Tag Archives: Soviet / post-Soviet history

Venezuela’s Turkish Connection and Other Notes on Dictatorships Surrounding EU / NATO

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, South America, Venezuela

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Let’s start with “East v West”, i.e., “Moscow v Washington” -> “Feudal Absolutism (and Totalitarianism) v Modern Democratic Liberalism” -> and on this blog, “Medieval v Modern”:

As Venezuela’s political crisis is unfolding, the unwavering support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies for the embattled Nicolas Maduro has been a wide-discussed theme in international media.
For some, by standing by Maduro against the “U.S.-backed coup ”, Turkey is only paying its respects to the Venezuelan president, who expressed solidarity with Erdoğan during the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016. Interestingly, Venezuela was among the first countries to back Turkey during the botched coup attempt in Turkey. Maduro’s immediate support to Erdoğan came at a time the Western allies of Ankara were slow to show their reaction over the coup attempt.

https://ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turkey/existential-threats-bringing-erdogan-and-maduro-together – 2/9/2019

What in the hell is Turkey doing in NATO (FB Presence in Part)?

You tell me.

Those dictatorships!

They know how to hang together.

God willing.

For the time being, some Venezuelans have figured out that money has meaning, and they have gone to ground, literally, to dig up gold that they sell to the Venezuelan state (who else?) and the state sells on to . . . Turkey!

Facilitating the transport of gold is Turkish Airlines, it said, noting, ”On New Year’s Day, 2018, Venezuela’s central bank began shipping gold to Turkey with a $36 million air shipment of the metal to Istanbul. It came just weeks after a visit by Maduro to Turkey. Shipments last year reached $900 million, according to Turkish government data and trade reports.” 

https://ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turkey/turkish-airlines-carrying-gold-not-many-people-caracas-reuters – 2/10/2019

How you like them apples?

Start with Putin.

Add Russia’s Vory. \

Now you know something that perhaps you did not know a moment ago?

Does it make a difference?

You (whoever you are) are one out of billions on the (now censored in former Communist states) Internet.

What do you think?

Venezuela’s mafia state —

https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/venezuela-mafia-state/

https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/world/2019-01-17-venezuela-is-fast-becoming-a-mafia-state-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ – 1/17/2019

— appears to have decided to start over with the Treasure of the Sierra Madre — i.e., with some portion of the people digging up wealth — gold — from out of the ground.

Hey, it’s money.

Oh — it’s also capitalism.

From Business Live:

The scale of Venezuela’s current social, economic and political crisis is so severe it is difficult to comprehend. Hyper-inflation has decimated the national currency and crippled the economy. Oil production — which accounts for 95% of the country’s export revenues — has halved since Maduro took power in 2013 and the industry has been further weakened by the collapse of the price of oil in 2014.

In 2018, the economy contracted by 18% and by the end of the year inflation had soared to 1-million percent. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted inflation will increase to 10-million percent by the latter half of 2019. These are dizzying figures but they only reflect one part of the complex situation Venezuela is facing.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/world/2019-01-17-venezuela-is-fast-becoming-a-mafia-state-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ – 1/17/2019

Power cuts. Shortages. Starvation.

Yada yada yada — fodder for dozens to hundreds to thousands of articles avoiding reference to the Soviet / Post-Soviet disaster now 26 years past the dissolving of Russia’s Communist passion play — and the world’s tragedy.

Off the cuff —

Zimbabwe tells the story of a dictatorship that personally reintroduced cholera to its people — and Mugabe made it possibly by denying a rival funds for sanitation chemicals (you may look that one up yourself unless the editor here goes all OCD on you).

Syria — with the help of Moscow and Tehran, Bashar al-Assad has succeeded in barrel bombing half of his state (or more) into deeply depopulated oblivion. While one may thank Mother Nature — oh, and ourselves — for the global warming damaging Syria’s agricultural economy, the necessity, eventual of mass migration may have been met with kindness and international cooperation.

BC guesses not.

Where else would you like to go in the still medieval worlds of “political absolutism”?

Yemen?

Posted by France 24 English, November 21, 2018

BC imagines power quite intoxicating if it can do to innocents what is depicted in the above video.

(BackChannels has another bitch with the Kingdom, i.e., the punishment of its best and brightest women).

MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) – Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has sought OPEC support against U.S. sanctions imposed on his country’s oil industry, citing their impact on oil prices and potential risks for other members of the producer group.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-opec-exclusive/exclusive-venezuelas-maduro-seeks-opec-help-against-u-s-sanctions-letter-idUSKCN1Q01HD – 2/11/201

Not only has Venezuela sought OPEC’s support.


The Organisation for the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and top oil producer but non-member Russia will not create a formal combined body as originally planned, Reuters hasreported.
In a draft document, the countries said they aim to set up an alliance rather than a formal organisation when they meet on April 17-18 in Vienna.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/2/11/opec-and-russia-alliance-will-not-be-formal-organisation – 2/11/2019

BC would add to the list of Moscow’s sphere-of-influence failures — well what is one to expect of criminal mercenaries and politicians!? — Crimea, Ukraine, which has been battle torn torn for five suffering years under Moscow’s false pretenses. From Michael MacKay via his Radio Lemberg:

Almost five years after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in Crimea, Putin’s army is still on the attack. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are bombarding and assaulting Ukrainian defenders in Donbas, as they have been doing continuously since April 2014. Yesterday, February 10, was typical in that the Russians violated the Minsk Agreement ceasefire in every sector of the battlefront.

http://radiolemberg.com/ua-articles/ua-allarticles/russia-attacks-europe-in-donbas-ukraine-defends-it-alone 2/11/2019

Altogether, Maduro’s regime has brought unprecedented misery to Venezuela, the depth of which would beggar imagination if any were needed or wanted.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/11/americas/venezuela-migrant-women-prostitution-intl/index.html

The above URL updates this kind of video —

To force on to leave one’s home for the vagaries of chance and fate — conditions are bad in Venezuela, but there is this one truth: the dictator — the malignant narcissist — is never wrong.

Vox, November 27, 2018

On more video that BC feels indicative of the true relationship between today’s feudal powers:

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Moscow as Medusa with All the Snakes Attached

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Islamic Small Wars

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First posted in 2016 and posted again this day, January 2, 2019, what Ankara has unleashed on the Kurds would seem most unlike NATO — but ask: what attributes has Ankara to validate its NATO status today? Under Erdogan, Turkish democracy and related ethics, principles, and values no longer exist. The state elected a dictator and has apparently got its collective wish.

“Medieval v Modern”

It’s a trope here on BackChannels, and it has an analog:

“Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”

More state of mind than state, “Kurdistan” has already its “Medieval v Modern” civil separation, and perhaps unwittingly, the Soviet-Era PKK, a NATO and U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization, remains mired in the flipped absolutism of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Another BackChannels trope, this one about Russia: “Two major revolutions in one-hundred years (1917-2017), three forms of government, and not one change in the nation’s affections in relation to ‘paternal authoritarianism'”.

For that last label, “paternal authoritarianism”, credit the late scholar Richard Pipes, but BC will not be looking up the specific source at this time.

The affection for strongmen — and perhaps helplessness before their “politically absolute” organizations — has the medieval world clawing the modern one backward.

Of course, the defectors from medieval worlds, those made refugee by them, those left bereft and without defenses, essentially drain the tapped resources of the same, leaving those worlds to become spiritually hollow, absent of conscience, lacking in their own humanity, and burnt out and purposeless.

Moscow, that “Third Rome”, has deals — call it what it is: “leverage” — with everyone: Assad, Khamenei, Hezbollah — low-hanging fruit: the “Syrian Tragedy”, BackChannel’s term, could not have taken place without Moscow’s endorsement and direct military support in arms and occasional actions (like bombing hospitals); Erdogan: “Turkish Stream” – Big Energy project demanding Ankara’s cooperation with Moscow: France – Marine Le Pen and the Newest Nationalism — but France is more brave in its defense of its still revolutionary democracy — Le Pen lost her bid for the presidency; Germany – energy supply dependence; Hungary – Orban’s bromance and narcissism; USA – only Mueller knows . . .

FTAC: From the BackChannels Reading Page on Facebook, January 2, 2019

The text about to be quoted accompanied as introduction on the BackChannels reading page on Facebook the URL to Roy Gutman’s December 28, 2018 political analysis in The Intercept in which he lays out aspects of character and control by the PKK that had been long supported by Moscow through the end of the Soviet Era and, obviously, 26 years beyond.

The problem BackChannels has seen has been that of Moscow operating the Syrian Theater in a way that perpetuates the existence of ISIS for as long as it remains a politically useful tool against the liberal and open democracies of the west.

In essence, it appears the Soviet methods in power imparted to the PKK during Russia’s Communist Party Era have become ingrained and difficult for western or liberal allies of the Kurds to displace.

In response and with reference to https://theintercept.com/2018/12/28/syria-withdrawal-kurds-pkk/

——

The Phantoms of the Soviet, a government dissolved in bankruptcy more than 26 years ago, continue to haunt or shadow the Kurdish Community in its bid for survival against the emergent Turkish Sultanate, as BackChannels views it, still supported by NATO, and ISIS, which is “handled” by Damascus as flanked by Moscow and Tehran.

In the ganglion of the Syrian Tragedy, too many threads lead back to Moscow — and Moscow has well demonstrated its peculiar absence of conscience in the general support of Assad the Tyrant, its own repeated bombings of Syrian hospitals, and its defense of Iranian advanced missile manufacturing.

Moscow has also partnered with Ankara on the Turkish Stream energy project.

😦

The true battle is one having to do with time: the medieval world of feudal absolute power — the power known to the world’s dictatorships, none of them responsible to either the Earth or Humanity — wishes to overrun the modern one built on the freedom accompanying democratically checked and distributed power.

According to Gutman, the Kurds appear stuck with both old habits of mind and with the organizational habits that have flowed down from the Soviet Era.

Of late, Kurdish representatives online have taken to pairing the United States and NATO with the backing of Turkey, a state no longer even proto-democratic and one long bent on the cultural annihilation of the Kurds. While the rhetoric may be shrugged away, the character of the PKK, well described by Roy Gutman (as cited) but also by Kyle Orton (as referenced below) may not be so easily covered over or glossed.

What portion of the Kurdish People remain behind or with the PKK?

That’s an open question for BackChannels.

Defectors from the conscripted ranks of the organization apparently (so noted by Gutman) have some options within “Kurdistan”, but the impression made by the Soviet affiliate would today repulse all humanity-, freedom-, and peace-loving advocates of influence in western politics who would otherwise more enthusiastically support a true indigenous people’s striving for autonomy and self-determination.

This poster by the young Danish communist Rune Agerhus features three flags, and they are from left to right as follows: Socialist Party of Kurdistan; National Liberation Front of Kurdistan; People’s Liberation Army of Kurdistan.

The flag better known to represent “Kurdistan” in the west (as judged at least by the “Flag of Kurdistan” page on Wikipedia):

During the seven-year course of the KGB Theater’s Production — call it “guided” (most likely) — of “Assad v The Terrorists”, Bashar al-Assad has managed to barrel bomb half his state into rubble and destroy or displace nearly half of his population (as known in 2011). He has won for his efforts the expansion of Russian and Iranian military interests on his formerly sovereign property and through related sadism — reference: Sednaya Prison — lost entirely the respect of the modern world.

As regards Soviet / post-Soviet alignment with Moscow, much less Damascus, the Kurds may not expect to sustain their alignment with the ruthless (who would even provide the useful enemy known as ISIS) while currying the favor of the democratic, humanist, liberal, and deeply socialized west.

Reference

Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine. “Kurdish Repression in Turkey.” June 1982.

Gutman, Roy. “In Syria, U.S.-Backed Kurdish Fighters Face Trump’s Withdrawal — and the Legacy of Their Own Mistakes.” The Intercept, December 28, 2018.

Horvath, Zoltan. “Kurdistan”. CRW Flags, updated June 2, 2018.

Oppenheim, James S. “Reflexive Control Process: “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” -> New Nationalism -> New Feudalism.” BackChannels, March 11, 2017.

Oppenheim, James S. “Syria — Assad — ISIL — Background.” BackChannels, December 9, 2016.

Orton, Kyle. “The Problems With the West’s Partners Against the Islamic State.” Kyle Orton’s Blog, May 10, 2017.

Wikipedia. “Flag of Kurdistan”.

W.W. “Paternalistic policy: Against baby authoritarianism.” The Economist, June 11, 2012.

Yayla, Ahmet S. and Colin P. Clarke. “Turkey’s Double ISIS Standard.” Foreign Policy, April 12, 2018.

Addendum – January 3, 2018+

Szuba, Jared. “‘This is our reward?’: After 4 years fighting ISIS, Syrian Kurds face uncertain future as US pivots to Turkey.” The Defense Post, January 2, 2018.

Syrian Democratic Council.

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FTAC: Overcoming the Once Communist Feudal Legacy Associated with Soviet-Aligned Dictatorships

24 Saturday Nov 2018

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

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On the Middle East Conflict

BackChannels believes that at the end of WWII, Stalin acquired some part of the middle east that Hitler and the Ottoman Empire had lost.  There must have been Nazi agents waiting for arrest or work or both.  There had been certainly Arab families or powers who had been aligned with Hitler through Amin al-Husseini, and with the big war over and a two-state offer for the Palestinians and Israel on the table, the same were presented with a choice: peace (and responsible governance) or war focused on the destruction of Israel.

Whether the Soviet Union believed its own rants about the Jews or just wanted to sell and increase its influence through the promotion of anti-Semitic invective pleasing to some Arab ears, BackChannels doesn’t know.

What BackChannels does know is that Soviet arms and diplomacy helped maneuver the Arab states into a disastrous war, after which it had to keep its hooks in the region.  Pan-Arab Nationalism got its strong bump up (1950s) , and the dictatorships served to block the spread of democratic western liberalism into the region (as much advanced by Israel’s establishment).  The KGB’s grooming of Arafat, the establishing of the PLO, and Arafat’s rise from within would follow in the 1960s as would the wholesale development of “state-sponsored terrorism” through the Andropov years.   

Fly over all that history, and we’re here today with the same “gift” from Russia, the Soviet Era and once Soviet-engineered “Middle East Conflict” that has for remnant the wreckage of old middle east dictatorships — Iraq and Libya at least — and the horror of what has been left — Syria in flames and ruins, ALL of it at the hands of its own leader; Iran environmentally damaged (it did that itself) and economically crippled by way of its own aggression and medieval barbarism.

So this morning started with a comment about moderate and peace-seeking Israelis and Palestinians approaching these issues but with the politically repressive elements born in the Soviet Era or conveyed by it through time armed, entrenched, and powerfully intimidating.  The conversational partner noted that for the many participating in the talk, ” . . . place and time are all wrong . . . .”

The morning’s first response:

One may recognize “too soon” but those with casualties may be more sensitive to “too late”.

So, forward in this conversation.

Given the so many Jews involved in middle east peace activities, the onlooking Palestinian Diaspora of the west, the truth about the Moscow business plainly spreading across the web (the story of Russian Influence through Disinformation is just moving across the web these days), you would think someone would figure out that “the west” was not quite the enemy as promoted in the imagination).

Three things make us feel better — basic income; close family — and if not the one in which we’re born, then the friends we make; and general and personal security. Perhaps the Israelis and Palestinians who understand that have mutual regard and a few old problems in common.

On Medieval Divisions and Modern Multicultural Democracies

Next: a rhetoric assertion to the effect that multiculturalism has died (in South Africa) and with the implication that the medieval divisions having to do with race and religion — and by extension clans, tribes, and states — were resurgent and, by inference, all that the world has to look forward to is the greater chaos and misery of war already too well known.

Response:

The “Rainbow Dream” that Mandela had has NOT died in South Africa!

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/08/27/unfiltered-south-african-president-ramaphosa-on-land-reform-parliament-on-the-same-earlier-this-year/

White South Africa left a legacy of now archaic land ownership arrangements, and some are upset about the state’s update or reforms to allow the state to implement policies beneficial to all South Africans.

The state’s related economics — there are too many poor! — and extended state security resources have produced conditions for brigandage — theft and murder — at least, and the aggrieved cast that in racial terms.

To better manage its issues, the people of South Africa recently ejected another corrupt communist aristocrat — the kind that take money from their people and immensely aggrandize themselves in the manners known to dictators.

From The Guardian, here’s a glimpse into how Jacob Zuma “managed” South Africa:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/zuma

Cheer up: South Africa may avoid the Zimbabwean meltdown at the hands of a nominally communist narcissist (Robert Mugabe, who has been deposed in the past year or so by his own military) and continue its independent development as a modern multi-racial, multi-tribal democracy.

Humankind may never see an end to war, but it may see it diminished.  The drawing down would be a real gift to Israelis and Palestinians alike.

This coming December 25 will mark the 26th year out from the dissolving of the Soviet Union (1991) toward a feudal and perhaps Orwellian politics (i.e., continuous war between three nuclear-armed giants and proxies within their spheres of influence all the way down — or, alternatively, the day may be closer to the end of the end of a long argument between the medieval world habituated to “absolute power” — power unquestionable with its brutality — especially toward the innocent — exercised with impunity — and the modern one in which democratic power is so for being checked, subject to criticism, distributed and balanced structurally (Administrations; Courts, Legislatures) and popularly (via free and fair elections). 

–33–

Mahmoud Abbas: KGB and Groomed to Lie

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Islam orders the Muslim to be honest to himself and others. This order repeatedly comes in the Noble Qur’an and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (SAWS). Islam orders the Muslim to tell the truth even if it is against the teller’s interest. Orders him not to cheat or deceive other people. A Muslim is ordered by Allah to be honest in his words and deeds, privately and publicly alike.

http://www.islamawareness.net/Honesty/honesty_article003.html

Portions of The Other Side have been considered as Holocaust denial by some critics,[8] especially the parts disputing the accepted number of deaths in the Holocaust as well as the accusations that Zionist agitation was the cause of the Holocaust,[9] a charge that Abbas denies.[10]

When Abbas was appointed the Palestinian prime minister in 2003, he wrote that the “Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind” and that he does not deny it,[11] and said that “When I wrote The Other Side … we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks”.[12] More recently, in 2013 he reasserted that part of his thesis that “the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis”.[13][14] In 2014, he stated the Holocaust was the “most heinous crime in the modern era”.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side:_The_Secret_Relationship_Between_Nazism_and_Zionism

Apparently, Mr. Abbas spreads lies when at war with Israel but shrugs through the truth when its suits him.

Or perhaps when it suits his family’s wallet.

These documents, reports from senior Fatah officials and Palestinian social media reveal extensive corruption at the highest levels — the Abbas family and a Palestinian elite manipulating the political and financial systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the people.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/306179-palestinian-kleptocracy-west-accepts-corruption-people

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

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

The architect of the Holocaust, Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann, was one of the first to deny its existence. While escaping the Nuremberg trials and evading international law, Eichmann befriended Nazi supporters in Argentina who published an anti-Semitic magazine titled “Der Weg,” or “The Way.” The magazine aimed to disprove what they called “the falsehood of the 6 million.” The magazine claimed the Holocaust was nothing but a libel, that there were never any gas chambers in Hitler’s Europe and that the Jews collaborated with the Third Reich in order to have another country for themselves after thousands of years in exile. According to Eichmann and the magazine’s publishers, the Jews were willing to sacrifice themselves to gain a national homeland.

Many Arabs were enthralled by this theory, and a young doctoral student by the name of Mahmoud Abbas, now the president of the Palestinian Authority, even wrote a dissertation on the subject titled, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism,” which opened the door for several different conspiracies on the subject of the Holocaust to develop.

The Arabs were among the first Holocaust deniers to adopt Eichmann’s theory.

Cohen, Edy.  “Adding Insult to Injury.”  Israel Hayom, April 23, 2017.

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

In the proverbial east, so it would appear, what may not be accomplished honestly may be accomplished through guile — and if not guile, plain lying and force.

One social trope BackChannels has heard regarding lying: “Any who lie to you don’t respect you.”

Fair enough.

BackChannels wonders to what extent those who lie to others, especially Palestinians who lie to Palestinians, respect even themselves.

Posted to YouTube by Human Rights Watch, August 29, 2016.

Related

http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/29/palestine-crackdown-journalists-activists

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/israel/palestine

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/palestine-state-of/

http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/topics/palestinian-violations

Expect updates to this post as more material comes together on Abbas representative of the end of a long cycle of totalitarian dictatorship — perhaps more gently, “authoritarian governance” — comes into view on the world stage.  Today’s political crooks get covered in global media and come to look exactly as they have painted themselves throughout the course of their careers.  Mahmoud Abbas?  KGB — he has the record of it, and once marked is marked forever with that organization — so whose interests, apart from his own, is he really representing?

Abbas has also made for himself a record as a Holocaust denier although he has backed away from that lunacy — still, one may wonder how many unwarranted words — assertion of fact that just aren’t true — he has still to recover.

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