Every war has a war in the shadows. This one involves #Putin#TrumpPutin#MalignantNarcissism and related circles of associates and investors as well as deep corruption and compromise. Good leaders–grounded and strong in their ethics, integrity, knowledge, and outlook plus experiences and skills–would not do as #TrumpPutin do in relation to their dishonesty, ruthlessness, and violence.
Moscow’s in . . . and we’re (we #Americans) are getting screwed. Putin has the power of a real “deep state”, specifically #SovietPostSoviet criminal #KGB / #FSB, and #RussianPower itself operates the state as a criminal enterprise–that’s how #Yanukovych got booted out of #Ukraine! In the #USA, we have gotten for a Presidential candidate a dumb narcissistic jerk. I believe he’s a traitor — #TrumpFakeElectorsAndBallots — who serves #Putin. He wants to replace our #ModernAmericanSecularDemocraticRepublic with his own system of private patronage. Add the look-up, “Trump, Money Laundering, Russia.”
😦
None with power, so far, appear to be able to say “No” to either #Putin or #Trump, neither of whom have normal boundaries or limits in the governing of their own behavior.
Flying rockets into playgrounds ain’t normal; baldly lying to #Americans, especially those who appear to trust you most, ain’t normal either.
Suggestions?
Lately, I’ve been noting, #WeAreAmerican–not an organization, a fact of life, #Democrats and #Republicans, all #AmericanCitizens–and I am certain the good and noble possessed of integrity are tired of #TrumpPutin, would that their “investors” would tired of them as well as all would seem to represent bad business and irremediable political evil.
I telegraph online impression via schematics like “mouth –> ear –> mind –> heart system” to get a much larger constellation in thought down to something almost memorable.
🙂
Nonetheless, reduction goes only so far: “overviewing” picks up some of the slack, which is often what happens here, and then, well, one must turn off the computer in favor of lengthier reading, which lately for me has been Pacepa & Rychlak’s Disinformation, an account of KGB’s accomplishments in the black arts accompanying libel, misdirection, misguidance, slander, and — I say this with “malignant narcissism” in mind — theatrical production.
Writing for The Guardian, Simon Tisdale recently commented on Putin and “The New Cold War” (11/19/2014) — “Last weekend’s G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, showed just how raw nerves have become – over Ukraine and, more broadly, over what the west has come to see as a pattern of expansionist, confrontational and often illegal behaviour by the Putin regime . . . ” — but perhaps not (yet) as aggression on two fronts.
In fact, my sources suggest that PFLP representatives met with Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian President’s Special Representative for the Middle East and Deputy Foreign Minister, earlier in November (possibly Sunday, November 2, 2014) and discussed, among other things, S300 missile shipments placed on hold in 2013.
“I suggested to Foreign Minister Lavrov that we intensify intelligence cooperation with respect to ISIL and other counter-terrorism challenges of the region and we agreed to do so,” Kerry said just after the meeting, using an alternative name for IS jihadists.
As Sarajevo would ultimately like to join NATO and the European Union, they understand that every few years the Americans and the EU will put pressure on them to reduce their ties to Iran, particularly to its intelligence services. A sort of Balkan kabuki theater inevitably follows, with promises by the SDA to crack down hard, this time. A few Iranian “diplomats” are discreetly asked to leave the country, some of the more overt Iranian intelligence fronts in Bosnia shut their doors, usually only temporarily, and the Americans and Europeans are bought off for a couple years. And the Iranians remain.
It is believed that MOIS cooperates with other intelligence agencies. One of these agencies is the Russian SVR, the KGB’s replacement. Despite the two agencies’ dissimilar doctrines and the complicated relationship between Iran and Russia in the past, they managed to cooperate in the 1990s, based not only on their intention of limiting U.S. political clout in Central Asia but also on their mutual efforts to stifle prospective ethnic turbulence. The SVR trained not only hundreds of Iranian agents but also numerous Russian agents inside Iran to equip Iranian intelligence with signals equipment in their headquarters compound. It is unclear whether this relationship is ongoing and whether the two intelligence agencies continue to cooperate.
From page 41 of the above cited piece: “Bin Laden’s phone records, obtained by U.S. investigators working on the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, show that 10 percent of phone calls made by Bin Laden and his lieutenants were to Iran.”
Khamenei, South America
The Mexican law student was surprised by how easy it was to get into Iran two years ago. By merely asking questions about Islam at a party, he managed to pique the interest of Iran’s top diplomat in Mexico. Months later, he had a plane ticket and a scholarship to a mysterious school in Iran as a guest of the Islamic Republic.
Next came the start of classes and a second surprise: There were dozens of others just like him.
While Iranian South American “feed and seed” programs may be continuing, the gist of a 2014 Congressional Research Service summary (by Mark P. Sullivan and June S. Beittel) suggests Khamenei’s regime may not be making as much progress as it would like. Rather than excerpt, I’ll leave it to the reader to look-see on this document: Latin America: Terrorism Issues. August 2014.
Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J. Disinformation. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.
Soldatov, Andrei and Irena Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. New York: Public Affairs, 2010.
The delegation stressed that Syria has been exposed to a U.S.-western-Zionist conspiracy, which is backed by some regimes in the region with the aim of liquidating the Palestinian issue since Syria is the main supporter of the cause.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán openly admires the ‘illiberal’ models of Russia and China. Critics say his Fidesz party is using Putin-like tactics to cut the funding of newspapers and NGOs that conflict with the Orbán government.
Putin is clearly the dominant force in the relationship. Orban may be currently the master of all he surveys within his own borders but externally, he looks increasing like the leader of a client state that is gently but perceptively gravitating towards Moscow’s sphere of influence. Which in itself is a remarkable state of affairs considering the residual concerns over the 1956 invasion by the Soviet Union.
The radicals, of course, are most vocal. Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, the U.K.’s anti-immigrant, anti-EU party, has expressed his admiration for Putin “as an operator, not a human being.” Farage has demanded that the West stop opposing Russian actions in Ukraine and ally itself with Putin in the fight against Islamic extremism. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s ultranationalist Front National, is another Putin admirer. And Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, has praised the Russian leader as a “pure democrat.”
I want to confess that I did something foolish once when I was young. Back in 1993, I abandoned my university studies in California and returned to Moscow. European nations had signed the Maastricht Treaty and I dreamed that Russia would join the European Union.
While the U.S. and Russia have pledged to share intelligence on the group, Russia—one of the main international backers of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government—is not a member of the U.S.-led “broad coalition” against ISIS announced last month. As one Russian foreign ministry official recently put it, “We do not expect any invitations and we are not going to buy entry tickets.”
Like others of his generation, he is part of a cadre of men who came of age in a massive, multinational, nuclear-armed superstate in the early 1970s. The faceless cogs who made this system work were unremarkable people like Putin, trained in ideology and imbued with the false faith that the USSR’s greatest days were yet to come.
In their later years, these men have experienced the normal anxieties and embarrassments of middle age. (In Putin’s case, she’s a gymnast young enough to be his daughter.) But middle age for the sovoks also brought many to realize they spent their lives serving a state based on lies and held together almost entirely by force.
So spend a moment imagining the better time for which these men yearn.
THE outcome of the “referendum” in Crimea was never in doubt. With Russian troops occupying the peninsula and anyone who does not want to join Russia staying away from the bogus procedure, the 97% vote in favour of becoming part of Russia is not a surprise.
The government in Kiev has accused Moscow of deliberately stirring up tensions in the east by bringing in professional activists and provocateurs from across the border. In a series of ominous statements, Russia’s foreign ministry has said it may be forced to act to “protect” ethnic Russians – an expression that appears to provide a rationale for future military incursions.
The Kremlin describes last month’s uprising in next-door Ukraine as an illegitimate fascist coup. It says dark rightwing forces have taken over the government, forcing Moscow to “protect” Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority . . . With Ukraine on the brink of invasion and division, most people in Kiev blame the country’s troubles on the former president. “This is Yanukovych’s fault,” Zhenia, a pensioner, said, surveying the battleground in Institutska Street, where many were gunned down. She was crying.
Links between Yanukovych, the Party of Regions and crime have been long known to policymakers as seen in U.S. cables from Kiev available through WikiLeaks.
At least 18 Party of Regions deputies have criminal ties, according to Hennadiy Moskal, deputy head of Parliament’s Committee on Organized Crime and Corruption.
When one wants something one shouldn’t have, when one wishes to hide something with which one doesn’t wish to be associated, one may resort to lying but not always, much less inevitably, erase the trail.
In fact, the trail follows in the kept anger of those wronged by criminal behavior, in the bent verdicts and forged documents attending sophisticated theft, or, in Yanukovych’s case, which journal keeping may be likened to the records of plunder and murder maintained by benumbed Nazi officials, the diary of bribes and of breathtaking sums acquired and spent across multiple estates and headier symbols of wealth.
A liberal socialist myself, somewhat, I’d nonetheless offer the problem of whether men shouldn’t be wealthy, filthy rich, swimming in moolah — I think private wealth is great but legally obtained, earned or inherited for a generation or two.
The truth is simple: I’d rather the rich man were the audited owner of a Fortune 500 company than a dumb mafia boss or vicious — and equally vacuous — pirate.
Stalin engineered the famine to rid himself of a stubborn enemy. Ukrainians had fought for their independence during the Russian Revolution, and for a short time, they had beaten back the Reds. What’s more, Ukraine, being the “bread basket of Europe,” had a rich and ancient culture of farmers, who wanted to hold on to their language, their land and their identity. As a civilization, Ukraine is a thousand years older than Moscow. For Stalin, as for Putin today, this would be a very hard back to break.
The combination of military adventurism and domestic crackdown is not a well-advised recipe for stabilizing the regime. This Saturday’s planned march in downtown Moscow against the war on Ukraine will now be joined by people outraged at the imposition of censorship. Putin’s Kremlin, not opposition leaders, remains the best recruiter for the Russian protest movement.
Viktor Yanukovich, whose overthrow last month after protests triggered the gravest crisis in Europe since the Cold War, insisted from his refuge in Russia that he was still Ukraine’s legitimate president and commander of its armed forces.
“I want to remind you that I am not only still the legitimate president of Ukraine but also the supreme commander of the army and I haven’t stopped my duties as president early – I am still alive.”
He took no questions from the press after his speech.
Cash: $12 million. Decoration of a dining hall and tea room: $2.3 million. Statue of a wild boar: $115,000. “A bribe”: $4,000.
These are some of the expenses detailed in financial documents found in President Viktor Yanukovych’s abandoned residence, which was occupied by protesters after the leader fled the capital.
Borrowing from the Putin-Assad-Khamenei show in the middle east, I would further suggest Yanukovych has no tears, no real ones, for any of dead, injured, and maimed of Euromaidan. He lost the confidence of his people; he lost the streets; he lost his properties. Now he’ll pout and throw a tantrum, if he can, with the help of Uncle Vlad.
Perhaps the less they are on the inside, the larger despots wish to look on the outside.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned Putin the other day and found him out of touch with reality. “In another world,” she said. He lives, like the Ottoman sultan of old, in a Topkapi Palace of his own creation.
I would not begrudge the wealthy their compounds, but how they get them or, if having gotten lucky — right place, right time, right man — like Khodorkovsky, how they manage the windfall might matter some to the surrounding public.
Khodorkovsky, of course, queried Putin directly over corruption, and the rest is history + pardon before Sochi + life in voluntary exile.
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Speaking of Khodorkovsky, it appears he’s back in politics!
Among those best of breed in state-based thieving, Viktor Yanukovych, (former?) owner of the above-toured “tea house” — barely earns a ribbon, but he knows himself well enough to have skedaddled back to the shelter from whence he came.
I doubt Yanukovych will get his country back. Regarding his private properties, I’ve no idea whether any or all may be considered seized by the revolution or held for legal private reoccupation.
To Putin’s credit, ownership has been long denied and press played to the effect that some unknown other Russian oligarch owns the place.
Uh huh.
* * *
As representatives of the Ukrainian Navy command in Sevastopol, nobody swore self-proclaimed “government of Crimea” and left the service. In addition, there were no cases dizertirstva Ukrainian military in Crimea, except the fact of treason former commander of the Ukrainian Navy Denis Berezovsky, writes TSN .
In the middle east’s “Arab Spring”, revolutions have gone the way of the decisions made by senior military in the states involved. Mubarak’s army, for example, failed to intercede on behalf of his attempt to establish a family dynasty; however, having given the Muslim Brotherhood it’s chance to lead Egypt to glory, it chose to support the Egyptian People in ejecting Morsi’s party and dealing back to itself the shepherding of the state back to modernity and renewed hopes for a more earnest and moderate and helpful democracy.
Ukraine’s military would seem know the state it represents.
According to the results of a 2010 opinion poll, 74% of Russians did not fully trust the official version of events.
A group of victims and their relatives sued the Russian government, demanding an open investigation into the case and declassification of the relevant information. In January 2003 the Tverskoy court in Moscow rejected the claims.
Sorry about the last clip. I had brief cause to check back on this post and found it totally gone — but other clips remain available (update: 3/3/2014).
The CNN footage: great (and in English). “The luxury never seemed to end,” says Nick Paton Walsh.
What kind of a world has Putin in mind that laces together so much wealth beneath private hands sustained on state treasuries and armies?
“Putin-Assad-Khamenei” has become a trope on this blog.
“Putin-Yanukovych” may have too, but he is gone and the people of the Ukraine have, probably, a new museum and park — and, also possibly, a new brand of vodka with a pirate’s cachet.
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