Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal

FTAC – On ‘Different Talks — Same Walk’

13 Monday Jun 2016

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

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

When it comes to autocracy and insanity, more or less, think “Different Talks — Same Walk.”

The combines of bipolar and malignantly narcissistic psychology cross cultural, ideological, and religious divides to produce the kind of person that becomes a dictator or the kind of person that becomes a terrorist.

Scaled in terms familiar in social psychology, some percentage of population drifts toward and into the available extremes at the margins of their chosen channels.

While the “Kool-Aid” varies, there are a lot of language- and information-related processes ferrying the right kind of personality into their kind of combat or political action.

With Islam — as opposed to, say, post-Soviet neo-feudal Russian nationalism — I / we, perhaps, have been on a journey from knowing very little to knowing enough to at least get the big picture about right, and with that we’re getting to see how the “jihadists” differ from Muslims who really have no wish to force on others or otherwise vigorously purvey “Political Islam”.

Greater than Islam may be our general transition and transformation from the medieval worldviews represented by “Red Brown Green” to the modern one of greater cooperation, integration, integrity, and inclusion plus, not a small thing, the want of being helpful to others.

Although one cannot overlook the medieval character of medieval religions and related behaviors; however, one may choose to set aside aspects of the content of one screed or another to more closely focus on the political and social psychology at work  — to be found on this blog: “social grammar”, “malignant narcissism”, “medieval vs modern”, etc.

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Posted to YouTube 4/6/2016

Related: Quinn, Liam.  “‘Let’s get rid of them’: British-born Islamic preacher who has called for gays to be ‘executed’ was giving lectures in Orlando weeks before nightclub massacre.”  Daily Mail, June 13, 2016.

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Omar Mir Seddique Mateen – Known to the FBI

12 Sunday Jun 2016

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

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Carlos Bledsoe

The suspect arrested in the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting booth today was under investigation by the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force since his return from Yemen, ABC News has learned.

The investigation was in its preliminary stages, authorities said, and was based on the suspect’s travel to Yemen and his arrest there for using a Somali passport.

Esposito, Richard, Pierre Thomas and Jack Date.  “Recruit Shooting Suspect Under FBI Investigation.”  ABC News, June 1, 2009.

Alton Nolen

“This do we find the clear precedent that explains the particular penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims, it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet,” reads the caption, which adds a citation from the Quran, “I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers; smite ye about their necks.”

With this heinous act, Nolen may have been seeking to convince himself, if nobody else, that he was not just an ex-con who was once again out of work.

Daly, Michael.  “The Muslim Convert Behind America’s First Workplace Beheading.”  The Daily Beast, September 27, 2014.

Here is a little bit of the word on “Prison Islam”:

Oliver testified that allowing the Muslim prisoners to pray in a group led the prisoners to setting up an inmate-led Muslim gang. The gang “shunned” other prisoners, forbidding them from joining the group prayer as well as controlling access to food and laying stake to the “meditation room” being used by leaving their prayer rugs and other religious items to the point of intimidating other faith groups from using the room.

Oliver testified that a group of Catholic prisoners gave up trying to use the room. “They said it was the Muslim room,” Oliver stated.

The Clarion Project.  “Prison Officials: Muslim Group Prayer Led to Gangs.”  July 2, 2013.

It may be noted that conversions to Islam in prison bring criminals into the Ummah, and of that lot, some well may well represent the kind of person who would step on to the manufacturing floor and behead an unsuspecting (what’s to suspect?) coworker just doing her job.

Bipolar Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder have been noted on BackChannels in the context of the construction of concepts perhaps useful to the field of Political Psychology, which concept list includes, of course, the “malignant narcissism” so often associated with dictators, who, if they were not so large, might just as well have turned out machete-wielding monsters at work.

Loose citations (lazy ones) for “Prison Islam”:

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/05/muslim-terrorists-running-whole-prison-blocks-sharia-law/ – 4/5/2016. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/how-belgian-prisons-became-a-breeding-ground-for-islamic-extremism/2016/03/27/ac437fd8-f39b-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_story.html – 3/27/2016. | http://www.meforum.org/blog/2015/08/islam-prison. – 8/30/2015.

Nidal M. Hasan

A Senate investigation of the Fort Hood shootings faults the Army and FBI with missing warning signs and not exchanging information that could have prevented the massacre.

Wan, William and Felicia Sonmez.  “Senate probe faults Army, FBI for missing warning signs before Fort Hood Attack.”  The Washington Post, February 3, 2011.

Causes for that fumble: aversion to “bureaucratic confrontation”; “political correctness”; and, possibly, military civility, politeness, and avoidance of opening the proverbial can of worms.  Basically, before the fact, no one knew how to field what was coming out of Nidal Hasan’s heart through his mouth.

Also at the time, great official political correctness, an adamant refusal to invoked the term “violent islamist extremism” produced the absurdity of labeling the “Alahu Akbar” laced mass murder as violence in the workplace.

Talk, behavioral change, and, inevitably, “arming up” become part of the terrorist’s narrative on the way to mayhem — but how are officials to select who to “gumshoe” or, were the laws to allow greater flexibility in examinations without charges, who to detain?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

The FSB first contacted the FBI about Tsarnaev in March 2011. At the time, he was a resident of Boston who seemed too interested in making contact with or joining a militant group in the Caucasus. The U.S. intelligence official said the FBI made three separate requests to Russian authorities for more information about Tsarnaev without an adequate response. The FBI concluded that the Russians considered Tsarnaev a threat to themselves, not the United States.

Finn, Peter.  “Decades of distrust restrain cooperation between FBI and Russia’s FSB.”  The Washington Post, May 8, 2013.

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez

He was not on any U.S. terror list and the FBI was not aware of his having any terrorist leanings. Abdulazeez had been stopped by local police in April when he was booked for a DUI..

Pugeus, Jeff.  “What we know about the gunman in Chattanooga attack.”  CBS News, July 16, 2015.

The Abdulazeez “lone wolf” attack appears not to have produced significant “signal” out ahead of itself.  The gunman sent up no caution flags before his attack.

Mohamed Barry

A machete-wielding man who stormed an Ohio restaurant and slashed diners at their tables had previously been investigated by the FBI over his radical Islamist views.
Mohamed Barry, 30, from the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, was shot dead by police during the rampage at Nazareth Restaurant and Deli, a Mediterranean restaurant owned by an Israeli man in Columbus, on Thursday.

Graham, Regina F., Hannah Parry, and Khaleda Rahman.  “FBI investigated Barry four years ago for expressing radical Islamic views.”  Daily Mail, February 15, 2016.

One cannot (yet) cry “Lone wolf!” before the crime, which is today everyone’s problem.

Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik

Officials said that not only had he never been a criminal suspect, but that he was also never mentioned by anyone interviewed by the F.B.I.

Schmidt, Michael S. and Richard Perez-Pena.  “F.B.I. Treating San Bernardino Attack as Terrorism Case.”  The New York Times, December 4, 2015.

Malik belonged to an educated, politically influential family from Karor Lal Esan in the Layyah district of Pakistan. Malik Ahmad Ali Aulakh, a cousin of Malik’s father, was once a provincial minister. Residents said the Aulakh family is known to have connections to militant Islam.

&

Investigators have learned that Farook had made contact — in some cases by phone and in others via social media — with people who came up tangentially in previous federal terrorism investigations. But he had not drawn any scrutiny.

Sahi, Aoun, David S. Cloud, and Brian Bennett.  “Tashfeen Malik was ‘modern girl’ who began posting extremist messages on Facebook.”  Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2015.

We all have people in our lives, some equipped with dangerous ideas and personalities to match, and in light of “Social Grammar”, which always applies on this blog, some to many personalities give way before cult, family, in-group, and tribal messages and related pressures either intimidating other thought or promoting deeply malign speech and action paths — and just as many prove more independent and strongly resist the intellectual poisoning associated with one or more social environments or relationships.

As the west does not do guilt or suspicion by mere association — something an outsized paranoid like Stalin would do — the FBI’s call on the matter fits with world’s broadest bandwidth in freedom of religion and of speech.

Still, in 20/20 hindsight, one might add up the dimensions involved: some extremist associates in the family, foreign association with radical centers like Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, and then . . . Islamist expression on Facebook or elsewhere.

When and how should a government step in?

What methods of detention might work?

What laws involving conspiracy or sedition might be needed to get to this kind of person before they arrive at what will become the scene of their crime?

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen

The father of Omar Mateen, identified by police as the man behind the carnage at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning, is an Afghan man who holds strong political views, including support for the Afghan Taliban. In a video he posted on Saturday, he appears to be portraying himself as the president of Afghanistan.

Bearak, Max.  “Orlando suspect’s father hosted a TV show and now pretends to be Afghanistan’s president.”  The Washington Post, June 12, 2016.

In the article cited, it’s the killer’s daddy that sounds a wee bit off the hook.

Be that as it may, the son, Omar, had not been completely off law enforcement’s radar.

“The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties,” Hopper said.
The investigation was closed, Hopper said, after investigators “were unable to verify the substance of his comments.”

Perez, Evan, Shimon Prokupecz, and Catherine E. Shoichet.  “Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, official says.”  CNN, June 12, 2016.

The story is continuing to break as I type, and it’s expected that more details will come out in the course of the investigation.

As regards “persons of interest”, and a few noted here were certainly either that or potentially that, the same issues — who to watch, what to watch for, and when and how to intervene before the fact — will be topics for debate in law involving sedition and detention for some time to come.

Addendum – 6/14/2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/14/fbi-director-orlando-shooting-probe-also-looks-backward-into-agency-files-on-shooter/

Addendum – 7/6/2016

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh

According to court documents and court proceedings, in March 2016, a now-deceased member of ISIL brokered an introduction between Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, Virginia, and an individual in the United States who actually was an FBI confidential human source (CHS). The ISIL member was actively plotting an attack in the United States and believed the attack would be carried out with the assistance of Jalloh and the CHS.

U. S. Department of Justice.  “Former Army National Guard Member Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISISL.”  July 5, 2016.

Additional Reference

The Last English Prince.  “Omar Mir Seddique Mateen: Understanding the Meaning of this Name.”  June 12, 2016.

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FATC – Comments on Gaza Between the Medieval and Modern Worlds

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Palestinia, Politics

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The Palestinians have been at the mercy of powerful Palestinian families and politicians for decades, and the same have kept refugee generations captive or enthralled or leveraged by brutality , disinformation, and outrageous promises.

Part of the story starts here — https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/quote-manipulation…/ — with the foreign policy practices of the Soviet Union and its promotion of anti-Semitic message and conflict. While Putin has worked on “anti- anti-Semitism”, his government has nonetheless met with PFLP in recent years (2014) and has refused to designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, which is how they’re officially viewed in the United States.

Districts in poverty are vulnerable to many kinds of exploitation, criminal and political — and sometimes both — through recruitment into programs that are not in their interest.

http://www.tabletmag.com/…/hamas-killed-160-palestinian…

http://www.padico.com/public/English.aspx?Lang=2…

Feudal methods from patronage to brutalization, intimidation, and murder help keep conditions in Yatta exactly as they are. The talk, whether of nationalism or Islam, enrage or mollify the dispossessed to the advantage of those who purport to represent their interests.

I’ve included PADICO, a Gaza-based development corporation, because its board of directors is listed elsewhere on the site, and each name may be researched as regards education and experience. In outline, many are modern — cosmopolitan, well educated — but perhaps no less than Hamas’s tunnel digging children, they too have been hamstrung between the medieval and modern worlds, or that is where they have maintained themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Agatha

One should refuse contextless gambits like the KDH (King David Hotel) bombing but might suggest that in 1946, the greater armies had barely stopped moving, the mess in destroyed and disrupted lives moving on the landscape must have been immense if not easily seen, and military and paramilitary action on the part of the British, whom I am sure wanted to be done with World War II and its aftermath, were still undertaken in the near shadows of other combat theaters.

The simplifications disservice multiple rich histories.

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Putin, While Messing With the West, Grows a New Russian Economy

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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Two points of reference:

Medetsky, Anatoly, Matthew Campbell, Yuliya Fedorinova.  “Putin is Growing Organic Power One T-34 Tank-Tomato at a Time.”  Bloomberg, June, 7, 2016.

Shinkman, Paul D.  “Beware Appeasement With Russia.”  U.S. News & World Report, June 9, 2016.

Keep in mind the extreme duality presented by the Concert in Palmyra, for example, and the savaging of Syria by a tyrant accompanied by the incubation and encouragement of ISIS as a useful foil and poker chip for playing over the course of perhaps the World’s Grandest and Most Romantic Political Theater.

While burdening the west (and NATO) with the fallout in refugees and terrorists from the Syrian Tragedy and pestering the same through its activities in Ukraine, an assortment of “frozen conflicts”, and its investment in “information warfare” online, Russia has been also (as Obama long ago suggested) growing its economy, the first fruits of which have been given pretty good play in Bloomberg.

About to this point, the image of a Moscow hard hit by dramatically reduced oil revenues and sanctions and by years of capital flight driven by corruption has held steady, but now we see The Bear has been planting all along.

Neither Russian artistic and intellectual high culture nor developing business success (finally!) can or will ethically or morally offset what Putin’s regime has done to degrade the lifestyles of Russians en masse (so far) nor erase the barbaric and contemptible way it has measured the worth of the lives and freedoms of others in Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere.

For whatever may have happened to Putin early in life, one may glimpse a Putin’s revenge taken against the enemies of the Soviet, perhaps old imperial Russia as well, and what he might brand as traitors to Russia in Eastern Europe — those who have joined with NATO — for while he has delivered refugees and terrorists and the confusions of RT and other state-controlled media operations to their lands and airwaves (and computers), he has placed the productive capacity of the state in the state-controlled private hands, and as the same wish to make a lot money, the tomatoes are going to be pretty good for eating (or throwing).

Note too that in the encouragement of Far Right and Far Left political organizations worldwide, Putin & Co. have blended with the tomatoes a heady mix of hippie values — what could be more pure than tomatoes irrigated by mountain waters? — and fascist nationalist dreams rooted in ethnolinguistic pride.

While NATO may prepare for and block greater Russian imperialist adventure, its more immediate and perhaps more real headache may involve meeting the challenge posed by Moscow’s autocratic, barbarous, and criminal “allowances” within Russia and far beyond its borders.

Posted to YouTube 2/3/2016.

Reference

AFP.  “Millions more Russians living in poverty as economic crisis bites.”  March 21, 2016.

Orttung, Robert and Christopher Walker.  “Putin’s Frozen Conflicts: Each of Russia’s reform-minded neighbors is plagued by separatism.  It’s no coincidence.”  Foreign Policy, February 13, 2015.

Pomerantsev, Peter.  “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.”  The Atlantic, September 9, 2014.

Ragozin, Leonid.  “Putin’s Core Support Begins to Waver.”  Bloomberg Businessweek, June 9, 2016.  (Added 6/10/2016).

Tolokonnikova, Nadya. “Criminal Godfathers and Dirty Birds.”  Huffington Post, February 3, 2016.

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Nikolayevka – Near Quotation – Ukrainian forces shell own positions with Russian missiles ;)

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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Posted to YouTube 6/5/2016.

Apparently somewhat related:

““Essence of Time” unit informed about the shelling of Donetsk, Gorlovka, and Dokuchaevsk outskirts by Ukrainian artillery on their official page in the social networks in the evening of June 2nd. The destruction of the civilian infrastructure was reported.” http://eu.eot.su/2016/06/03/essence-of-time-unit-report-donetsk-gorlovka-dokuchaevsk-are-shelled-again/ – 6/3/2016

Related to the above report: “The Essence of Time Movement (Russian: “Суть Времени”) is an international organization with headquarters in Moscow and departments in all of Russia, in countries of Europe, as well as in USA, Canada and China.”  — http://eu.eot.su/about/

Apparently also related:

“The night was tense in the zone of the ATO. Pro-Russian illegal armed groups continue to resort to more intense armed provocations,” reads a statement. “Militants opened fire 49 times at the Ukrainian defenders. In the Donetsk direction, the enemy shelled the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 15 times. Positions near Opytne, Pesky, Nevelske, Avdiyivka, Novoselivka Druga came under 82mm and 120mm mortar fire, and at about 23:00 Kyiv time, the Russian mercenaries fired on the defenders of Pesky another 20 artillery shells of a 122mm caliber,” the press service said.

UNIAN: http://www.unian.info/war/1365631-intensity-of-enemy-fire-remains-high-ato-hq.html – 6/4/2016

Also related: http://112.international/conflict-in-eastern-ukraine/over-the-past-day-militants-shelled-ukrainian-positions-44-times-ato-hq-5623.html – 6/5/2016.

BackChannels cannot fact check either the latest in video recordings from Ukraine nor claims or reports interpreting the same.  However, BackChannels may note the Moscow-based initiative taken to reach BackChannels and others on the Internet with the spin that “Ukrainian fascists” comprise the opposition.

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FTAC – Haaretz’s Noticing the Anti-BDS Community

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The Soviet was not only a power structure. It had a mentality — and the same has been transitioned by Putin into the nationalist format — that served the intellectual and political engines of the Far Left. The Tired Old Politics of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left grind on absent of the Soviet, and Haaretz.com, among others, may be dropping those politics while flailing around for a distinct new social liberalism.

Article of Interest: David, Ariel.  “In anti-BDS Move, Italy Bringing Huge Academic Delegation to Israel.”  Haaretz, May 30, 2016.

Inspiration for the writing: “Ironic that Haaretz is reporting this story, considering that most of the BDS animus is fueled and justified by Haaretz writers.”

Those “Tired Old Politics of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left” keep duped and misdirected possibly millions of well-intentioned Americans (as well as anti-Semites) sitting politely in dozens to hundreds of organizations hooked up to representatives of the the BDS Movement, the International and Palestinian Solidarity organizations, and every other post-Soviet comrade tank.

What has been done to, say, the Unitarian Universalist Association to produce the hallucinating Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME) should be the subject of scandal, especially since most today either know or may easily know the Soviet KGB history involved in the creation of Yassir Arafat and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) plus the promotion of the terrorism of that day (and Moscow has continued to meet with such as the PFLP and continues to refuse to designate either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations despite the evidence over decades of their crimes, including, lately, the use of human shields, the practice of summary executions within their bailiwicks, and for Hamas the deaths of child tunnel diggers, among other abuses).

The Presbyterian Church USA has similar fallen for the same bunk (December 2014).

(Each story has now close historic play online.  As an accompaniment to the above statement, readers might enjoy Jeanne Bishop’s Presbyterian pro-Israel argument in Huffington Religion, “Why Proposed Presbyterian Divestment from Israel is Wrong” – August 10, 2014).

While BackChannels continues to note that this year will mark the 25th year out from the dissolving of the Soviet Union, the notion that inherently anti-Semitic pro-BDS furor represents the ghosts of another era, one may find online (with relation to “Cold War — Cold Struggle“) a most cynical partisan-to-Moscow approach the modern world’s wrestling with the medieval mind:

https://newcoldwar.org/

Here’s a declaration on the publication’s “About” page:

‘Independent’ does not mean non-partisan. You can find a statement of our broad views in the antiwar declaration approved at a conference in Yalta, Crimea approved on 7 July 2014 at a meeting of activists from Ukraine, Europe, Russia and North America. We believe great injustices are being committed by the government installed in Kiev in February against the whole Ukrainian people.

On the web, it’s too easy to surf off the BDS issue (in America and globally) and over to Moscow’s maneuvering in Syria and Ukraine, and yet these very different themes — BDS, Cold War, Syria, Ukraine, and Politics on the Left — would seem very much connected by a massive update on old agitation and propaganda methods.  (As always, the sense of how the Soviet state worked may be obtained through any number of volumes relayed in the “Russian Section” of this blog).

The poison — anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist; pro-mob, pro-power without warrant — spreads down to American villages in countless “activist” newsletters.  Here’s a glimpse from the calendar page of the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter:

Friday, June 3, KINGSTON: There will be a 7 p.m. screening of the documentary The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills, 320 Sawkill Rd. This film offers a sophisticated analysis of the Zionist strategy to keep Washington policymakers and the U.S. public on Israel’s side despite its subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Oh, please, End the Preoccupation!

http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/topics/palestinian-violations

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5019/hamas-palestinian-authority-human-rights (1/9/2015).

http://www.timesofisrael.com/human-rights-watchdog-hamas-pa-tortured-hundreds-in-2014/ (1/29/2015).

Eastward across the pond, the Brits on the Left seem to be waking up — or at least pushed toward introspection with both Naz Shah’s apology for earlier and mindless anti-Semitic cant and the election of London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan.

How come the American Left doesn’t get it?

Hamas governs Gaza — from examination of its constitution to human rights to billionaire status for both Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, there’s no lack of information online or in books for its goals, its history, its methods, its human rights record, and so on.

Similarly, the Palestinian Authority is the political authority in the West Bank.  While Israel and its Defense Forces have defensive control over who and what moves in the disputed territory, the working police serve Abbas.  In fact, the timbre of life — how things work within — are defined by the behavior of the Palestinian Authority in concert with others with whom it does business.

Reduction: Hamas occupies Gaza; the PLO / PA occupies the West Bank.

And those “poor Palestinians” may be read about on websites like these: Palestine Real Estate Investment Company, Padico Holding — find the boards of directors online and follow each mogul to related career terminals within the region.

For the Hate-America-Firsters”, perhaps some Americans should take another look at America.

Start here: “USAID: West Bank and Gaza“.

Also on BackChannels — Loose URL Reference

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/02/09/ftac-on-why-the-jews/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/07/ftac-on-the-soviet-contribution-to-contemporary-left-side-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/07/ftac-on-the-soviet-contribution-to-contemporary-left-side-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/18/ftac-mec-thin-wall/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/16/ftac-longitude-the-hebrews-judaism-and-law/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/04/29/soviet-anti-semitism-an-example-from-andrew-and-mitrokhins-the-sword-and-the-shield/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/22/ftac-approaching-anti-semitism-and-the-medieval-revanch/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/new-old-now-old-far-out-and-lost-left/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/04/24/reference-two-articles-bds-on-campus-bds-and-related-networks-undercover-investigative-reporting/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

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All For Show – Russia’s Comeback – High Culture and Lowest Barbarism

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Syria

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Posted to YouTube 2/8/2014

Posted to YouTube 1/1/2015

While Bashar al-Assad in Damascus must take responsibility for the casualties of 2014 and the shaping of the war to that date, it would seem Vladimir Putin in Moscow — or in Sochi — during that same winter has only sustained in that season the legacy of the Soviet alignment.

Posted to YouTube 5/7/2016

Posted to YouTube 5/6/2016

Related

Ellis, Ralph and Holly Yan.  “Airstrike at Syrian refugee camp kills at least 28.”  CNN, May 6, 2016:

At least 28 people were killed when warplanes struck a refugee camp Thursday in Syria, the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, with many of the dead women and children.

Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the London-based group, told CNN it was not immediately clear whether Syrian or Russian planes conducted the airstrike.

BackChannels — and so BackChannels feels — has been wrong about cozy relationships between dictators, perhaps, but probably right about their colluding in their own practical interests as regards sustaining feudal absolute power.

Kleptocrats, apparently (this inspired by the pieces in the reference section) need not be in love but only realistic about their mutual dependencies.

By incubating the al-Qaeda types in Syria, especially ISIS, by selecting other targets for bombing earlier in the Syrian Tragedy (see in reference BackChannels 2015), Assad and Putin may have developed an unrealistic plan for both blackmailing and goading the west, which appears to be taking refugees, filtering criminals (over time), and fighting ISIS separately.  With “Assad vs The Terrorists” backfiring, the two, Assad and Putin, are stuck with one another and Assad needs Putin to get to an endgame that makes sense.

Frederic C. Hof, whose essay for the Atlantic Council has appeared in Newsweek winds through an excellent and most clinical analysis of the options at hand.  Here’s a little part of that:

Secretary of State John Kerry nevertheless seeks common ground with Russia on political transition involving a non-Assad, negotiated Syrian consensus.

Is common ground achievable when Moscow sees Assad as personifying a state to save, while Washington sees him as a war criminal and ISIS’s top recruiting asset in the region?

Read Hof — for the boys who made the mess, who produced “Assad vs The Terrorists”, there may be no good exits yet in sight.

The slogan “Assad or We Burn It” has won the day, for now much of Syria has been burned, and Assad has only more to answer for and much, much less to claim.

For Mr. Putin’s part in the Syrian Tragedy, the Russian President may not have been able to direct Assad as regards so many “barrel bombs”, but he has control of Russian air power in the space, and perhaps he should use it to spare noncombatants from assaults, Syrian and Russian, that have built antipathy worldwide for the post-Soviet Moscow-to-Tehran arc of power.

Additional, Cited, and Related Reference

AFP.  “Chief Syria opposition negotiator quits over failed peace talks.”  ABC News, May 30, 2016.

BackChannels.  “Syria — “Assad vs The Terrorists” — How ISIS Defends Assad.”  October 2, 2015.

Hof, Frederic C.  “We Must Reject Putin’s Shabby Deal to Work with Assad.”  Newsweek, May 30, 2016.

Miller, James.  “Putin’s Attack Helicopters and Mercenaries Are Winning the War for Assad.”  Foreign Policy, March 30, 2016.

Petrou, Michael.  “For Canada, standing up to Russia means standing up for a united EU.”  Open Canada, May 31, 2016.

Snyder, Timothy.  “The Wars of Vladimir Putin.”  Three book reviews.  The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016:

When Pieniążek arrived in Kiev in November 2013 as a young man of twenty-four, he was observing the latest, and perhaps the last, attempt to mobilize the idea of “Europe” in order to reform a state. Ukrainians had been led to expect that their government would sign an association agreement with the European Union. Frustrated by endemic corruption, many Ukrainians saw the accord as an instrument to strengthen the rule of law. Moscow, meanwhile, was demanding that Ukraine not sign the agreement with the EU but instead become a part of its new “Eurasian” trade zone of authoritarian regimes.

At the last moment, Russian President Vladimir Putin dissuaded the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, from signing the EU association agreement.

Tilghman, Andrew.  “No U.S. combat advisers for Fallujah invasion.”  Military Times, May 23, 2016.

Trofimov, Yaroslav.  “Russia’s Long Road to the Middle East.”  Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2016:

“The Middle East is a way to showcase that the period of Russia’s absence from the international scene as a first-rate state has ended,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow, which advises the Kremlin and other government institutions.

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