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Author Archives: commart

A Little Wisdom Having to do with Empiricism and Integrity

08 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology

≈ Leave a comment

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empiricism, epistemology, integrity

*

Only two words really matter with information — empiricism and integrity. Where we dismiss the former, people will entertain anything; where the latter goes missing, people will tell others anything — and they’ll do it for greed and lust expressed as money and power.

*

We know the characteristics of good information.

There is the reporter’s standard, “clear, accurate, and complete”.

The empiricist may want to know what is cogent, valid, and reliable — and in what precise measure against chance (probability).

Most of the time we want to know “how things work”, and we want answers we may rely on for making decisions, but in difficult times — or just with troubled machinery — we may want to know as well why things don’t work.

Agitation, disinformation, and propaganda fail always the two-part test: is it true? Is it honest?

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/10/23/fake-news-genuine-fake-news-the-real-fake-news-get-your-fake-news-here/

###

FTAC: On Handling China and Its Abuses and Civilizational Challenges

07 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Tags

China's Ambitions, China's International Relations, Chinese Political Ambition

“China is our enemy!”

That articulated attitude and belief provided the impetus for this response.

From the Awesome Conversation


From Nixon’s day forward, China has been an American trading partner, its chief source of cheap labor (since when have we complained about the prices of goods “Made in China”?), a major contributor — as well as thief — associated with our college- and university-level science programs, a major purchases of our agricultural and other products, and a major lender responding to OUR national lifestyle and its debts. Perhaps unwittingly but more likely knowingly, Beijing has become a capital for capitalism.

Our war fighting capability has and will continue to trim China’s “exuberance” in the South China Sea but to responds to the breadth of China’s efforts to subject the world to its abuses and subvert it to its worldviews requires a broader spectrum of response than the penchant of some to launch missiles.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/11/27/a-short-note-on-chinas-contemporary-political-sins/


Additional Comment

I’m sure I’m not the only foreign affairs observer who has heard through Facebook the drumming for war with China. The modern truth: we are every day at war with China across the broadest spectrum of competition imaginable, from banking to superficial ideological arguments; in fact, the realpolitik comes down always to banking, business, global competition for influence and trade, and appropriate western support for broad enfranchisement in political power and the promotion of human rights.

Beijing, along with Moscow and Tehran — and briefly across the term of the Trump Administration in Washington — has chosen an updated expression of civilizational narcissism and centralized feudal power, albeit vested in the Chinese Communist Party and a powerful head of state — as standing behind its brand in the world and has acted accordingly and, well, disrespectfully in its handling of its clients around the world. As word gets around and states rise to the defense of their own leadership and cultural and political influences, one may expect China’s ambitious political methods to find resistance in negotiated banking, business, cultural, and trade agreements and policies.


Related on BackChannels (and as noted above): https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/11/27/a-short-note-on-chinas-contemporary-political-sins/


Recommended web searches: “China’s Billionaires”; “China, Human Rights”; China, Debt Trap Diplomacy”; “China, Dominance, South China Sea”; “China, Biological Warfare Convention”; “China, Covid-19, Origins”.

China’s business and political elites are certain to see themselves in the mirror created by the World Wide Web, and they themselves — as well as the world and their greatest business and state clients — will see how they respond to information accurately conveying and detailing their own image.

###

Congress Reconvenes to Certify Vote

07 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Live at posting, January 7, 2021.

HE lied to his base, and his base believed him.

HE lied to the Republican Party, but some did not believe him.

See the record formed by RVAT volunteered video testimonies on that.

HE lied to the American People, and most knew better than to take him at his word.


Posted to YouTube by Guardian News, July 16, 2018.

Posted to YouTube by Jose, November 23, 2020.

###

DJT’s Mob – Confused, Disordered, Unpatriotic

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

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U.S. Capitol Security Breach, U.S. Capitol Takeover, U.S. Capitol Violence

Where is one to start taking apart the chaos brought to America by Russian Active Measures, President Trump, the Strident White Right (say it three times fast) — the United States this day has reaped with others less noble, less honorably motivated, have sown.

Welcome the whirlwind and hope it goes away soon.

Start with this guy — Paul Manafort (https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-manafort-russia-ties-2017-10 – 8/1/2018 (“What we know about Paul Manafort’s tangled web of connections to Russia”). Then move on to the list of felons and ne’er do wells — CNN has one: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/trump-bannon-law-associates/index.html – 8/20/2020.

As neighbors make the neighborhood, who gets into government in relation to whom (and why) should tell Americans and the world quite a bit about what has transpired to bring America’s most patriotic souls — and most delusional as well — to violence, disorder, and this afternoon’s attempt to disrupt Congress, ignore the courts of the land, and to in fact ignore the results of possibly the most well observed and secured election in the history of the nation.

Donald’s mob knows better?

Donald’s mob know nothing!

Try to remember that the United States of America has some deeply experiences, malicious, and sophisticated enemies, Putin’s Moscow foremost with its general “full court press” — broad spectrum hybrid warfare — against EU/NATO’s and all other evidence of western liberalism and authentic democracy.

So there’s Donald’s mob on the steps of the Capitol and in the building shouting “USA! USA! USA!” except what they’re doing is not “USA!”.

What DJT’s mob is doing is “banana republic”, i.e., would-be rule by the most corrupt, violent, and ruthless — and rallying and driving a disorderly mob into government buildings is how that works.


Live at Posting, 1/6/2021.

Reported: Protesters inside the Capitol; tear gas deployed; members of Congress being evacuated with masks on; condemnations all over the news . . . .


Live at Posting, 1/6/2021/1612 EST.

1/6/2021.

Odds & Ends

https://www.streetinsider.com/Politics/One+Person+Shot+in+Capital+-+Report/17791194.html – 1/6/2021/1620 EST —

https://t.co/7zqXO0ykTD

— Lindsay Watts (@LindsayAWatts) January 6, 2021

We may take some personal defense-related comfort in appropriate firearms ownership . . . and hunting now and then is a healthy good thing — good to be out on the range, beating the brush, getting into some “position” before dawn on the “opener” of deer gun season — but it’s amazing what can be done by nefarious actors with someone else’s imagination.

Excerpt from relatively conservative personal correspondence just this morning, January 6, 2021. Active Measures and massive foreign and domestic disinformation may well account for this latest in off-the-wall American spectacle made this afternoon by a deluded and deliberately lied to political base.

Most Closely Related on BackChannels: Medieval v Modern; Mafia “Don”? Laundering the Authoritarian President’s Image; The Confidence Man — He’ll Tell You Anything; Russian Active Measures, Donald Trump, and Either Evil or Gullible Americans (Or Both).

###

Failing President Donald John Trump’s Medieval Mob Invades Capitol

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Medieval Mob, U.S. Capitol Security Breach

This news is so stunning, I am inclined to relay the above video (and title) while building this page.

VIDEO: Chaos at Capitol as Trump Supporters Battle Police, Buildings Evacuate, Chamber Recess

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/532938-pence-removed-from-senate-as-protestors-breach-capitol-security (1/6/2020/1435)

Live, more or less, at posting – 1/6/2021/1525 EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/06/dc-protests-trump-rally-live-updates/
(1/6/2021/1527)

Thousands of President Trump’s supporters are in Washington for rallies Wednesday to falsely assert that the presidential election was stolen from him. Many in attendance see the demonstrations as a last stand for Trump on the same day that Congress votes to certify that President-elect Joe Biden won the election.

Trump — who lost the popular and electoral college vote — continues to dispute the results, without evidence, and has encouraged his supporters to attend the rallies in the nation’s capital. He took the stage about noon to roaring crowds, claiming he had won the election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/06/dc-protests-trump-rally-live-updates/

Live at Posting, 1/6/2021/1532 EST.

I’ll stop here and pick up in the next post with commentary.

###

Hebron, Where the Mouths Go Off Before Investigation Begins

03 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Israel, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Harun Abu Ara, Iranian Political Criminality, MEC, middle east conflict, red-green alliance

Where are the gun and shooter?

Moments ago, Harun Abu Aram of al Rakeez, located in the South Hebron Hills, was shot by #IDF forces as he attempted to prevent his property from being confiscated. Israeli soldiers had entered the area in order to confiscate a generator belonging to the victim of this violence. pic.twitter.com/gyzmr6JX9W

— Good Shepherd Collective (@Shepherds4Good) January 1, 2021

How convenient for the camera to have followed the tug-of-war over the generator and not the assault (by whom) on Harun Abu Aram.

The unholy choir or practiced propagandists have weighed in with their headers – Middle East Eye: “Israeli forces shoot Palestinian in neck as they attempt to confiscate generator”; +972: “He grabbed his generator. They shot him in the neck” (note: the generator was far out of the victim’s hands when shots were fired); Al Jazeera: “Palestinian man left quadriplegic by Israeli shooting: Ministry” (at least the publication attributes the call — “A Palestinian man was paralysed from the neck down after being shot by the Israeli army on Friday in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said”).

Of course, The Jerusalem Post hedges —

“The claim that a Palestinian was wounded by live ammunition is known and the incident is being investigated,” the IDF said.

Channel 12 reported on Friday night that an initial investigation indicated that Abu Aram was shot unintentionally when the weapon of one of the soldiers at the scene discharged accidentally.

https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/eu-demands-probe-into-idf-shooting-of-palestinian-during-generator-brawl-654074
Screen capture at 0:31 seconds on January 3, 2021.

The generator and its owner had been separated, albeit not entirely in the IDF’s direction. Still, what would have been the point?

I’m inclined to leave the original header in place on this post even while changing its course, a reminder to myself to have the hard independent look first and shill neither Left nor Right.

While “Palestinian Resistance” picks up with its habitual protests — and those are certain to draw others toward injury — the facade covering Iranian involvement (backed by Moscow) will slip mightily as Sunni Arab states further cement their both new and strategic relationship with Israel. Those that have done that are no fans of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. They’re not behind the Red-Green Far Out Left either. That pack of howling hyenas has worked as hard as the Palestinian “leadership” to encourage and sustain Palestinian self-destruction via abuse and corruption, disingenuous (the fix is always in!) speech, old Soviet communist (KGB) alliance, and deep exploitation (from use as “Pallywood” actors to child tunnel diggers to human shields).

In the Middle East as well as elsewhere across the world’s conflicted regions, appearances may be deceiving. Here, however, I would be surprised if IDF investigation were to refuse IDF fault in the injuring of Harun Abu Aram. The case now seems other — at least at this desktop — than a my-side-your-side thing. Still, states and territories have their agreements and understandings for the everyday working of their respective societies, and the suspended Palestinian semi-state and its residents should know better than to build where Israel has refused permit.

If there’s another fact irrefutable on the Palestinian side, it is just exactly that.


Posted to YouTube by polka23dot, March 22, 2012.

What kind of person would want to see Palestinian misery sustained in service to his own aggrandizement?

Have a look at the Middle East’s chief sponsor of extraordinary Palestinian discontent —

Stecklow, Steve, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Yeganeh Torbati. “Assets of the Ayatollah: The economic empire behind Iran’s supreme leader — Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.” Reuters Investigates, November 11, 2013.

No one understands self-serving impositions of injustice and theft quite like Ali Khamenei.

###

Premier: Ibtidah Education News & Views

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Pakistan, Political Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

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Ibtidah, Intellectual Freedom & Integrity, Teaching Evolution in Islam, Teaching Science in Islam

Posted to YouTube December 29, 2020

On Facebook and on YouTube, Ibtidah (The Beginning), the presence appears to represent the modern argument for intellectual freedom and integrity in states in which politics have been bound to religion and the state and others control education in the cause of medieval intellectual enslavement.

Personal Note on the Issue of Education in Transitioning Medieval Societies

I shared this note with the editor of Ibtidah —

Broad spectrum of choice should yield toward reason in the dissemination and uptake of information, but as some societies remain medieval in relation to power and worldviews, the medieval within societies may choose to cling to what becomes with greater knowledge simply archaic information. That doesn’t help anyone and least of all fanatical adherents to reactionary political or religious dogma.

Our species boasts the possession of about 4,300 religions with atheism quite low in percentage against believers in God or gods. Having become conscious as human (see Genesis chapters two and three as depicted in the Tenach and read without presumptions), we appear to have come equipped with imagination and moral sense that reliably, far more than less, extends into metaphysics. If we hadn’t, we would handle bodies — or perhaps presence — as we do animal nuisances and trash. That we don’t speaks to greater consciousness in the way of awareness and self-awareness: within our separable cultures, we wish children to be born and ourselves married and buried in customary ways fit to sustained cultural and social precepts.

With such ways, we take cultural form.

We may even believe ourselves beautiful by doing so.

🙂

By comparison, science may be crude in its marriage with reality and practical issues, but given the want of a compassionate modern world, the accurate conveyance of scientific information becomes all the more important for the broad and broadly distributed services we may bring to ourselves globally.

###

Reading Suggested on Viktor Orban’s Corrupt Hungarian Neo-Dictatorship

27 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Hungary, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Hungarian nationalism, medieval v modern, Orban's Neo-Dictatorship, Politically Absolute and Corrupt

Orbán’s political takeover – buttressed by a German industrial lobby that relies on cheap labour in Hungarian plants – has largely been bankrolled by cash plundered from the European Union that he rails so fervently against. A 2019 New York Times investigation found that Orbán uses billions of euros in EU subsidies as a patronage fund that enriches his allies, protects his political interests and punishes his rivals. “The ideology is a ruse. The money is where the action is,” said Lane Scheppele.

Geoghegan, Peter. “Dark money, dirty politics and the backlash against human rights.” Open Democracy, August 20, 2020.

Related Online (Well, What’s Not Related Online These Days?)

Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “The Antisemitism Lurking Behind George Soros Conspiracy Theories.” October 11, 2018; “Disinformation: Conspiracies connecting George Soros to protests and antifa”, n.d.; “Soros Conspiracy Theories and The Protests: A Gateway to Antisemitism.” June 2, 2020.

Fruen, Lauren and Rory Tingle. “‘The perfect enemy’: How two Jewish American political consultants ‘started a deliberate plot to smear George Soros to help Hungarian PM and helped to create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’.” Daily Mail, January 21, 2019.

Grassegger, Hannes. “The Unbelievable Story of the Plot Against George Soros.” BuzzFeed News, January 20, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: A Short Note on the Demonizing of George Soros.” BackChannels, August 8, 2020.

Wikipedia. “Arthur Finkelstein”.

Wikipedia. “George Birnbaum”.

###

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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