Tag Archives: Russia vs NATO

Estonia – Bugged by The Bear

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Norther Europe

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estonia

Captured from Google Maps.
Estonia, a country in Northern Europe, borders the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland. Including more than 1,500 islands, its diverse terrain spans rocky beaches, old-growth forest and many lakes. Formerly part of the Soviet Union, it’s dotted with castles, churches and hilltop fortresses. The capital, Tallinn, is known for its preserved Old Town, museums and the 314m-high Tallinn TV Tower, which has an observation deck. Capital:Tallinn; Population:1.325 million (2013); President:Kersti Kaljulaid; Sources include:World Bank.

As “Moscow” — President Putin; the New Security State; the revanchist ultra-nationalist neo-imperial combine — continues to develop as a belligerent with obvious “credits”, so far, in Syria and Ukraine, the former and now free members of the Soviet Union have been rightly sensitive to the many returns of the KGB mob.

Two items from the former Soviet state caught BackChannels attention this morning:

The Russian Federation’s diplomat, who was caught by the police in a brothel behaving curiously served in Estonia temporarily, which means that the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not been informed of his presence. In connection with the increasing intensity of Russia’s intelligence activities the number of temporary diplomats in the European Union countries has gone up as well.

Värk, Joosep.  “Brothel patron lacked state acceptance.”  Postimees Estonian News, December 23, 2016.

The “temporary diplomatic official” had been in-country with the barest minimum of Estonian awareness (and without diplomatic immunity).  Värk Joosep’s reporting suggests there have been many such temporary figures in Estonia over the past two years.

A meeting between a member of US president-elect Donald Trump’s close circle and a pro-Putin member of the Russian State Duma in a Eastern European country was picked up by the Estonian Information Board, Newsweek wrote yesterday, based on information from several people with ties to the agency.

Värk, Joosep.  “Estonian foreign intelligence in the spotlight.”  Postimees Estonian News, January 12, 2017.

Related in Newsweek, possibly European edition, and as relayed by Estonian Public Broadcasting: “Newsweek: Estonian foreign intelligence eavesdropped on Russian official meeting Trump associate.”  Estonian Public Broadcasting, January 11, 2017.

Of course the world is at war every day, but some days — and some places — are more quiet than others.  Here on the cusp of an American Presidential Inauguration, these just beneath -the-radar activities tell a story about activity that add to what the world has seen put on display by Moscow, primarily, so BackChannels believes, in Syria and Ukraine.

The Newsweek category for Estonia relates well to the above and in this screen capture (made 1/16/2017/0930-EST) revealing:

nweek-estonia-top-170116-0930

It would appear “The Bear” has been acting aggressively and Estonia has been standing up for itself with confidence in the NATO arrangement.

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Also in Media: “Why Vladimir Putin Hates Us” | Observer | November 22, 2016

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

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

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Predictably, the Kremlin maintains that moving state-of-the art missiles into Kaliningrad is a response to American ballistic missile defenses which have been deployed in Eastern Europe. As usual, Moscow depicts all its military moves, even ones which are destabilizing to regional security, as cosmically defensive, so great is the Western threat to Russia.

Source: Why Vladimir Putin Hates Us | Observer

Relevant on BackChannels: “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.

FTAC – Russia vs NATO – Freeze Frame

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics, Russia, United States of America

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Whatever the state of affairs may be, the staging is in for the next Administration.

Putin has reinvented Russia as a neo-imperial power with privileged classes anchored by the “New Nobility” (FSB) and the oligarchs with himself a level or two above all he has leveraged (in service to his own unlimited narcissistic supply).

The United States has managed to force Putin to attempt to produce a national economy based on other than oil revenues and skimmed proceeds from others states — and Putin has produced law for punishing the oligarchs from exporting their capital (capital flight in Russia over many years plus the loss of anticipated oil revenues plus sanctions have had good effects).

NATO has moved its machinery into place to stall additional inroads against former Soviet clients, and it has recently put on a demonstration of power against Russia’s own parading of nuclear might.

I got to tell you have so many years of tracking the Islamic Small Wars and discovering the “Phantoms of the Soviet” in contemporary foreign affairs, this is scary stuff!

Of course, there are “Phantoms of the Soviet” also in American domestic affairs.

Start with Black Lives Matter and the Chicago Coalition Against Racism and Political Repression along that line and end in the murky affection between V. Putin and D. Trump and the oddness of Trump’s having for his political advisor the same Paul Manafort as Ukraine’s deposed President Yanukovych.

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Putin’s Swipe at NATO Via Erdogan

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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

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From the Awesome Conversation:

Putin’s clawing into NATO, and he’s going to use Erdogan, a natural authoritarian (with his own White Palace) to further establish “absolutism” around a feudal Russian core.

In the today’s news:

The Kremlin accepted a letter from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an apology this week.

Mr Putin spoke to Mr Erdogan by phone on Wednesday, telling him he planned to lift the travel sanctions.

The lifting of non-travel trade sanctions will depend on the outcome of the trade talks, the Russian leader said in his decree.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36676516 – 6/30/2016

In news analysis appearing in The Atlantic about three years ago:

The Turks suffer from a deep-rooted, historic reluctance to confront the Russians. The humming Turkish economy is woefully dependent on Russian energy exports: More than half of Turkey’s natural gas consumption comes from Russia. Consequently, Turkey is unlikely to confront Moscow even when Russia undermines Turkey’s interests, such as in Syria where Russia is supporting the Assad regime, even as Ankara tries to depose it.

Historically, the Turks have always feared the Russians . . . .

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/turkey-fears-russia-too-much-to-intervene-in-syria/275571/ – 5/6/2013

Moscow has so far been able to separate itself from such wondrous moves as the incubation of ISIS (through “deselection” for bombing and combat early in the Syrian Tragedy) and the related development of Syrian mass migration, and with Turkey and the latest airport bombing — and where the terrorists come from but Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan — the same channeling applies and to similar effect: Russia has been channeling its extremists to ISIS, and when they do what they do in the NATO community, it may lay claim to being tough on the same.

If terrorists should wreak havoc on a renewed Russian flight to Turkey, well then: Moscow and Washington may then mutually share sorrows and perhaps move toward rapprochement (on counterterrorism cooperation, say) while Assad the Tyrant and the familiar Soviet / post-Soviet (now neo-feudal) arrangements remain in place.

There’s a greater problem with such a rosey “what-if” or outcome, and that is the modern world’s ceding itself to the sustained “feudal absolute power” that today, as in medieval days, lends itself to despotism, kleptocracy, and the war of all against all without end.  Unfortunately, “Red Brown Green” applies: to have within NATO nationalist or Islamist authoritarians (Hungary’s Orban, Turkey’s Erdogan, for starters) lends itself to Russia’s feudal revanch and its imperial ends.

Fast Related Reference (URL + Date)

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/04/19/turkish-autocrat-erdogan-on-track/ – 4/19/2016.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016

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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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