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Tag Archives: Soviet

Palestinian KGB

03 Monday Oct 2016

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

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

Abbas, Arafat, KGB, middle east conflict, Russia, Soviet, terrorism

The document, which the University of Cambridge’s Churchill Archives Centre confirmed was authentic, was smuggled in to the UK by a defector called Vasily Mitrokhin.

It is entitled “KGB developments – Year 1983” and Mr Abbas identifies him by the codename “Krotov” or “mole”.

“‘Krotov’ – Abbas, Mahmoud, born 1935, origin Palestine, member of the executive committee of Fatah, PLO, Damascus, agent of the KGB,” says the brief entry.

BBC News.  “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘was KGB agent'”.  September 8, 2016.

The KGB, when I was still connected with it, went to great lengths to transform an Egyptian born Marxist, Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar, into a Palestinian-born Yasser Arafat.  It took the KGB — and my DIE — many years to endow Arafat with a credible Palestinian birth certificate and other identity documents, to build him a new past, and to train him at the KGB Balashikha special-operations training school east of Moscow.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  P. 289.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/ – 11/28/2016.

For those who may read in Russian, the Wilson Center hosts the Mitrohkin Archive at this address:

http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/52/mitrokhin-archive


How much of the intellectual poison delivered by Soviet-borne misinformation persists today in the Middle East Conflict?

Considering the looks of Syria, the miserable psychology shared between the dictatorships — on this blog, have a glance at the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” — and the horrific results, a side by side glance at Hamas behavior in Gaza (x human rights) suggests the same malign narcissistic values continues to course through the governance in both locations.

There may be no longer a need to wonder why.


Reference – Abbas, KGB Coverage

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/palestine-s-prez-was-once-a-kgb-mole.html – 9/17/2016.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/world/soviet-papers-palestinian-president-was-a-kgb-agent/ – 9/8/2016.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37305953 – 9/8/2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/world/middleeast/mahmoud-abbas-israel-palestine-kgb.html – 9/7/2016.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-abbas-idUSKCN11E1U0 – 9/8/2016.

Bergman, Judith.  “The Soviet-Palestinian Lie.”  Gatestone Institute, October 16, 2016: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9090/soviet-union-palestinians 

Reference – Arafat, KGB

Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world’s “kings, queens & despots,” with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai.  “The KGB’s Man.”  The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003.


A little more than four months before the news this week that tests on Arafat’s body in a Swiss investigation showed “unexpected high activity” of polonium, a book co-authored by former Romanian spy chief Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa was published documenting Arafat’s training by the communist Soviet Union and pointing out that the only other known case of polonium-210 poisoning was the death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

WND.  “New Evidence Suggests Kremlin Poisoned Arafat.”  November 7, 2013.

Related

Their report concluded that Arafat’s remains showed levels of polonium 18 times higher than normal.

Arafat’s widow, Suha, has reaffirmed to the BBC her belief that their report proves he was assassinated.

But she said she could not directly accuse anyone, saying that he had many enemies around the world.

BBC. “Arafat polonium findings confirmed by Swiss scientists.”  November 7, 2013.

Al Jazeera Investigative Unit.  “Swiss forensic report on Arafat’s death.” Document, 108-pages.  November 6, 2013.

http://honestreporting.com/plo-still-lying-about-arafats-legacy/ – 8/5/2015.

Yasir Arafat claims that he was born in Jerusalem, but he was actually born in Cairo. He claims to belong to the prominent Jerusalem family of Husseini, but he is at best only distantly related to it. He claims that he turned down a chance to go to the University of Texas, but according to one biographer, the Palestinian-born writer Saïd K. Aburish, it is highly unlikely that he was ever accepted. He claims to have disabled ten Israeli armored personnel carriers in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but Israel didn’t even have ten APCs in the sector he was in. He claims to have made millions as a businessman in Kuwait, but this, too, is almost certainly untrue.

Obviously, Arafat is a congenital liar. But there’s more to it than that: his lies are all designed to create an aura of romance around himself and the Palestinian people.

Brooks, David.  “A Brief History of Yasir Arafat: The PLO leader is a terrible administrator but a brilliant image crafter.”  The Atlantic, July/August 2002.

Reference – Wikipedia

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


The history of Palestine–Russia (and between 1917–1991, Palestine–Soviet Union) relations has been long and complex. For a number of historical and political reasons, it has been deeply interwoven with Russian (and between 1917–1991, Soviet) relations with the Zionist-Israeli enterprise, Palestinian nationalism, and Third World national liberation movements in general. However, at the same time, particularly between 1956 and 1990, Soviet-Palestinian relations were also part and parcel of the then ongoing Soviet-American confrontation, and even after the Cold War ended, the international and ideological role and importance of the Russian-Palestinian relationship always far exceeded its local and regional limitations. This relationship has continued even today. Russia remains an important player in the Middle East peace process and is a member of the Middle East Quartet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine%E2%80%93Russia_relations


The leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the Soviet KGB in the beginning of the 1970s.[9] The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB.

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


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


According to Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992, in early 1970 Haddad was recruited by the KGB as an agent, codenamed NATSIONALIST. Thereafter, in deep secrecy the Soviets helped to fund and arm the PFLP. The KGB had warning of its major operations and almost certainly sanctioned the most significant, such as the September 1970 hijackings. Haddad remained a highly valued agent till his death in 1978.

A letter by Yuri Andropov allegedly confirming Haddad’s role as an agent was independently discovered in Soviet archives by Vladimir Bukovsky and has since been published.

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

Reference – Gaza, Iran, Syria

http://armamentresearch.com/assessment-of-the-khaibar-1-rockets-captured-by-the-idf/ – 3/12/2014.


The Khaibar-1 (Arabic: خيبر-1‎‎) is a Syrian-made 302 mm [1] artillery rocket used by Hezbollah against targets in northern Israel. The name of the rocket was first revealed on July 28, 2006 by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a speech on Al-Manar television station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaibar-1

Related: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/world/meast/israel-intercepted-weapons/ – 3/6/2014.


https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-says-hezbollah-hamas-arent-terrorist-groups-50783 – 11/16/2015.

Web search “Moscow, PFLP” also produces results.

Related

In July, Russia’s Federal Security Service, successor agency to the KGB, released a list of 17 organizations the Russian Supreme Court had identified as “terrorist.” The FSB’s counterterrorism chief described all 17 groups as a threat to the Russian state and noted that almost all were linked in some way to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the 17. Hamas, however, was not listed, though it openly describes itself as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and frequently features deceased Brotherhood dignitaries like Hassan al-Banna and Abdullah Azzam alongside Hamas leaders on its posters and pamphlets. The reason for not listing Hamas, the counterterrorism chief explained, was that Hamas was not engaged in violent activity in Russia, nor was it linked to illegal armed groups operating in the North Caucasus. But Hamas supporters do maintain a presence in Russia, and the group does express solidarity with Chechen fighters, including suicide bombers.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/putins-new-friends-moscow-hosts-hamas – 3/19/2007.

http://www.rferl.org/a/soviet-islamist-terrorism-israel-america-disinformation-pacepa/25034290.html – 7/2/2013.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9090/soviet-union-palestinians – 10/16/2016.

–33–

Also in Media – “Soviet-Nazi Collaboration and World War II” | World Affairs Journal, Essay by Alexander J. Motyl

18 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Nazis, political manipulation, post-WWII, propaganda, reflexivism, Russian history, Soviet

For starters, the Moscow-controlled Communist International, and its sidekick, the Communist Party of Germany, made Hitler’s rise to power possible, if not indeed inevitable, by tarring the German Social Democrats as “social fascists” who threatened to split the proletariat and were, thus, a greater evil than the Nazis. Had the German left remained united against the real threat—Nazism—Hitler might not have come to power. (Many leftists make a similar mistake today, preferring Vladimir Putin’s fascism to American capitalism and thereby promoting war in Europe.)

Source: Soviet-Nazi Collaboration and World War II | World Affairs Journal – April 30, 2015.

FTAC -Interpreting the Iraq War Through the Filter of the Cold War and Awareness of Soviet / Post-Soviet Manipulation

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cold War, disinformation, foreign affairs, information space, information warfare, politics, post-Soviet, public perception, Russia, Soviet

(In addition to having been a brutal dictatorship — one that stooped so low as to rob children of food to fund the building of palaces — and state sponsor of terrorism, Hussein’s Iraq had related to the Soviet through the Baath Party and Pan-Arab Nationalism. The dissolving of the Soviet — a murderous system of Party patronage and privilege — may have set up client states for regime change in some form. The Cold War label is well known but 25 years after is was over, it may be regarded as ancient history on campus when in fact it continues to resonate in foreign affairs. Recommended reading for any who may wish to catch up with the near past: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-New-History/dp/0143038273.

I feel strongly that citizens of open democracies should be familiar with how the Soviet worked to disinform “the masses” and abuse, manipulate, meddle, misguide, and, in a sense, master others, including Muslims, in the Party’s ambition to impose its will on the world. https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/ & a contemporary analysis of one facet of Russian manipulation and control in “information space” — http://cimsec.org/cutting-fog-reflexive-control-russian-stratcom-ukraine/20156

Because international affairs are complex in their history and political science and because popular media, from early broadsheets and flyers to this day’s immense array of online information, reduced the image of issues — like “regime change in Iraq” — the on-campus and public perceptions of many conflicts have been crude compared with the knowledge of nonpartisan academics and professional analysts in government and research. I try with Back-Channels, my blog, to bridge that gap while continuing to educate myself in these areas.

Whether Iraq or Vietnam, the free publics of the open democracies — not subject to state-controlled press — should be able to “see” — interpret and perceive — the Cold War, Vietnam, and Iraq and other struggles with much, much greater accuracy. I’ve had some personal leisure and the ability to purchase used books on Amazon, and the experience has shifted my views toward the conservative center).


The passage was written as an aside within a thread focusing on America’s new Muslim war hero Humayun Khan, a casualty of the war in Iraq, and the Muslim world’s view of American intercession as an invader.  Conservative Australian politician Sherry Sufi — Policy Chairman, Liberal Party of Australia — posed the question this way:

Muslims view George W Bush’s Iraq War as a foreign invasion to usurp the nation’s oil under the pretence of neutralising Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. I’m curious about Muslims that are now hailing American soldier Humayun Khan as a hero who died in Iraq while serving American interests after his parents used his death to boost support for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. Does this mean he wasn’t a foreign invader?

BackChannels may either keep its own counsel as regards America’s 2016 election season or take the middle of the road approach to either “he” or “she” being elected.

As a blog about conflict (culture, language, and psychology), dealing with the dissension and polarization evident in American politics seems at once both too near and too ugly for short address.

What seemed a component missing in the responses to Sufi’s question was the Cold War Era and America’s possible approach to Russia and related post-Soviet foreign policy, which would be to see the dictatorships replaced with nascent modern democracies.  Although Iraq and Libya may be contested and war torn states, they are no longer established tyrannies, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi having long made their passage into history.

At Syria, Putin made public (in a kind of gambit with Obama) the switching of course from modern democracy to a post-modern medieval system of centralized power, patronage, and privilege.

BackChannels believes Orwell would recognize Putin’s World and its encouragement of Far Right and Far Left politics — Black, Red, Brown, and Green — and, as happened elsewhere in the 1960s and beyond, promote war without end but to its own advantage in the twin promotions of fear and and power.  Along those lines, BackChannels readers may wish to take note of Soviet political manipulation associated with the Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s.  This piece published by the BBC on that war gets at the agitation developed to get the war started for Somali militia and later the Russian rescue of the Ethiopian Army with arms sales sufficient to turn back Somali gains:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 (April 7, 2016).

In the broad and crazy retelling of the story in Wikipedia, Russia, the Soviet, found itself backing both states in the contest for the Ogaden, but the BBC interview goes down into the details of how Somali forces were moved into action in the Ogaden at the urging of renowned Admiral Sergey Gorshkov who told Somali General Mohamed Noor Galal (still living) that he wanted the imperialists (western interests) out of the Horn of Africa.

“Grand Game” politics, Soviet style?

Are these wars a part of a dance taking place between antagonists for resources plus political control and power?

Without that BBC interview, one returns to a more general interpretation of events.

Echoing Wikipedia, the Polynational War Memorial page for “Ethiopia vs Somalia” summarizes the politics this way:

The Ogaden War was a conventional conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978 over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Fighting erupted as Somalia sought to exploit a temporary shift in the regional balance of power in their favor to occupy the Ogaden region, claimed to be part of Greater Somalia. In a notable illustration of the nature of Cold War alliances, the Soviet Union switched from supplying aid to Somalia to supporting Ethiopia, which had previously been backed by the United States, prompting the U.S. to start supporting Somalia. The war ended when Somali forces retreated back across the border and a truce was declared.

 

For all the death and wreckage involved, who got what out of the Ogaden War?

Who profited?

BackChannels doesn’t have the answer but knows the maneuvering and manipulation repeatedly produce bloody results that don’t seem to translate into broad local, national, or regional lifestyle improvements.

In fictional language, one might write, “There was a war that changed nothing.”

-33-

Quote – From the Soviet Way of Thinking – #JeSuisCharlie

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

malignant narcissism, manipulation, political psychology, political theater, Soviet, terrorism

“We must execute not only the guilty,” Lenin’s commissar of justice, Nikolai Krylenko, said.  “Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”

Remnick, David.  Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire.  P. 506. New York: Random House, 1993.


In light of today’s heinous attack in Paris, it may do (and with Putin’s neo-feudal and piratical Russian oligarchy in mind) to think back on the “red” part of the “red-green alliance” and its contribution to the manner of terrorism witnessed today.


Posted 1/7/2015.


http://freebeacon.com/national-security/a-tribute-to-charlie-hebdo/ 1/7/2015.


http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamson – 1/7/2015.  (“Reform Jewish Extremism”?  I want in!  I want to hear what ten million people singing Kumbaya in tune together sounds like).  😉  Back on the serious note, no pun intended:

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found itself the subject of an unkind Broadway lampoon, The Book of Mormon, its leaders did not bomb the theater or even try to force the show to be shut down as “hate speech.” Instead, they decided — in a brilliant stroke — to offer theatergoers copies of their scripture through an advertisement in the show’s playbill: “You’ve seen the play, now read the book.”


http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/french-police-identify-3-suspects-in-attack-on-newspaper-office-that-killed-12-1.2177723#ixzz3OAwQp8Fy – 1/7/2015.


http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-islamic-state-and-the-%E2%80%9Carmy-in-being%E2%80%9D – 1/7/2015.


http://www.rand.org/blog/2015/01/terror-in-paris-answers-from-rand-experts.html – 1/7/2015.


http://gawker.com/what-is-charlie-hebdo-and-why-a-mostly-complete-histo-1677959168 – 1/7/2015.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30710545 – 1/7/2015.


There are numerous calls to violent jihad in the Quran. But the Quran is hardly alone. In too much of Islam, jihad is a thoroughly modern concept. The 20th-century jihad “bible,” and an animating work for many Islamist groups today, is “The Quranic Concept of War,” a book written in the mid-1970s by Pakistani Gen. S.K. Malik. He argues that because God, Allah, himself authored every word of the Quran, the rules of war contained in the Quran are of a higher caliber than the rules developed by mere mortals.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-how-to-answer-the-paris-terror-attack-1420672114 – 1/7/2015

# # #

A Note Indicating Interest in Russian Post-Soviet Soviet Influence

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

influence, political, politics, Russia, Soviet

?

Khamenei –> Putin –> Assad

?

Putin (-Yanukovych : Ukraine | +Orban : Hungary)

?


For a long time now, I have quipped about “the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei: together they are defending political absolutism.”

With the Russian foray into Ukraine, it appears that intuition may have steered me straight; however, taking that same intuition a step further, I wonder if the top theokleptocrat in Iran may not be holding the greater hand in global sway.

BackChannels may try to tease out of vast global web soup more of the state-driven meddling promoting the cultivation of socialist-nationalist movements such as that of Hungary’s Orban, but I’m not certain the web will yield to such a line of inquiry.

 Additional Reference

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-troll-army-hit-america#y01zgl – 6/2/2014.


(5/27/2014)

*

http://geopoli.info/?p=596 – “Ukraine – Terrorist recruitment, marketing & geopolitics.”  6/25/2014.

*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingsoc

# # #

 

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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