On Elon Musk’s X platform, all Xpression may as well be flushed down the digital river of tweeted communications: the appearance is brief and the flood mighty.
Countermeasure: copy-paste and blog the message as well.
Vladimir Putin using Viktor Yanukovych as his lackey had sorely abused Ukrainian business with time-honored mafia methods, i.e., plain skimming theft in the end:
#Putin & #RussianNazis #RusNazis spread chaos, degradation, deprivation, and desperation worldwide, and then cover their crimes with lies, specifically baseless accusations, deflections, denials, erasures of collective memory, fabrications, and omissions of facts.
#TrumpPutin’s shared basic psychology: Malignant Narcissism and Process. The lies told by both represent the “Covering” of deeply seated humiliation (“Narcissistic Mortification”) and the fear of its repeat. The psyche creates an alternative undamaged courageous-heroic self, and that becomes the leader’s principle project both in its assertion and its defense (in the psychology, “Splitting” or, together, “Covering/Splitting”). Complementary observation, term, or trope: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries or limits, i.e., the parameters of conscience” (so I quote myself). The end of the process for the Russian dictator and the American wanna-be dictator: “Unlimited Narcissistic Supply”, i.e., the validating infinite love of millions without end in sight.
Unfortunately, cluing in the world to yesterday’s news and Russia’s blood-and-soil religious fantasia might be easier.
To such elites, all of whom fall on the spectrum of Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic, WEIRD for short, Putin represents an atavism whose motivations they cannot understand. The Kremlin strongman adheres to a distinctly throwback view of international relations where the use of force is normal, and countries protect their national interests unapologetically, with all the instruments of national power. Putin’s wholehearted embrace of religiously-infused nationalism, which boasts a venerable history in Russia, leaves WEIRDs befuddled yet has real resonance among average Russians. Western doubts that the former KGB man has “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” miss the point, but then the West has never understood Russian Orthodoxy very well. No matter what Putin really believes, his public embrace of religiously-grounded national conservatism provides his regime with an ideological anchor, one which happens to view Ukraine’s subservience to Russia as a spiritual as well as geostrategic necessity.
Perhaps EU/NATO should have seen this coming with the truth about 9/11 (i.e., where terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri spent winter 1996-7 courtesy of the KGB) and the reflexively controlled “New Nationalism”.
Of course, Plausibility in no way neutralizes Deniability.
However, add at least one or two sideshows.
On the same day gun rights activist Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent, the president stressed his support for gun rights at an NRA meeting.
Okay, no biggie, but Butina most certainly chose to target with her charms a most conservative institution representative of not only America’s heartland but its gun-and-hook and healthy outdoor and clean living heart.
From major flag-bearer of democracy Anne Applebaum:
in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.
So, in my best Orwellian: Trump Medieval! Pence Modern! And “Pompeo Medieval!”
The Cold War–the west’s struggle against Russia’s Soviet Union and its Communist Party–has been regarded as having ended on December 25, 1991 in relation to the bankrupting of the state in relation to its defeat in Afghanistan in 1989.
With relation to America’s national security interests and international peace, what arrangements were made between the United States and Russian security cultures in 1992?
I have no answers for that.
America’s wacky political paranoia, however–more for entertainment than righteous cause, some portion of Americans has loved The X-Files, made pilgrimage to Area 51, and bought in on UFOs–has also produced a notorious anti-Constitutional Administration (2016-2020) — with its Head of State fully entangled with Russian money — and has done so in defense of lost eras and lost powers.
What happened back there — in 1992, perhaps — to bring us to this passage with a now former authoritarian American president steaming in the wings while a deeply disturbed and piratical Russian power in the figure of one Vladmir Putin makes a mess of modern Ukraine?
I have been breathing for 15 seconds after the last question mark, and I still don’t know. 🙂
However, we of EU/NATO geopolitical space have seen in action Russia’s Active Measures, Cyber Warfare, related Destabilization Measures, Hybrid Warfare, and the twists of a “New Nationalism” accompanied by authoritarianism and mafia drift in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (add France in the making of a big deal about Marine Le Pen) — and on this day a warning and perhaps a bid from Russia presaging nuclear warfare.
What are the obligations–ethical, moral, and legal–attending the watching of a crime in process that may be stopped by main force followed by extraordinary strength in defense?
First, the rescuer must survive the disaster too! 🙂
Then comes the business well known to those for whom the preemptive strike has been a requirement, not an option.
As I chatype and type, Russia’s invading assets would seem to be racing toward NATO on rails in Belarus and out on the highways and streets of Ukraine . . . in other words, out in the open.
For all intents, post-Euromaidan Ukraine has demonstrated steadfast devotion to becoming part of the western assembly of open democracies bound beneath credible constitutions and related rule of law while Putin’s Russia has chosen the stance opposite, i.e., a state devoted to a capricious dictatorship and rule of force.
Marina Agaltsova, a lawyer with the Russian human rights group Memorial, said those who did protest were extremely brave, adding that “Russians are deeply terrified of arrests and court trials over rallying people to go out and protest.”
Human rights activist Marina Litvinovich urged Russians not to cry and “not to be afraid, but to just come out and say that they are against the war,” in comments on social media. Calling on people to protest is an offense under Russia’s restrictive laws.
Perhaps I urge fools to rush in, and NATO is no collection of fools, although one may one note the post-9/11 turns toward authoritarianism or polarization in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Nonetheless, as Putin’s Push comes to shove, the reaffirmation of the security compact appears accomplished. The question at hand would seem to be not “If” but “When” as regards the timing of an engagement. BackChannels may assure readers of this much: Putin, as often as he may get away with this simple dance, will offer NATO hope as regards relief from attack–and then he will take it away. Brutally. Time and again.
So why wait for the monster to finish ravaging Ukraine and positioning his forces on NATO’s eastern flank before stepping into to end that dark carnival of carnage and destruction?
Putin practices treachery, he deceives, lies, and steals through the betrayal of trust: would it not be fit, would it not be best, to play him in kind?
Brest, #Belarus, a few kilometers from the border with Poland, the NATO country. All equipment is marked with the letter V. We are asking Belarusians to send us information🇷🇺 troops.
By deploying the troops on the border with Poland, Putin also wants to threaten NATO pic.twitter.com/AiqSifZQOZ
Я обращаюсь к вам, люди #России. Еще не поздно. Хотя много зла уже сделано, еще не поздно все это остановить. I appeal to you people of #Russia. It’s not too late. Even though much evil has been committed, it’s not too late yet to stop all of this. pic.twitter.com/1PLBSAROPg
"There are no NATO troops on the ground… that causes some bitterness here…the President has often said, when it comes to this fight it is the Ukrainians who are doing it. So you have the most advanced of NATO weaponry and the most basic of patriot resolve" @bbclysedoucetpic.twitter.com/24dvGW3Up3
Posted to YouTube by The Guardian, February 24, 2022.
Guardian News, February 24, 2022.
11Alive, February 24, 2022.
“War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Bliss” plus Putin’s own additions: “Chaos is Order / Life is Death”.
Early today, Vladimir Putin AKA “Vladolph” AKA “Putler”, Russia’s President by way of assassinations, defenestrations, detentions, and rigged elections, launched his invasion of Ukraine, a young democracy on its western flank, turning back the clock to the 1930s and and further to feudal-medieval barbarism.
President Biden, February 24, 2022.
PBS NewsHour, February 24, 2022.
Ukrainians flee to Romania via border crossing in Chernivtsi Region in Western Ukraine
The march – with a full police escort – is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the Washington Monument and conclude at the Holodomor Memorial, near Union Station, where a vigil is to be held, concluding at approximately 5:30 p.m.
Among the invited guest speakers are analyst Paul Goble, Peter Borisow, president of the Hollywood Trident Foundation; other noted Ukraine advocates are expected and, at the time of writing, were still being confirmed, among them Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly. Clergy from the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Churches, as well as leaders of the Jewish and Muslim faiths in Ukraine have been invited to properly represent the people of Ukraine.
As stated by Mr. Skibicki: “We demand that the Russian-backed terrorists immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine. If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government to stick to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by providing modern defensive weapons in order to help the Ukrainian people restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are NOT calling for American troops to be deployed to Ukraine.”
BackChannels 