If there’s the sniff of a Clinton tie to corruption and crime, the conservative press will find it. In the listings below, The Daily Caller shouts on that.
For any interested (including the FBI) in Fethullah Gulen, BackChannels has visited the presentation of the personality in online news at least twice (as listed) and somewhere on this blog there’s a related poem involving “winks ‘n’ nods” (you’ll appreciate it more if you find it on your own). 🙂
Erdogan the Malignant with the White Palace?
BackChannels has had some say (also as listed).
Psychological alignment: Erdogan along with Orban may share more with Putin as personalities than they may with other NATO leaders and the leaders of westward-leaning former Soviet states or clients.
That’s life with “malignant narcissists”.
Their people will be beaten up for a buck; their manipulated constituencies will drift toward fascist nationalism or some near equivalent (on this blog, keep in mind “Syndicate Red Brown Green“); but they will be glorious in wealth and treasure plundered from state coffers — just as Putin would have it (and has as much for himself as regards kleptocracy and absolute power).
Americans, often written off as being more concerned with Kardashians and sports scores, probably should immerse for a brief spell in Cold War and post-Soviet history, so as to get a grip not only on machinations driving contemporary foreign affairs but to check the state’s own Machiavellian preference for developing perhaps too much business and politics “behind the curtains”.
But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement. This got me thinking even more intently about the similar ways that the two — despite their differences — have applied, encouraged and supported the use of violence. In light of these parallels, the lessons derived from the decades-long struggle against communism throughout the world may provide important guidance for the continuing fight against jihadism.
These attacks — Dallas, Nice / Black Lives Matter, ISIS (et al) — should not be seen separately. Each devolves to familiar Soviet / post-Soviet agitation, manipulation, and misinformation, at least. With “terrorist-type” “actions”, direct relationships (or “orders”) are not needed as “actor” compulsions pushed by incitements, and permissions plainly work to produce attacks.
Moscow’s Themes
Confusion Through a Massive Agitprop Press — e.g., Information Clearinghouse, Mint Press, RT, etc. — confusing or inverting issues — developing and promulgating disinformation that may weave into more moderate but still far liberal press like Democracy Now and Mother Jones, legitimate stalwarts on the west but perhaps also a little seduced;
Corruption, Kleptocracy, State Mafia — “Chaika” may be all that needs to be signaled to find the entrance to that rabbit hole;
Ends-Against-the-Middle throughout NATO-aligned and westward-leaning states — “Syndicate Red Brown Green” — Old Comrades, New Nationalists, Islamists;
Political Absolute Power — centralized governance; state aristocracy; sustained secret police state (read through the “Russian Section” of this blog’s library);
Terrorism – Moscow refuses to designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and in recent years it has hosted representatives of the infamous PFLP.
The last piece posted in October 2015, and it may need an update. However: having incubated ISIS to blackmail and goad the west, Putin has now the option of demonstrating “revived” Russian military prowess by eating ISIS alive but not too much at a time. Khamenei-favoring Shiite militia in Iraq, long hosting Revolutionary Guard advisors, have also their convenient foil.
As regards Europe, Moscow-(Tehran) favors resurgent nationalism — le Pen or Orban (and Jobbik), which is exactly what terrorism compels or encourages in the states it targets.
It’s hard to imagine the kind of narcissism / malignant narcissism (and cowardice and — what sets off the narcissism — “narcissistic mortification”) that would build such a theater of politics and war as Syria-Iraq and a troubled Europe, but go back to the Cold War, which was supposed to have ended 25 years ago, and drag forward the Soviet / KGB Era methods in manipulating whole “chess boards” — both sides of any conflict to advantage.
Then look again at Moscow.
How has Moscow played both sides of a conflict?
There’s a related history lesson in this gem of a BBC video interview:
Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as “the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide.”[4][5][6] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”[7] He also claimed that “Airplane hijacking is my own invention” and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[7]
Lt. General Pacepa described operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States. According to Pacepa, the following organizations received assistance from the KGB and other Eastern Bloc intelligence services: PLO, National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara), the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, and the Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975.[8]
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016 – Note: ISIS has also served Moscow as a target to which to channel its own Islamists. In effect, ISIS by existing in numbers in Syria provides a “KZ” or “kill zone” in which to concentrate fighters for later warfare. HOW such fighters may then come to launch actions against NATO members forms a question beyond the means of this blog to address.
*
The last word on this post goes to Stratfor’s Scott Stewart:
In an earlier column, I briefly addressed the similarities between the utopian ideology of the Islamic State and that of the global communist movement. I have also compared the counterinsurgency efforts used against the two movements in the past. But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement.
Our YouTube feeds respond to our Internet habits — all that Google Chrome or other mammoth machinery may capture (about us), crunch with algorithms, and throw back to us with the logic that if we clicked on it, we must have been interested in it — but let me not get distracted with computer-human interactions, social engineering, and programmers.
Regarding the above clips: Farrokh Sekaleshfar had his name made the moment Omar Mateen operationalized at least an opinion similar to his own; Nouman Ali Khan, whose online presence I found connected with the Islamic Center of Irving (Texas) appears a countervailing speaker to Sekaleshfar; and then, in the way of YouTube’s relational “other video” options, comes a voice of reason about madness — Omar Mateen’s ex-wife.
What do they look like together, these three videos?
GREAT DAYS OF SERVICE IN IRVING, TEXAS, IS AN INTERFAITH ASSOCIATION OF FAITH COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNITY PARTNERS UNITED IN SERVING GOD AND COMMUNITY THROUGH RENEWING NEIGHBORHOODS AND AIDING HOMEOWNERS IN THE RESTORATION OF THEIR PROPERTIES.
Great Days of Service is a non-profit association of diverse Irving faith communities, businesses, and civic groups who are united in serving God and community by renewing neighborhoods and aiding homeowners in the restoration of their properties.
The GDS website supports pages displaying Church Partners (there are many — 14 churches listed and one mosque – the Islamic Center of Irving) and Community Partners, a melange of relevant government and the kinds of good-hearted private businesses that anchor the tapestry of small town America.
BackChannels has heard that in the past year– and for the next — one or two churches have dropped out of the ranks of the multi-faith “Great Days of Service” in the wake of a “dust up” with the mosque.
Those who keep tabs on voter rolls say the number of Muslim voters has jumped from about 150 two years ago to over 800 in the May 7 election. Of the city’s 92,000 registered voters, about 3,800 — slightly more than 4 percent — identify as Muslims.
But they made up nearly 18 percent of the ballots cast in an election where the turnout was low.
Possibly, this given the direction of those not-so-sacred numbers (indicating growth), it may not hurt the representatives of Irving’s Muslim community to share back into the Christian community the making and posting of participation-and-accomplishment videos having to do with those “Great Days of Service” –(added per the addendum at the top) nor would it hurt the churches to produce and post their own videos on the matter . . . or have a hand in the interfaith making of the next video.
Sigh.
In the medieval mode, religious succession — initially, the ascent or uptake of Christianity displacing (for most) Judaism (source of history and inspiration) and much else — accounts for bloodshed through many ages, but cue the angels (“Aaaaaaah”) and The Enlightenment arrives, the church divides and divides again — and fends off Islam’s incursions in what has become Europe– until within its many domains Northern Ireland quiets down and that seems the end of that part of the bloody story.
But wait: about here enters those “Red Brown Green” malignant narcissists — “Comrades, Nationalist, Islamists” but Kleptocrats (and subscription builders) most of all — and we’re once again on this potentially bloody — and still medieval — merry-go-round.
In the way of the web and YouTube, this video automatically followed the two cited and displayed above:
Apparently, the fishers of souls continue to count their success in subscriptions and may adjust their talk to compete.
Addendum and Mild Retraction – July 10, 2016
There have been other “Great Days of Service — Irving” videos recent within the past two years. However, the top search results appearing on YouTube come up absent of productions posted by the Christian churches.
A simple caption might do: Diamond Reynolds meets the press on the police-involved killing of her boyfriend Philando Castile in the Falcon Heights community outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
As Reynolds breaks into tears and is comforted by a pastor, another man comes forward wearing a “Day of Dignity” t-shirt that has come from an event sponsored by Islamic Relief USA (there are many Day of Dignity events annually).
BackChannels to this point has been “crayony” and superficial about “Moscow-Tehran” and “Syndicate Red Brown Green”, which one may infer from pictures at the intersection between the black nationalist movements and Palestinian Solidarity — raised fists and green flags — and it’s there in the latest attractive trope, “Ferguson-Gaza” — by way of examples online:
“Ferguson-Gaza” — look it up 🙂 — loads up on the anti-Semitic New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left, of course, and the same is met (same search) by Jewish and other commentary questioning the comparison. Be that as it may, take this post as being about the motivation for hitching emotions to the readymade and head-nodding programs of the Far Left and potential Islamist Front, not that there’s anything in the least controversial about missionary sympathy from any religious quarter toward those to whom injustice has either been done or who perceive the same as being so.
Again, this post is about the motivation: the policeman looked white; the angel looked black.
That’s the way it looks and will probably be remembered as the way it looked.
On the basis of surface events and visceral perception, those in politics and ambitious about picking up their legions know exactly how to exploit such misery to pick up their own numbers.
“Black Lives Matter Chicago, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Trinity United Church of Christ calls upon all the various strands of the peoples movement to come out and join us in protest of the cold blooded, brutal murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. We will rally Monday, July 11, 2016 in Federal Plaza (Dearborn and Adams) at 4:30pm and march in the streets.”
In relation to Dallas, never mind the political incitement present, so might be inferred, in the head of sniper Micah Johnson. How did such an idea as shooting police from a parking garage in Dallas get in there in the first place?
Regarding “Syndicate Red Brown Green”, a term of art on this blog, this piece may be essential for understanding how Far Left movements do, in fact, collide:
The point should be clear and for now remain: the proper framework for Far Left politics in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere) remains the Soviet, the Cold War, and the aftermath — the political phantoms — that have flowed down with both over time. If one wants to drive back even further in cultural-political history, one may through the lens of greater Asian and Russian history and the barbarism and feudal conquests associated with both. What for interest appeals to BackChannels is the extreme narcissism in play in history and in present politics where powerful personalities have placed themselves beyond criticism and law and immune to the suffering of others, especially when they themselves capriciously impose that suffering on others with impunity.
National Review writer David French has also weighed in on Black Lives Matter. Here are two pieces, one dating back to December 2015 and another posted yesterday.
Yet, for jihadists, the “past is not a tool of mere inspiration or for marking enemies,” Kazimi said, arguing that “history books are recipe books” giving instructions on how to “reclaim that greatness of Islam.” Since its origins in 2006 Iraq, the Islamic State in particular saw itself emulating Islam’s founding followers from seventh-century Arabia under the prophet Muhammad, a community that ultimately conquered empires. The 2014 caliphate declaration of ISIS, a group perhaps even stronger than the initial followers of Islam’s prophet, reflected how Muhammad’s “calling compelled him to strike out boldly, against incredible odds.”