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Tag Archives: unconventional warfare

FTAC – On the Persistence of the Feudal Mode in Statecraft

05 Friday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, transnational crime

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21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, criminal warfare, hybrid warfare, sub-conflict conflict, unconventional warfare

The Kingdom is not a NATO member, much less one applying for European Union accession. It’s alliance with the west may be based on its defense of its own power and prestige in Sunni Islam (vs the Shiite anchorage in Iran) and on related defense, development, and trade needs.

Turkey no longer teeters on the “brink of Islamization”.

Over the course of many years, President Erdogan has managed to eviscerate the pillars of the westward-leaning government developed by Kemal Ataturk, starting with the neutralization of the generals and ending just about with the throttling of Turkey once free press. When President Putin leveraged Erdogan into an apology over the shooting down of a trespassing Russian jet, that signaled the end of common western interest within Ankara as regards the NATO agreement.

This one video clip foreshadows more recent events and serves as illustration of Moscow’s deal making realpolitik:

So Moscow has won, eh?

Not necessarily.

The anachronistic feudal systems that Putin (and Khamenei) wish to sustain in services to their own politically absolute power (dictatorship / kleptocracy) have ways of losing money and pissing off modern constituents. Moscow has been running down its state cash reserves for some time by way of criminal behavior that has spurred capital flight for years, induced the west into the application of sanctions, and promoted alternative energy sourcing that has driven down the oil revenues on which Moscow had counted for growth. Here’s the kicker: the less immediately fluid wealth of the Russian Federation has been parked in WESTERN banking institutions and valuable assets protected by rule of law!

Russia cannot expect to move to conventional war. It hasn’t the money to support related industry and troops. Instead, if offers its nuclear threat, which is a potent headache for everyone, and the more criminal and insidious permutations of combined “hybrid warfare”, which really combines the most underhanded methods in the subversion of target states while also totally managing the image of conflict and enjoy the benefits of transnational crime.

🙂

I smile because I — and you — should cry.

As I tire of making the same assertions over and over again as regards the “end of the end of the Cold War” (but we would like to avoid a “hot war”, right?), I may only suggest here a visit to my blog — https://conflict-backchannels.com/ — and perhaps spending some time with Agnia Grigas’s book on Crimea — http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?k=9780300214505.

The world on display in the Moscow Grand Mosque video is the one held together by President Putin and arrangements he’s made that serve the interests of a now privileged social set using hyper modern tools of political repression. They have gone back to secret police, centralized power, and both a nervous and reactionary class of immensely patronized wealthy.

The People?

Who cares?

In the feudal states, The People will have their patriotism and religion, just like in the olden days . . . .


Reference: The Power of Money

Several of the following news reports appear to feed from the same source but with each their own flavor.  No matter.  The point made here is that Russia’s easiest money has been hit hard by time: capital flight; reduced oil revenues; sanctions –> depleted ready cash.  Other wealth rides in banks, luxury assets, and markets, but for both western conflict analysts and Russian citizens outside of the “systema”, the money appears to be running out and domestic hardship appears already in the numbers.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/12/19/how-to-win-the-new-cold-war-without-firing-a-shot/#c8037fd7967e | http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/16/news/economy/russia-cash-reserves-depleted/ | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-money-reserve-fund-2017-assets-oil-prices-recession-sanctions-a7313236.html | http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/economics/28-12-2016/136533-russia_reserve_fund-0/ | https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/russia-could-run-out-of-cash-reserves-in-2017/ar-BBwhUe9

Here’s an excerpt from observations published over the winter:

According to the Russian Finance Ministry, only 10 of Russia’s 85 official regions — most of them commodity producers and metropolitan areas with substantial tax bases — are economically or financially stable, down by half since 2015. Of the country’s remaining regions, 30 manage to scrape by because direct federal subsidies make up at least 33% of their revenues. Half of the $3.5 billion in subsidies that the Kremlin disburses each year goes to just 10 of those regions: Dagestan, Chechnya, Yakutia, Kamchatka, Crimea, Altai, Tuva, Buryatia, Stavropol and Bashkortostan. That leaves more than half of Russia’s regions struggling to fulfill their social obligations and meet the federal government’s demands for funding.

Seventy of Russia’s regions send 63% of the income they generate to the federal budget, keeping only the remaining 37%. The federal government, meanwhile, returns at most 20% of the money by way of subsidies and intergovernmental transfers.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/russia-is-a-mess-the-poverty-rate-is-soaring-and-only-10-of-85-regions-are-financially-stable-2017-01-31

Related World Bank data, albeit covering Russia’s expanded impoverishment only through 2015: http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/RUS

Reference: The Russian “Mafia State”

As the fabulously wealthy – such as Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich – buy ever bigger yachts and build ever bigger mansions, the average Russian is becoming ever poorer.

Many ordinary men and women live in desperate conditions and last year a staggering 19.2 million people – or 13.4% of the population – were officially living in poverty .

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/inside-vladimir-putins-new-russia-9976578 – 3/6/2017


Belarus, Chechnya and Russia are virtual “mafia states” and Ukraine is going to be one. For each of those countries, one cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and organized crime groups. Economic influence, sooner or later always reaches political power. a key factor in a government’s ability to combat OC depends on the extent to which the country’s best attorneys and law firms represent the mafia.

The vory v zakone do not engage in racketeering and murder, preferring to distance themselves from this activity and focus on crimes that are further up in the hierarchy, such as corruption of high-level ministers. The level of power that vory v zakone operate at is indicated by their level of interaction with these public servants, because cabinet-level officials do not spend time with unimportant people and cannot be tempted by those who do not have something important to offer.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/russian-organized-crime.htm – 2/18/2017 by David Cay Johnston

Also:

http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_security_concerns_russian_mafia_back_on_agenda7083 – 7/25/2016 Republished in Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/putin-welcomes-return-russian-mafia-484083 

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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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