Author Archives: commart

FTAC — Strongmen vs Strong Societies

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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This blog’s editor got off on a little bit of a roll this morning, but will ease off on pontification.  🙂

The challenge is setting off and managing a transition from the medieval mode in governance toward modern features.

Europe itself continues to support at least a dozen monarchies, and they would be no different as centers of power and sources of patronage than the Saudi Kingdom or the Islamic Republic of Iran were it not for the leveraging of power out of exclusive hands.

Much of the world contesting the authority of the west (basically: Russia vs NATO) has either to press forward with “political absolutism” or turn toward “classical liberalism”. In Moscow, Putin has chosen a feudal, neo-imperial course. In Riyadh, such a luminary as Prince Al-Waleed has found ways to blend — at least for himself and those to whom he extends patronage — the best of both worlds.

What Moscow, again using that proper noun to represent Putin, the “New Nobility” (FSB), and the Oligarchs, appears to want is greater chaos in the world to which it then may respond as a provider of greater stability!

Moscow plays a deeply manipulating script over and over and over.

Let’s try this Matryoshka doll method of nesting from the larger to the smaller:

Moscow vs NATO

Tehran vs Riyadh (Shiite vs Sunni Islam)

Damascus vs Split Proto-Democratic | Proto-islamist Forces

Hamas | Hezbollah vs Tel Aviv

From the big conflict-containing political doll down to the smallest:

Medieval Autocratic Power vs Modern Distributed Power

From my desktop experience and perspective, the principle as regards the architecture of the most notable “conflict set” — we should stop calling it “East vs West” at this point — doesn’t change.

Moscow appears to want a world of vast feudal estates managed by “strongmen”.

Washington may appreciate and produce wealth fit for kings, but its system prefers the presence of a meaningful electorate, then politicians, then the Chief Administrator we call a President, lesser administrators, and then appointed judges, all of its political machinery governed by a stable Constitution and a host of legal codes upheld from township to Federal region.

That’s the “different kind of war” seen from the BackChannels’ desktop.  It has great stability — “Medieval Autocratic Power vs Modern Distributed Power” — but also some variance within (and the Rolling Stones have conquered only popular Cuba).

In that parenthesis is another conflict that involves the discrepancy  between the rule of the strong (anywhere) and the popular will (anywhere).  Although both Moscow and Washington — and all the others — support vast internal security campuses, the differences may be at least superficially marked (e.g., KGB/FSB vs FBI / CIA / U.S. Homeland Security) but with depth immediately beyond this blog’s interest, reach, and scope.

As regards the binary “Medieval vs Modern”, change on the side of the good — universally compassionate and reparative — involves myriad elements in transition.  Perhaps when President Obama has counseled patience or refused to demonize Islam in its totality — a common complaint from the extreme wings of western nationalists — it has been to both compel but manage a global and gradual political greening.  Whether the Administration has done far too little at a mosey may be subject for another post.

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FTAC — A Wrap-Up on Mentality — Malignant/Medieval and Reparative/Modern Narcissism

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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In our common malignancy, perhaps, our narcissism lends repair to psychological damage to self concept. Life’s rough and in part insults us, less or more, but, again perhaps, the greater the insult to esteem — the heavier the hand — the more passionate the want of self-aggrandizement, security, and wealth.

In the healthy, it’s good having basic and somewhat above good circumstance in freedom, money, and general security. In the malignant, the same wants get Up There and Out There. On Back-Channels, I’ve likened such qualities to the recognized psychological pathologies that are bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. In our general political psychology and related sociology, we aspire and trade up in comfort and prestige, and we do that through laws an practices that accommodate a healthy general development with concern spanning the distance from penthouse to street.

The malignant do things quite differently.

Muammar Qaddafi’s Mullah Shweyga story (easily looked up) tells the difference. Such leaders take full advantage of the possession of the power to visit suffering on others with impunity. All of the crimes that may be visited on one may as well be extended to others: capricious “justice” or detainments, imprisonments, hangings, tortures. Each dictator asks: “who is going to stop me?” And off each goes into the high life on the backs of the hungry, the powerless, and vulnerable.

I’m always happy to share the Reuters piece on Khamenei (“Assets of the Ayatollah”), but I think it better that others embark on similar journeys as regards the entire host of figures whose power has proven malignant and resides in the brutalities and related fears and levers (e.g., bribery and patronage; intimidation and murder) known more to the medieval mind than the modern one.

Yes, this may be the only blog on earth suggesting the reader continue doing the research.

🙂

Here’s a related comment on Moscow’s role in managing conflicts in a manner fit to destroy those it manages to manipulate and prize from the same conflict-related income and, at least in its own hive-mind, power and prestige.

Moscow, representing Putin’s political police, himself, and the oligarchs, may be a greater power than Tehran. It may barely be keeping its political image clean — remember: officially, Moscow is helping Damascus fight “The Terrorists” — but it may have the habit of manipulating political situations to its advantage.

From Somali General Galal, who is still alive, here’s a densely compacted recap of the Somali vs Ethiopian war over the Ogaden: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1

In the PROCESS of that war, Moscow apparently manipulated Somali leaders into laying claim or reclaiming the Ogaden, pitting first guerrilla then regular forces against Ethiopian control of the space. As advances pushed Ethiopia out of the contested space, Soviet Russia stepped in to arm Ethiopian forces, who then pushed back the Somalis. The Ogaden continues to host some related “low-intensity conflict”.

Who won?

Getting away from one’s own interests, in this instance Syria, and venturing to overview Moscow’s involvements in conflicts worldwide across time may help us more brightly resolve (accurately perceive) states of affairs in Syria and the Middle East Conflict.

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FTAC – “Everyone Knows” (About the Jews)

06 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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PROPAGANDA ALERT!

“Everyone knows that American Jews and Israel are drifting apart . . .”

Everyone does “not know” because it isn’t the truth.

I am an American of Jewish descent.

I don’t speak Hebrew, but I belong to a synagogue. While I am as interested in being an American without a hyphenate, and in the United States of America, that is possible, I am not only comfortable being Jewish but democratic, humanist, liberal, and pro-Zionist.

The propaganda that starts with an assumptive phrase, “Everyone knows” often goes on to “about the Jews”. Most American Jews well know the history of the invocation of such phrases and the persecution of the Jewish People that continues apace without regard to possession of the Hebrew language or religious passion (Hitler, I believe, set the mark for “genocide” for one-fifth “Jewish blood”).

I don’t really want to take on the genetics crowd, but Jewishness, believing (in God) “ethical monotheism” and appreciation of cultural customs and holidays and rituals appear all over the world, from Cuba to the Asian subcontinent (include China and Africa . . . everywhere) through the Jews. Regardless of real race — talk about “rainbow coalition” — the vast majority of Jews recognize the significance, promise fulfilled, and powerful function of the possession of a real spiritual — and functional and functioning — homeland. Our culture — our way, our ethics, morality, our arguments . . . in fact: no Moses — no Muhammad — knows the land from whence it came, and in that most all share.

Ask a Baloch, a Kurd, a Pashtun (“B’ni Israel”) about his relationship with the Land of The People.

The response may be no different for the Hebrew People and Jewish People of the global diaspora. We know the land from whence we’ve come — and we know what we have had to overcome to get there. We are not drifting from that land: we are drifting the world closer to it.

Never mind the forum — the source of irritation:

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/04/if-american-jews-and-israel-are-drifting-apart-whats-the-reason/ (4/4/2016 – a progressive book review by Elliot Abrams, no less).

So Jews argue (and the cliche goes: “two Jews, three opinions”).

Call what we do intellectual freedom combined with the ambition to learn and explore ethics, law, and psychology and much else without limits.

We’re not drifting apart: we’re drifting more together, and not only the Jews, but with the same “mixed multitude” that Moses led out of Egypt.

As regards the business of establishing a “Palestinian state” — and BackChannels’ editor endorses a two-state solution or, if unachievable, suzerainty — resides with the creaking old absolute-power enthusiasts: the PLO / PA and Hamas, both apparently incapable of change (on this blog, have a look at “Why the Jews“) and chained themselves (by money most of all) to the Moscow-Tehran axis, post-Soviet, neo-feudal, and relentlessly piratical, both of them.

The opener, “PROPAGANDA ALERT” may have ironic meaning for some (bigots), but it refers to the tack taken in the first paragraph of the Abrams review and might apply to liberal gloss throughout lauds the excessive criticism of Israel as programmatic in “saving Israel” (from those blasted far right wingers) while barely touching on the perfidy of the Jewish State’s sworn enemies –and not the Palestinians but the Palestinian leadership.

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Hef & Holly – A Note on Malignant and Reparative Narcissism

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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PERHAPS —

The Malignant controls, discourages, manipulates

&

The Reparative liberates, encourages, and grows

_____

Attempt to escape as he may, the editor of BackChannels returns to his themes even while journeying out to Hollywood between the pages of a hardcover, i.e., celebrity Holly Madison’s Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny (New York: Harper Collins, Dey Street imprint, 2015).

As ladies men go, some peacocks appear to have an image both to create and maintain, and not infrequently that at high cost to the cheerleaders seduced into hanging on to their elbows.

Now how different is that from the global politics — and the themes attending those “leaders and their followers in a dangerous world” written about by Jerrold Post (2004)  — visited here by way of the pack of contemporary autocrats?

🙂

I have seen the term “state capitalism” applied to Putin’s medieval revanch in the creation of the post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia now wrapped around his own “vertical of power”.  The idea has its appeal (and many related posts break into a BackChannels’ category ne “21st Century Feudal“).

In the American Wildness, distributed business-borne capitalism, which in North America could not be otherwise, appears to produce in part feudal competitions and related private environs as part of the nature of power arrayed between chairmen and presidents, members of the board, and shareholders and other stakeholders.  The degree to which those at the top embrace their own “vertical of power” and effectively promote their own cultural fascism around and beneath them needs must vary, but overarched by democratic governance, such private feudal behaviors have only the boundaries of a few legal papers (noncompete and nondisclosure agreements, for a start), the discipline of their accounting departments (no workee, no checkee), and their doors for fending off equally private but solitary revolutions: employees belittled, degraded, demeaned, denigrated, enslaved by their environments can, do, will outgrow their my-way-or-the-highway keepers — and walk across the street or do that highway thing and move one big town, state, or country over.

It’s a big world, and life’s too short to tolerate a capricious and irrational subjugation forever.

Of course, with governments operated as private businesses for authoritarian elites, the same problems are much, much greater for those suffering — and not individually: en masse — beneath them.

Additional Reference

BackChannels.  “Malignant Narcissism”.

Odell, Amy.  “The 14 Worst Things About Hugh Hefner, as Revealed in Holly Madison’s New Book: From his incessant mansplaining to the constant infighting he created among girlfriends, Madison describes her life in the mansion as anything but happy.” Cosmopolitan, June 22, 2015. 

Wikipedia.  “Presidency of Vladimir Putin”: About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma in late January 2009, when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: “It is no coincidence that Medvedev has taken aim at the country’s mayors. Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in 2005. Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia. Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country.

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FTAC – Brussels – On Public Impatience and Outrage

25 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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I don’t question the police for courage. A quick glance at the news tells how aggressive and deep the investigation has gone on this attack. As regards the better solution of having forestalled the attack, the European neighbors seem to be attending to that area of criticism. The public — and on Facebook, those now featuring the meme “Je Suis Tired of This Shit” — also tires of complacency in the presence of this implacable (“sub-state transnational”) enemy. Expect the heat to rise against this class of transnational state enemy.

From the editor’s accidental (2007 and broadband-enabled) introduction to them, the “Islamic Small Wars” have been wars for “detectives and poets” — detectives, because every element in an attack has welled up out of a chain of criminal conspiracies; poets, because what’s in the head got there through language and language-driven manipulation.

In the American experience from 2007 forward, we have seen at least the watched figure of Carlos Bledsoe (Little Rock, 2009) carry through his attack without impedance, the similarly tagged Tsarnaev brothers (Boston, 2013) similarly succeed (and there were other attacks — e.g., Nidal Hassan, Fort Hood, 2009 — that involved perpetrator signals in words and actions that should have produced responsive countermeasures — counseling, detention, investigation), and it seems not until San Bernardino (2015) that authorities acknowledge the character of the attack, its relationship with “radical Islam”, and the “gating” missed all along the timeline to the massacre.  Now, having turned that corner, the attack in Brussels adds impetus to the business of using accumulated experience and knowledge to finally “crawl up the vines” with intents shifting between investigative purposes to actually dismantling involved criminal networks.

Maybe.

“Open source” punditry ends about here where governments may (finally) set to work against the God Mob using accumulated nonpublic intelligence and methods.

As the whole sheet of martial and political music may go, the dark gifts of the 20th Century that were Hitlerism and Stalinism would seem in the mix given the contribution of both to the development and distribution of now decades of similar terrorism, especially that targeting airliners and terminals (for reading up on the 1970s experience, BackChannels recommends Brendan I. Koerner’s The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking).

Obama’s Administration, perhaps having chosen to display the least visible war possible, has perhaps effectively met the challenge posed by Putin’s post-Soviet transitioning of Russia into, for now, a feudal estate and the related aggression sustained by aligned but old powers, especially that represented by the piratical Ayatollah Khamenei with his handling of Hezbollah and Hamas and other elements in the field.

BackChannels reminds readers that the Soviet dissolved a little more than 24 years ago (December 26, 1991), that the quarter-century anniversary is therefore this year, and that Putin and NATO may be engaged in a tug of war over how the world will look — and how medieval absolute power in the modern world will have fared — on Christmas Day 2016.

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Excerpt – David Ramati on the Historic Western Experience with Islamic Aggression

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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It is important to understand this history in order to understand what we are up against; our enemy has a long memory and seeks to avenge this defeat of its ancestors. The radical Islamists are not upset about our presence in their lands, nor are they especially upset about Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, nor about our “exploitation” of their oil fields, nor our invasion of Iraq. They are taking a much longer view, a view with vengeance in mind! They want vengeance for Tours, vengeance for Granada, vengeance for Vienna. They want to reinvigorate Islam, return to the days of pride and victory and submission by their foes. They want to establish the Caliphate and place the entire world under Sharia law. 9/11 was the first step in this process of re-establishing Jihad as a divine force of conversion and conquest but it will not be the last. If America, Europe and Israel fail to understand this, then they have made a fatal mistake in warfare in that they have failed to understand their enemy and even worse; they have failed to identify who their real enemy is.

Ramati, David. “The Ongoing War Against Islam.”  Academia.edu, n.d. Quoted with the permission of the author.

“Shimmer” always applies — not all Muslims (and Muslims appear most frequently the first victims of Islamist ambition) but some.  Which ones?  The perpetual question: Daniel Pipes’ “How Many Islamists?”

Considering the Islamist’s delusions of future grandeur a part of the “civilizational narcissism” and “malignant narcissism” integrated with their enterprise, BackChannels has tried to attach motivation to the medieval complex in which the power of God is believed to flow down to benighted mortals.  The view is one the modern world has long dismissed in practice (although a dozen European states remain kingdoms).

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FTAC – Syria – Medieval vs Modern

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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Natural ethnolinguistic cultural separation, survival, and co-evolution should be, imho, a global standard in the understanding of the foundations of the peace. Viewed through that prism, Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, and Pashtun have claim to the lands that bore them into being, culture and language themselves representing a People’s struggle confined to living with themselves and their ecological environment.

The politics in play in Syria have pitted the medieval worldview promoted by despots intent on keeping themselves in “absolute power” against the power-distributing and checking forces of the west in its post-Enlightenment phases. The same has also pitted as post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia against the arc of NATO or westward-moving states. The once Arab and Soviet-promoted anti-Semitism cultivated in Syria has probably contributed to impeding efforts to get in the way of the creation of the tragedy.

In fact, the good of the western world certainly do pray for Syrians. Whether by way of Judaic, Judeo-Christian, and perhaps (or soon) Judeo-Christian-Islamic “Ethical Monotheism” or by way of “Ethical Humanism” or “Secular Humanism”, western ideals involving mankind tend toward egalitarianism (none are supreme by virtue of birth) and universalism (our values and principles are accessible to all).

It is important to see Putin, Assad, and Khamenei or “Syndicate Red Brown Green” or “Post-Soviet Neo-Feudal” Russia as expressive of a medieval worldview now long superseded by arrangements attached to functioning international conventions and law and trade.

Posting to this blog has slowed quite a bit as its editor wishes not to keep saying the same things over and over and over and over . . . again.  Certain criminal behaviors involving “non-state transnational actors” and certain state leaders and their followers fit medieval concepts involving their own legitimacy and the concomitant development and sustaining of the immense power and wealth they’re able to personally amass or commandeer.  Whatever the superficial banner representing the character of the enclave of a dictator or “malignant narcissist”, the range may be better noted by scale (start with the pirate’s cove and work on up to the national socialist dictatorship) than by nominal affinity with some system of mystical belief.  The name of the eternal game for those committed to the latest fascisms: money.

On BackChannels, the concept “Syndicate Red Brown Green” reflects elements from movements within the communist / post-communist worlds, the worldview of the New Nationalists (Orban, Erdogan, among others), and, of course, that of the hipster “Islamists” so devoted to general destruction and the destruction of Israel and Jewry worldwide in particular, and it attaches to the leadership, which cleans up (makes a lot of loot) on what it can “put over” on followers and marks while maintaining vast systems of patronage.

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Allah Islam – important documentary about Muslims in Europe

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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(Initially published August 8, 2014 by Forest Rain).

Forest Rain's avatarInspiration from Zion: This is a Love Story

Everyone around the world needs to watch this important documentary by Zvi Yehezkeli and David Deryi. This was created two years ago and in that time, the situation has become more extreme.

I strongly urge everyone who cares about freedom and Western values to show this in their communities. Show this in your church, your synagogue, your school. People need to open their eyes to what is happening around the world.

See what Muslims in Europe have to say about themselves, their goals and their culture. Look how Europe is changing…

It is not about Israel or even about Jews. This is about a clash of civilizations. France, Sweden, Belgium, England… the problem is not “over there”, it is on your doorstep.  If not today, it will be tomorrow.

Listen and learn. 

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