RUSSIA DESK

The way of life of the Russian ethnic group was originally communal in nature with its own peculiar culture. The social organisation of Russian society is based on the institution of a community with traditional moral values and the priority of protecting public rather than personal interests, wherein society, in turn, must protect the interests of the individual. A person was evaluated on the basis of their personal contribution and usefulness to the common cause. I.e., a collectivist civilisational code was laid in Russian society, defining each individual in terms of usefulness for society as a whole. Hence the craving of the Russian people for justice and a social state.

PEPE ESCOBAR–Soon, in early 2021, ITI will become a reality. But, initially, just as a freight train. The deal was recently sealed at the 10th meeting of the transport and communication ministers of ECO (Economic Cooperation Organization) in Istanbul.

ITI’s official name is actually the ECO Container Train. Trial runs started in 2019. The 6,500 km overland journey should now take 11 days – compared to the roughly 45 days across sealanes for trade between Western Europe and Pakistan.

ECO is a very interesting – and strategic – organization, virtually unknown outside of Asia, uniting Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, the five Central Asian “stans”, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan.

PEPE ESCOBAR—What’s fascinating is that Ankara under Erdogan always seems to be exhibiting a sort of “devil may care” attitude.

Take the seemingly insoluble situation in the Idlib cauldron in northwest Syria. Jabhat al-Nusra – a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria – honchos are now involved in “secret” negotiations with Turkish-backed armed gangs, such as Ahrar al-Sharqiya, right in front of Turkish officials. The objective: to boost the number of jihadis concentrated in certain key areas. The bottom line: a large number of these will come from Jabhat al-Nusra.

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM—This ostensible sloppiness of Russian intelligence agencies contradicts separate US media claims that the Kremlin just launched a spellbinding cyber-assault on the heart of American government departments and corporations.

In any case, Navalny reportedly succeeded in his “sting” operation against the FSB by using sophisticated electronic mimicking of the agency’s phone line and posing as a senior member of the Russian national security council who was demanding a briefing on the alleged assassination and how it failed. We are led to believe the FSB officer, who is named, volunteered the information that Novichok was applied to Navalny’s underpants while he was staying at a hotel in the hours before his flight to Tomsk on August 20.

Basically, Soviet Premier N. Kruschev, who also betrayed Stalin (“Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, ‘On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,’ Delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” February 25, 1956), started this fandango by trying desperately to appease the US bloc via “peaceful coexistence” and the abandonment of support for Third World revolutionaries.  This move had been in turn precipitated by decades long acute hostility toward the Soviet Union by the capitalist world, led by the US. The Soviet posture in time detonated an over-reaction in China, which accused the Soviets of being “social imperialists”. Subsequently, Beijing, deepening the split, welcomed Nixon in 1972, marking the start of a sordid period of collaboration with the western imperialists against the SU across the globe.