Tag Archives: Russia

Also in Media: “The Collapse of the Soviet Union: 25 Years Later” | Frontpage Mag | Jamie Glazov Interviews David Satter, December 26, 2016

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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The ironies of absolute power were evident in Tsarist Russia. In the 19th century, the Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadaev said that Russia existed to teach the world how not to live. He was referring to Russia’s contempt for the individual. “Alone in the world,” he wrote in his First Philosophical Letter,”we gave the world nothing and have taken nothing. We have in no way contributed to the progress of human reason and everything that came to us as a result of this progress, we distorted.”

Source: The Collapse of the Soviet Union: 25 Years Later | Frontpage Mag – 12/26/2016.

A little further on —

Satter: Soviet rule was based on lying as a substitute for truth. What mattered was not what was true but what could be made to appear to be true and the criterion for this ersatz truth was whatever was in the interest of the regime.

Against this background, the introduction of genuinely truthful information as a result of Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost could only lead to the destruction of the system. The elements of truth that were introduced as a result of glasnost became part of a delusionary system with which they were totally incompatible. The result was a confrontation over core principles and either the system or the truth had to be destroyed. Fortunately, it was the system that collapsed. In the end, massive falsification was formidable only as long as it was unchallenged. Once the truth was allowed in a limited form, the dykes holding back the reality of the outside world ruptured and the system became part of the past.

Related on BackChannels:

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

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Also in Media: “Putin Using All Means Against The West – Including Islamist Terrorism – Piontkovsky Says” | December 12, 2016

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Russia, Syria

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“There is a mass of evidence about the strategic cooperation of the Kremlin and ‘the Islamic State,’ about the conscious dispatch by the FSB of Caucasus militants into its ranks, about the use by Moscow of terrorists as an instrument for weakening and destroying the West” and also about Putin’s use of terrorism to build his increasingly vicious state at home.

Source: Putin Using All Means Against The West – Including Islamist Terrorism – Piontkovsky Says 12/12/2016

BackChannels has seen a related reference online recently:

Satter, David.  “Putin is No Partner on Terrorism: It’s a Mistake for Washington to Count Moscow an Ally.”  Foreign Affairs, December 22, 2016.

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FTAC – Moscow’s Presence in the Middle East Conflict

24 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Spychology, Politics

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Here’s a different perspective:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

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

Soviet Era Moscow and “Putin’s Moscow” today both defend and represent a medieval political absolutism laced with criminal and kleptocratic features.

As long as Moscow’s role in engineering the invention of Arafat and the PLO goes unnoticed, and as long as it remains masked off from conversations like this one, there will be no solution to the “middle east conflict”. It’s a money maker for the leaders, clans, and cronies who sustain it at cost to the Palestinians.

Related Reference

On BackChannels – Fast Links

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/11/ftac-why-the-middle-east-conflict-will-be-drawn-down-if-it-is-drawn-down/

Elsewhere On the Internet

Danan, Deborah.  “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires — How Hamas’s Leaders Got Rich Quick.”  The Algemeiner, July 28, 2014.

Greenfield, Daniel.  “Palestinian Authority: 1,700 Hamas Millionaires in Gaza.”  FrontPage Magazine, March 24, 2014.

Lightening, S. M.  “4 Hamas Billionaires and 600 Millionaires Turning Civilian Suffering Into Hard Cash.” Jewish Business News, July 25, 2014.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “How Many Millionaires Live in the “Impoverished” Gaza Strip?”  Gatestone Institute, August 30, 2012.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “How Much is Mahmoud Abbas Worth?  Try $100 Million.”  Gatestone Institute, May 18, 2012.

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Also in Media: From 2009: “The Syria-Soviet Alliance” – Jewish Policy Center – Spring 2009

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria

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In 1955, Moscow invited Syria, along with Egypt, to join a pro-Soviet pact. Turkey, a U.S. ally, mobilized troops along its southern border in an attempt to dissuade Syria from joining this pact. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov threatened Turkey not to use force against Syria, prompting Ankara to back down. The Syria-Soviet relationship was soon cemented. From 1955 to 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev provided Syria with more than $200 million in military aid to solidify the alliance and to counter U.S. influence in the region.

Source: The Syria-Soviet Alliance – Jewish Policy Center – Spring 2009.

Also in Media: Background: Andrei Piontkovsky: ‘Russia as Part of Chechnya’ OR What is ‘Russian patriot’ Ramzan Kadyrov Is Afraid of? – InformNapalm.org (English) – February 23, 2016.

14 Wednesday Dec 2016

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— Why does Putin need Kadyrov at all?

— The whole legitimation of Kadyrov is the ‘victory’ in the Chechen war.

Do you remember how he appeared from nowhere in 1999? The terrorists blew up our houses (in the reality Russian secret services did that) and all of a sudden a heroic military officer appeared and stopped the terrorists, calmed down Caucasus, proclaimed the war. Putin cannot declare Kadyrov as an enemy and liquidate him as some military bosses would like – that would mean that Putin deceived us all of these 15 years and that all of his politics failed. Closing the ‘Kadyrov’ project is a solution required by the security forces. They use the murder of Nemtsov (organized by themselves) as a pretext for the closure of the ‘Kadyrov’ project. It is obvious that the direct executors of the murder were captured- and they are Kadyrov’s people. Investigators want to question people close to Kadyrov, and Kadyrov himself. And it is a sharp political conflict, which unfolds now between military bosses and Putin. This conflict is a lot sharper then the conflict between Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko.

Source: Andrei Piontkovsky: ‘Russia as Part of Chechnya’ OR What is ‘Russian patriot’ Ramzan Kadyrov Is Afraid of? – InformNapalm.org (English) – 2/23/2016.

Fast Reference

On the interviewee:

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

On the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”:

http://www.hudson.org/research/12507-how-putin-became-president – 5/19/2016.

On Ramzan Kadyrov:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21690046-alarming-world-ramzan-kadyrov-putins-chechen-enforcer – 2/6/2016.

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FTAC – Trump – What If Moscow Were Indulged?

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eastern Europe, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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The balloon: The thought that Trump might cede Crimea for piffle in debts or other trade.

Ridiculous.

Welcome to the New Dark Ages.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/08/ftac-trumps-choice-and-moscow/

I could wag the finger all day in the direction of Putin and his inner circle and the Phantoms of the Cold War (arisen from the Grave of Communism as Ultra-Nationalist Fascists), and I would still have to deal with the resistance posed by 15 years of the greater population dwelling on “Islamic Terrorism” with nary a look back at the Cold War, much less a look forward to Russia’s transformation into an ultra-national neo-imperial state.

BackChannels achieves some compression of ideas and observations, and it has broad reach — it’s accessed annually from more than 140 nations — but it barely “pings” in the Foreign Affairs, International Relations, Political Science] communities . . .

Although no one knows how Trump will embark on his newly informed foreign affairs journey, everyone knows that this may be Trump’s first “real job” in a long time, and it’s not, as we say here in the U.S., “at will”: the President will be stuck with the Oval Office and answering to a government far greater and more powerful than himself, not to mention the people it represents.

My glance at the headlines suggests you may have been disinformed.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/309509-senators-urge-trump-to-be-tough-on-russia-in-ukraine

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/12/08/senators-urge-trump-to-provide-lethal-aid-to-ukraine/

It looks to me like Tass has been typing with rose-colored glasses:

http://tass.com/world/917932

It really underestimates how well the American professional political community — analysts, scholars, politicians — see Moscow as Putin has rebuilt it and sustained so much Soviet Era baggage and its inability to chart a middle course anywhere — but it may please those less engaged in politics.

This morning, I glanced at a Foreign Policy (Magazine) headline on how democracies fall apart. I should get to that article, but the official state remains quite robust. Trump may do the right great American things despite himself and, to lay in Churchill’s observation, without having to try all the wrong ones first.

This is a dangerous period for everyone as Putin with Khamenei and through Assad has chosen to demonstrate a depth in callousness, cruelty, dishonesty, and madness in Syria beyond anything witnessed anywhere else in the world in recent memory.

For five years or so I have seen repeated in untold visual analogs the image of a child’s hand gripping a mother’s forearm — no bodies — in relation to the indiscriminate bombing of noncombatants in Syria. Such murderers seem to be begging to be stopped — and maybe that would be a mercy — but the just poking along western response has been to watch the Russian economy wither while Assad burns Syria into an unsustainable nothing — except, perhaps, as a base for Russian military presence — and neither Moscow nor Tehran get anywhere with horrifying the world.

I’ll probably copy my response to an “FTAC” post on the blog. It has in it the prayer that the state prove stronger than its leading statesman, and I think the odds fair that it will do that if a President — any at any time — embarks on a dictator’s mission.

 

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Lunev’s Little Book – Two Excerpts

02 Friday Dec 2016

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

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Lunev, Stanislav and Ira Winkler. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: Russia’s highest ranking military defector reveals why Russia is more dangerous than ever. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.

What will be a surprise to the American people is that the GRU and KGB had a larger budget for antiwar propaganda in the United States than it did for economic and military support of the Vietnamese.  The antiwar propaganda cost the GRU more than $1 billion, but as history shows, it was a hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost.  The antiwar sentiment created an incredible momentum that greatly weakened the U.S. military.

But our instructors kept stressing that just because the Americans lost did not mean they were in total decline.  America, they sad, was becoming much more aggressive and a danger to civilization because it would have to reassert itself as a world power and avenge its defeat.  For this reason, no matter who or what our targets, we were always to prioritize America. 

p.78-79.

There was also the GRU Special Center for the training of terrorists at GRU headquarters.  The KGB provided financial and communications support to terrorists, but the operational training and support was reserved for the GRU.  The GRU has trained terrorists from almost every country in the world, including Iraq, Libya, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Italy, Germany, Spain, Turkey, and Latin America.  Where no terrorist groups existed in countries inimical to the USSR, the GRU would help to form them, and then provide them the necessary training, funding, and organizational support.  So, for example, while the terrorists involved in the World Trade Center bombing may never have attended the GRU training, the GRU was responsible for the formation of the terrorist group that they belonged to.

p. 81

Wherever one finds oneself as regards the “Open Source Intelligence” (OSI) community and, here on BackChannels, “Political Spychology“, the reading with a jaundiced eye, an appropriate skepticism, serves generally to strengthen claims when it comes to Russia’s Soviet Era intelligence history, its outlook, and its political operations.  For example, elements out of “The Russian Section” of the in-house library keep showing up across volumes compiled independently and over time by numerous authors.

Lunev’s book has a bit of Bondish fun in it, as when he claims to have hitched a ride on the undercarriage of a train across a river to meet a Chinese source (China, for Moscow, had been at the time Enemy Number Two for intelligence trawling) — and never mind his beating up the thieves who greeted him when he rolled off on the opposite bank.

Related Reference

Kuzio, Taras.  “Is Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism?”  New Eastern Europe, January 22, 2015.

Motyl, Alexander J. “Putin’s Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.”  World Affairs, April 14, 2014.

Orton, Kyle.  “How Russia Manipulates Islamic Terrorism.”  The Syrian Intifada, September 8, 2015.

Schindler, John R.  “Putin’s Support for Europe’s Far-Right Just Turned Lethal.”  Observer, October 27, 2016.

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Also in Media: Window on Eurasia — New Series: “Putin’s Language Doesn’t Threaten Russia’s Neighbors but Does Threaten Russia, Shchetkina Says” — December 1, 2016

01 Thursday Dec 2016

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

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  Unfortunately for Russians, what Putin is doing puts them and their culture under threat. “For Russia, the fate of their language is a question of life or death” because the language is in many ways a metaphor for Russia itself. “The Russian language, Russian culture and Russian literature are … what Russia is.”

Indeed, Shchetkina argues, Russia doesn’t exist anywhere beyond these things; and that explains why Putin has said that Russia has no borders because Russia is a “virtual” reality rather than a geographic one.  And in this is a problem: “this culture and language does not belong undividedly to a country which is now called the Russian Federation.”

Source: Window on Eurasia — New Series: Putin’s Language Doesn’t Threaten Russia’s Neighbors but Does Threaten Russia, Shchetkina Says – 12/1/2016.