Tag Archive for: Russia

A Middle East Grand Bargain Must Create Kurdistan by Sherkoh Abbas and Robert Sklaroff

President Trump’s itinerary during his first overseas trip revealed both his goal and its attendant strategy—although it remains officially unstated—as he tries to fashion a durable end to the Syrian civil war and the birth of a restructured region.

In the process of touching-base with the nerve-centers of each of the three major Middle East religions, he attempted to eliminate the Islamic State without empowering Iran.

Conspiratorial Liberals yelp when he recruits Russia, and acolytes of the Obama Administration condemn his having maneuvered around Tehran.

But he must defang the ayatollahs, lest they ally with North Korean missile-rattlers and threaten World War III.

This is why he keeps an armada in the Gulf, while maintaining a beefed-up presence in the Sea of Japan and encouraging Beijing to block Pyongyang from nuke-testing, for he must stretch the depleted military in theaters a half-globe apart until it has been rebuilt.

And that’s why he has embedded Americans with Kurdish forces attacking Raqqa, for it is impossible to be a “player” without having placed pieces onto the board.Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the U.S. national security adviser, was triggered to inform Turkey on May 1st  that the Kurds were to receive heavy machine guns, mortars, anti-tank weapons, and armored cars after the Turks had lethally-bombed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria the prior Tuesday. That reflected autocrat Erdo?an having again  “distracted”  world attention from targeting the primary target, the Islamic State.

Accommodating this major reconfiguration of regional forces, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia saw no need to arm the Syrian Kurds, but said Moscow would maintain working contacts with them.

Secretary of Defense James “Jim” Mattis had decided to arm the Kurds directly rather than via any regional country, finally reversing Obama’s following-from-behind intransigent passivity.

He is implementing key aphorisms derived from his storied career defending America.

Indeed, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) recognized arming the Kurds constitutes “an immense milestone.”

In the process, Mattis has recognized The Road to Defeating the Islamic State Runs through Kurdistan, an essay—illustrated by a settlement-map—that succinctly details the historic, military, economic, religious and political implications of this overdue stance.

Visiting Trump in this charged atmosphere, Erdo?an chose the wrong time to be bellicose against Israel and America.  His post-referendum dictatorial effort to promote Jihad was again manifest through two decrees; one that expelled more than 4,000 civil servants and another that banned television dating programs.

That these actions were  not being well-received. That was reflected in the fact that the latter two hyperlinks [al-Monitor and Aljazeera] are from Arab websites, suggesting welcome-recognition of a tilt toward inter-alia the Sunni Gulf states, plus Qatar, the locale of a major American military presence over NATO-aligned Ankara ,which is increasingly aligning with Iran against the potential for Kurds to achieve independence.

That  would serve as the culmination of battle-plans we have proposed for almost a decade.  In 2008, we identified  Kurds as  an “invisible people”  and   advocated confronting the major source of global terrorism,The Road to Iran Runs through Kurdistan – and Starts in Syria. In 2015, we showed why the United States cannot evade this trouble-spot,[The Pathway to Defeating ISIS Runs Though Kurdistan – And Starts in America. In 2013, we  concluded The Kurds can lead a reconstituted  Syria, at peace with all of her neighbors.  In 2014, we suggested NATO Must Help the Kurds Now.

That is  why Kurds are seeking recognition of their enormous military sacrifice and their unique political feat, noting their carefully-constructed federal system in Rojava;  the area of Northern Syria comprised of four self-governing cantons.

Resolving vague territorial claims would yield a regional Diaspora in Turkey, Iran, and Russia, although Stalin purged much of the USSR-population a half-century ago.

Recognizing that Russia has unilaterally created safe-zones, and buzzed American jets near Alaska and Crimea, it will remain vital to coordinate militaries functioning in close-quarters, to ensure spheres of influence do not inadvertently trigger  conflict.

If America retracts support for anti-Islamist Kurds, Erdo?an will be free to promote his brand of Muslim Brotherhood ideology; the dangerous ramifications of which have been explored [Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future].

NATO can reassure Turkey that creation of an independent Kurdistan south of its border, joining with the federated section of northern Iraq, will remove inordinate fears that secession-agitation will persist on its eastern reaches.

Turkey needs to accept this type of endpoint, for its military killed six members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in air strikes in northern Iraq .

What really irks Erdo?an is that “U.S. arming Syrian Kurds shattered Turkey’s Ottoman Empire ambitions. ” Both  America and Turkey will face a de-facto proxy-war unless Erdogan heeds the more conciliatory tone struck by his Prime Minister.

The schism between the United States and Turkey was illustrated during their press  event.  These leaders deemed different entities as “terroristic”.  Trump cited PKK; whereas Erdo?an cited YPG/PYD .

This perhaps explains the anguish expressed by Turkish security guards, when they beatprotesters—primarily Kurds and Armenian outside t their D.C. embassy .

We suggest the following blueprint should be followed to prompt Moscow to help oust Iran from Syria . It would allow the Kurdish-plurality in northwestern Syria to extend its governance to the Mediterranean Sea, blocking Turkey from expansionist temptations.

The multi-front war against Islamists is recognized by Western leaders such as US Senator Ted Cruz (R, Texas) and globally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—to have supplanted the Cold War paradigm of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Perhaps the ultimate method to illustrate the wisdom of this approach is to discount an oppositional paradigm, such as the false claim that American involvement in Syria would merely be a manifestation of Western Imperialism in Rojava.

Instead, America should  implement Point 12  of Woodrow Wilson’s 14-Point Plan that advocated establishing Kurdistan more than a century ago.

At  long last, America Must Recognize Kurdistan  by serving as midwife for a new country [assuming this is the electoral outcome of the originally scheduled September 25 plebiscite sponsored by the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. That  would assist in finally defeating  the Islamic State.  This would offer immediate and long-term geo-political  dividends.

ABOUT SHERKOH ABBAS

Sherkoh Abbas is President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria.

ABOUT ROBERT SKLAROFF

Robert Sklaroff is a physician-activist and supporter of Kurdish self-determination.

This article constitutes the policy of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, conveyed to America and to the world, representing the Kurds of Syria.

RELATED ARTICLE: Netanyahu, the First World Leader to Endorse Independent Kurdistan, Hits Back at Erdogan for Supporting Hamas

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Trump-Russia Media Coverage: A Parody of Dumb and Dumber

Donald Trump, Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya

The media has taken upon itself the quest to deliberately exaggerate anything of no consequence when it comes to Donald J. Trump and his family. This deliberate exaggeration has turned comedic in the media’s quest to find collusion, betrayal or any link between any member of the Trump family and anything remotely linked to Russia.

The media has gone through various stages of mocking and lampooning to what Byron York describes as a “Scandal That Ate Cable TV.” Referring to the meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The Media is now infected with “Tabloid Thinking.”

Tabloid Thinking makes the media think something is simple because it keeps the media from looking at the complicating details. The media prefers quick summaries and likes to put things in a nutshell. The media stereotypes people or issues with simple phrases. They have deep-set emotions toward those people or issues and like to describe them with catchy phrases.

In an article title “Dear CNN: Russian Lawyer Veselnitskaya Pictured With Obama’s Ambassador To Russia — Is That News?” Clash Daily reports:

The photograph is striking: There sits Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and others at Trump Tower in Manhattan on June 9, 2016, seated a few days later in the front row of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing at which witnesses discussed U.S. sanctions against her country.

The day before, Veselnitskaya was at Washington’s Newseum, attending the screening of a film that criticized U.S. sanctions.

Source: The Washington Post

Here’s the video of Veselnikskaya at the hearing:

Clash Daily says “But wait!”

MORE— That looks like Emin Agalarov sitting next to Natalia Veselnitskaya. He was mentioned in Donald Trump Jr’s statement this morning. Emin helped set up the meeting with Veselnitskaya.

Emin Agalarov sitting next to Natalia Veselnitskaya (circled in red).

Veselnitskaya was also connected to Fusion GPS, the DNC opposition research firm that produced the fraudulent and discredited Trump Dossier.

Source: The Gateway Pundit

The UK Independent reports:

The Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr and allegedly offered to supply damaging information about Hillary Clinton, is apparently linked to a firm that helped compile the notorious dossier of wild and unproven allegations about the US President…

…In a statement, Mark Corallo added: “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier.”

In The Hill’s article “Exclusive: DOJ let Russian lawyer into US before she met with Trump team” John Solomon and Jonathan Easley report:

The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances” before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews.

This revelation means it was the Obama Justice Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the country without a visa.

[ … ]

The Moscow lawyer had been turned down for a visa to enter the U.S. lawfully but then was granted special immigration parole by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.

Read more.

If this isn’t a clear example of not connecting the dots by the media, I don’t know what is.

Clearly, the media is infected with the viral “Tabloid Thinking.”

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Russian Lawyer Who Met with Donald Trump Jr. Worked with Democrats for Years

Why the latest Russia story is just another Trump witch hunt

When The Clinton Campaign Worked With a Foreign Government to Undermine Trump’s Candidacy

FACT CHECK: Did Donald Trump Jr. Commit Treason?

Antidote to Trump Derangement Syndrome

This day in “collusion” hysteria

MOVIE: America Under Siege — Soviet Islam

AmericaUnderSiege_SovietIslam_instagram01-644x644-400x400“Only a coalition of Islamists and Marxists can destroy the United States.” – Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez, AKA Carlos the Jackal

Soviet Islam is the second episode in the five-part America Under Siege webseries releasing over the course of 2017. Each episode investigates the growing influence of revolutionary Marxists and their allies in different sectors of American society.

When the Soviet Union failed to eradicate religion, it quickly changed tactics. After World War II, Soviet Communists forged alliances with unlikely partners – radical Islamists and Middle Eastern nationalist dictators. Beginning in the Cold War and continuing through to today, the Kremlin has armed, trained, and supported these Islamists and dictators to advance a frightening goal: subverting their shared American enemy.

Those radicals became a domestic threat in the 1960s. Religious extremists like the Nation of Islam co-opted Soviet ideology to agitate American institutions and disrupt democracy. For the Soviets, the intent was to make the U.S. ungovernable through organized protest and violence. But while the Cold War may be over, the threat from the Kremlin is now more serious than ever.

Today, Putin is the heir to the Soviet strategy of subversion. Picking up where the old KGB left off, his regime continues to leverage the vast network of radicals across the Middle East and the West the Soviets created.

The film was written by and stars conservative author Trevor Loudon, was directed by Judd Saul, and produced by Cohesion Films in partnership with Dangerous Documentaries (a project of the Capital Research Center). (Bombthrowers is a project of the Capital Research Center, as well.)

Trevor’s research into Soviet and modern Russian influence on radical Islamism and Middle Eastern dictatorships is especially urgent given the current conflict in Syria. Showing that there are still so many influential political actors in America whose ideological roots grow out of the Soviet Union’s past meddling in Islamic society is unsettling — and helps explain Russia’s modern day tactics to subvert its enemies from within.

RELATED ARTICLE: Red-Green Alliance Funded by Billionaire Democrats

EDITORS NOTE: America Under Siege: Soviet Islam is available to watch on DangerousDocumentaries.com.

Russian Reactions to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Visit

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow on April 11-12, 2017 came against the backdrop of a recent U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase that was followed by political tensions between Russia and the U.S.[1] At the G7 meeting in Italy just prior to his trip to Moscow, Tillerson had stated: “I think it’s also worth thinking about Russia has [sic] really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians, and Hizbullah. Is that a long-term alliance that serves Russia’s interest, or would Russia prefer to realign with the United States, with other Western countries and Middle East countries who are seeking to resolve the Syrian crisis? We want to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people. We want to create a future for Syria that is stable and secure. And so Russia can be a part of that future and play an important role, or Russia can maintain its alliance with this group, which we believe is not going to serve Russia’s interest longer-term. But only Russia can answer that question.”[2]

Commenting on Tillerson’s words, Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “It’s useless to come to us with ultimatums, it’s just counterproductive.”[3] However, the meeting between Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov changed Russia’s internal mood. Maxim Usim, columnist for the Russian daily Kommersant, noted that Tillerson’s language was not confrontational and that this had enabled him to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin just before his departure from Moscow.

The following are reactions to U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson’s Moscow visit:

tillerson russia

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. (Source: State.gov)

Senator Kosachev: “The American Did Not Come With Absurd Proposals… None Of The Parties… Have A Desire To Further Exacerbate The Situation”

Russian Federation Council International Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachev wrote on his Facebook page: “The first impression is quite positive. No breakthrough occurred, and no one expected it. However, the two sides were able to avoid the temptation of the overstated expectations, and the modest results of the meeting are still positive.” Kosachev stressed that a meaningful result was the Russian and U.S. commitment to maintaining the dialogue by “institutionalizing it in the format of special representatives.”

He added: “The two sides now have a better understanding of the possible and impossible limits in the prospects for bilateral relations and in the interpretation of international problems. The Americans obviously did not come with some absurd proposals similar to exchanging (Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad) for G7 membership, Ukraine for Syria and so on, and also not only with moralizing and ultimatums.”

He stressed: “Otherwise, the meeting with (Russian President Vladimir Putin) would have not taken place, as wasting time on empty words is not his style.”

Kosachev also said that Russia “unambiguously confirmed its willingness to restore cooperation, provided that the two sides could do without the notorious American mentoring and arrogance. Anyway, none of the parties seems to have a desire to further exacerbate the situation, and everyone believes that it is not hopeless.”

(Tass.com, April 13, 2017)

(Source: Sputniknews.com, April 12, 2017)

Kommersant Columnist: Tillerson’s Moderate Language Enabled Meeting With Putin

Maxim Usim, a columnist for the Russian daily Kommersant, wrote that Tillerson’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was not confrontational, but rather business oriented. According to Usim, Tillerson avoided using harsh language regarding Russian policies, while Lavrov was reserved and diplomatic. The impression, wrote Usim, is that both sides want to minimize the damage to bilateral relations by “Trump’s Syrian escapade,” adding that the mere fact that Tillerson avoided “speaking in terms of sanctions and ultimatums” made the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin possible.

(Kommersant.ru, April 12, 2017)

Izvestia: “The First Attempt To Get Along May Be Considered Productive, Even If Not Fully Successful”

The Russian daily Izvestia summarized Tillerson’s the visit as follows: “The most important thing is that during this very short but very intense visit the sides succeeded in reaching an agreement regarding further steps to be taken in order to get rid of the bilateral crisis. At the same time, the visit’s message to the world was: The first attempt to ‘get along’ may be considered productive, even if not fully successful.”

(Izvestia.ru, April 13, 2017)

Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman: “There Was No Ultimatum”

Duma International Affairs Committee chairman Leonid Slutsky stated: “One of the visit’s results is the failed prognosis regarding some kinds of U.S. ultimatum. There was no ultimatum. On the contrary, the sides agreed on establishing a joint group in order to look into the most complicated questions of the Russia-U.S. agenda.”

(Tass.com, April 12, 2017)

Tillerson: “We want to relieve the suffering of the Iraq… Ouch… Liby… Ouch… Syrian people.” The cartoon was published prior to Tillerson’s visit. (Ria.ru, April 11, 2017)

Senator Klintzevich: “It Is Now Obvious That Tillerson’s Visit Was Not A Waste Of Time”

Senator Franz Klintsevich, deputy chair of the Federation Council Defense and Security Committee, commented: “It is now obvious that Tillerson’s visit was not a waste of time. Reiterating the mutual commitment to fight international terror is the maximum which could have been achieved, given the recent negative developments. At the moment, it’s quite stupid to discuss who won and who lost as the result of the meeting, who saved face and who lost face… The sides opted for mutual compromise, but as a result they secured the chance to really cooperate against ISIS. That’s what is really important.”

(Tass.com, April 12, 2017)

Ivan Melnikov, Communist Party, Vice-speaker of Duma: “Given the unpredicted U.S. actions influencing the situation, we may judge only by the deeds rather than by the words and intentions. Mr. Tillerson leaves good impression, and speaks respectfully about Russia as a superpower – but what if the principles of the American imperialism remain in force?”

(Tass.com, April 12, 2017)

Ruling Party United Russia MP Sergey Zheleznyak: “The meeting demonstrated that despite the differences, our countries are interested in cooperation concerning various areas – solving burning international crises as well as renewing economic cooperation. We’ll see how Tillerson’s words in Moscow will coincide with the administration’s actions and then we’ll draw our conclusions.”

(Tass.com, April 12, 2017)

Senator Pushkov: The Meeting Was “The Start Of Dialogue”

Senator Alexey Pushkov tweeted: “Frontal confrontation has been cancelled. Russia and the U.S. proceed from the war of words towards exchanging opinions, controlling the differences and cautious dialogue.”

(Twitter.com/Alexey_Pushkov, April 12, 2017)

Pushkov also tweeted: “The summary of the negotiations in Moscow: Not yet a breakthrough, but the start of dialogue and an attempt to strengthen the mutual trust after serious tensions erupted.”

(Twitter.com/Alexey_Pushkov, April 12, 2017)

According to a Russian Defense Ministry source quoted in the Vedomosti newspaper, Moscow is ready for dialogue and does not consider a dangerous direct confrontation with the U.S. to be inevitable. Simultaneously, Moscow demonstrates its readiness to strengthen its military positions in Syria – this is the message delivered by the deployment of the frigate Admiral Grigorovich to the Mediterranean.

(Vedomosti.ru, April 13, 2017)

REFERENCES:

[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6866, Russia’s Reactions To The U.S. Missile Strike In Syria, April 10, 2017.

[2] State.gov, April 11, 2017.

[3] Ria.ru, April 12, 2017.

The cost of lifting U.S. Sanctions on Sudan: GENOCIDE by Lt. Gen. Abakar M. Abdallah

Sudan’s volatile security situation and human right abuses have worsened despite the partial lifting of sanctions by former President Obama, just days before the onset of the Trump Administration in January 2017. Under the terms of that partial sanctions lifting, there is a six months ‘look back’ period which could be reversed if evidence of ethnic cleansing, genocide or support for Jihad terrorism persisted. This report graphically presents evidence that genocide, war crimes and human right abuses have not ended in Darfur, Kordofan, and Blue Nile regions of the Sudan. Random killings, torturing, rape and extra-judicial executions continue unabated in all parts of these regions. There is evidence of aerial bombing attacks and the alleged use of banned chemical weapons.  Syria is not the only Muslim country in the Middle East and Africa where indiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction have been used against civilian populations. This has been delivered through by bombing attacks of the Sudan Air force.  Both China and Russia are supplying weapons and equipment in support of Sudan’s genocidal Jihad funded by Gulf Emirates and Saudi Arabia.  Time for the Trump Administration to re-impose Sudan sanctions and to consider establishing no-fly safe zones in Sudan conflict areas.

Sudan peace force Massacres of Kababiish and Hamar Tribes in South Kordofan

Over 119 people were killed in South Kordofan in early April 2017 and the fighting continues. This is another tragedy wrought by President Bashir with funding support from the Arab cabal of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The massacre of 119 Harmar and Kababiish tribal people comes in the wake of a $200,000,000 gift from Her Royal Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Naser of Qatar donated while on a recent trip to Sudan for the purpose of helping children in the Kordofan region. As we have written previously, the actual use of those funds was to support recruitment and arm more Janjaweed Arab “peace force” militias.

The Sudan Tribune reported Kababiish tribesmen shot and killed 36 people of the Hamar tribe. These people had their hands tied, were shot, slaughtered and their bodies burned and buried.  According to Ambassador Hassan Ibrahim Jadkerim those involved in the massacre were wearing Sudan regime’s military uniforms and were armed with heavy weapons provided by the government.

According to the eye witness report the fighting erupted between the two tribes of Hamar and Kababiish because of alleged stolen camels, despite both tribes using government supplied weapons and trucks killing each other. Both tribes are trained and armed by the government and they are part of the Janjaweed peace forces militias. The current governor of South Kordofan, Ahmed Harun, an indicted war criminal wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court ICC), has been organizing, training and arming these militias to attack the people of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan. He is directly responsible for these government trained militias, financially sponsored by the State of Qatar. Fighting has been going on between these two tribes since the beginning of April, 2017. Instead of providing security protection, the Sudan regime National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) is supporting both conflicting groups with both weapons and logistic supplies.

Mass killing of Hamar-Kababiish by Sudan regime’s tribal militias clashes April 6, 2017 Sodori, North Kordofan, Sudan

The Sudan regime NISS security apparatus recruits, organizes, trains and arms these tribes with heavy weapons. The regime also provides them with trucks and logistic supplies. Moreover, the Bashir regime has granted them with full authority to kill anyone who opposes the implementation of the Arab Coalition plan directed at establishing a virtual Caliphate making demographic changes in Darfur and in the entire African Sahel region.

The Janjaweed peace forces Arab militias were established to enable the survival of the Bashir regime, fomenting international Jihad terrorism; the end state of the Muslim Brotherhood organization of the Islamic movement. The Bashir regime duplicitously arms these Arab militias.  However, when they committed heinous crimes, such as the massacring innocent civilians, the regime will deny that it had connections with them calling them outlawed groups. It is the regime’s strategy arming such groups and denying them when they committed crimes, so that they did not have to reveal that to the public and the international community. Effectively, the regime would eliminate any Arab militia group that refused to recruit its militants to fight for the regime. The fighting between Kababiish and Hamar is not the first instance of Arab militias fighting among themselves. It is an example of the internecine war to eliminate those opposing the Bashir regime to implement the strategy of the Arab Coalition.

Arab tribal militias armed by Sudan regime Sodori, North Kordofan, Sudan March 6, 2017

Arson and Killing in Darfur

The Sudan NISS and its armed Janjaweed peace force militias continue executing innocent civilians. They are massacring people, robbing, seizing of properties, committing arson and raping women. This is in furtherance of its strategy to dismantle Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.  The regime intelligence apparatus recruited and trained individuals unleashing them to conduct arson of homes in IDP camps and markets.  Since late March 2017 several IDP camp homes and shops were burned in Nertiti, Zalengi, Central Darfur and Greida in South Darfur, and Garsila, in the Western Darfur region. These fires destroyed homes, food supplies, clothes and belongings of the IDP residents.   Losses from this arson in Greida alone were estimated at approximately $3 million US dollars. The government’s intention is to force the IDP camp residents into cities or move elsewhere so their land and wells are left to Arab Janjaweed peace force new settlers.

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (reorganized Janjaweed militias. Formerly riding horses and camels but currently equipped with Toyota Pickup trucks and heavy weapons). Sodori, North Kordofan, March 6, 2017

The National Congress Party Sudan regime is surviving only through crisis. The regime’s security apparatus instigate such crises just to create confusion among Arab Janjaweed peace force militia and Darfur people alike and keep them busy fighting among themselves. The tribal clashes in Darfur and Kordofan regions are using government provided arms killing hundreds of people. These clashes are fomented, logistically supported and controlled by the NISS.

On March 31, 2017 nine Janjaweed militia fighters riding camels attacked a group of villagers driving their livestock to Tawal Shala water wells in eastern Jebel Marra. The militias opened fire and killed 3 people on the spot while others being pursued escaped for their lives. They seized all the possessions of those people killed including cows, donkeys and goats.

On April 3, 2017 Janjaweed militias shut and killed two brothers, Ali Ismael and Hamad Ismael. They were caught with their motor-cycle in the Kasab IDP camp, Kutum, North Darfur.

On April 6, 2017 another group of Janjaweed militias riding camels intercepted a vehicle between Buram and Greida killed one man and wounded two others then robbed the passengers.

Human violations in Darfur have continued for more than fifteen years. In addition to Janjaweed militias’ attacks, the Sudan government planes continue air bombardment on Jebel Marra and elsewhere. On April 6, 2017 Sudanese war planes dropped bombs in the area west of Dereibat.

These attacks demonstrate that the Sudan regime and its militias target innocent civilians and their property.

Muslim prayers for two Brothers: Ali Ismael and Hamadi Ismael Janjaweed Militias shut and Killed and taken their motor cycle in Kasab IDP camp, Kutum North Darfur April, 3, 2017

Why Obama Lifted Sanctions on Sudan

Why did the former Obama Administration lift sanctions on Sudan if its militias continued to kill innocent people? Over 3 million people of Darfur are now living in IDP and refugee camps and their land is occupied by Janjaweed militias.

By lifting partial economic sanctions President Obama ignored long-standing US commitments to put an end to Sudan’s years of internal conflicts and security instability caused by the National Islamic Front/Muslim Brotherhood regime. Former US President Obama’s  cooperation with the Islamic regime in Khartoum undermined United States engagement that might have  prevented  human right violations and protected  indigenous populations targeted  for ethnic cleansing by the Sudan regime. Instead the Obama Administration’s inaction in the face of these humanitarian violations by President Bashir was pursued in the vain hope of obtaining of counterterrorism intelligence information. Effectively the Bashir regime provided little useful information and cooperation with US in the global war on terrorism.  The National Islamic/Muslim Brotherhood regime continued to recruit, harbor and support terrorist organizations including fighters from the Islamic State.  Obama’s cooperation with the Sudan’s indicted President Bashir compounded the problem by opening a door for other Western governments, such as Great Britain, Italy and Germany, to establish various types of bilateral and multilateral economic and security cooperation agreements despite the Bashir regime’s worsening human rights record.

Sudan’s NISS burning of IDP camps and markets, March 2017 in Greida, South Darfur, Sudan

Failure of African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur

The African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) deployed in Darfur since 2007 with the mandate to protect civilians has unfortunately has become a puppet of the National Congress Party regime of President Bashir. Since its inception in Darfur none of the UNAMID Secretaries have reported human right violations in Darfur. None of the UNAMID forces have protected any civilian that has his or her life threatened by the Janjaweed militias. Most of the killing, rape, torture, and other human right abuses committed by the Janjaweed occur close to or in the vicinity of UNAMID camps. The Janjaweed militias commit these crimes because they know UNAMID’s movement is strictly controlled by the regime’s security forces who are mainly Janjaweed militias themselves. That is the reason UNAMID forces could not investigate incidents or protect innocent civilians even one kilometer outside their camp. The UNAMID forces cannot move without obtaining permission from the Sudan regime. Effectively they cannot file a report or conduct an independent investigation without consulting the Sudan regime’s officials and its security forces.

Sudan NISS burning of IDP camps to dismantle Otach IDP camp, Nyala South Darfur, Sudan March 7, 2017

 Failure of UNAMID to investigate incidents and write independent reports is probably the main reason that the international community distanced itself from Darfur. Darfurian people were internationally neglected and abandoned because UNAMID forces deployed to protect them had no capability to freely conduct operations.

The organization abandoned its primary role of protecting the innocent civilians and monitoring of human right violations instead policing the behavior of the Sudan government.  Witness the newly appointed Secretary of UNAMID openly demanding UN pressure Darfur resistance movements to cease armed struggle and sign false peace deals with the Bashir regime. Peace deals that bring no benefit to our people but instead more suffering.

How could the international community appoint a South African as head of the UNAMID mission in Darfur since South African President Jacob Zuma refused to arrest President Bashir in his country even announcing they were resigning membership in the International Criminal Court? The Darfur people have not healed from the wounds of Thabon Mbeki who became the right hand man of Bashir establishing false roadmaps and calling upon the international community to rally behind the genocidal regime.

The former South African President Thabon Mbeki who worked in the Darfur crisis for over 9 years said he brought peace in Darfur because he had been working closely with the African Union to help maintain Bashir in power and undermine the ICC.

The newly appointed Chief of UNAMID is another South African who has already begun ignoring human right violations that the regime is continually committing against the people of Darfur. Addressing the UNSC on April 4, 2017, the South African diplomat failed to mention Janjaweed militias committing daily atrocities on innocent civilians on Darfur. He also failed to mention the mission’s inability to provide security to the very people that they were mandated to protect. He called the Janjaweed, a well known government militia, just bandits.

The United Nations Security Council must appoint qualified officials who are impartial and empowered with the capacity to speak truthfully and act against the menace of genocide.  Peace and justice for the Darfurian people must prevail.

The UNSC has no capability to force Sudan’s regime to stop human right violations. Moreover, the Bashir regime has the power to dismiss any UN employee working in Sudan. The UNSC cannot protect them. Ivo Freijsen the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan was expelled. Over the last two years the Bashir regime expelled four UN officials from Sudan while the UNSC did nothing. Sudan simply did not recognize any of the UNSC resolutions. The UNSC issued over 18 resolutions on Darfur but none of these resolutions were implemented.

Indicted President Bashir has not been committing genocide alone without aid from Arab countries.  China and Russia supply arms.  Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, European Union and some European states provide financial assistances that ends up recruiting and training Janjaweed Militias, Rapid Support Forces or what President Bashir calls ‘peace forces.’ African Union and many Arab League member states collectively provide protection for Bashir to avoid arrest and prosecution by the ICC.

Conclusion

The Chinese and Russians are providing weapons that Sudan President Bashir uses to kill our people.  Arab countries and the European Union provide funds that are funneled to finance the recruitment of Janjaweed peace force militias that commit genocide against indigenous people of Sudan. We seek US and international assistance to stop the genocidal Jihad regime of President Bashir by seeking his arrest and establishing no-fly zones in Darfur, Kordofan and the Blue Nile region to save the lives of the country’s indigenous people.

ABOUT LIEUTENANT GENERAL ABAKAR M. ABDALLAH

Lt. Gen. Abakar M. Abdallah is Chairman of the Sudan United Movement (SUM). He is a native of North Darfur who joined the Sudan Liberation People’s Army (SPLA) in 1984 and became active in the Nuba Hills and Darfurian resistance. In 1989 he joined the Patriotic Salvation Movement in neighboring Chad based in Darfur. He served as an officer in the Chadian army for 23 years. He held senior intelligence and counterterrorism posts including as Coordinator of the Multi-National Joint Task Force of Nigeria, Chad and Niger. He is a December 2002 graduate of the Intelligence Officers’ Advanced and Combating Terrorism Courses, US Army Intelligence Center and Schools, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He was a Graduate Terrorism Fellow and is a Graduate of the College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University, Washington, DC, 2005. He was an International Fellow and Graduate of the US Army War College, Class of 2008.

EDITORS NOTE: Jerry Gordon, Senior Editor of the New English Review assisted in the preparation of this article. This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

First image of St. Petersburg terror suspect indicates that this was an Islamic jihad attack

St. Petersburg terror suspectUPDATE: This man [pictured right] has turned himself in to police and insists he is innocent and had no involvement in the attack.

The featured image is courtesy of Kyrgyzstan’s security service, who identified the bombing suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in the Kyrgyzstani city of Osh in 1995.

RELATED ARTICLE: Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen identified as St. Petersburg subway bomb suspect


Cue the establishment media stories about “backlash” and “Islamophobia.”

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Photo of suspect in St. Petersburg terror attack. Photo: Russia – liveuamap.com

“Pictured: First images of ‘terror suspect’ accused of planting a nail bomb which ripped through carriages on St Petersburg metro killing at least ten and injuring 50 while Putin visited the city,” by Gareth Davies, Julian Robinson and Will Stewart, Mailonline, April 3, 2017:

These are the first images of the suspected terrorist accused of planting a nail bomb which ripped through carriages on a St Petersburg train killing at least ten and injuring 50 today.

Several Russian media outlets have released the CCTV picture of the bearded suspect who was wearing a long, black top and a hat blamed for caused the carnage by detonating a bomb that was packed with shrapnel.

The terrifying incident took place on a train that was travelling between Sennaya Ploshchad and Sadovaya metro stations.

Dozens have been injured, including at least three children, as it was reported the man left a briefcase on a train before moving carriages moments before the deadly blast.

A second explosive device disguised as a fire extinguisher was found and defused in a nearby station.

Bloodied passengers were left strewn across the platform in the Russian city as emergency services scrambled to save those wounded by the bomb and the resulting shards of glass and twisted metal.

Vladimir Putin is in his hometown of St Petersburg today for talks with the president of Belarus and confirmed ‘there are dead and injured’, offering his condolences to the families of those killed.

The Kremlin leader, who wanted to visit the scene in the aftermath of the attack but was held back by security services, said: ‘I have already spoken to the head of our special services, they are working to ascertain the cause of the blasts.

‘The causes are not clear, it’s too early. We will look at all possible causes, terrorism as well as common crime.’

Interfax news agency cited an unidentified source who says the suspect in Monday’s blast might have left the explosive device in a bag….

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RELATED VIDEO: St. Petersburg Metro bombings — At least 10 killed.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of REN TV

Will Syria’s Kurds join with Israel and the U.S.?

kurdnasLogoHiSherkoh Abbas , President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria (KURDNAS), raised in  a recent Jns.com article the tantalizing prospect of a Kurdish- Israel- US Alliance to complete the work of destroying the Islamic State, “Are Syrian Kurds the missing ingredient in the West’s recipe to defeat Islamic State?” The thoughts expressed in this article reflect a recent conversation the author held with Sherkoh Abbas and Dr. Mordechai Nisan, author of  Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-Expression.

The Kurds have earned political and military capital in both Iraq and Syria as the most effective boots on the ground combating the extremist Salafism of the Islamic State. This largest non Arab ethnic group in the Middle East has long been denied the promised statehood at the Versailles conference of 1919 that ended the First World War and the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that established the modern Republic of Turkey.

Nevertheless, the Kurds have been resilient despite numerous tragic setbacks in their history over the past century. The establishment of a no fly zone in northern Iraq under US auspices led to the creation the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and its much praised fighting force, the Peshmerga.

Further, it demonstrated the capabilities of the Kurds to govern themselves, overcoming internal differences and external geo- political threats from a hegemonic Iran and the Ba’athist regime of the late Saddam Hussein. Having vast energy resources helped to fuel the KRG’s development. KRG’s Peshmerga exemplary role in the current battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, in coordination with Iraqi national security and US forces, demonstrated its proficiency. Its humanity was demonstrated providing safe havens for Yazidis, Chaldean Christians and other ethnic non Muslim minorities that brought the KRG global recognition and respect.

On the surface the situation in Syrian Kurdistan, while complicated, has the potential for fostering the development of an autonomous Kurdish region extending across northern Syria from the KRG frontier to the Mediterranean, despite the objections of Erdogan’s Turkey.

We only have to look at recent actions by both Russia and the US. Russia and the YPG concluded an arrangement potentially protecting the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Northwest Syria. Further, Russian meetings with Syrian Kurdish representatives in Moscow have evinced Kremlin interest in a federalized Syria in any agreement to end the seven year civil war with the Assad regime. After WWII, the Russians established a short-lived Kurdish Republic in Mahabad, Iran.  US Army Brig. General (ret.) Ernie Audino in our December 2015 New English Review interview, “No War Against ISIS Without the Kurds”, noted that history:

The well-educated and well-respected Qazi Muhammad was elected to serve as president of the Mahabad Republic, history’s first and only sovereign, Kurdish state. Knowing he needed a capable army to protect the state he requested help from the great Kurdish nationalist, Mustafa Barzani, who showed up with 5,000 of his peshmerga. During this period, a son was born to Barzani who named him, Masud. That son is now Masud Barzani, the current President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq.

The U.S. has acted as an umpire between Turkish forces of President Erdogan and Islamist Sunni opposition militia from entering Manbij, liberated by the YPG on the west bank of the Euphrates River.

Moreover, the US sent a message to Ankara that it was backing the YPG led Syrian Democratic Force in the battle to retake the Islamic State administrative capital of Raqqa. The Pentagon has dispatched a US Marine artillery unit. It also alerted a reinforced brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division for possible deployment in Syria.

On the political side of the Syrian Kurdish conundrum there is the daunting task of unifying the tribes, political parties, and the Kurdish National Council.

As Sherkoh Abbas of KURDNAS has pointed out that will require the delinking of the YPG/PYD leadership from outreach and involvement with the PKK, the Assad regime, Iran’s Qods Force, and its proxy, the Iraqi Hashd Shiite Popular Mobilization Force militia. There are indications that the YPG/PYD might consider doing this if there were US, Russian and potentially, Israeli auspices.

Israeli PM Netanyahu, a year and a half ago, issued a statement supporting the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the region; welcomed by the Kurdish communities.

The benefits would include having a reliable ally in a post Assad Syria with both political and military capacities and a secure source of oil to meet the Jewish nation’s growing domestic and regional demand.

Israel has to take an important step to achieve these desirable results. It has to reach out to both the Syrian Kurds and the Trump Administration to recognize the significant Kurdish role in the final destruction of the Islamic State threatening the security of Israel’s northern Golan frontier.

If that succeeds then both the US and Israel would have an important stable alliance with the largest non Arab ethnic polity in the troubled Middle East.  With the defeat of the Islamic State, that would turn attention to reining in the threat posed by a hegemonic Iran. With the possibility of a triple entente composed of both Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistans, Israel and the US, it raises the future prospect of fostering regime change in Tehran giving rise to the aspirations for autonomy of minorities in Iran- the Kurds, Azeri, Ahwaz and Baluch.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Why Democrats are conspiring with the Russians to discredit President Trump

The Democrats keep yelling “the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.” Why?

There have been many theories about the sudden interest on any and all connections between President Trump and his cabinet with the Russians by Democrats. Among these are: the Russians hacked the election, the Russians stole the election from Hillary Clinton, any contact with any Russian official or surrogate is grounds for dismissal or even impeachment.

Perhaps we should look back at what the Obama administration did to appease, if not become a surrogate for, Russia:

  1. Obama abandoned the missile defense system in Europe shelving deployment of U.S. missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, citing new intelligence that the missile threat from Iran was minimal. Victory: Russia and Iran.
  2. Obama called for a “reset” of Russian/U.S. relations. On 6 March 2009 in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the English word “reset” and the Roman alphabet transliteration of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet word перегрузка (“peregruzka”.) Victory: Russia and Iran.
  3. Obama tells Russian President Dmitry Medvedev more flexibility after the 2012 election. Obama stated that Vladimir Putin should give him more “space” and that “[a]fter my election I have more flexibility.” Victory: Russia, Iran, Syria
  4. Obama’s “red line” in Syria if Assad used chemical weapons. Red line policy ignored when Assad uses chemical weapons a second time. Victory: Russia and Syria.
  5. Finally, Obama’s deal with Iran on development of nuclear weapons. Victory: Iran, Russia and ISIS.

Democrats consider Obama’s Iran deal his signature foreign policy success. Here are Obama’s remarks on the Iran deal:

Obama’s foreign policy has emboldened Russia as the key force in the Middle East and at the same time given Iran the cover it needs to continue its nuclear program. Iran is now the hegemonic power in the Middle East, with the help of Russia, and is training and exporting radical Islamists to do its bidding globally.

As former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said July 28, 2009, after the latest of six trips to the Gulf in the last 18 months, that “what I hear is, there is greater fear of Iran than there is animus toward Israel.” He added, “So that is almost a predominant sentiment that I’ve noticed throughout most, if not all, of the Gulf states” (Washington Times, July 29, 2009).

pelosi schumer putinThis is the reason that Democrats have tried to tie President Trump’s hands when it comes to Russia.

For if President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are successful in engaging Russia in the fight against ISIS and if President Trump can decouple Russia from Iran then the Obama foreign policy legacy will be gone. The Iran deal will be no more. Iran will be de-fanged and will not be the threat that it currently is to its Gulf state neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Israel.

Democrats working with the Russians are doing everything they can to put President Trump into a box when it comes to negotiating with Russia. That is good for Russia, Iran and Syria’s Assad.

Democrats want America to be weak in its foreign policy and weak even before President Trump meets with Russian President Putin.

The Democrats, along with Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio are hurting President Trump’s foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East and with Russia. That is the goal.

That is why the Democrats, and perhaps the “Axis of Evil” Republican Senators McCain, Graham and Rubio, are in effect conspiring with the Russians.

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Dear Senator McCain please follow or get out of the way!

Dear Senator John McCain (R-AZ),

You had your chance to become the leader of the free world. You failed. As General George S. Patton said, “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”

Since you are not President of the United States then you have a duty to follow Donald J. Trump as a Republican, based upon your oath to uphold the Constitution and as an American citizen to allow President Trump to conduct foreign policy as he sees fit.

There is a long standing tradition that members of the Senate do not criticize a sitting President overseas.

Speaking in 1947, Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), the influential chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, provided key support to Democratic President Harry S. Truman and admonished his colleagues that “[W]e must stop partisan politics at the water’s edge.”

You are the current chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. You have a duty to speak with President Trump privately on issues important to you but you have no right to suggest the POTUS is a dictator or dictatorial in a foreign land.

President Trump has the power to conduct U.S. foreign policy under Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Please remember President Trump took the oath of office which states, ”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Gateway Pundit reports that in a February 2017 recording in what appears to be a conversation between Senator McCain with Russian comedians Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stoliarov — known as Vovan and Lexus — posing as Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman in a prank phone call, you discussed key national security issues on U.S. policy towards Ukraine and Russia.

Please understand that President Trump won the election. Therefore you are bound by your oath of office and the rules of the Republican Party to follow the lead of President Trump or get out of the way.

Sincerely,

The American People

U.S. Allows Russia to Send Iran Enough Uranium for 10 Nuclear Weapons

Meanwhile, the U.S. ships fired warning shots toward Iranian fast-attack vessels that were closing in on U.S. ships and refused to slow down.

Russia is sending a large shipment of natural uranium to Iran in exchange for an Iranian shipment to Russia of nuclear reactor coolant. The shipment of 116 metric tons (130 tons) was approved by the United States and the five other countries involved in orchestrating the nuclear deal with Iran.

United Nations Security Council approval of the shipment is expected soon as a formality.

The shipment is enough to make more than 10 simple nuclear bombs, according to David Albright, an expert with the Institute of Science and International Security, “depending on the efficiency of the enrichment process and the design of the nuclear weapon.”

Two senior diplomats leaked the information to the Associated Press under the condition of anonymity and said they were not authorized to discuss details of the program.

The Iranian shipment is legal under the terms of the nuclear deal and will be “subject to the careful monitoring and inspections that are included in the deal to ensure that Iran is living up to the commitments that they made,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

An upcoming conference this week of representatives from Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Vienna will focus on alleged violations of the nuclear deal by the United States, following Iranian complaints.

Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama sold the nuclear deal to the American people on the understanding that the deal would make it more difficult, rather than easier, for Iran to build nuclear weapons.

At the same time as receiving huge Iranian shipments while complaining about alleged U.S. violations of the nuclear deal, the Iranian navy has come close to combat with U.S. ships in international waters in the Straits of Hormuz.

Iranian fast attack vessels closed in rapidly to a U.S. destroyer on Sunday and ignored repeated warnings to slow down. This forced the destroyer to fire three warning shots at the Iranian ships.

The Iranian vessels came within 900 yards of the ship according to U.S. Defense officials.

“This was an unsafe and unprofessional interaction, and that is due to the fact that they were approaching at a high level of speed with weapons manned and disregarding repeated warnings,”  Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told media.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of a nuclear reactor  is for illustrative purposes only. Photo: © Reuters.

‘Trust Me’ Doesn’t Cut It on Russian Hacking: This one-sided report smells like a political hatchet job

Here’s the real problem with the joint intelligence report on alleged Russian hacking: without the classified details, we ordinary citizens are supposed to take the breathless allegations, presented as “high confidence” intelligence judgments, on faith.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan are crossing their fingers and saying, “Trust us.”

Since both are political appointees – Brennan in particular came directly out of the Obama White House, where he is believed to have orchestrated secret arms smuggling through Libya to Syrian rebels that led directly to the Benghazi disaster – excuse me if I remain skeptical.

Has Russia been engaged in sophisticated disinformation operations in the United States? Well, duh. That’s been going on for decades. During the Cold War, as General Clapper reminded the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, we had a separate United States Information Agency (USIA) at the State Department to combat Soviet intelligence desinformatziya and, to a lesser degree, maskirovka.

The USIA regularly issued bulletins on Soviet deception operations, and traced how they were laundered through predominantly Third World media (India was a big favorite in the 1980s) until they made it into the United States, generally as part of left-wing conspiracy outlets.

A few examples were fabricated stories that the CIA had invented AIDS, or that Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which was shot down by Soviet fighters in 1983, had been flying a covert U.S. intelligence mission. The KGB also planted forged documents to smear American politicians and then “leaked” them to (usually) unwitting journalists.

But that’s not what happened here. If we are to believe the unclassified Russian hacking report, released on Friday, Russian intelligence agents hacked into the DNC and into the Hillary Clinton campaign servers and then turned over emails it exfiltrated to DCleaks.com and to Wikileaks.

“Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self- proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries,” the report stated.

Note that statement: the Russians didn’t spread obvious falsehoods or sophisticated disinformation. They disseminated the truth – stolen documents, yes. But true.

That is one reason why many Americans are having a hard time getting steamed at the Russians for exploiting the stupidity of John Podesta, who responded to a spearphishing attack by emailing his password, which was the word “password.”

Dumber than that, you die… of ridicule.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told FoxNews that the RNC reported similar attempts to penetrate its email to the FBI, and was never successfully penetrated. Why? Because they already had common sense security protocols in place.

Nations spy on each other. Democrat operatives need to get over it – or perhaps, just set aside the roach and revive their collective memories. After all, it was just two years ago that President Obama sent his 2012 campaign field director, Jeremy Bird, and four other political operatives to Israel, with orders to help defeat Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in his March 2015 re-election effort.

That was direct, overt, U.S. government interference in the election of a U.S. ally. But because it was Obama and Netanyahu, Democrats just didn’t get steamed.

By the way, if the Russians could penetrate the Clinton campaign server, what’s to say they didn’t also penetrate the private email server Mrs. Clinton set up to mask her “private” dealings while she was Secretary of State? And yet, the U.S. hacking report never alleges that this happened, nor does it allege that the Russians disclosed classified U.S. documents.

Perhaps that was a red line the Russians didn’t want to cross? Leaking unclassified emails that revealed the hypocrisy of the Clinton team and the Democrat party could arguably be construed as doing the work the U.S. news media failed to do. Leaking classified documents is another matter entirely.

Fully half of the unclassified U.S. report details the activities of RT television, formerly known as Russia Today.

It’s hard to believe that anyone watching RT is not aware of its strong Russia connection. The U.S. report accurately describes how RT unsurprisingly coordinated its propaganda with the Russian state.

What about MSNBC and CNN coordinating their propaganda with a political party, the DNC?

The U.S. report criticizes Russia because “RT coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative.” Somehow I missed the report’s criticism of MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post for their “consistently negative” coverage of Donald Trump.

But I get it: that’s because RT is controlled by a foreign state, and those U.S. media organizations are privately owned.

So why doesn’t the U.S. intelligence report criticize other foreign state-owned media organizations, such as the BBC, or TF1 and France 2 in France, that not only broadcast coverage of Donald Trump that was “consistently negative,” but portrayed him as “emotionally unbalanced,” “unhinged,” “incompetent,” “unqualified to be President,” “racist,” “misogynist,” etc.?

The U.S. report announces on page 1 that it “covers the motivation and scope of Moscow’s intentions regarding US elections and Moscow’s use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence US public opinion.” Perhaps it’s just me, but I find it odd that U.S. intelligence analysts would put their analysis of Russian motivation before the facts. But that’s the way it reads throughout.

One curious omission: the report contains no assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. While the report claims this is because it’s not the job of the intelligence community to “analyze US political processes or US public opinion,” I can guarantee you that if they had detected a clear impact of the Russian hacking, they would have spread it like butter on toast.

Michael Moore may have influenced more voters in a YouTube clip from his one-man show in Michigan, than RT did in all of its election coverage. The five-minute segment went viral when it was first released; many people thought they were actually watching left-wing ideologue Moore endorse Donald Trump.

Moore of course had no intention of endorsing Trump, but wanted to show his audience that he “understood” the motivation of Trump voters, and that they were “good” people. From the astonished look on the faces of people in the audience, it’s easy to imagine many of these Michigan voters suddenly realizing it was “okay” for them to vote for Trump, even if they traditionally had identified with Democrats.

The omission of any context in the unclassified version of this report, coupled to the breathless tone of its “high-confidence” conclusions and total lack of factual evidence in the public version, makes it appear like a political hatchet job. That in itself does a disservice to the honest, hard-working intelligence gatherers and analysts of the U.S. intelligence community.

EDITORS NOTE: This column first appeared on FrontPage Magazine.

Trump: Only ‘stupid people’ are against a ‘good’ but ‘respectful’ relationship with Russia

President-elect Trump has once again showed the world and his supporters that he does not seek confrontation but rather respect for the United States of America. Americans and Westerners have more in common with Russia than with other nations that hate us, for example Iran. A good but respectful bilateral relationship with Russia can open the door to dealing with a common enemy – radical Islam.

In a series of tweets the President-elect once again made it clear to outgoing President Obama, Democrats and some bellicose Republicans that a good relationship is not a bad thing with Russia.

trump-russia-tweet-1

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It is clear that President-elect Trump is not caving into the narrative pushed by the Democrats, Obama, legacy media and Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The President-elect will not be boxed into a position that is reminiscent of the Cold War era “better dead than red” mindset. The Soviet Union has fallen. Economically Russia is a shadow of the former Soviet Union before its collapse.

Russia’s GDP calculated for purchasing power parity was $3.5 trillion, while Italy’s was $2.1 trillion. So in 2013, Russia had a higher level of economic activity than Italy, but because goods and services are more expensive in Italy, the overall value (nominal GDP) ended up the same. In contrast, the United States is the world’s largest national economy in nominal terms and second largest according to purchasing power parity (PPP), representing 22% of nominal global GDP and 17% of gross world product (GWP). The United States’ GDP was estimated to be $17.914 trillion as of Q2 2015.

In order to make America great again President-elect Trump understands that we must grow our economy, our military and unlike the Obama administration, reengage in the global political arena. Respect comes from strength. Economic, moral and military strength.

If there is a battle to be waged is must be between the free world led by a strong America against those who hate freedom and liberty. That is what it means to make America great again.

Remembering the 1979 Russian Invasion of Afghanistan: How Democrats created radical Islamic terrorism

Don Hank in an email titled “This is how the terror started (in 1979)” provided this quote:

In his 1993 memoirs [“From the Shadows“], ex-Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Robert Gates revealed that direct CIA involvement in Afghanistan had commenced almost six months before the Soviet invasion. Jimmy Carter signed a presidential decree in July 1979 to covertly aid the Mujahideen insurgents.

Hank then wrote, “And then came Al-Qaeda and the 9-11 attack, and then ISIS and the invasion of Europe. It all seems to have started with the CIA. If you want a war on terror, you have to start with the people who spawned the terror. A true war on terror would include a war on the CIA. It starts with education.”

Hank provided a link to a Daryl Morini, paper dated January 3rd, 2010 titled “Why Did the Soviet Union Invade Afghanistan?.” Morini wrote:

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a costly and, ultimately, pointless war. Historical hindsight has made this evident. However, exactly why the Red Army wound up in direct military conflict, embroiled in a bitter and complicated civil war—some 3,000 kilometres away from Moscow—is a point of historiographical uncertainty. The evidence available suggests that geopolitical calculations were at the top of the Kremlin’s goals. These were arguably to deter US interference in the USSR’s ‘backyard’, to gain a highly strategic foothold in Southwest Asia and, not least of all, to attempt to contain the radical Islamic revolution emanating from Iran. The subsidiary goal of the invasion was to secure an ideologically-friendly régime in the region.

[ … ]

Following the 1970s period of détente between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union, the latter seemed to be in an advantageous strategic position, compared to the post-Vietnam paralysis which plagued its main opponent. Scott McMichael, a military historian, argued that this “turned out largely to be an illusion,” although there is substance to the claim that the Soviet Union was ahead of the game in the lead u p to 1979. This is exemplified by Moscow’s increasing assertiveness in foreign affairs during this period. As a direct result of the so-called ‘Brezhnev doctrine’, the USSR asserted its “right and duty” to go to war in foreign countries “if and when an existing socialist regime was threatened.” [Emphasis added]

Read more…

Is Russia, under Putin, making the same mistake that his predecessors in the Former Soviet Union made by exerting Russia’s “right and duty” to go to war in foreign countries “if an when an existing socialist regime [like Assad’s Syria] was threatened.” According to Wikipedia:

The Ba’ath Party, and indirectly the Syrian Regional Branch, was established on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq (a Christian), Salah al-Din al-Bitar (a Sunni Muslim) and Zaki al-Arsuzi (an Alawite). According to the congress, the party was “nationalist, populist, socialist, and revolutionary” and believed in the “unity and freedom of the Arab nation within its homeland.” 

[ … ]

The party merged with the Arab Socialist Party (ASP), led by Akram al-Hawrani, to establish the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party in Lebanon following Adib Shishakli‘s rise to power. [Emphasis added]

Read more…

Has President Obama made the same mistake as Jimmy Carter did in 1979 by arming the anti-Assad Mujahideen insurgents? Is the CIA complicit, once again, in doing the wrong thing for what it believes is in America’s national interests?

President-elect Donald J. Trump has expressed his doubts about the CIA and other U.S. national intelligence agencies, especially when it comes to Russia, Iran, North Korea, China and Syria.

On January 20th, 2017 Donald J. Trump will be sworn into the Office of the President of these United States. Will a President Trump learn from the failures of both Democratic President’s Carter and Obama? Me thinks so.

RELATED ARTICLE: Secretary of State Kerry’s Speech on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Cyber Warfare — A Clear and Present Danger

In a January 2014 column titled “The Cyber Attacks are coming, the Cyber Attacks are coming!” I wrote:

According to experts like John Jorgenson, CEO and founding partner of the Sylint Group, our government is woefully behind the times in capability and capacity to deal with the threat of cyber attacks let alone the cyber warfare being conducted on a global scale by nation states such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

[ … ]

“Nothing of substance to protect commercial industry, the countries infrastructure, or the citizen has come out of the [Obama] White House. From the attacks being made on the United States on the Cyber Battlefield our advisories are taking Cyber Warfare seriously while we can’t find a credible Field Marshall let alone decide what needs to be done,” notes Jorgenson.

Read more…

On February 26th, 2016 I was interviewed by Denise Simon on The Denise Simon Experience regarding the issue of cyber warfare. I spoke about the clear and present dangers of enemies, both foreign and domestic, using technology to commit crimes, steal national secrets and impact our way of life.

Denise called cyber attacks “the poor man’s nuclear weapon.”

I talked about the current threat (attacks from nation states, cyber hackers and groups like Anonymous) to the looming future threat of cyborgs, chipping and Internables.

Internables are internal sensors that measure well-being in our bodies may become the new wearables. According to Ericsson’s ConsumerLab eight out of 10 consumers would like to use technology to enhance sensory perceptions and cognitive abilities such as vision, memory and hearing.

Fast forward to December 2016 and the media’s obsession with the successful phishing of the DNC and release of John Podesta’s emails. What they are missing is:

  1. As technology has become ubiquitous, cyber warfare has become the preferred method of attacking one’s enemies.
  2. President Obama turned over control of the Internet to the United Nations in October of 2016, which increases the cyber warfare threat against U.S. public and private entities.
  3. All nation states, with the exception of the U.S., conduct offensive cyber warfare as a matter of public policy including: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and ISIS to name a few.
  4. The Obama administration has made neither cyber security nor cyber warfare a priority during the past 8 years.

My greatest concern is that the United States government is only conducting defensive operations against the threat, and not doing that very well. The Obama administration does not conduct effective offensive operations against our enemies which include: China, Russia, Iran, the Islamic State, North Korea and many others.

Our warnings went unheeded by the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and the White House.

So who really is to blame for these unrelenting cyber attacks?

Why its U.S.!

How the Collapse of the USSR felt from the inside: A reflection by a witness 25 years later

25 years ago George Bush Sr. was still in office, and so was Saddam Hussein. The European Union didn’t exist and neither did China’s economic powerhouse. The Berlin wall had just come down and Germany had finally reunited. Hillary Clinton was a little-known mouthy First Lady of Arkansas and the media gleefully predicted that Donald Trump would never climb back to the top after his Atlantic City fiasco.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Eastern bloc was in shambles, but the USSR was still standing with Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm. Vladimir Putin dabbled in minor corruption working for the Mayor of Saint Petersburg, which had just been renamed from Leningrad. The KGB meddled in other countries’ affairs as usual, spreading “fake news” and helping leftist politicians to win elections with no objections from the Western mainstream media.

fall-of-the-ussrThen, all of a sudden, the USSR disappeared from the map. How did that happen?

Political scientists have and will continue to write, with varying degree of accuracy, about the details of it. What I’m attempting to do here is describe how it looked and felt from the inside – as seen by me, who at the time happened to be a voiceless, powerless Soviet citizen trying to make sense of the universe.

The Soviet clocks may have been the fastest in the world, but time wasn’t moving and seemed to be broken. With three-fourths of the country overlapping with Asia, where time had stopped a millennium ago, the Soviet Union defied the Western concept of progress. The official TV and radio stations always played old, slow songs with flowing melodies; if their purpose was to set a sluggish rhythm of life for the rest of us, it was working. Even the few semi-unofficial rock bands tried but mostly failed to get a different rhythm out of their instruments. It was as if we all lived in a gigantic aquarium, whose sleepy inhabitants lazily picked slowly descending flakes of bland food, distributed to them by the invisible owner’s hand. It could be quite relaxing if that is your thing, but most of the time I felt like a trapped passenger of the sunken ship at the bottom, next to the fake plastic seaweed.

The textbook date of the end of the USSR is December 26, 1991, but for us, Soviet citizens, the dissolution began a few months earlier and happened in stages.

Very few people feared or believed the Communists any longer, ridiculing their institutions and their lying media. A typical political joke at the time was about a man who always complained that Communists had run out of everything – food, toilet paper, consumer goods, and so on. So the KGB brought him to their office and tried to explain that the country was going through historic changes and we all needed to be patient. “You should be thankful this isn’t the old days when you could be shot,” the KGB officer said, pointing a finger to his head. To which the man responded, “Ah, so you’ve also run out of bullets.”

The Soviets continued to obey the old establishment mostly out of habit and because there was no functioning alternative. We knew something was bound to happen; we just didn’t know when.

To understand the reasons of the breakup, one must remember that the USSR was a union of fifteen ethnic republics that had little in common except for the common misfortune of being absorbed into a messianic empire and subjected to absurd social experiments. Though they were all touted as “equal,” everyone knew that Russia was “more equal” than others.

Officially, the Soviet Union was a model of international solidarity and brotherly love. Unofficially, it was a prison of nations. Any non-Russian nationalist sentiment was viewed as treason and as an attempt to escape. In contrast, Russian nationalism was encouraged; it was a glue that held the country together, which effectively turned ethnic Russians into jailers. What started as a maximum-security prison, however, towards the end degraded into a low-security facility with crumbling perimeter fencing and drunken jailers who no longer wanted their jobs.

The first mortal blow to the system was delivered by the breakout of Ukraine. Technically speaking, the first inmates to get away were the three Baltic states, but those had been known malcontents who always kept to themselves and their escape wasn’t critical to the empire’s survival. But when the second-most powerful republic ran off with its prime real estate, industries, agriculture, and ethically related Slavic population, the compulsory “brotherly union” could no longer exist.

Secession from the USSR had been a matter of hypothetical speculation for months if not years in every Soviet republic. However, after a failed communist coup d’état in Moscow on August 19, that idea was upgraded from hypothetical to absolutely urgent and necessary. The delusional coup members had attempted to bring back a form of Stalinism, but they only succeeded in convincing everyone that the threat of tyranny would always remain as long as there was a USSR in its current form.

A few days later, on August 24, Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party, ridding the country of a nominal force that held it together. On the same day, no longer bound to the Kremlin’s masters, Ukrainian leadership declared independence from the USSR, pending a popular referendum in December. Other Soviet republics quickly followed suit.

Years later Mikhail Gorbachev said that “the most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.” I couldn’t agree more. However, back in 1991, Gorbachev campaigned against Ukraine’s referendum to exit the USSR as passionately as today’s European leaders (and even president Obama) campaigned against Brexit – a similar referendum whereby British citizens voted to exit the European Union.

Gorbachev’s hopes to keep the USSR alive were crushed on December 1, when 90% of Ukrainian voters (including me) chose independence. Opponents of the referendum had tried to scare us with the specter of Ukrainian nationalism, which they said was as bad as Nazism. But a 90% vote for exit in a country where only 70% were ethnic Ukrainians proved that people feared staying in the USSR more than they feared the “scary” nationalists. All they wanted was to live as a normal independent European nation.

The U.S. Press Secretary Fitzwater cautiously congratulated us on the results of the referendum, but reminded us that the official recognition of an independent Ukraine would take time. Foreign governments expressed concern about 1.5 million soldiers and 176 nuclear missiles based in Ukraine, as well as about its industry producing aircraft carriers, heavy military planes, and missile launching equipment (these concerns were removed later after the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and demilitarized in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity).

But the real point of no return was crossed a week later, on December 8, when leaders of the three Slavic republics of the union – Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine – gathered behind Gorbachev’s back at a mansion deep in the Belorussian woods and signed a declaration proclaiming that “the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics no longer exists as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality.”

The declaration, known as the Belavezha Accords, announced the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, or the C.I.S., and welcomed other formerly Soviet republics to join. Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk called it a model for the European Community, based on “horizontal relationships” as opposed to the “vertical relationship” with the central government in the form of a pyramid with Gorbachev at the top.

The same night, unsuspecting Gorbachev spoke on TV, warning Ukrainians that if the USSR should dissolve, Russia would most certainly claim possession of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. On Ukrainian TV, a local official representative shrugged him off, calling Gorbachev’s opinion “a tragedy of a man outstripped by his time.” After all, Ukrainian president Kravchuk and Russian president Yeltsin had signed waivers of any mutual territorial claims.

Morning newspapers called the C.I.S. declaration a political bomb laid under Gorbachev’s chair. Instantly, the peak of the tremendous pyramid of power appeared hanging in the air with no support, with an army of bureaucrats crashing down on the ground, screaming in anger and swearing to get their positions back.

Reports from the Wall Street and Tokyo exchanges registered an increase of the dollar against the yen and the German mark, since Germany and Japan were the biggest money lenders to the old USSR. At about the same time, English-speaking Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S., Canada, and Australia made a point that everybody should stop spelling Ukraine with the definite article “the” because it was no longer a province but an independent nation. Native speakers had no idea what that meant since Slavic languages have no articles, definite or indefinite. But the same idea could be expressed with different prepositions, so one could now glean people’s political leanings by their use of grammar.

I remember that it was a Sunday because I spent that day at the airport, seeing off a friend who had traded his Soviet citizenship for a refugee status in America. As it turned out, he fled the USSR on the same day the USSR ceased to exist. We didn’t know it at the time, but on the following day I was thinking that my friend wasn’t the only one who left the old country for good. We all did. In a way, we all received a free ride, only my friend landed in the U.S., and we landed in the C.I.S.

He, a Soviet refugee in the U.S., was entitled to welfare benefits. We, Soviet refugees in the C.I.S, weren’t. There wasn’t a plane nor a train or a ship that could take us back. No amnesty would grant us a return. It was a different form of emigration. The new country looked exactly like the old one: the climate, the buildings, the language, the people and their problems. And yet something was different,  something in the air, something that pioneers must feel in new territories: a chance to start a new life.

Founded by Lenin, expanded by Stalin, and somewhat remodeled by Khrushchev, the USSR remained an impossible, contrived, and hopelessly fake Potemkin village of a country until on its seventy fourth year the “three Slavic leaders” went ahead and cut a slice of it each for himself, leaving the rest for the taking.

For a human civilization, seventy four years is a blink of an eye. For the hundreds of millions of individual souls trapped within its militarized borders, it was the only time they had. Imagine being born and living an entire life in a bomb shelter, seeing everything in the artificial light, breathing filtered air, and learning about the outside world only from military reports. My generation was luckier than others – we were still young, in our early thirties, when we stepped out of the bomb shelter and walked on our shaky legs into the forbidden sunshine. Some of us couldn’t get our eyes off of the sun and went blind, proving that our elders were right – the sun was dangerous! But the rest of us didn’t care. Unlike the bulbs of measured brightness, the sun was also equally bright and warm for everyone.

It was a country of many names. They called it a freak and a prophet, the world’s bogeyman, the cradle of the revolution, the evil empire, the bulwark of peace and socialism, the prison of nations, the embodiment of the brightest dreams of humanity.

It had given me my first notions about the world. I grew up knowing there were things we shouldn’t be talking or thinking about. But when someone tells you not to think about an elephant, all you do is think about an elephant. I figured out early on that no one could check if I wasn’t thinking about the things I shouldn’t be thinking about.

Life would have been easier if the list of forbidden things existed in the form of a spreadsheet with three columns for the name, description, and magnitude, similar to the List of Forbidden Rock Bands. But even if such a list of forbidden things existed, we would by definition be forbidden to see it. All we knew was that things on that list were always changing and so we had to be careful what we say and to whom, which taught us never to trust our own judgment. Instead, we were expected to check the Party newspapers for reliable updates on how to see the reality correctly on any day of the week. Once I entered the workforce, newspaper subscriptions became mandatory.

Our teachers kindly taught us that individual liberties resulted in crime, violence, and depravity. The Communist Party was the only thing that kept us alive, separating us from chaos and certain death. Individual people couldn’t be trusted to make the right choices, which was why we needed a caring government. It was a matter of common knowledge that should the government stop regulating society, the world would almost immediately end in a terrible bloodbath.

At the same time our teachers told us that the Communist ideology was “historically optimistic.” And I remember thinking to myself then that a capitalist society that trusted people with their freedoms was a lot more historically optimistic than the bunch of misanthropic curmudgeons in the Kremlin who taught us to fear freedom and took everything away from us in exchange for a vague utopian promise. Not in these exact words, but that was the general idea.

We were taught to love our country for its beauty, mind, and soul – and so we did, while secretly hating it for its deformity, idiocy, and cruelty. Now this bipolar relationship was over. No longer will the word “USSR” invoke that special paranoid feeling of a humongous monster rising behind my back, depressing me and supporting me at the same time. We called it the Motherland. It will sound like Neverland to my children. They won’t grow up to be Soviets like their parents. We were the last of the Soviet breed. Not of the New Man breed, though, because the promised New Man of Communism – the selfless, multitalented altruist – never emerged despite the seven decades of painstaking indoctrination. At least no one can say he wasn’t given a chance.

The student-age Soviets were thrilled for the hell of it, but they didn’t have much to say. Those closer to retirement felt scared and disoriented, but their long lives had taught them to keep their mouths shut. The ones in between were for the most part too busy with their daily survival. Like working ants, they didn’t care about large distant objects. What could the three presidents offer them apart from changing the name of their anthill? The passing away of the glorious messianic era was met with silence.

Though I was born in Ukraine, I was taught to think of the rest of the USSR as my land as well. My land is your land, and your land is my land, even if I’ll never be able to correctly pronounce your land’s god-awful name or spell it in your ridiculous language. Now the era of many names was over, too. Stretching from Europe to the Pacific, the vast country slept under a white blanket of snow, like an uncharted white spot on the world map – or a gigantic blank page. A nameless country.

Gorbachev resigned seventeen days later, by declaring the president’s office extinct. On the following day the Council of Republics voted the Soviet Union (and itself) out of existence. It was December 26, 1991 – a date forever stamped on the USSR’s official death certificate.

A POSTSCRIPT

I wish I could say “and everyone lived happily ever after,” but that would be a lie.

The official breakup had gone so smoothly in part because the former Communist Party and government bosses were in a hurry to enjoy new opportunities offered by the independent economies within a quickly emerging private sector. The highly centralized Soviet system had been too bulky and riddled with nepotism and corruption, leaving those outside of Moscow fewer chances of advancement. The breakup gave the formerly disadvantaged bureaucrats a chance to be the rulers of their own corrupt domains.

My dreams to see Ukraine develop into a prosperous European country were dashed when I realized how thoroughly corrupted the society had become after decades of socialism. The way most people imagined capitalism was the ugly caricature painted for them by Communist propaganda. Instead of re-examining that wrong image, it was simply assumed that ugly was the new beautiful. So we ended up constructing a caricature of capitalism.

Our former Communist elites found this approach agreeable. In the absence of qualified experts, they were now in charge of transitioning to the market economy, which in their minds was indistinguishable from crony capitalism. Soon the former USSR had become a commonwealth of kleptocracies where billionaire thieves ruled over impoverished subjects, beset by high unemployment and hyperinflation. The only exception were the three Baltic states that had retained some memory of how life was before their 1939 annexation.

Vladimir Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.” His idea to reassemble the USSR, albeit in a different format, is critical to the survival of the immense centralized kleptocracy he has crafted in Russia. His biggest fear is an emergence of a transparent, functioning government in any of the ex-Soviet states, which will make his loyal subjects wonder why Russia can’t also be like that. Putin’s notion of “maintaining Russia’s sphere of influence” most fittingly translates as “using bribes and threats to keep the neighboring corrupt regimes dependent on Russia’s corruption, thus ensuring the continuation of his power.”

For that very reason, when in 2014 Ukrainians revolted against their pro-Russian corrupt government, Putin punished them by annexing the Crimea and orchestrating a war in eastern Ukraine. His willingness to violate the Budapest accord (and thus suffer international sanctions) prove how critical for his power it is to keep his neighbors corrupt and dependent.

While the extent of Russia’s meddling in American politics this year has been greatly exaggerated (for obvious reasons), such an interference isn’t new and has existed since at least the 1930s. Imagine how much damage Russia’s interference, multiplied tenfold, can do to a weaker neighboring country with a Russian-speaking majority and frail democratic traditions.

In 1994 I emigrated to America, hoping to raise a family in a country ruled by reason and common sense. But lately I’ve been noticing a shortage of these commodities in the U.S. as well. While the ratio of reasonable people in this country may still be greater than elsewhere in the world, the ignorant passion for Soviet-style politics is very alarming.

Just as it was in the USSR, American media now publishes articles that read like Pravda’s updates on this week’s current truth. American entertainers and moviemakers are consistently pushing the politically correct party line. Social media giants are seriously considering political censorship. Indoctrination in American schools and colleges is worse than what I’ve seen in the Soviet Union, where getting a real education was actually important. And finally, just as it was in the USSR, more and more people begin to resent the “progressive” establishment and mock the lying media.

The way I see it, the proliferation of socialist ideas is largely a consequence of the decades-long Soviet meddling in American affairs, aimed at demoralizing the public and promoting the “correct” people and opinions in places where it mattered most. According to KGB defectors, only about 15% of Soviet intelligence activities here focused on actual espionage; the rest were influence operations. Their seeds have now blossomed, long after the “gardeners” have left this earth. Today’s left-wing radicals in the Democratic Party owe Russia a large debt of gratitude for their unearned power. Seeing Russia turn against them in the last election must have felt excruciatingly scary and painful; they still seem to be in shock.

History is still being written. In this country, where a citizen’s voice still means something, we are a part of this writing process. Trump’s victory and the movement it started makes me feel “historically optimistic” again. This winter it is America’s turn to be a blank page. It is up to us what will be written on it.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.