Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal

Nadiya Savchenko – Signal of 21st Century Neo-Feudalism

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Authorized Ukrainian TV channel «Inter» Youtube stream

Authorized Ukrainian TV channel «Inter» Youtube stream; channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/InterTVua; License: Creative Commons; Image: brightness adjusted; Web Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko#/media/File:Nadiya_Savchenko.jpg; Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko

Nadiya Savchenko – Fast Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko: “Russia’s Investigative Committee insists she crossed the border voluntarily, without documents and in the guise of a refugee.[20] Russia’s pro-Kremlin TV channel NTV, however, reported on June 20 that Savchenko had been captured by “rebels” and then handed over to the Russian authorities.[21] Ukrainian officials said she had been illegally taken to Russia by Russian intelligence services in collaboration with pro-Russian rebels.”

http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1437143184 – 7/18/2015 – “New attempt to keep Nadiya Savchenko trial secret” — “Russia is insisting on holding the trial of captured ex-pilot Nadiya Savchenko in a Russian city bordering the area of Ukraine under Kremlin-backed militant control. There are no legitimate grounds for this move which will seriously hinder access to the trial, and could, Savchenko believes, put her mother and sister in danger. Her formal appeal* to Russia’s Prosecutor General to move the trial to Moscow where all investigative activities and assessments were carried out has effectively already been rejected. One of her lawyers announced late on Friday afternoon that Savchenko has already been moved from the remand prison in Moscow and is on her way to the Rostov oblast.”

http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1435707020 – 7/2/2015 – “Savchenko material shows how Russia concocted ‘case’ and what it can’t conceal” – ” The key problem in the investigators’ case is Savchenko’s irrefutable alibi however there are also a number of other obvious flaws in their version which do not go away despite being assiduously ignored..”

Posted to YouTube 7/7/2015

This patriot, made a Hero of Ukraine by President Poroshenko on March 2, this Joan of Arc detained in spite of the diplomatic immunity to which she has been entitled since her election to the Rada and as Ukraine’s representative to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, has become simultaneously the symbol of Putin’s arbitrary exercise of power and of Ukrainian resistance.

As Russia celebrated with great pomp and ceremony the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, one might have hoped that Putin would make a gesture.

He did not.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/free-nadyia-savchenko_b_7255318.html – 5/11/2015

Here in Moscow she has been charged as an accessory to murder, linked to the death of two Russian journalists covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the rebels and government troops.

But the BBC has seen mobile phone data from the day they died, that her lawyers argue proves her innocence.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31760381 – “Nadiya Savchenko: Ukraine resistance symbol in Russia.”  – 3/6/2015.

Imprisoning a Ukrainian officer, who disappeared while on duty last month in the battleground region of Luhansk, will make it hard for Russia to maintain its claim that it is not in league with the separatist rebels. According to the Ukrainian government, the rebels captured Savchenko in June and illegally smuggled her across the border into Russia, where authorities not only arrested her but took her hundreds of miles to the city of Voronezh, a provincial capital in the heartland of western Russia. Diplomats and top officials in Ukraine, as well as their U.S. allies, have already cited the case as among the clearest pieces of evidence so far that Russian security services are working in concert with the rebel fighters. That means the case is sure to bolster the Western argument for another round of sanctions against Russia this month.

http://time.com/2976146/the-strange-case-of-vladimir-putin-and-the-ukrainian-pilot/ – 7/11/2014.

Russia agreed to immediately free all hostages and illegally held persons. Yet Russia and the separatists it backs continue to hold at least 500 hostages. They include Savchenko, as well as Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, both of whom were captured by separatists on Ukrainian soil and illegally transported against their will to Russia.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/response-we-people-petition-nadiya-savchenko – 11/21/2014.

We continue our publication of the prison writings delivered to us by Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was abducted by pro-Russian separatists on June 18, 2014, and who has been in prison ever since. La Règle du Jeu, in partnership with Kyiv Post, Ukraina Pravda, The Huffington Post/WorldPost, and other magazines and newspapers, is launching a double appeal: Do not forget Nadiya, and do everything you can–everything–to obtain her release.–Bernard-Henri Lévy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/nadiya-savchenkos-letters_b_7264172.html – 5/12/2015.

When it comes to the perception of brute force in power, the language play in the invention of the term “21st Century Neo-Feudalism” proves more convenient than earnest and popular political science on the matter, so suggests a cursory glance at related Google search results, which frequently lists this blog as the term’s proponent. Nonetheless, as witness through Internet-borne media to Nadiya Savchenko’s abduction and imprisonment in relation to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid warfare” (by proxy thugs) in Ukraine, the term would seem well applied.

Typing here from the sidelines, the lawlessness of the feudal world — in effect, the caprice of the senior mafia running the show — concentrates power in a titular head, who may actually have it, and a surrounding bulwark of favored and patronized nobility.  Against that model, the lawful of the democratic world — also argumentative, bureaucratic, responsible, responsive — tend to distribute power across a magnificent quilt of private and public and local to international interests.  Adventurous and bright, the very tough Nadiya Savchenko appears to have managed to become selected for being trapped between the two worlds.

Putin’s message: I have captured and caged the brave Ukrainian bird; come and get her.

That’s absolute power.

I have long suggested here and elsewhere that that kind of power becomes the power to make others suffer with impunity — and Putin, among others, have demonstrably got it.

What power have the democracies against “political absolutism”?

The power of international law as invested in western institutions?

Talk, talk, talk.

The ogre keeps the stolen bird caged.

Old tweet: “Putin, Assad, Khamenei — together they are defending absolute power.”

Posted to YouTube 7/15/2015

Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue slaughtering or displacing all Syrians who disagree with his ownership — absolute control — of Syria and dominion over the lives and property of all who inhabit his realm?

Nothing has diminished his power where he may still project it, and, in fact, the political theater produced by “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and to which I refer as “Assad vs The Terrorists” has positively contributed to his power.  Assad appears to have forked Obama’s policy on Syria (whatever it might have been), for the American has had to have his military fly sorties against Daesh, everyone’s enemy, but also — and mostly so — Assad’s enemy.

Assad didn’t always have “The Terrorists”, but through sufficient selective bombing and fighting, he achieved the incubation of the “Al-Qaeda Typicals”, and now he has them, and he has got Washington bombing them at Washington’s expense!

Oh, the glory.

Posted to YouTube 7/18/2015

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei too has gathered power unto himself without limit, and he too appears to have going “hybrid warfare” and “war-by-proxy” in several districts, from Yemen today to the Gaza Strip, and these too continue with just enough impedance to hold them in place.  If Tehran keeps its part of the “nuclear deal”, it will find itself with tens of billions of new or recovered dollars to earmark for throwing its weight around the region.

Why not?

Khamenei has met no lasting opposition within Iran — the world knows how that works — and within the region, whether manipulating the Al-Qaeda Typicals or the Hezbollah Virulence, sending Revolutionary Guard to battle Daesh with Iraq’s Shiite militia or cheering the Houthis as they bring wreckage and ruin to Yemen, none have yet curtailed his influence or meddling.

No “off button”; no “reset”; no brakes: that’s theocratic dictatorship — and that’s been Khamenei’s thing for a while now, and it’s working.

It would appear that “absolute power” needs no ethical, humanist, moral, or religion defense, for whether practiced by Putin, Assad, or Khamenei — different talks: same walk — all that is needed is unyielding relentless assertion.

What does Putin say?

I have got your most ambitious, darling, and high flying bird in my cage.

What does Assad say:

I have committed crimes beyond imagination and destroyed children’s educations, their homes, and their parents’ lives by the millions — but I am still here, President of Syria.

What does Khamenei say:

Khamenei doesn’t say anything, for Khamenei laughs.

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Link — A Real Corker! – National Review

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Links, North America, Politics, United States of America

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Of course, you may have been under the impression – perhaps from reading our quaint Constitution from those dark pre-Fundamental Transformation days – that We the People are sovereign, that our government must take its marching orders from us. To the contrary, President Obama is claiming in his Iran deal that he – unilaterally and without congressional advice, consent, or legislation – may huddle with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist government, some European leaders, and our Iranian enemies to devise enforceable law. We and our elected representatives are expected meekly to submit.

We must not submit.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421349/congress-must-ditch-corker-bill-and-treat-iran-deal-either-treaty-or-proposed

H.R.1191 – Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015

Charen, Mona.  “Obama: Witting or Witless?”  National Review, July 17, 2015.

Smith-Spark, Laura.  “Iran’s Supreme Leader vows no change in relations with ‘arrogant’ United States.”  CNN, July 19, 2015.

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Islam — A Note on Political Topology and Prejudice and Possibility

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions

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And here we are in 2015 choosing to believe the promises made by the leaders of Islamic Iran regarding nuclear proliferation despite the well-known Islamic policy of taqiyya-religious deception. Despite the fact that they have lied about their nuclear programme in the past. From the Qur’an – This verse tells Muslims not to take those outside the faith as friends, unless it is to “guard themselves” against danger, meaning that there are times when a Muslim may appear friendly to non-Muslims, though they should not feel that way.” (Here And here – “And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against them): and Allah is the best of schemers.” If Allah is supremely deceitful toward unbelievers, then there is little basis for denying that Muslims are allowed to do the same. (See also 8:30 and 10:21) and here. From the Hadith: Bukhari (84:64-65) – Speaking from a position of power at the time, Ali confirms that lying is permissible in order to deceive an “enemy.” In other words, the word of a Muslim leader is not his bond.

Bederman, Diane Weber.  “Western Arrogance may lead us to Armageddon.”  Canada Free Press, July 16, 2015.

The vast majority of countries on Earth with nuclear programs do not possess sensitive nuclear facilities. Rather the fuel is provided by a more advanced nuclear power, such as Russia, France, or the United States. This eliminates the need for the spread of dangerous enrichment or reprocessing programs to new countries. Countries like Iran that insist on developing their own sensitive technologies for “peaceful purposes,” therefore, are tipping their hand and revealing a likely intention to build the bomb.

Kroenig, Matthew.  “Why is Obama Abandoning 70 Years of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy?”  Tablet, June 15, 2015.

Whether nations or women deceived, Islam and several of the states most representative of it would seem to have a big credibility issue.  For Jews, perhaps others who have taken note, serious betrayal — and signal of the complete absence of compassion, conscience, and empathy — begins with the legend of the mass slaughter of the Banu Qurayza men and the barbaric enslavement of their wives and daughters.

Muslim critic and reformer Tarek Fatah has derided and rejected the authenticity of the Banu Qurayza legend for finding it execrable as any sort of example of morality while the “anti-Jihad”, in general, maintains the same as a potent symbol of the character of Islam.

Today’s skinny brings the tale of the imam who lied to betray his wife and woo another woman (K. M. Lessing) into conversion and marriage.

Same thing, isn’t it?

First, lie; then exploit the lie: to get the woman; to get power over others.

From simple mass slaughter and the abuse of women inveigled into relationships, Islam’s apparently inherent interest in the possession of absolute power — unanswerable, unconscionable (well demonstrated throughout the Syrian theater and the military and political play that has been fashioned as “Assad vs The Terrorists”), and humanly conflated with the presence in concept of God Almighty — extends logically to the possession of nuclear arms and the associated ability and evident intent to threaten the annihilation of others in exchange for their cooperation, loyalty, obedience, subjugation.

Should one take it on faith that not all imam are like K. M. Lessing’s imam?

Similarly, should on take it on faith that not all ayatollah and senior clerics are like Ali Khamenei or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?  Or the Muhammad who allegedly slaughtered 800 self-surrendered, compliant, and disarmed fathers and sons?

What do the polls say?

Where are the social science measures of attitudes toward others from within Islam?

Here we are back at “Shimmer“.

It’s different today: the question had been, as stated by Daniel Pipes, “How Many Islamists?”  Now we’re being positioned to ask among the despotic and theocratic leaders of Islamic states, who else (in addition to Pakistan) will have nuclear weapons, how soon, and how many?

While it may be understood that the Religion of Peace contains the genuinely peaceful and now an emerged leadership complement of Islamic humanists, social progressives, and reformers, its other faces retain the power and punch of military generals and political autocrats, and those in Iran it appears the west may now be rewarding with increased access to capital and the further encouragement of license exceeding all limits.

Loosely Related Reference

Afshari, Ali.  “Khamenei preaches Shiite-Sunni unity against Islamic State, US.”  Al-Monitor, October 22, 2014: “High-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic have always talked about the importance of Shiite-Sunni unity and even dedicated a week each year to the issue. Their actions, however, have served to deepen the Shiite-Sunni divide, in particular their discrimination against Iranian Sunnis, including limitations on their religious activities, as well as efforts to propagate Shiism in the Middle East.”

Al-Muslimi, Farea.  “Yemen’s Houthis proxy, not ally for Iran.”  Al-Monitor, November 19, 2014.

BackChannels.  “Ali Khamenei and the Letter from Near Mosul — A Speculation.”  January 16, 2015.

Bender, Jeremy.  “Iran’s proxy war in Yemen just got exposed.”  Business Insider, May 1, 2015.

Council on Foreign Relations.  “The Sunni-Shia Divide.”

Daoud, David.  “Iran’s Khamenei Says US is Enemy to Both Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East.”  The Algemeiner, May 18, 2015.

Frantzman, Seth J.  “20 Myths About the Iran Deal.”  Terra Incognita, July 15, 2015: “How a country that hangs people proudly and burns the flags of those it negotiates with has come to be so respected on the international stage is truly extraordinary. It is a testament to the soft racism of low expectations of the West.”

Karami, Arash.  “Iranian supreme leader doubles down on struggle against American ‘arrogance'”.  Al-Monitor, July 13, 2015

In September 2014, the U.S. began airstrikes in Syria that targeted ISIS, allowing Assad to perform an “economy of force“: Assad left the U.S. to attack ISIS in the east and focused on the moderates in the west. Assad has worked very hard to make extremists the face of the insurgency—for example between ISIS’ emergence and late 2014, Assad directed just six percent of his airstrikes against ISIS—and to present this as a binary choice between the dictator or the takfiris; this is a lie, but many believe it and it has worked to make the U.S. effectively Assad’s (Iran’s) air force in Syria.

Orton, Kyle.  “America Not Training Syria’s Rebels Isn’t “Failure”; It’s Policy.”  The Syrian Intifada, July 13, 2015.

Ross, Dennis.  “Iran Will Cheat, Then What?”  Time, July 15, 2015.

Starr, Barbara.  “Sources: Baghdadi may have been in Raqqa.”  CNN Politics, July 15, 2015.  Post includes video, story, and photo panel of “Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups.”

Former U.S. officials and Iran experts say Khamenei has a deep-rooted suspicion of the West and a streak of insecurity – he rose to power due to his loyalty to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rather than lofty religious credentials.

A sense of inferiority has dogged him over the years and it would be especially important for Khamenei to be seen as not folding under Western pressure to reach an agreement, they said.

Zakaria, Tabassum.  “For Iran talks, trying to divine supreme leader’s intent.”  Reuters, April 13, 2012.

The United States pushed forward with a sanctions-based approach largely because key administration officials believed that sanctions strengthened the credibility and leverage of those who wanted to engage Iran, while preventing more violent actions by Israel. They insisted that such an approach best addressed the myriad long-term mutual interests shared by the United States and Iran. President Obama himself reached the conclusion that there were too few negative incentives to affect Iran’s internal calculus, particularly regarding mutual interests.

Marashi, Reza.  “The Political Psychology of Obama’s Iran Policy.”  Muftah, January 6, 2012.

Khalaji, Mehdi.  “No Voice of Reconciliation: Khamenei Targets the West.”  The Washington Institute, May 21, 2015.

The Soufan Group.  “TSG IntelBrief: Khamenei’s Challenges and Unease in Iran’s Power Structure.”  November 14, 2013.

There’s not much on the web as regards “political psychology, Khamenei.”

Perhaps BackChannel’s approach with “malignant narcissism” aligned with the “Syndicate Red Brown Green” feudalism and associated anti-Semitism / anti-Zionism / anti-westernism will fill the bill: I believe Khamenei’s interests continue to reside with the possession of political “absolute power”, capricious justice, piratical leadership, militarism expressed through “war by proxy” and the cultivation of Daesh as a Sunni-aligned foil for Iraq’s Shiite militia (advised by Revolutionary Guard), and the long-term survival of Sunni vs Shiite teleological rivalry and related hot conflict as stage-managed from Tehran.

World Nuclear Association.  “Nuclear Power in Iran.”  Updated May 2015: “After two years delay due to Iran’s reluctance to agree to returning used fuel to Russia without being paid for it, two agreements were signed early in 2005 covering both supply of fresh fuel for the new Bushehr nuclear reactor and its return to Russia after use. The Russian agreement means that Iran’s nuclear fuel supply is secured for the foreseeable future, removing any justification for enrichment locally.”

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Old “King Code” – A Note on The Long War for Cybercrimefighters

09 Thursday Jul 2015

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

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Start with the good guys’ white hats —

http://surveillance.rsf.org/en/hacking-team/ – n.d.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/hacking-team-leaks-reveal-spyware-industrys-growth — 7/8/2015.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/07/08/hacking-team-iphone-android-malware/ – “Hacking Team’s $175,000 Apple Store And Google Play Surveillance Apps Flirt With Illegality” – 7/8/2015.

And let’s got on to the bad guys’ black hats (who could be the same guys or white-hat guys who have had their ideas / methods / products / processes stolen) —

According to the documents, 400GB of which have been published, Hacking Team has also been working with numerous repressive governments – something it has previously explicitly denied doing. It has not been possible to independently verify the veracity of the documents.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/06/hacking-team-hacked-firm-sold-spying-tools-to-repressive-regimes-documents-claim — 7/6/2015.

As with other tools, like axes and guns, software has itself has neither consciousness nor conscience.  It doesn’t know who’s using it or how or for what noble or ignoble purpose, and the sawing will go this way: “Software doesn’t destroy, shield, or steal digital assets: programmers and end-users do.”

And now return to the good guys — so I freely presume the avatars of the lawful to be themselves lawful — and another electronic-communicating aspect of their problem with the bad guys of the certifiable kind:

The director of the FBI has warned that criminals and terrorists will be able to talk ‘with impunity’ if encryption goes too far.

James Comey said that anti-surveillance measures being deployed by the likes of Apple and Google will ‘inexorably affect my ability to do that job’ if they continue to expand.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3152226/Is-web-security-putting-DANGER-Criminals-terrorists-communicate-impunity-encryption-sophisticated-FBI-warns.html#ixzz3fP58ZMC5 – 7/7/2015.

Related: FBI – Cybercrime Page: “We are building our lives around our wired and wireless networks. The question is, are we ready to work together to defend them?”

  • What is being hidden from whom?
  • What would be exploited by whom were it not kept safe?
  • Where is the war?

One of my distant correspondents noted of a small community project beneath his wing that he dared not display too much of physical improvements online for there were those in his village that might want a cut just because.

Those guys.

Wiseguys.

Greedy, jealous, suspicious.

Thugs.

Scale it up:

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1 – 11/11/2013.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-russia-mafia-kleptocracy – 12/1/2010.

Or scale it back down:

On May 1, 2014, a grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania indicted five members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for 31 criminal counts, including: conspiring to commit computer fraud; accessing a computer without authorization for the purpose of commercial advantage and private financial gain; damaging computers through the transmission of code and commands; aggravated identity theft; economic espionage; and theft of trade secrets.

First paragraph description of one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Cybercriminals (as viewed in July 2015).

It appears that not so many decades ago, technologists went to work on eliminating space as an impediment to forming basic social relationships while migrating the digitally empowered away from paper-based banking, gasoline-enabled shopping, and family-room television: mission accomplished.

In the process of eliminating so much work while producing incalculable savings, the same have done away with troves of evidence of physical bother: who needs cash, or even a courier, when numbers shuttled between computers move wealth?

Who needs a theater and ticket counter when the talented — whatever the talent — may put on a show, flash mob or flash bang, with the distribution of a signal from a cell phone?

What army is needed where one gunman — recruited online, minimally “handled” — can walk a weapon into some space and inside of a few minutes commit mass murder, damage a state’s tourist industry, or destroy a community’s sense of security in relation to racial or religious harmony?

For the west and geopolitical space integrating with the western mind (of the lawful), all of the traffic, however massive, ultimately educates, informs, or entertains while facilitating either comparatively healthy private and social behavior or behavior not yet codified.

A few of quite another mind — feudal, malignantly narcissistic, plainly malign by normative standards — diverge to disagree in expression and action.

Given free expression (short of direct conspiracy or incitement to crime), conflict between the lawful and the lawless has now long been moved to an electronic boundary between publically empowered and trusted investigators and privately enfranchised criminals, and along that boundary on both sides, software — code is king wherever it “wins” and for as long as it works — has become shield and sword.

Those of us who spend a fair part of our day online reading, writing, shopping, and watching YouTube videos, are going to be witness to and monitors of this challenge to the lawful control of information for some time to come.

Related on BackChannels: “FTAC — On the Opposition of the Lawless to the Influence of Israel” (June 19, 2015).

Related in the News: Reuters.  “FBI says thwarted Islamic State-inspired attacks on July 4.”  July 9, 2015.

Update – Reference – July 10, 2015

Levine, Mike and Jack Date.  “22 Million Affected by OPM Hack, Officials Say.”  ABC News, July 9, 2015.

Waddell, Kaveh and Dustin Volz.  “OPM Announces More Than 21 Million Affected by Second Data Breach.”  National Journal, June 9, 2015.

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FTAC – Twitter Choice

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Journal, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Yemen

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Following, for a while. As with so many others incapable of rejecting a sect (in its entirety) within a religion of which one is not a part and over a conflict that is distant and — and I will assign blame to Khamenei and others of feudal mind and ambition — archaic, I don’t want to weigh on the scales. I’ve found the same divide in Shiite and other circles where claim is made about being “the Jews of islam” (and persecuted by Sunni Muslims). Nonetheless, one understands: where this kind of conflict is hot — the bullets are flying and the bombs are going off and lives are being ended, shattered, or threatened in the most direct ways — polarization is as unavoidable as it is destructive and seemingly impossible to repair.

The place where the bullets are flying: Yemen.

The drift of sympathy: against the Houthis as representative of Ayatollah Khamenei’s War by Proxy that in turn defends feudal absolutism and seeks to expand the regime’s power against Sunni interests.

In another and now increasingly distant age — even 25 or 50 years ago may now seem like centuries — the Yemeni part of the Islamic Small Wars would been played as a clipping in the back of the “A” section of the newspapers, a remote tribal war to be overlooked by western indifference.

Those days are gone.

Our Facebook friends are either there or have family and friends who are close to live fire — not only in Yemen but everywhere being razed and ruined by these forces — and we’re watching without recourse to choosing a good and bad side except against the “al-Qaeda Typicals” and the “Hezbollah Virus”, i.e., operations with military wings so awful that the good of the planet would seek to shut down regardless of other disagreements stemming from nominal affiliations and associated cultural, political, and religious self-concept.

Instead, some of us seem to be standing by friends on both sides and hoping the theme of “The Medieval vs The Modern” will catch on before the medieval world, which some are working hard to sustain, swallows the modern.  That outcome may not be possible across continents, but it seems to be proving possible in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe (with Putin-Khamenei as the hub from which so much chaos, destruction, and political confusion emanate).

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FTAC – of Flights and Slights

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

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

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Referencing the Back-Channels zeitgeist — on the greater web: https://conflict-backchannels.com/ — and this has been as much a journey in cultural and political navigation as it has been for others sailing together through time — both Putin and Khamenei have emphasized their devotion to feudalism and absolute power (for them, that’s the good side) and (the bad side) the validation of mafia-style governance and outright internal piracy.

Periodically, Iranian naval forces have tweaked the British Navy by capturing a patrol boat and forcing Great Britain into a predictable round of negotiations ending with, so one might say, faces saved.

Putin’s neo-feudal rig in Russia extends the privileges of the police state known in the Soviet Era (reference: Karen Dawisha’s work) and certainly harks back to the 19th Century’s Age of Empire (so I might wag “colonel, President, EMPEROR Putin” at times). With the invasion of Crimea most in evidence (western governments are the only entities acquiescing, albeit perhaps superficially, in various levels of denial), Putin similarly takes swipes at western resolve,

Much amounts to political theater (like the $52 billion Sochi Olympics show covering the butchery and degradation taking place in Syria with Putin’s military deliveries), but these feints may at any point become more pressed, more earnest, more deadly.

That Putin would call Obama to exchange Independence Day sentiment while this was taking place of course tells of the kind of mentality represented by the Russian President and how that differs from the still dominant American manner on the topside of international politics.

The thread starter: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/06/officials-us-jets-scramble-to-intercept-russian-bombers-off-california-alaska/ (July 6, 2015).

The Big Boys with The Big Toys play around the world this way —

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201506290076 – “Joint exercise in South China Sea reflects Japan’s ‘strong concern’ about Beijing” – 6/29/2015

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/cycle-north-korean-provocations (1/30/2014)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032300574.html – “Iran Seizes 15 British Seamen” (3/24/2007)

And so it goes – and probably goes on every day in ways that simply compile into military activity statistics.

What made the story played by Fox News compelling were, of course, the date, the phone call, and the required scramble.

Newsweek has got it right for this day: “Putin’s War on Ukraine is More Important Than Greek Debt” (July 6, 2015):

. . . the Kremlin opted for a third strategy, identified with Putin’s diabolic aide Vladislav Surkov: a limited but bloody war in the eastern and southern part of only two of Ukraine’s 25 regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, known as the Donbas.

The destruction has been horrendous. The territory now occupied by Russian troops or their subordinates once harbored 3.3 million people, but most have since fled—1.3 million to other parts of Ukraine, 500,000 to Russia, and 100,000 to other countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Only pensioners, the destitute and criminals remain.

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From Correspondence – On (Swedish) Nationalism and Ethnolinguistic Cultural Survival and Self-Determination

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Northern Europe, Philology, Politics, Regions, Sweden

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Posted to YouTube June 15, 2015.

While one may wish not to endorse a racist national socialism – one that seeks the destruction or subjugation of all others everywhere – I’ve always stood behind the prerogatives of ethnolinguistic cultural survival and self-determination. The possession of culture (with beliefs, calendar, customs, institutions, and rituals) suspended in and transmitted through language is a precious gift, and one that man cannot create except in the natural course of living together in some human space and in limited numbers, i.e., a social subset of the species in its totality.

American multiculturalism works partly because of the English-borne classical liberalism passed down through its constitution through time and a combination of privacy, resources, and space such that every cooperating culture may and has found some place to plant itself and struggle along or thrive on the American quilt. Most other states, if not all, including those of the British Commonwealth, have a legitimate part of old feudal interest in the survival of, indeed, both a national way of life (x beliefs, calendar, customs, institutions, and rituals) and the adjusted survival of indigenous contributing cultures within.

The correspondent had shared the video with BackChannels.  Plainly, the complaint devolves to geospatial cultural realities — Let Sweden be Swedish! — and how those interests may be handled today.

In Sweden, the Church of Sweden has been separated from the state since 2000 — the state has become secular — and political navigation has proceeded from the fundamentally changed premise.

En Arg Blatte Talar, AKA “Angry Foreigner” on YouTube, and the spokesman in the above video is himself a Bosnian immigrant to Sweden.  As much surfaces in a related video (by Sargon of Akkad, June 10, 2015, time: 1:37:23).

Among other observations, Talar notes on his Angry Foreigner page, “I don’t hate blacks, arabs and jews. No idea why some of the comments are like that. I am not against immigration as a phenomenon. Of course Im not saying that every country should close it’s borders. Im just asking that other countries take more responsibility with asylum seekers so that we in Sweden don’t have to take as much. It’s fucking killing us. Our politicians are too scared to integrate immigrants properly and it’s causing problems for both the ethnic population and us who have come here over the past years.”

Pat Condell, “Sweden – Ship of fools” (posted to YouTube October 13, 2014):

On the other side of asylum and immigration issues of serious scale are conditions in other lands.  Mexico’s ever lumbering economy and narcoterrorism literally drives its population to border-running desperation.  The same may be noted where mass lowest-level employment draws labor into foreign enslavement.  In other quarters — but I have Syria and Iraq immediately in mind (however, watch out for an increase in Ukraine’s newly dispossessed) — open conflict (poorly addressed) has produced “internally displaced” and “refugee” (homeless, either way) numbers ranging far into the million (by way of Syria alone, above nine million).

Swedish good nature and goodness may account for folly in acts of grace that would take in the immigrant (tired, poor, wretched, and culturally militant), but the challenge to the world (perhaps: get the coming numbers down; get resources up; and move internal economies and trade into strong development) dwarfs even its best potential gestures.

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Ukraine – Orphan?

06 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Ukraine

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Posted to YouTube June 30, 2015.

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has prepared a dossier laying out evidence for what it calls “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

The report alleges there are some 9,000 Russian troops deployed in Ukraine, forming 15 battalion tactical groups. The force includes about 200 tanks, more than 500 armored fighting vehicles, and some 150 artillery systems, according to the dossier.

Coalson, Robert.  “Who Are The Russian Generals That Ukraine Says Are Fighting In The Donbas?”  Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, July 3, 2015.

In today’s Washington Post, Jackson Diehl notes Russia’s suspension of gas deliveries to Ukraine and the west’s distractions with Greece and Iran, asking at the end of his piece “Will this be remembered as the summer when the West let Ukraine die?”

I won’t give away his answer.

My hope: I hope not.

Remember Yanukovych Leaks and the state-borne internal piracy that drove Ukrainians to give Putin’s stooge the boot.

Remember Putin’s $52 billion Sochi Winter Olympics, which obscene spending ignored and masked off the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria and the nearly 10 million displace while Putin-Assad-Khamenei fairly cultivated “The Terrorists” for Assad’s Big Political Theater and Khamenei’s teleological commitment to bringing forth the Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle.

Remember Yulia Marushveska — says Anna Nemtsova recently, “She’s a Beautiful, Passionate Voice for Ukraine, But That’s Not Enough” (The Daily Beast, June 28, 2015):

“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets,” she said to the global audience, her voice full of feeling. “There is only one reason: They want to be free from a dictatorship. … We are civilized people but our government are barbarians. This is not a Soviet Union.” The video has since been seen by more than 8.3 million people.

Remember “Syndicate Red Brown Green” and the smaller feudal and mafia-style relationships: Putin-Assad-Khamenei; Putin-Khamenei; Jobbik-Iran; Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan, which looks shaky today.

Remember how Assad nurtured Syria’s al-Qaeda Typicals.

Remember Milan Kundera’s famous statement about remembering: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

The main purpose of keeping the Donbas conflict in a smoldering state is to let Putin remain in power. The Donbas war will distract the Russians and help Putin stay in power, the ex-FSB officer said.

Zik.  “Ex-FSB officer throws light on Putin’s games around Donbas.”  July 6, 2015.

The BackChannel’s term for what Putin (and Putin and Khamenei together) represent in contemporary political possibility: “21st Century Neo-Feudalism”.

Dzerzhinsky may be a Communist saint, but the symbolism of the prince’s statue is inescapable. It will celebrate the new Vladimir, not just the old one. This may be obvious, but the subject is avoided in polite conversation.

There are other topics — rising prices, the fighting in Ukraine, the shape of things to come — that people don’t like to think about, even though these subjects are at times unavoidable. The economy is entering “a full-fledged crisis,” former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Parliament recently. He warned that Russia’s gross domestic product is forecast to be 4 percent lower this year than it was in 2014. Meanwhile, food prices are rising. Official figures indicate a 23 percent jump for the year ending in March, but an informal survey of grocers in my neighborhood suggests a 30 percent jump is more realistic.

Trudolyubov, Maxim.  “Russia’s Virtual Universe.”  The New York Times, July 5, 2015.

But Vyrypaev’s wider summing-up was admirably succinct: “This means that [the state] has the right to intervene, to control, direct, grow, regulate, monitor, and finally to develop the cultural process. It means that the state assumes the role of a kind of spiritual and educational shepherd for the people.”

Birchenough, Tom.  “theartsdesk in Moscow: Free thought vs cultural politics
How heavy is the official hand bearing down on Russian culture today?”  The Arts Desk, July 5, 2015.

While Obama has for the public paired Putin with Soviet revanche, it’s not the Soviet that Putin (and the KGB cum FSB organization) have brought to Russia: “feudalism”, “state capitalism”, “neo-feudalism” better describe what Putin has done — is doing —  to the Russians.

Related Reference

AP. “Land mine explosion in eastern Ukraine kills 5 soldiers, wounds 3 as fighting grinds on.”  Fox News, July 5, 2015.

Avedissian, Karena.  “The power of Electric Yerevan.”  Open Democracy, July 6, 2015: “The corruption and mismanagement of ENA reflect wider problems of governance and the political environment in Russia. When Russian state-owned companies (in which theft is not the exception but the norm) take over infrastructure in neighbouring countries, this is, in effect, ‘exporting corruption’.”

Batchelor, John.  “Obama’s ultimatums to Putin fall on deaf ears.”  Al Jazeera, July 3, 2015.

BBC.  “Nemtsov daughter condemns Russian media ‘propaganda’.”  June 9, 2015.

Castner, Jennifer.  “In Putin’s Russia, Environmentalists Face Stiff Repression.”  Earth Island Journal, June 30, 2015.

Center for Transatlantic Relations.  “This Week in Ukraine” (viewed as compiled July 2, 2015).

Connolly, Kate.  “Obama lambasts Putin: you’re wrecking Russia to recreate Soviet empire.”  The Guardian, June 8, 2015.

Gray, Rosie.  “Pro-Putin Think Tank Based in New York Shuts Down.”  BuzzFeed News, June 30 2015.

Gutterman, Steve.  “Russia blocks internet sites of Putin critics.”  Reuters, March 13, 2014.

Horvath, Ani.  “Hungary’s Viktor Orban antagonizes European Union with border fence, Russia embrace.”  The Washington Times, July 2, 2015.

Isachenkov, Vladimir.  “Putin: Russia is going to spend $400 billion upgrading its military.”  AP via Business Insider, June 26, 2015.

Popova, Polina.  “Freedom of speech under fire in Ukraine.”  The Hill, June 16, 2015.  (The story becomes convoluted as official Ukraine responds to the assault of Russian propaganda: writes Popova, “Some journalists fear that the ministry was actually created to muffle internal opposition, rather than tackling Russian propaganda. It’s not surprising that it has earned the Orwellian nickname “the Ministry of Truth”).

Not a few Russian intellectuals, depressed by the Orwellian state of Russian public discourse, have come to see Ukrainian cities as the hope for the future of Russian culture. In this light, the Russian invasion of Ukraine to protect freedom of speech in the Russian language is perhaps better compared to America invading Canada to save the welfare state or North Korea invading South Korea to protect capitalism.

Snyder, Timothy.  “Ukraine’s easy, misunderstood Babel.”  Politico, July 2-3, 2015.

The Chosunilbo.  “Russia Bans Internet Database Archive.”  July 6, 2015.  (The story concerns the “Wayback Machine” and, indeed, the suppression of questionable material).

Vasilyeva, Nataliya.  “Russian opposition star campaigns against apathy, but Kremlin media drowns him out.”  U.S. News & World Report, July 1, 2015.

Weiss, Michael.  “The Kremlin’s $220 Million Man: Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, is supposed to have the cleanest hands in the Kremlin. So where’d he get a quarter of a billion dollars?”  Foreign Policy, October 29, 2014.

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