship in its every hideous aspect.
The reader may judge for himself the tone of the “moderate” revolution through the pages of the Syrian Free Press that purports to represent the main base of the revolution: Netanyahu Calls the Whole World “Anti-Semites” | – 2/24/2014.
Putin at the global political poker table has strong cards in Russian anti-Islamist experience and, lately, a neutral to positive stance toward Jews, enabling him, cynically perhaps, to claim better defense of “western values” in Syria (while his client’s snipers paralyze children) and in Ukraine.
While pursuing Russian nationalist imperialism — well, I can’t call it “Soviet” — Putin may now amplify, invent, and portray opposition to Russian expansion as coming from fascist religious or nationalist movements.
It’s an awful strategy, relying as it does on political gaslighting — i.e., planting false information to produce some wanted perception.
What kicked off this rant is this from March 14: Kiev Mob Stabs Rabbi Hillel Cohen in Anti-Semitic Attack (IB Times).
True to thesis, or at least echoed by IB journalist Gianluca Mezoofiore: “The attack plays into the hands of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich’s rhetoric and to that of the Kremlin that Ukraine’s revolutionary movement that removed him is made up of Nazis and extremists.”
In Ukrainian uprising reality, Jews, ever among the oldest of liberation theologians, have played another role:
Balaclava-clad far-right paramilitaries fire into the air at the funeral in Ukraine of an anti-government protestor. This is not a tribute to a fellow right-wing nationalist, but to a Jewish construction worker, Alexander Scherbanyuk.
Of the approximately 100 people killed during the protests in Kiev that swept Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich from power in February, three were Jews, according to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Ukrainian anti-Semitism expert.
Three Jews among those killed in Ukraine uprising – Jewish World News Israel News | Haaretz – 3/18/2014.
Facebook’s Euromaidan page has a note from February 20 on Alexander Scherbanyuk: “12:00 – Chernivtsi Alexander Scherbanyuk, a Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party member, has been killed. He was killed by a sniper bullet to the heart. Alexander Scherbanyuk, an Afghan, has left behind three children. – “LigaNews”
Of Joseph Shiling, the Voices of Ukraine blog notes, “He was 61. He and his wife Anna raised two daughters, and he has four granddaughters.”
That just doesn’t sound very fascist, nationalist, or particularly “thuggy” to me.
May Grandpa Shiling rest in peace.
The national or religious heritage of those who were killed is, of course, not important in truth. Just as their age, gender, political views aren’t important. Everything is unimportant, except the fact that they are Ukrainians and that they are heroes of Ukraine, who died in its honor while fighting against evil and injustice.
The Jewish Division of Ukraine’s Heaven’s Hundred | Voices of Ukraine – 3/11/2014.
The third Jewish martyr to the revolution: Evgeniy Kotlyar, an environmentalist.
Scary man, huh?
I kid, of course.
The Ukrainian revolutionary government knows it inherits an issue in regard to anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism does not appear to be its problem but rather a common social issue, the same present in measures small and smaller — a little larger with Jobbik in Hungary — in every political community of the west.
During a special discussion called “The growth of extremism, radicalization and xenophobia”, Nalyvaichenko demonstrated to representatives of the parliamentary delegations of European countries examples of anti-Semitic and xenophobic images and publications on “Berkut” pages in social networks and talked about illegal actions of Special Forces. He noted that in the society, especially among law enforcement agencies, dissemination of information that might incite ethnic hatred and encourage violence against minorities, was unacceptable.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko heads Ukraine’s revolutionary security service.
Thank God.
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Revolutions develop along two fronts: one is outside the person.
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