[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 20 January 2018 10:10.
The Russian Federation is still crying: “Nobody likes traitors. Apparently, Kurds will stay alone with Turkish armed forces. Neither Damascus nor Moscow will provide any assistance to them. And only Kurdish leaders are responsible for that” - Alexandr Dugin.
It is a good sign that they are, along with their People’s Protection Unit (YPJ), putting imperialist Turkey, US, Russia and Israel in a bind.
Having their origin in separation from the Jewy treachery of Soviet Russia, its imperialism, its Muslim Turkish cohorts, in favor of left nationalism in order to wrest national independence for the Kurds, it would be ideal if this Asian backed left nationalism could sheer off the eastern half of Turkey and, along with fellow ethnonationalists from the west, put the squeeze on those rats. The imperial Russian Federation is still crying that the Kurds have rejected them. In causing consternation for the JewSA, Russovitz and Israel’s Turkish Friends, they are causing ethnonational consternation for imperial Israel as well.
Now, the Kurds have different facets and we are talking favorably about the ideal form and purpose of their left nationalism, not any assistance or alignment that some of them may have provided for radical Islam - on the contrary, that is just another form of imperialism.
Jerusalem Post, “Turkish and Syrian threats in Afrin put U.S., Russia in a bind, 19 January 2018:
What does it all mean for Israel?
People hold flags of People’s Protection Unit (YPJ) as they walk during a protest against Turkish attacks on Afrin, in Hasaka, Syria, January 18, 2018. . (photo credit: RODI SAID / REUTERS)
On Friday, Turkey increased its shelling of the Kurdish-held Afrin enclave in northern Syria. According to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) up to 70 artillery shells were fired during the night.
While Turkey has threatened to invade the Kurdish area, which it says is being controlled by terrorists aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party, Syria has threatened to shoot down Turkish warplanes in case of any attack on Syria’s territory. The war of words in northern Syria puts the US and Russia in a bind because the US is allied with the Kurds in eastern Syria while Russia has been a close ally of the Syrian regime.
Since mid-January, there have been rumors and threats of a Turkish invasion of Afrin. The area has been controlled by the YPG since the early years of the Syrian civil war. In eastern Syria, the YPG and its affiliated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been successful at defeating Islamic State. However, in northern Syria, the Kurds have only come to control the thinly populated mountainous area of Afrin.
The autonomous canton is home to around one million people. The area is surrounded by Turkey on two sides and in Syria it borders areas controlled by Syrian rebel groups. The Kurds in this area have remained mostly outside the Syrian conflict because the Syrian rebel groups represent a buffer from most of the heavy fighting.
However, the Kurds here also have a complex relationship with the Syrian regime. They have not opposed Russian military personnel, for instance, who have been spotted in the Afrin area, and the YPG maintains amicable contact with the Russians, who are the Syrian regime’s closet ally.
Since the fall of 2016, when Turkey began to intervene in Syria, the YPG has been targeted by the Turks and their Syrian rebel allies. When Turkey and those allies moved into the area between Jarabulus and Kilis in 2016, it was widely seen as an offensive not only against ISIS, but also to make sure the Kurdish forces did not get any closer to the Turkish border to link up Afrin with the areas they control in eastern Syria.
In March 2017, the US, which has been working closely with the SDF and YPG against ISIS, sent vehicles to Manbij to ward off any Turkish attack on its Kurdish partners. This was an important symbol because it showed the US had drawn a clear line around its partner forces and would warn off any attack. The US shot down a Syrian plane in June 2017 that was operating close to the SDF as well.
However, US-led coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon put out a statement on January 16 saying it is not operating in Afrin and the Pentagon told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that it was not involved with the YPG in Afrin. “We don’t consider them as part of our defeat ISIS operations,” a Pentagon spokesman said. This is a clear message to Turkey that the US would not be involved in any sort of operations if they happened in Afrin.
However, the US has indicated the US will be remaining in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reiterated this pledge Wednesday. The US has often urged Turkey to keep its focus on fighting ISIS, rather than mission creep that would lead to conflict with the Kurds. Any conflict with the Kurds would inevitably complicate the US mission in eastern Syria, because it would cause the Kurds in the east to want to aid their comrades in Afrin.
Turkey has posited that any operation into Afrin would be with rebel groups and that the operation is carried out “for them,” and Turkey is “helping our brothers,” according to statements from the Turkish Presidency. However, this poses problems because the Syrian rebels that Turkey wants to work with against Afrin are busy fighting the Syrian regime in Idlib, where they are hardpressed, suffering civilian and military loses.
Nevertheless Turkey’s defense minister Nurettin Canikli vowed on January 19 that Ankara would carry out the operation, according to Turkish media. “The threat level against Turkey is increasing by the day. This operation will be carried out and we will combat terrorism.” At the same time, the Syrian regime warns that any incursion could bring Syrian air defense into the picture. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Daisal Mekdad warned Friday that any attack on Afrin would be an act of “aggression” against Syria.
According to Al-Jazeera, Russia has moved military observers in Afrin “away” from the area, closer to Syrian regime-held territory. Any attack would therefore not harm the Russians who have become a key arbiter of issues in Syria. Russia has hosted the Astana and Sochi talks about the future of Syria, meeting with Turkey, Iran and Syria’s governments. In Afrin, Russia is the key player because it has relations with all sides and it has warmed relations with Turkey over the last six months.
However, Russia has remained mum on any potential Turkish operation. It must balance its interests in cultivating relations with Syria, with its support of Damascus and its relations with the Kurds. Wishing to see itself as the broker of peace, Russia would hope that there is not a major Turkish incursion. That means any Turkish action might be limited, as it has been before, and the war of words is intended more to test the waters with the US, Russia and Syria, than lead to a major attack jeopardizing the lives of thousands.
For Israel, what does this mean? A similar scenario will eventually play out near the Golan, without Turkey but with the regime seeking to test the US, Jordan and Israel’s resolve with Russia in the background. Afrin therefore matters greatly to the region and what transpires there will tell us about the future of Syria.
While many of us may applaud the commendable outpouring of American public outage over President Trump’s supremacist “shithole” comment, we should not forget that those same Americans have maintained almost seven decades of unconscionable silence over far worse supramacist comments by Israeli leaders who take pride in statements that characterise and dehumanise Palestinians as never having existed; as having to be killed unless they were resigned to live as slaves; as being beasts walking on two legs; as being like crocodiles who when given more meat, wanted even more; as a people whose physical homes should be obliterated to prevent more snakes being raised in them; and as deserving to be bombed back to the Middle ages.
Furthermore, those currently outraged Americans have not only remained silent over rampant supramacism in Apartheid Israel but they have gone a stage further by wholeheartedly supporting and financing Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people: and they have done all this despite the U.S. Department of State’s alleged respect for democracy and human rights.
“Democracy and respect for human rights have long been central components of U.S. foreign policy. Supporting democracy not only promotes such fundamental American values as religious freedom and worker rights, but also helps create a more secure, stable, and prosperous global arena in which the United States can advance its national interests. In addition, democracy is the one national interest that helps to secure all the others. Democratically governed nations are more likely to secure the peace, deter aggression, expand open markets, promote economic development, protect American citizens, combat international terrorism and crime, uphold human and worker rights, avoid humanitarian crises and refugee flows, improve the global environment, and protect human health.”
“The protection of fundamental human rights was a foundation stone in the establishment of the United States over 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States understands that the existence of human rights helps secure the peace, deter aggression, promote the rule of law, combat crime and corruption, strengthen democracies, and prevent humanitarian crises.”
Ultimately, irrespective of how many American lawmakers, TV anchors, and pundits condemn the supremacist comments of their incumbent and ignorant President, the inescapable fact remains that not only did 62,980,160 Americans vote for him, but also the reality that most Americans are nothing but lamentable cowards and hypocrites when it comes to criticising Israel’s blatant and barbaric disregard for the human rights of the indigenous Palestinians. Thanks to their unconditional support for Israel, the American people have lost their moral compass, abandoned the true principles of democracy, and shattered the American Dream.
There are couple of important matters to note in regard to this article. One being that “rights” should not only regard individuals as being in need of protection; but also group rights as the designation of species potentially under threat as a pattern from patterns of aggressors; or even inadvertent destruction from other groups and individuals.
With regard to Trump’s “shit hole country” remarks, it is interesting to note in the context of this article that El Salvador, one of the countries that he referred to as a shit-hole, has apparently taken a large number of Palestinian refugees - there are approximately 100,000 Salvadorans with Palestinian ancestry; and with that, it is a country more wise than many to the hypocrisy of Israel. This may in part explain why it is not highly regarded by Trump and his ZOG. Why, in fact, in terms of deportation schedule, it is ranked even less urgent a matter than Haiti - the Haitians of which slaughtered entire French peoples, men, women and children the moment they disembarked from ship upon arrival in Haiti; despite their having come there upon fervent assurances that there would be no violence against them and pleas for help to rebuild the country after the Mulatto supremacist revolution had already slaughtered the prior French colonists and troops; and where after the Mulatto supremacists were, in turn, slaughtered by the blacks proper. These blacks are forbears of present day Haiti. Some of us wouldn’t mind having, and could have done a great deal better with, the kind of aid money that has been sunk into that s*** hole.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 11 January 2018 22:25.
Israel is facing a possible international criminal court war-crimes probe over its 2014 assault on Gaza, which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including over 500 children.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 04 January 2018 06:25.
It was quite picky on its target. It went through several checks and when those checks failed, it would not implement the attack. It was obviously probing for a very specific target…you have to put this in context - this was the most sophisticated piece of malware that we have ever seen. So, its kind of strange that someone makes this huge effort to hit one specific target…well, that must be quite a significant target:
Whoever was behind Stuxnet hasn’t admitted they were behind it.
Even after the cyberweapon had penetrated computers all over the world, no one was willing to admit that it was loose, or talk about the dangers that it posed.
Stuxnet first surfaced with a Belarusian security company servicing Iran.
“Had you ever seen anything quite so sophisticated before?”
“Not with this kind of ‘zero-day’ capacity…......... it was the first time in my practice.”
... a third kind of hactivist is sponsored by state governments…
It went beyond our worst fears… our worst nightmares ..and this continued the more we analyzed….
The first time we opened up Stuxnet there was just bad things everywhere.
Just to give you some context, we can go through and understand every line of code for the average threat in minutes… and here we are one month into this threat and we are just beginning to discover what we call its payload, or its whole purpose…
When looking at the Stuxnet code, its twenty times the size of the average piece of code but contains almost no bugs inside of it, which is extremely rare, code always has bugs inside of it. It’s dense and everything does something or does something right in order to conduct its attack.
One of the things that surprised us was that Stuxnet utilized what is called a zero day exploit.
...its a piece of code allows it to spread without you having to do anything…
A zero day is an exploit which nobody knows about except for the attacker; so there’s no protection against it, there’s been no patch released.
There’s been zero days protection against it. That’s what attackers value because they know 100 percent that if they have this zero day that they can get in whenever they want
They’re actually very valuable - you can sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Then we became worried because immediately we discovered we had more zero days, and again, these zero days are extremely rare.
Inside Stuxnet we had four zero days, and for the entire rest of the year we only saw twelve zero days used.
It blows everything else out of the water ..we’ve never seen this before and never seen it since, either.
Seeing one in a malware you could understand because the malware offers a means to make money, they’re stealing people’s credit cards so its worth their while to use it, but seeing four zero days…could be worth half a million dollars right there in one piece of malware ..this is not your ordinary criminal gang doing this, this is someone bigger.
It’s definitely not traditional crime. Not hacktivists.
It was evident early on, just given the sophistication of this malware that there must have been a nation state involved - at least one nation state involved in the development.
However, there were “breadcrumbs” left…they had to have some human assets steal certificates, which they did, traceable from two companies in close proximity in a business park in Taiwan.
Eventually we were able to see that Iran was the number one infected country in the world.
That immediately raised our eyebrows.
...we’d never seen a threat before where it was predominantly in Iran.
So we began to follow what was going on in the geopolitical world, what was happening in the general news.
At that time there were actually multiple explosions of pipelines going in and out of Iran.
And we noticed that there had been assassinations of nuclear scientists
More breadcrumbs showed that Stuxnet was targeting Siemans progammable logic controllers.
The PLC is like a very small computer attached to physical equipment like pumps, like valves, like motors.
So, this little box is running a digital program and the actions of this program turns that motor on, off, or sets the specific speed.
They control things like power plants, power grids… things in factories… in critical infrastructure ...critical infrastructure is everywhere around us ...transportation, telecommunication, financial services, health care..
So the payload of Stuxnet was designed to attack some very important part of our world.
The payload was going to be very important..
We knew that Stuxnet could have very dire consequences.
Stuxnet caused the centrifuges (of Iranian nuclear reactors) to spin much faster (than programmed for, to the point where they would explode).
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 02 January 2018 07:28.
A kiss and a medal for Jack Posobiec
Mission
Per JP 1-02, Information Operations is “the integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own.”
The question is: Is their mission virtually one and the same as Israel’s at this point? .... The crew of the USS Liberty might have hoped not.
Center for International Maritime Security, Current Operations, Cyber War
CIMSEC, “Navy Information Warfare — What is it?”, 13 Sept 2016:
By Richard Mosier
U.S. Navy Information Dominance Warfare Officer Breast Insignia
United States Navy Information Dominance Warfare Officer warfare pin breast insignia is two-and-three-quarter inches by one-and-one-eighth inches, gold matte metal pin showing a background of ocean waves, a crossed Naval officer’s sword and lightning bolt, a fouled anchor, and a globe.
Defining a warfare area’s mission and function is the foundation for all activities required to conduct mission area analysis to determine requirements, develop doctrine and tactics, and structure, train, and equip the fleet to accomplish the mission.
Within the U.S. Navy, the terms Information Warfare (IW), Information Operations (IO), and Information Operations Warfare are widely used but not well defined. Nor are they linked to provide coherent definitions from joint and service perspectives that are essential to successful communication regarding IW’s relationship to other warfare areas and supporting activities. The result is confusion, a lack of progress in structuring, training, and equipping the U.S. Navy to perform this emerging predominant warfare area
The following are examples of how these terms mean different things to different groups:
Reference: Station Hypo, 14 Jul 16, “CWOBC, a Community’s Course“: “The Cryptologic Warfare Officer Basic Course (CWOBC) formerly known as the Information Warfare Basic Course (IWBC) is an entry level course for all officers, regardless of commission source, who are coming into the Cryptologic Warfare Officer (CWO) community. Six weeks in length with an average annual throughput of 154, the course focuses on Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), Electronic Warfare (EW), Cyber Operations, as well as security fundamentals and community history.” Inasmuch as the content of the basic course remained the same, the terms “Information Warfare” and “Cryptologic Warfare” appear to mean the same thing for this group.
50828-N-PU674-005 PENSACOLA, Fla. (Aug. 28, 2015) Officers attending the Information Professional Basic Course at Center for Information Dominance Unit Corry Station listen to Rear Adm. Daniel J. MacDonnell, commander of Information Dominance Corps Reserve Command (IDCRC) and Reserve deputy commander of Navy Information Dominance Forces (NAVIDFOR). Macdonnell spoke with them about career opportunities in the Information Dominance Corps and active and reserve integration.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (Aug. 28, 2015) Officers attending the Information Professional Basic Course at Center for Information Dominance Unit Corry Station listen to Rear Adm. Daniel J. MacDonnell, commander of Information Dominance Corps Reserve Command (IDCRC) and Reserve deputy commander of Navy Information Dominance Forces (NAVIDFOR). Macdonnell spoke with them about career opportunities in the Information Dominance Corps and active and reserve integration.
Reference the BUPERS Information Warfare Community Management web page. It only addresses Information Professionals (1820), Cryptologic Warfare Specialists (1810), Cyber Warfare Engineers (1840), Intelligence Officers (1830), and Oceanography Specialists (1800), implying that together this aggregation of legacy support specialties constitutes Information Warfare. All of these are restricted line designators that by definition exercise command only over organizations that perform these specialties. There are no unrestricted line designators for specializing in and exercising Information Operations Warfare Commander (IWC) functions described in Naval Warfare Publication NWP 3-56 below.
Reference: NAVADMIN 023/16, DTG 021815 Feb 16, Subject: Information Dominance Corps Re-designated Information Warfare Community. The message states Information Warfare’s mission is: “providing sufficient overmatch in command and control, understanding the battlespace and adversaries, and projecting power through and across all domains.” This description of the Information Warfare mission is substantially different from the definition of Information Operations defined by Secretary of Defense, adopted by the JCS, and reflected in Naval Warfare Publications.
The Secretary of Defense defines Information Operations in DOD Directive 3600.1, dated May 2, 2013, as: “The integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own.” This definition was incorporated in Joint Pub 1-02 and Naval Warfare Publications.
Naval Warfare Publication (NWP) 3-13 Information Operations, Feb 2014, defines Information Operations as: “the integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own.” Paragraph 1-3 states: “Evolving joint and Navy doctrine has refined IO as a discrete warfare area, not just a supporting function or enabling capability, and the IE [information environment] as a valuable and contested part of the battlespace.”
160123-N-PU674-018 PENSACOLA, Fla. (Jan. 23, 2016) Information warfare Sailors from the Center for Information Dominance Unit Corry Station mentor high school students during CyberThon, an event designed to develop the future cybersecurity workforce. Hosted by the Blue Angels Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, CyberThon challenged the students to play the role of newly hired information technology professionals tasked with defending their company’s network.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (Jan. 23, 2016) Information warfare Sailors from the Center for Information Dominance Unit Corry Station mentor high school students during CyberThon, an event designed to develop the future cybersecurity workforce. Hosted by the Blue Angels Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, CyberThon challenged the students to play the role of newly hired information technology professionals tasked with defending their company’s network.
Naval Warfare Publication (NWP) 3-56, subject: Composite Warfare Commander, Feb 2010, Paragraph 3.7 identifies twenty-three typical functions assigned to the “Information Operations Warfare Commander (IWC)” that are summarized below:
Planning IO, EW, Military Deception, Operations Security, PSYOP, and Spectrum Usage.
Developing, coordinating, and practicing preplanned responses for counter-surveillance, counter-influence, and counter-targeting in response to changes in the tactical situation.
Recommending the EMCON profile and coordinating with ASWC to manage acoustic emissions in response to changes in the tactical situation.
Controlling ES and EA assets, and coordinating employment of ES and cryptologic sensors.
Conducting computer Network Defense (CND) and COMSEC monitoring.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 01 January 2018 06:43.
Middle East Monitor, “Palestinians discuss development of gas field with Shell”
In February of 2017, The Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) announced that it has been discussing the development of Gaza Marine Gas Field with Shell, Anadolu has reported.
Gaza Marine is about 30km off the coast of the Gaza Strip in the eastern Mediterranean; it is estimated to contain about 28 million cubic metres of gas.
British Gas bought the concession from the Palestinian Authority in 1999 but the development of the project has been on hold due to Israeli obstacles. Preventing the development of the project is part of the internationally-backed Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip. Shell bought the British Gas stake in Gaza Marine recently, and it is now the main developer of the field.
The Director of the PIF, Mohamed Mustafa, told Anadolu that the current discussions with Shell concentrate on accelerating the development of the project. He noted that there had been a study to connect a pipeline from the field to the sole electricity plant in Gaza. “The most important thing, though, is that we get Israel’s permission for this pipeline because it crosses its land,” he explained.
According to Offshore-technology.com, Shell holds a 90 per cent interest in the field. The stake will reduce to 60 per cent if the PIF and Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) decide to exercise their options. PIF and CCC would subsequently hold 30 per cent and 10 per cent interests respectively.
The PIF is a sovereign Palestinian fund with capital of $800 million.
Significant reserves of natural gas were found offshore from the Gaza Strip. As of early 2015, Gaza’s natural gas was still underwater and the same for almost all of the Levantine gas.[1]
History
The Palestinians signed a memorandum of intent on November 8, 1999 with British Gas and a company linked to the Palestinian Authority, the Consolidated Contractors Company, giving them rights to explore the area.[2][3] The discovered natural gas reserve was calculated to have 35 BCM, larger than Israel’s Yam Tethys maritime gas field.[3] It was found in two small gas fields dubbed Gaza Marine 1 and Gaza Marine 2.
In 1999, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak set aside exploration of Gaza’s offshore resources for a future Palestinian state, with no prior consultation with Israel stipulated.[2] According to Michael Schwartz, Barak deployed the Israeli navy in Gaza’s coastal waters to impede the implementation of the terms of the modest contract between the Palestinian Authority and British Gas (BG) to develop Gaza’s Mediterranean gas resources.[1] Israel demanded that the Gaza gas be piped to facilities on its territory, and at a price below the prevailing market level[4] and that Israel also control all the (relatively modest) revenues destined for the Palestinians — to prevent the money from being used to “fund terror.” In Schwartz’s view, with this Israeli action the Oslo Accords were officially doomed, because by declaring Palestinian control over gas revenues unacceptable, the Israeli government committed itself to not accepting even the most limited kind of Palestinian budgetary autonomy, let alone full sovereignty. In Schwartz’s view, since no Palestinian government or organization would agree to this, a future filled with armed conflict was assured.[1]
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 28 December 2017 05:38.
Correction: I spoke too soon about Timothy Snyder being an anti-nationalist, and I did that in light of his estimation that Britain and France were not really nations while they were empires, that their “nationhoods” were creations of post hoc political convenience. Nevertheless, to say that he is against nationalism would not be correct, since in fact he sees the weak state and the destruction of the state as that which abets genocide.
Snyder’s characterology of how Putin’s and Trump’s positions have emerged in fairly conjoint construction is uncanny…
As such he does make of himself a useful idiot in that he exposes one side of the YKW equation - the specific origin and characters of their right wing cohorts, Putin and Trump.
Youtube, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It: Masha Gessen Talks Autocracy with Timothy Snyder”, 12 July 2017:
As his fellow Trump/Putin critic, (((Masha Gessen))) would suggest, we would miss the truth of these characters, more like mafia dons than statesmen, if we were to maintain a policy of sheer fact checking. Because essentially, they don’t care. They both have a cynical world view and it is about power - logical consistency is for the naive. By contrast to that, one must have the courage and confidence to tell the true story -
Youtube, “Chatham House Primer: Modern Authoritarianism”, 30 Oct 2017:
This guy, (Ivan) Ilyin, I think was a very interesting philosopher; he is kind of the grandfather of the current Russian “fascism.” Current Russian “fascists” like Alexander Dugin are a little jealous of him and say that he just serves a technical function in the Kremlin and he’s not that interesting. I think he’s interesting. One of his ideas is that for Russia to have a leader, that person has to be free of history, which is a high demand.
He (Ilyin) was a right-wing Hegelian ...his whole idea was that god created the world and that was a mistake. It’s an interesting view, those of you who know anything about Orthodox theology know that there are references… god created the world, it was a mistake, the factuality of the world is itself sinful, history is itself sinful, contingency, to use the technical term, contingency is sinful, all these facts and passions we have, they’re inherently sinful.
So, in order for Russia to be rescued it has to be rescued by someone who is somehow clean of history.
It has to be a redeemer who comes from beyond history.
What I find so interesting is that this actually happened in a way.
The place that is not history is fiction.
When Mr. Putin came to power, Surkov and the others in the Kremlin literally had a kind of game and then a public opinion poll where they tried to figure out which Russian fictional character would be most attractive to Russians. They came up with this character (Max Otto von) Stierlitz, who was a double agent and a person in a novel, and in a film, in the 70’s, who was a Russian spy who spoke German. That’s why they chose Mr. Putin. So, he literally .. this true people! This is the world we live in. So he literally came from fiction.
Then you connect Mr. Putin to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump is Not a successful real estate developer! That never happened. Mr. Trump bankrupted six companies. He owed billions of dollars to, I think, seventy banks. Until, low and behold, some nice Russians came and said, ‘hey, why don’t you just put your name on some buildings and we’ll give you money for that, and we will build the buildings - which then became his business plan. Which is a great (((business plan))) if you can get it.
The Miss Universe pageant. How did he run (((the Miss Universe pageant)))? The Russians gave him twenty million dollars and he showed up. Which is a great business plan if you can do it.
So, a fictional Russian character comes to power and then creates a fictional American character called Mr. Trump. This happened!
Once the Russians had bailed him out, he then appeared on American television, on celebrity apprentice, playing a successful real estate developer - which he never was.
But as a character, he was great, he could say, “you’re fired!” in a really convincing way.
So, one fictional character then creates another fictional character. And that fictional character also comes to power. ..with the help of all kinds of fictional devices, mostly delivered through the internet. So there really is an interesting problem of (((genre))) going on in our life.
India Today reports on the forced conversion to Islam of Rakhine Hindus in the Bangladesh refugee camps and the discovery of Hindu mass graves in Rakhine by the Myanmar security services. This report dates from September and has gone unnoticed in the West. I found it as the latest entry on the Facebook account of Shwe Eain Si, so the girl obviously hasn’t given up the fight. Good for her.