Monday, March 30, 2015

A Leviathan's part, key element (efficient cause) of the planned regime change in Russia, continues to emerge into plain view

If the West relies in Syria on al Qaeda/ISIS badly hidden behind the fiction of "moderate rebels," in Ukraine and also in Russia, the West relies on fascism (reloaded and reset) barely hidden under a liberal lipstick. That this is a key piece in the game plan is now much scribbled already on the walls (open sources) by the strategists, imperial thinking "tanks" and then passed on as something ostensibly reasonable and even normal by the media.

Mark Galeotti, a professor at NYU's Center For Global Affairs, serves advice to West-backed opposition in Russia (or "how Putin could lose power" = the article's title. The answer is: do something similar to what was done in Ukraine: use and activate "street nationalism" and "racist attitudes" (Galeotti's obvious placeholders for fascism, for which the West accuses the Russian government, but which Galeotti is now identifying with the way in which to topple the existing system). According to Galeotti 1) the opposition needs to reach out of Moscow's pro-Western middle class and government bureaucrats and create "a wider base"; 2)  in Galeotti's words: "Navalny certainly seems to have demonstrated racist attitudes in the past. And he could play the 'we Russians are being bled and exploited by the people from North Caucasus, by the people from Central Asia' card. That plays to a depressingly powerful strand of common Russian public opinion, and it's something against which Putin has surprisingly little defense. That could conceivably build a wider public constituency quite quickly if Navalny is willing to play that card."

Use and activation of fascism by the West-backed liberal opposition is thus supposed both to topple the government and to effect a breakup of Russia (exploding the Caucasus and Central Asia by means of this deliberate racism and "street nationalism") .

The reporter then asks whether this embrace of badly disguised fascism would not push away the supposed "the young [pro-Western, liberal] urban elite." Galeotti believes that this "elite" would be fine with this shift (as it was in Ukraine) for, among other things, Galeotti does trust that they are not that bright after all:

Reporter: "Would that cost Navalny his relationship with the young urban elite?"

Galeotti: "I think probably not. I don't get the sense that they are necessarily incredibly enlightened in their opinions. Let's face it: he's the only game in town. ... Do you hope that some change, even if it's not ideal, is better than no change at all? I think for many the answer is yes."

If decoded, Galeotti sanguinely asserts that change by means of fascism in Russia is "better than no change at all." As I commented earlier today, Russia Insider, representing a would-be pro-Russian and pro-Putin liberal wing, ran an article today by Gernier who argued that someone or ideas of someone like Ivan Ilyin, who was occasionally praised by Putin in the past and who (Ilyin) praised the (anti-communist) greatness of Nazism (see my blog on the subject), could actually offer a chance for Russia's new partnership with the West. The article did acknowledge at the end that Gernier also worked for the Pentagon and the State Department.

On that subject, here is a summary of Gernier's article as published by Russia Insider with a glowing recommendation from Alexander Mercouris:

A. Mercouris: "We publish [Grenier's piece on VP's thinkers] for it's tour de force packed with exceptional insights"
Russia Insider's defense of Putin's "favorite thinkers" was authored by Paul Grenier who worked for the Pentagon,State Department,World Bank
Russia Insider: Thinkers like Ivan Ilyin favored by Putin offer the West "a chance to form a partnership with a Russia .. some ways forward"
Russia Insider: Thinkers like Ivan Ilyin favored by Putin offer the West "an opportunity, a chance to form a partnership with a Russia"
Russia Insider: "[Ivan] Il’in quite plainly admired the United States"
Russia Insider: "Il’in is a major influence on Putin’s brand of “liberal conservatism”
Russia Insider: Il’in's view "of the Soviet man that the future Russia would inherit ... lying, thinking in a slavish manner and aping"
Russia Insider:Putin likes to quote Il’in’s Our Tasks,the "overriding theme is the need to put an end to Soviet rule"
Russia Insider: "Berdyaev mostly approves of liberalism [as] something aristocratic or at any rate not revolutionary"
Russia Insider: "Putin urged his governors [to] read [Berdyaev] ... [his] condemnation of everything the Soviet Union’s founders stood for."
As tweeted by me, with FB "automatically" stopping most of my automatically set reposts from twitter on this subject

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/5/7482441/how-putin-lose-power

Thursday, March 19, 2015

On Putin's "difficulties which we we are creating for ourselves" (was this with a reference to the mythical "clever plan"?)

In his March 18, 2015 speech commemorating the reunion of Crimea with Russia, Vladimir Putin made a serious of interesting, if not baffling statements (see my tweets). One of these statements was his declaration that "we've come to understand that Crimea was not only a matter of strategic importance [military strategic importance?], but also a matter of [caring for] millions of Russians." Another such statement, which I would like to delve on a bit more here, was Putin's stated confidence that "we will overcome the difficulties which we have been creating for ourselves." This statement immediately triggered a mass of questions and inquiries to which Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was compelled to react. Peskov dealt with the issue, however, only very briefly, but he mentioned especially the plague of "bureaucratism."

In my view, the question of "difficulties" created by Russia, and by Moscow, in particular, as opposed to those created for Russia by her enemies is a question on which depends not only the further existence of Novorossiya, but also Russia's own salvation and thus also destinies of other peoples in Europe and elsewhere. It is, therefore, a question of utmost importance, which should not be shelved or closed before it is properly and adequately addressed.

The irony and paradox of these difficulties is that many of them could be easily attributed to the so-called clever plans or rather clever plans (for they were constantly shifting and changing as the previous ones failed to live up to their promises, assurances, platitudes and predictions).

If one wants to be both sincere and serious about these obvious difficulties, which are neither abstract nor benign, one may want to start with listing some of the most pressing ones. For they threaten to unravel exactly what, in the same speech, Putin said that the collective pronoun is now learning to respect and honor--the struggles and achievements of the previous generations and their heroes. 

So let's down to this urgent task and let's look into at least some of these "difficulties." I will list here at least six critical difficulties, which are becoming evermore obvious just to anyone who pays attention.

1) The one glaring "difficulty," which is actually a policy decision adopted on the very top, is that Moscow curators of Novorossiya (as they are sometimes called) have also been stalling and blocking real state/nation building of Novorossiya and its war mobilization. 

2) However, Moscow also took no detectable necessary state building efforts in the face of the Western sanctions, the war in Donbass, which the junta always saw as part of the war with Russia, and NATO systematic mobilization against Russia in Europe. Military exercises are not enough. 

3) Also, as I said earlier, the number of former Russian government high ranking officials (Nemtsov was just one of them) who are now openly anti-Russian is staggering. Some of them were part of Putin's and Medvedev's government only recently. It's almost like a circus. 

4) Worrisome reports start coming (one of the latest of this kind can be found here), that, apparently trying to conform to yet another Minsk deal and giving powers to the Ministry for Emergency Situations, Moscow began severely curtailing flow of goods, medications, supplies, and even assistance to the people's republics of Novorossiya. The republics are forced to import commercial goods from Ukraine or via Ukraine, and humanitarian assistance is being limited to the official one and to the officially endorsed providers. These measures are thus effectively and directly aiding to the blockade of the people's republics, which the Kiev Banderite regime has already imposed on its part. The reports are coming from the people on the ground, from activists and also members of the opolchenie. While such measures fit what the West and the junta want to see and what they have demanded all along, their adoption would as criminal as disgraceful and can be justified or excused on no solid grounds, however "clever" they might appear in the minds of the people behind them.

5) The other thing, which Putin's speech celebrating the reunion with Crimea only slightly touched, is the fact that the Minsk agreements in their design and essence hauntingly, imperially, and self-defeatingly (for the Kremlin) dismissed, ignored and belittled the will of the people of Donbass and the millions of the Russians there.

6) Another quintessential question, which needs to be raised, is this one: if Russia still continues to be mired in post-Soviet oligarchy, as it is arguably the case, what political ideology is to be expected to correspond best to this class character of the regime? One can find it in Surkov, one can also find the answer in the common sense. First, oligarchy's political ideology would be or is principally antithetical to any people's power which most people in Novorossiya want and demand. Second, it would very likely not be that far from the reactionary musings of someone like Ivan Ilyin, the one thinker who has the honor of being most cited by President. Third, oligarchy's political ideology could be very likely described as some form or version of right-wing nihilism (with strong elements and currents in the direction of equally nihilistic hedonism, protestations toward so-called or would-be conservatism notwithstanding. Fourth, oligarchy's political ideology as such might also hold some explanatory power towards grasping some of the perverse temptation to call the junta in Kiev and its Banderite fascist leaders as "trusted partners" or even as the "party of peace."

Having creating these "difficulties" for ourselves and by ourselves is deplorable. But whether the Russian leadership and its strategists will also able to rectify and overcome them will also serve as an objective measure and test of true statesmanship and leadership.

Monday, March 9, 2015

I would not be surprised if the same force, which killed Batman, Iscenko ... and tried to kill Mozgovoy, Gubarev and others was and is also helping in the murder of Nemtsov

The murder of Nemtsov was planned and organized very professionally. The timing was done in such a way which makes it likely that the anti-Putin march was organized beforehand as its next and well timed action in a series. The place, on the bridge (a symbol over[coming] Moscow, the river, and right by the Kremlin) too had been clearly very carefully chosen.

Moreover, one also needs to assume that Nemtsov was very probably led to the place of his death by his Ukrainian "girlfriend" (read: hired female escort).

What the FSB was doing or apparently not doing when it failed or was told not to maintain surveillance of Nemtsov--for his own protection--and when it also failed to make up anything of the fact that his Ukrainian escort was also a lover of one of the Kiev Nazi battalions, remind one of the very kind of "provocations" and very professional "unprofessionalism" which planned and pulled off in order to change the communist regimes (from above) in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Moreover, while the Ukrainian escort of Nemtsov, who apparently walked Nemtsov to his death, was called the main and sole [??] witness of the murder, she was very suspiciously allowed to go (escape) very quickly, too quickly, back to Ukraine where Avakov himself quickly declared that she was not coming back for further investigation.

 On top of that, she might or should have been also included among the possible suspects of the murder. But this did not seem to occur to anyone and, clearly, a decision was made very high up not to even demand that she stay in the country during the necessary investigation. I repeat--the fact that Nemtsov's Ukrainian escort with links to Kiev Nazis was so quickly released, without the clever investigators not even allowing for a possibility that she too might have been one of the suspects (for all practical purposes, she herself could have shot him), makes one not just wonders, but absolutely stunned.

Now, with the arrest, accusation and killing of Kadyrov's men serving in Chechnya's pro-Russian security forces, the investigators (or Moscow itself) are also "masterfully" (absolutely unprofessionally) challenging the honor and stability in Chechnya--on top of having the murder fuel, swell, and energize the liberal Maidan of regime change. The quickly cooked rewarding of Kadyrov does not make all these strange and connected lapses any better.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Almost Cipher: Why would someone so smart be divulging and publishing the plot of the Game already back in 2011?

Why would anyone, not to mention M-5, feel the need to reveal the plot of the next act several years ahead? Simply because man has an innate desire to tell and, at the same time, one can be sure that, in 99.9% of cases, people read only superficially?

Vladislav Surkov's first "anonymous" book, to which he himself wrote a preface, is called Almost Zero (which can rendered as Almost a Cipher). A cipher (encrypted code) is, in its essence, a logical and mathematical problem, which, as such, also has a logical and mathematical solution.

If Vladimir Putin were a differential equation, its root might not be so much Ksenia Sobcak's father and former mayor of Petersburg, for whom Putin used to work after returning from Germany, but this very same enigmatic Surkov.

This brings me back to Vladislav Surkov's Machiavellian-Nietzschean, postmodern and thoroughly cynical Almost Zero, "based on a true story," so to speak, or rather inspired by its very author.

The most important piece and work on Surkov written in the West comes from the pen of Peter Pomerantsev. He works for the other side. By the word "work" I mean a professional relationship for which one is paid. In this respect, I admit that I am just an amateur-dilettante.

Peter Pomerantsev is deservedly a recognized leading "connoisseur of contemporary Russia" (two books, many excellent articles, etc.). His father Igor Pomerantsev was a Russian anti-communist dissident, poet and journalist who was forced to emigrate with his family from the Soviet Union in 1978. Later, he worked for the CIA-run Radio Liberty. His son, Peter Pomerantsev, wrote the best and also most important review of Surkov's Almost Zero. The review was published in October of 2011.

At the very beginning, Pomerantsev writes: "The next act of Russian history is about to begin ... It’s the apotheosis of what has become known as ‘managed democracy’, and the ultimate triumph of the show’s writer-director, Putin’s chief ideologue and grey cardinal, Vladislav Surkov, the ‘Kremlin demiurge’. Known also as the ‘puppetmaster who privatised the Russian political system’, Surkov is the real genius of the Putin era. Understand him and you understand not only contemporary Russia but a new type of power politics ..."

The synopsis of Surkov's novel is presented as follows:

"The novel is a satire of contemporary Russia whose hero, Egor, is a corrupt PR man happy to serve anyone ... The most interesting parts of Almost Zero come when the author moves away from social satire to the inner world of his protagonist. Egor is described as a ‘vulgar Hamlet’ who can see through the superficiality of his age, but is unable to have any real feelings for anyone or anything: ‘His self was locked in a nutshell … outside were his shadows, dolls. He saw himself as almost autistic, imitating contact with the outside world, talking to others in false voices to fish out whatever he needed from the Moscow squall: books, sex, money, food, power and other useful things.’ The novel refers to Hamlet over and over again – even though Prospero might have been more apt – while the main protagonists are compared to the Players, ‘prepared to perform pastoral, tragedy or something in between’." 

Interestingly, Pomerantsev then goes on to argue that Surkov's PR art owes a lot to hypnosis-based technology of neuro-linguistic programming developed from early CIA mind control experiments: "This fusion of despotism and postmodernism, in which no truth is certain, is reflected in the craze among the Russian elite for neuro-linguistic programming and Eriksonian hypnosis: types of subliminal manipulation based largely on confusing your opponent, first developed in the US in the 1960s. There are countless NLP and Eriksonian training centres in Moscow, with every wannabe power-wielder shelling out thousands of dollars to learn how to be the next master manipulator. Newly translated postmodernist texts give philosophical weight to the Surkovian power model."

Toward the end Pomerantsev serves the reader a description of the utterly snobbish and brutally insincere and fake atmosphere at a play, which was an adaptation of Surkov's novel (it also serves as a stairway toward the disclosure of the plot itself):

"I found myself in one of them late one night, having finally, after a month of phone calls, begging, blackmailing and pleading, managed to get a ticket to see the theatre version of Almost Zero, the most exclusive play this deeply theatrical city has ever seen. Official tickets started at $500. Black market tickets were going for four figures. The final price? Two bottles of champagne and the opportunity for one of the theatre’s leading actresses to use my parents’ London home rent-free. It turned out that the fee wasn’t even worth a proper seat. The ushers let me in after the lights were dimmed. They gave me a cushion and told me to sit on the floor by the front row. My head spent the night knocking against the perfumed thigh of an impossibly perfect model, her brutal-looking husband seeming none too pleased. The audience was full of these types: the hard, clever men who rule the country and their stunning female satellites. You don’t usually find them at the theatre but they were there because it was the thing to do: if they ever bumped into Surkov they could tell him how much they liked his fascinating piece. The other half of the audience were the city’s artistic leaders: impresarios, directors, actors. They had a similar reason to be present: Surkov is famous for giving grants to theatres and festivals. It wouldn’t do not to have seen the play. ....The bohemians in the audience laughed uncomfortably. The hard men and their satellites stared ahead unblinking, as if these provocations had nothing to do with them. Many left at the interval. Thus the great director pulled off a feat entirely worthy of the Age of Surkov: he pleased his political masters – Surkov sponsors an arts festival that Serebrennikov runs – while preserving his liberal integrity. One foot in Surkov’s camp, the other in Khodorkovsky’s. A fine performance."

Pomerantsev then at last drops the ball, the punch line (which I was myself advertising from the very beginning)--the best, where he discloses the plot at the very end of his article. Surkov himself might not be the ultimate director of this long post-Soviet play, but he has always been few steps ahead of the other players since he knew and understood the direction and the purpose of the play. Interestingly, in divulging the plot, Pomerantsev seems to plagiarizing a device used by great Plato himself: a story is told based on what someone told someone else (see, for example, Symposium or Phaedo). In this case, Pomerantsev evokes his unnamed "companion" who, in turn, refers to "a literature professor turned rock producer (a very Moscow trajectory)," which looks much like a weakly veiled reference to Surkov himself. The divulged plot might thus come through Pomerantsev, this well certified British expert on contemporary Russia, from Surkov himself:

‘Who’s the central figure in Hamlet?’ she asked. ‘Who’s the demiurge manipulating the whole situation?’
I said I didn’t know.
‘It’s Fortinbras, the crown prince of Norway, who takes over Denmark at the end. Horatio and the visiting players are in his employ: their mission is to tip Hamlet over the edge and foment conflict in Elsinore. Look at the play again. Hamlet’s father killed Fortinbras’s father, he has every motive for revenge. We know Hamlet’s father was a bad king, we’re told both Horatio and the players have been away for years: essentially they left to get away from Hamlet the father. Could they have been with Fortinbras in Norway? At the end of the play Horatio talks to Fortinbras like a spy delivering his end-of-mission report. Knowing young Hamlet’s unstable nature they hired the players to provoke him into a series of actions that will bring down Elsinore’s rulers. This is why everyone can see the ghost at the start. Then when only Hamlet sees him later he is hallucinating. To Muscovites it’s obvious. We’re so much closer to Shakespeare’s world here.’ On the map of civilisation, Moscow – with its cloak and dagger politics (designer cloak, diamond-studded dagger), its poisoned spies, baron-bureaucrats and exiled oligarchs who plan revolutions from abroad, its Cecil-Surkovs whispering into the ears of power, its Raleigh-Khodorkovskys imprisoned in the Tower – is somewhere near Elsinore."

Surkov's Almost Zero, together with his other book, was conceived as a Machiavellian/Nietschean/postmodern/Havelian mirror of Russia. But it is also a mirror of the author himself. This Russian Wizard of Oz is no Che Guevara or Gandhi or even Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. He perfectly reflects and embodies one of the possible as well as real Russias. An oligarchic Russia where some of the advisers kept sneaking into Putin's speeches praises of Ivan Ilyin, the right-wing Russian anti-communist admirer of the anti-Bolshevik greatness of German fascism.

Evidently, Surkov has been deemed by far the mos qualified (politically, morally, and intellectually) for the job (however, the one has been defined) and hence also for handling some of the most critical political issues, which Russia has been facing from the late 1990s till today.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

If Russian Maidan were a play and hence a script, then it might run like this

Strelkov said that Surkov-shaped "strategy" is to achieve the least at the greatest possible costs. Back in 1990s, Surkov's boss was oligarch Khodorkovsky. The more one knows the more one has to start taking a possibility that Surkov has been working for the return of his former boss.

In fact, Surkov himself can justifiably be included among the top five politically most important people and among some of the longest in the innermost circles of power in post-Soviet Russia. And he bows to Havel, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli.

Surkov has hardly respect for anyone around him. In terms of holding someone in respect he made a notable exception for people like Vaclav Havel and Tupac Shakur.

In Ukraine, Serhiy Lyovochkin, the head of Yanukovich's administration, a position which Surkov himself used to occupy in Moscow, played a key role in helping the Ukrainian Maidan from within the government which the Maidan overthrew.

Of course, one of the commonest fallacies is to assume that what was possible in Ukraine cannot or would not happen in some form or another in Russia as well. After all, in the end, for many people, to paraphrase Bernard Shaw, politics is no longer so much a question of principles, as the question of their price for which they are willing to do whatever they are hired for.

The US regime strategy has two key goals, which both in the past and in the present dictated and dictate which course is chosen: 1) containing and ultimately controlling Russia's nuclear arsenal and 2) as much as possible limit or prevent a possible Chinese grab in the desired, but very dangerous dissolution of the Russian Federation.

Nemtsov's symbolic murder (both the time and the place were meticulously chosen) started off the implementation phase of Russian Maidan for which Surkov's Ukraine strategy has been creating rather very favorable conditions together with the liberal oligarchs and economists in charge of Russia's economic and financial policies.

Incidentally, this very week or so the Kremlin started also adding its voice to the meme that the greatest threat might no longer be the liberal fifth column, but Russian "nationalists, radicals, and extremists." Something which people like Starikov started spreading already toward the end of 2014.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Speaking of Prometheus, Czechs have a terrible proverb: "Don't try to extinguish (bother about) what does not burn (concern) your personally" ("Don't give a f--- about bigger issues")

"The root of the functional difference is an effect of the distinction of the creative human personality, as a type, from the willing slave. That is the core of the Promethean principle, the difference in principle of behaviour of the child of Prometheus, as distinguished from the slave-mentalities which are to be associated with the notion of the qualities of the relatively systemically degraded victims of the contamination which is characteristic of the prevalent influence of the Zeus-influence."

The theme of slaves and masters was introduced back into Western political discourse by Nietzsche--on the side of the (new) masters(') race. The above does come from LaRouche, which certainly had its own share with the left in the past (and also the so-called left). We all had to come from somewhere.

However, I would venture to say that the argument made by LaRouche as part of its polemic with world oligarchy might be philosophically the most serious argument raised against oligarchy since Socrates and Plato. With Hegel and Nietzsche (and Heidegger and Strauss), the right turned its eyes to the deeper philosophical foundations of the political problem of our time. For a host of reasons, which it would be rather tiresome to list, the left (in its intellectual self-conceit and assured dogmatism) was unable to respond in kind.

On my part, I do believe and would argue that without a proper philosophical groundwork (which does require treating the Greek foundations of our political tradition seriously, that is, with proper piety and respect), we cannot address our political problems effectively. For our political as well as economic problems have become civilizational problems. Problem of the whole system as such. To deal with requires something deeper than ideological talking points. One needs to descent to the foundations themselves. Usual political "thought" is not equipped for that. That requires calling philosophy back from the dead. Or rather philosophically and hence also politically (and spiritually) dead denizens need to rekindle their civilizational Promethean fire--the gift of their creative mind--again.

Of course, I am doing, knowing that one is thus running the risk that "willing slaves" would be the first to try to abort any such renaissance and revival.

http://cecaust.com.au/aas/AASVol16No02_Almanac_No01_email.pdf