Author Archives: commart

FTAC – Conflict, Graphic Images, Social Sharing – A Comment

28 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Notes On Reading BackChannels, Philology, Political Psychology

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All I might suggest is “cultural updating” throughout the . . . what do we want to call them? “Unmodern”? — and no modern nuclear blast will be pretty either — world plus some shift in rules of engagement, including photography and communications, in the field.

I’ve been an accidental viewer of “war porn” — not always accidental: I “clicked” to see my first beheading, firing squad, mass execution, combat helicopter footage (all on YouTube), and so on, and then as a casual blog editor — no connections, no revenue — I found myself posting forensic outrages: https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/ftac-on-war-porn…/ The start of the worst was a photo of two children hanging from rafters in a Burmese hut. I was writing about the Rohingya Muslims. That photograph, which I had downloaded and republished, changed my statistics, and I eventually deleted it from my blog’s library and provided the LiveLeak URL in its place. We’re an f-ing wild and ghoulish species, apparently. And “porn”, which I interpret loosely as “exceptional explicit display” of anything, sells. When it’s pretty and waxed, it sells cars and cameras and guitars (“guitar porn” — ask a musician). When it’s conflict and sex, countless thousands to millions want to see spilled blood and sperm.

I don’t like sensationalized conflict shock images because they’re used to mask other political, social, and psychological realities. They make us angry when we see them — those children hanging from rafters, this young man to the left, infants washing up out of the water in Libya after their attempted migration by boat fails. We know what’s happening; we need to leave the dead to the grace of God; and we need to better focus on the politics (and psychology and language behavior — if you’re like me) that produced the horror.

Prompt: a discussion about visual propaganda.

BackChannels decided some time ago to demur on reposting sensational images of death and tragedy.  If it had a photographer in the field sending live data?  Perhaps it would go with the feed . . . I don’t know; however, promoting cause with shock — humans burnt alive (seen it in stills and videos — what is done to “witches” in Africa); hangings from cranes (who hasn’t seen that obscenity from out of the Ayatollah’s Iran?); stonings (at least the Soroya movie version); chemical gassing (thanks, Assad); barrel bombing (thanks, Assad); etc. — seems to me a particularly egregious practice (look at me! look at me! look at me!) and one that should undermine the publisher’s argument and cause.

Partisan causes — Christian missionary publications, for example; ISIS on display in the media, for another — turn death into art (like Nazis turning skin into lampshades) frequently, and I, and I hope others, abhor them for doing that to us.

Related: DiLonardo, Mary Jo.  “What are thought viruses?”  Mother Nature Network, August 27, 2015.

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Syrian Refugee Camp From the Air

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Journalism, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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Note: Examination of the downloaded clip showed no EXIF (camera) or IPTC (author or editorial) data. Although Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has been noted as visiting the Zaatari Refugee Camp in northern Jordan on April 22, 2014, whether or not he’s the passenger on the above flight — a pretty good look at the establishment of a new town, at least for a while — could not be ascertained.

Many of the refugees were from middle-income families and communities in Syria.

Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are now selling fruit and vegetables at illegal stands in Zaatari or in communities around northern Jordan. Around five percent of Zaatari’s residents were university students in Syria before coming to the camp.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/26/a-lost-generation-where-have-4-million-syrians-fled/ – 8/26/2015 – In the lede, journalist Charlotte Florance reports, “According to United Nations figures, more than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland, with another 7 million displaced internally within Syria.”

http://observer.com/2015/07/is-saudi-prince-talal-going-to-israel/ – 7/14/2015

https://www.alwaleedphilanthropies.org/alwaleed-philanthropies-supported-300-syrian-refugees-bekaa –

Posted to YouTube 9/7/2013

Posted to YouTube 1/2/2014

Posted to YouTube 2/2/2014

Posted to YouTube 1/8/2015

Posted to YouTube 7/30/2015

I have found this blog a paste-up board for snapshots of time.  Visitors here see a part of a day that I have experienced online, and then longitudinally, over time, the series in events, places, and themes begins to tell the story of a desktop journey through time.

http://blog.worldvisionyouth.org/2014/03/12/syria-6-stories/ – 3/12/2014.

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Link – With Iran, Greed is Good!

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

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While conceding there were still some ‘fundamental differences of view’ on ‘major issues’, Hammond hailed the ‘power of diplomacy’. This doesn’t include the power to stop Iran from executing dissidents and others at the fastest rate in many years, or the power to get Iran to halt its support to the Syrian regime’s murder machine.

What the diplomacy with Iran does have the ability to do, Hammond explained, is slake the ‘huge appetite’ of UK businesses and banks to begin commerce with Iran. Indeed, impediments to doing business could be eliminated by the spring. In this cold-blooded calculation the British government is hardly alone.

Orton, Kyle.  “Britain is siding with the Iranian regime against the population.”  Left Foot Forward, August 26, 2015.

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Link – Iran – Afghanistan – Al Qaeda (All Together Now)

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Links

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The 2005–06 documents reveal that Iran offered bounties for the murder of NATO soldiers and members of the elected Afghan government. Later reports indicated that this policy continued into 2009, when Iran was working in tandem with al-Qaeda to spread the Taliban’s reach in southern Afghanistan. This should hardly come as a surprise: The 9/11 Commission reported that Iran began training al-Qaeda jihadists through Hezbollah in 1992 and collaborated with al-Qaeda on the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. To this day Iran maintains an al-Qaeda network on its territory, which supplies weapons, money, and fighters to Jabhat an-Nusra in Syria.

Orton, Kyle.  “The supposed rivals are working together — and working with the Taliban.”  National Review, August 26, 2015.

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FTAC – After the Obama Years

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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I don’t feel divided or conquered; nor do I wish to demonize Obama EVEN IF he has promoted a “Peace in our times” treaty, i.e., a worthless piece of expletive deleted: I believe he has changed the structure in and around Iran in which warfare may be waged against the west. Point by point:

We have seen serious reductions in oil revenues funding the governments and national lifestyle of Russian and Iran: both have had to respond to that loss of income and the centralized power of distribution of the same (state capitalism: state patronage).

Despite the apparent failure of the “Arab Spring” (or “Persian Bloom”?), Iran’s colleges today are populated about 60 percent female! Women are going to be the educated person in the Next Iran. I’ll be surprised if those demographics don’t have an effect on the state within the next presidential term.

Speaking of which, Obama, as we say in the American colloquial mode, is “outta here” in about a year. Done. Finished. No more Barrack. He’s going to pick up his “chips” in favors owed (he could even turn out the world’s first trillionaire), but he’s going to be finished with the business of managing America’s governance, and the backlash to come is right here on Facebook in its conservative circles.

We’re going to have our guns.

Our vote is going to matter.

We’re going to get over, if we have to, “retribalization” and race, color, creed, and religion — as we have had idealized at the beginning, and that we have realized through civil war and civil rights movement and law suits and disputes across centuries.

Americans — doesn’t matter what race, color, creed, or religion, or gender preference, for that matter — are going to emerge from the Obama Years more egalitarian, ethical, just, and strong.

It could be the wine talking (with cold pizza), but at least I hope so.

The prompt had to do with the American Jewish community’s reaction to the “Nuclear Deal” with Iran.

I think “the deal” entirely bogus based on the character of the Iranian tyranny.

Period.

It’s dishonest with itself (you should visit the revision made to Wikipedia’s Iran’s Wealthiest page — something like that — and the listing of Ali and his brother commanding as much as $57 billion in personal portfolio); it’s sadistic with its critics and rivals; its “human rights” record makes sharks look like warm and fluffy pets.  On this blog, do the search for “Iran, hangings” (oh, heck, I can give you the URL).  This blog has always suggested to readers what these people — and people like them — are.

Filter that message politically (dictators), theologically (devils), or psychologically (sociopaths) and then tell me how you see them as “fathers” or “liberators” in any dimension but Hell.

Of course, I had to write on.

Some people shouldn’t “drink and drive” — I probably should not imbibe and write . . . but it made a nice BackChannels piece.

I really do believe, D., that with everything we discuss today, we have to take a broader and longer-range view of political and social realities.

I don’t believe “detente” will hold with Iran — it’s doing evil to its own people while conducting “war by proxy” against Israel, against the Syrian people (true), and against Yemen, right now, and isolating its governing powers every inch of the way.

I believe also, while I’m chatyping with wine, that Israel’s peace with Egypt will hold fast and strong, and that Muslims like N. and Jews like me need to pioneer a greater future together rather than apart. I may not be a “Jew’s Jew” by orthodox standards, or any standards at all. I am an American humanist, Diest, in alliance with nature, Emersonian and Shakespearian. My river is the Potomac, not the Jordan, but I hope my ethics and morality are, by and large, with Moses and, in this day and age, with Jewish kindness and love, just the same as gave voice to Hillel the Elder (35 BCE to 10 CE) and Christ and a fair part of Muhammad as well (“One scholar is more powerful against the devil than one thousand worshippers”). If we have immense problems with scripture and human organizations, well, that’s our immense capacity for language married to imagination and our deficits having to do with compassion and empathy.

Enough said (and I am positive about that).

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Syria – Assad – “We trust the Russians . . . .”

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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girl-injured-clinic

Injured girl, field hospital, Douma, Syria. The downloaded image itself contained no EXIF or IPTC data.

Related: http://www.citizenside.com/en/photos/politics/2015-07-27/118223/syria-field-hospital-in-douma.html#f=0/1299528 – 7/27/2015.

“. . . we trust the Russians.  They proved throughout the crisis, the last four years, they proved they are honest, transparent, and have principles . . . .”

BBC.  “Syria’s Assad ‘confident’ of Iranian and Russian support.”  Video and news report.  August 26, 2015

Without Putin, Bashar al-Assad as a dynastic leader would have been finished in 2011.  However, instead of appropriately responding to Syrian complaints at the time and the yearning for a voice in their own governance, Assad chose to arrest and torture children.  All that has changed in the past four years has been the scope in breadth and cruelty of the punishment meted to noncombatant Syrians.

At the outset, President Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia presented a block to the start of the erosion of the Assad family’s absolute ruling power; next: Assad cultivated ISIS by selectively not bombing the al-Qaeda Typicals in their infancy, which then dealt to himself a glorious piece — in his warped eyes — of political theater, “Assad vs The Terrorist”.  Putin, Assad, and Khamenei each knew “The Terrorists”, which have largely turned out to be ISIS, although many other and similar organizations exist in the field, would present an even more difficult challenge to the west.

For Khamenei, nothing could sustain an Islamic theocratic tyranny in Iran quite like the prospect and reality of a continuous Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle, for which ISIS would conveniently serve as foil to the further expression and regional projection of Iranian Shiite power.

For the west, perhaps, there is less of “reset” in what has taken place in Syria and more of pressing the collapse of Soviet-style “state capitalism” in the form of an oligarchy — a “new nobility” — brought into existence and managed by Putin.  From that perspective, Russia has stalled in Syria and Crimea — and given the price of oil at the well these days — or the evident callousness of the Russian leadership — it may not want the burden of settling either conflict or reconstructing that which it has helped destroy, both “hot spots” being more effective at bleeding the west of financial resources and focus.  With U.S. President Obama shrugging away much of that form of challenge — or seeming to do that — that tack may not be going so well.

Similar observations may be made in regard to Iran’s position.

Even though it will see immense cash flow for the “nuclear deal”, the regime will have to deal with greater greed around itself as well as its unpopular extension through wars by proxy in the region.

Who knows but that Hezbollah will tire of its men dying for the ambitions of the Ayatollah.

Still, nothing will change all that fast.

While Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together defend “absolute power”, the suffering accompanying that psychology — and what ISIS means to bring to Syrians, i.e., greater tyranny in the name of God, will be even worse — will grow worse: the “Eye Doctor” has lost himself in his own inverted fantasia, a world in which Putin’s Russia has proven “honest, transparent, and principled” (tell that to Ukrainians) and Syrians suffer primarily at the hands of “The Terrorists” and not beneath the barrel bombs dropped on the most helpless of them by Assad’s own air force.

The “additional reference” section may be at this point outmoded by a very good and quick Google search engine.  We can find what we may want to read in flash; whether we can find the conversation we need to have as quickly remains to be seen.

Search string: “Syria, barrel bombs” / news:

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/22/433735915/activists-un-denounce-deadly-syrian-barrell-bombs – 8/22/2015

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/20570-barrel-bombs-fall-on-syrias-douma-killing-50-source – 8/23/2015

http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-regimes-barrel-bombs-kill-more-civilians-isis-al-qaeda-combined-2057392 – 8/18/2015

http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/08/25/assads-barrel-bombs-cost-syrian-boy-his-family-and-hearing – 8/24/2015

Search string: “Syria, water, war” / news

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/world/middleeast/water-is-called-casualty-of-syrian-war.html – 8/25/2015 Related: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_82980.html

Search string: “Syria, moderate forces” / news

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11817208/US-failed-to-protect-us-says-commander-of-Pentagon-trained-rebels-in-Syria.html – 8/21/2015

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/19/us-trained-syrian-rebels-we-need-training-be-faste/ – 8/19/2015

Search string: “Syria, New Syria Force”

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/18/middleeast/new-syria-force-fighter-abu-iskander/ – 8/18/2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/world/middleeast/ahrar-al-sham-rebel-force-in-syrias-gray-zone-poses-challenge-to-us.html – 8/25/2015.

Misc.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/08/246155.htm – 8/17/2015.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/25/video-syrian-toddler-rescued-from-under-the-rubble-of-bombed-building/ – 8/25/2015

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/africa/20625-are-we-human-beings – 8/24/2015

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FTAC – On the The Repudiation of Feudal Barbarism

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

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

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Part of the difficult in addressing ISIS and others becoming defined as “Islamists” by the worlds to which they have brought harm involves accessing the greater body of literature stemming from the Qur’an and the legends and speech of Muhammad plus a body of commentary plus a developed and divided legal history. The miscreant groups, and clearly Qanta Ahmed repudiates them in her article, draw on verbal lore, however selected, however selfishly believed, to validate their barbarism.

My acquaintance who have delved into, let’s call it “dangerous text”, have done so with some blanketing “Islamophobic” intent, in essence justifying ISIS behavior on the basis that ISIS claims, and with which Dr. Ahmed claims to be unfamiliar.

Scholarship developed in isolation or within a circumscribed intellectual and geopolitical space may be given to corruption by the scholar’s own self-interest. In any religion, a cleric or priest or other “holy man” may be expected to install in others what benefits his own position. Today, asking a modern person — again: any religion — to delve into the arcane bodies of work promulgated by the experts, i.e., asking me to read the Talmud, for example, or Dr. Ahmed to plow through volumes (and ages) of related intellectual history to support further argument, merely leads the mind back into the closed universe of the feudal world. What ISIS has put on display by displaying itself needs no extraordinary scholarly knowledge for universal condemnation, including condemnation by the greater Islamic Ummah.

Those whose obsessions lead them back into lost worlds may also drown themselves in the same. For some, myself, at least, time is the only ocean, and one wants to navigate the crossing of it into the future, not into the past.

The prompt: the posting of Dr. Qanta Ahmed’s condemnation of ISIS (CNN, August 18, 2015) on a forum page and, in the background, a conversation with a friend who has collected and come to know a fair portion of the material on which the Daesh project permits itself its excesses.

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