Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal

Taliban Poised to Suffocate Afghanistan (Again)

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

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

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August 18, 2021.

Wikipedia offers a term for what happens next: “Talibanization“.

Read it and weep.

India Times, August 14, 2021.

From Journeyman Pictures, “Afghani Life Under Taliban Rule (1998)” — and regarding filming (in 1998): “According to Islam and according to our society, we are not allowed . . . under Islamic rule, there is no question of ‘why’. In Islamic society, nothing is allowed such as television, such as type (stet) such as any other recording, uh, recorders to play . . . .” (1:46-2:13).

From U.S. Department of State (November 17, 2001): “Report on the Taliban’s War Against Women”: “The life of Afghan women is so bad. We are locked at home and cannot see the sun” (Nageeba, a 35-year-old widow in Kabul).

The Taliban wants to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan, ideally as an emirate, which would be led by a religious leader and draw its legitimacy from clerics. Afghanistan is currently an Islamic republic, which is led by a president and draws legitimacy from universal suffrage and accordance with international laws and norms.

Maizland, Lindsay. “The Taliban in Afghanistan.” Council on Foreign Relations, August 3, 2021 (last update).

Welcome back to the Old New (Old Medieval) World.

How long before Darkness — the affirmation of ignorance and the revival of medieval “Islamic” codes, punishments, and tortures resume?

Having won their war, the Taliban have seen Muslims flee their presence en masse.

Having won their war, the Taliban must now defend with weapons their authority in Afghanistan.

August 18, 2021.

Having won their war, the Taliban must impose their will on modern Afghani people.

August 16, 2021.
The full interview with Mahbooba Seraj may be viewed on YouTube –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjYh6p0CGi8&t=5s

(August 9, 2021).

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The best and worst thing to ever happen to the Taliban?

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

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

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Winning.

The Taliban will have to defend Afghanistan now, and they will not be able to do that without serious Chinese and Russian and other support in the navigating of modern international legal, political, and technology systems.

Worse for the Taliban: Afghanis appear to fear them, not respect them.

Apart from fighting, first the Russians — and then the Americans who helped them stave off the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan — they have done nothing for Afghanistan apart from threatening, at least, to again impose their medieval will on a modern society. In that way, their “win” may more resemble the tyranny of the Islamic Revolution in Iran than true modern cultural Afghani self-determination.

Today, August 17, 2021.

To garner respect, the Taliban would have to deliver into their own outlook and politics the most advanced of the world’s standards having to do with comprehension of the human condition, the individual yearning for autonomy and freedom from absolute power — authoritarianism — and the dogma and propaganda employed to justify its own sadism. It has missed its own complete education thus far in the collective poetry of the world and while offering assurances has been quick nonetheless to paint over a vibrant modernity with its own darkness.

Will the Taliban escape their own darkness, in essence their own culturally suffocating presence, and make the steep climb into the light of awareness, compassion, and responsibility in concert with the decent, engaged, and responsible of the world?

The Obama White House, June 4, 2009.

While today’s west will always support indigenous self-determination and respect the sovereignty of independent states, it has demonstrated that it will not respect claims to ethnic, racial, or religious supremacism within its own bounds, and it will not approve or endorse as much elsewhere in the world. As a political bloc, EU/NATO will forever abhor absolutism, bigotry, cruelty, enslavement, hate, and subjugation — and all of that whether threatened by forces or processes within or by the enemies of freedom and security without.

Related Online

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

Fair, C. Christine. “Pakistan and the United States Have Betrayed the Afghan People.” Foreign Policy, August 16, 2021.

Jason, Mike. “What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan.” The Atlantic, August 12, 2021.

Muslim American Leadership Alliance

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Afghanistan Welcomes the Taliban

16 Monday Aug 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Afghanistan, Islamic Small Wars

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The Telegraph, August 16, 2021.

Russia, duplicitous and playing beneath the table as well as above it, fairly owns that deck of cards labelled “REALPOLITIK”. It has in its underhanded fashion furnished the Taliban all along with Russian arms and materiel while at the same time mouthing its anti-terrorist stance. Yesterday, while former Afghani President Ghani fled Kabul with, possibly, so much loot that it would not fit in his helicopter, the Taliban was deploying guards to the Russian Embassy.

How sweet this victory for the most archaic, medieval, narcissistic, and selfish of human political minds across cultures.

The Afghan People, the Afghan Military, the United States of America, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been not only humiliated by the Taliban’s guerrilla putsch made possible by corruption within the Afghan government — or money would have reached its troops and those troops would have been more appreciated, moved, and better defended when most needed — the same have been looted by Moscow, more or less, and left to do their “lessons learned” back home, which from today may become less safe in relation to the deeply retrograde Islamic Revolution in Afghanistan.

Keys

–Rightful CIA intercession on behalf of the mujaheddin during the Soviet Army’s invasion of Afghanistan (see “Operation Cyclone” for the details).

— While both the CIA and Russian interests appeared to mirror one another in retreat from Afghanistan and leaving the state to its own devices, BackChannels believes Moscow directly influenced Ayman Al-Zawahiri during a 1996-97 detention in Russia and through him the compact with Osama Bin Laden that would produce Al-Qaeda and lead to 9/11 and successive acts of Islamist terror worldwide. Conspiratorial? Delusional? Look again at whose embassy is not only staying put in Kabul but which has Taliban guards keeping it secured.

–Today, “Moscow-Kabul” may be added to “Moscow-Tehran”, another block-and-goad nexus against western culture, democracy, humanism, and liberalism.

For peace, Asian powers as well as EU/NATO have with half-measures navigated what they have believed to be an “East-West Rivalry” sustained on business and political accommodations and tensions, and as much would seem in the natural course of diplomatic and international affairs. However, BackChannels has long noted a much different axis in conflict, and that has been the tension between Feudal-Medieval Personalities and States, the chief representatives of “Political Absolutism”, and the Modern of Mind devoted to universal dignity and freedom in the address of common and global challenges to human well-being and the survival of Earth herself.

Moscow and Company (lately Beijing as well) have been most interested in Power and Wealth benefiting select elites as determined in each respective absolutist and feudal-medieval framework while much of the rest of the world now cries for deliverance from them with hopes for modern improvements in Qualities of Living wherever life has planted them.

The deeply archaic and medieval Taliban were not welcomed yesterday in Kabul nearly as much as dreaded and feared.

Modern universal moral revulsion will now oppose the Taliban’s primitive narcissism, rigidity, and violence, and however disorganized it may be, it will by way of species-wide intellectual evolution emerge naturally and implacably — no less so than what mankind has done to create the culturally interwoven complex machinery that delivers the modern world in materials and services — and yesterday’s “victory” (over millions determined to flee it and now subject to living beneath the lowering shadow of the fear of it) may yet prove but the beginning of the Islamists own end.

Sky News, August 16, 2021.

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Afghanistan: On The Fall of Kabul

15 Sunday Aug 2021

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

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CBC News, August 15, 2021.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Two Afghan officials say President Ashraf Ghani has left the country.

The officials, one from former President Hamid Karzai’s office and another an aide on the Afghan security council, told The Associated Press that Ghani left Sunday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists.

Ghani left along with his National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib and a second close associate. It wasn’t immediately clear where they went.

Meanwhile, the Taliban said it would further enter Kabul on Sunday night after spending hours on the city’s outskirts.

Seir, Ahmad, Rahim Faiez, Tameem Akhgar, Jon Gambrell. “Officials: Afghan president has left the country.” AP, August 15, 2021.

While ordinary Afghani cower within or flee their presence, the Taliban appear to have just won their chance to further fail and horrify Afghanistan.

Posted by Astra, May 11, 2016.

The Taliban were born when Mullah Omar took revenge on a tank crew and its commander for the rape of two village girls. The crew were killed and the commander as well by hanging him from his own tank barrel. Omar then fled with his band to recruit an army of resistance to the then Soviet invasion.

Most who have followed Afghanistan from the Cold War forward know that story and the subsequent arming of the mujaheddin, the defeat of the Soviet Army, the mirroring CIA retreat from the theater, and the final bankrupting of Soviet Union and the opening of the gangway for the lawless of Russia for 1992. At the time, I believe — unless corrected — the mujaheddin were left with their ideologies and weapons and a broken nation that would then be subdued by arms, but in an interesting turnabout, that loose energy would fall to Russian encouragement. The situation would be analogous to clearing a house of burglars only to leave one’s own gun out on the dining room table.

Ayman al-Zawahiri appears to have been by mutual intent detained in Russia at the end of 1996 and released to travel to Afghanistan in 1997. By 1998, he and Osama Bin Laden would have a deal plus funding plus manpower motivated against the west and would three years later deliver “9/11“. For the big recap of the narrative that followed, see Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “The U.S. War in Afghanistan: 1999-2021. Here’s the copy at the end of that piece —

April 14, 2021
Biden Decides on Complete U.S. Withdrawal by 9/11

President Biden announces that the United States will not meet the deadline set under the U.S.-Taliban agreement to withdraw all troops by May 1 and instead releases a plan for a full withdrawal by September 11, 2021. “It’s time to end America’s longest war,” he says. The remaining 3,500 troops in Afghanistan will be withdrawn regardless of whether progress is made in intra-Afghan peace talks or the Taliban reduces its attacks on Afghan security forces and citizens. NATO troops in Afghanistan will also leave. Biden says Washington will continue to assist Afghan security forces and support the peace process. The Taliban says it will not participate in “any conference” on Afghanistan’s future until all foreign troops leave.

What have the Afghani People to look forward to under Taliban rule?

Compelled affirmation of archaic attitudes and beliefs enforced by continuous surveillance, intimidation, and violence — Afghanistan has just been returned to the status of a medieval theocracy;

Feudal-medieval conflict as religious principles fail to resolve personal, tribal, state, and international disputes or temper the criminality and greed that have corrupted not only the politics of the state but have seen the most unsavory of receipts fill the Taliban’s own war chest.

Afghanistan’s women will be diminished as persons, conservative or modern, and again mastered by a patriarchy infamous for its cruelties and most unbalanced and terrifying “guidance” as laid out by Islamic law.

Related Online

Coren, Anna, Sandi Sidhu, Tim Lister, and Abdul Basir Bina. “Taliban fighters execute 22 Afghan commandos as they try to surrender.” CNN, July 14, 2021.

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “The U.S. War in Afghanistan: 1999-2021.

Felbab-Brown, Vanda. “Drugs, security, and counternarcotics policies in Afghanistan.” Brookings, October 29, 2020.

Goodhand, Jonathan. “What the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan means for the global drug trade.” Scroll.In, August 13, 2021.

Haider, Mobarak. Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, May 16, 2010.

Mohamed, Hamza and Ramy Allahoum. “President Ashraf Ghani leaves Afghanistan: Live”. Al Jazeera, August 15, 2021.

Sanger, David E. and Helene Cooper. “Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations.” The New York Times, August 15, 2021.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Shamoun, Sam. “Compel them or Not?” Answering Islam, n.d.

Shamoun, Sam. “Fighting All People Until They Do What?” Answering Islam. n.d.

Ward, Alexander, Paul McLeary, Lara Seligman, David Cohen. “Taliban seize power amid chaos in Kabul.” Politico, August 15, 2021.

France 24 English, August 15, 2021.

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Taliban: Another Russian Wrecking Crew

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

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

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When something stinks, people flee from it.

With arms and materiel supplied by Russian smugglers — and now with the same captured from overrun government forces — the Taliban have been picking up all the chips left abandoned by NATO’s general withdrawal. Game over. Fold up the board. Hand it to the world’s foremost advocate for Rule by the Ruthless Rich. Whether in weeks, months, or years, the Taliban too will have cleared themselves from the field — they are destroying themselves by the hour and don’t know it — and there will remain Afghanistan, bereft of order, debased, depopulated, disillusioned, disorganized, traumatized — rather like Syria, also deeply beholden to Moscow and Tehran for all of the miseries dispensed by the Tyrant in Damascus.

There is another side to Taliban mayhem and misrule.

Call it a new plant.

Narcoticus Talibanus

KABUL—The escalating war in Afghanistan is directly linked to the multibillion-dollar global trade in illicit drugs, as the Taliban seek to expand and consolidate control over the production and trafficking of narcotics and to diversify from heroin into methamphetamine, in what an Afghan counternarcotics officer called “a coming catastrophe for the world.”

Afghan and international counternarcotics experts said violence in Afghanistan has spiked in recent years alongside increased cultivation of opium poppies, used for heroin production, and ephedra, a plant that grows wild across the country and is being used to make methamphetamine.

O’Donnell, Lynne. “The Taliban Are Breaking Bad: Meth is even more profitable than heroin–and is turbocharging the insurgency.” Foreign Policy, July 19, 2021.

And you thought the Taliban were bringing Islam to Afghanistan.

As listed by Hanif Suvizada in an article in The Conversation (Dec. 8, 2020), here is how the Taliban makes its money — drugs, protection (“mining”), other extortion plus taxation, skimming from “charitable donations” to finance terrorism, export that might be legitimate if it didn’t include poppy and looted minerals.

Related Online

Goodman, Ryan. “Trump Pushed CIA to Give Intelligence to Kremlin, While Taking No Action Against Russia Arming Taliban.” Just Security, July 8, 2020.

Mashal, Mujib and Michael Schwirtz. “How Russia Built a Channel to the Taliban, Once an Enemy”. The New York Times, July 13, 2020.

Noorzai, Roshan, Ezel Sahinkaya, Rahim Gul Sarwan. “Afghan Lawmakers: Russian Support to Taliban No Secret.” VOA, July 3, 2020.

O’Donnell, Lynne. “The Taliban Are Breaking Bad: Meth is even more profitable than heroin–and is turbocharging the insurgency.” Foreign Policy, July 19, 2021.

Reuters. “Russia says boosts arms supplies to Central Asia amid Afghan conflict.” August 5, 2021. Open query: with corruption practically a given worldwide, what part will make it to the Taliban?

Ross, Jamie. “Trump Appears to Defend Russia Arming the Taliban Against U.S. Troops.” Daily Beast, July 29, 2020 .

Rowlatt, Justin. “Russia ‘arming the Afghan Taliban’, says US.” BBC News, March 23, 2018.

Savage, Charlie, Eric Schmitt, Michael Schwirtz. Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says.” The New York Times, July 29, 2020.

Sufizada, Hanif. “The Taliban are megarich — here’s where they get the money they use to wage war in Afghanistan.” The Conversation, December 8, 2020.

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FTAC: Palestinian KGB & The Palestinians –Abused and Plundered by Their Own

26 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Israel, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories

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I’ve had to revise this page (Dec. 19, 2023) in response to my own poor editing ages ago. My comment, here italicized, had appeared some time ago on Facebook, and I seem not in the mood to search for it. 

*
Why focus always returns to Israel or the Jews eludes me when, in fact, the primary conflict driver has been Arab and other (well, Russian) anti-Semitic habit welded to lies and willful political misguidance to keep democracy and humanism away from the dictatorships, including those systems headed by Palestinian “leaders”, disinterested in either. In fact, The Palestinians have been long weaponized – politically perverted in mind, heart, soul — by those who have most pretended to represent them (while in fact ensuring their continued plunder).
*

In 2016, Ronen Bergman put together a piece of history involving Russia’s then secret political police, the KGB, and the Palestinians. It was the start of an era in which an alternative Palestinian liberation myth could be installed in the refugee population and used to goad the west (with terrorism) and block the expansion of western liberalism as represented by Israel. The rest would seem a history of capture and enslavement by anti-democratic and illiberal forces bent on plundering Palestinian support for their own pockets and lavish lifestyles.

Ronen Bergman’s report on the KGB’s supporting the Palestinians has been organized in three parts (starting in October 2016) with this page serving as the base: Bergman, Ronen. “The KGB’s MIddle East Files.” Ynet News, 2016.

Earlier on BackChannels

“FTAC: Palestinian KGB: Another Remark.” February 11, 2021.

“Set: ‘Palestinian KGB’ and Other BackChannels Observations Related to the Middle East Conflict.” February 6, 2018.

I confess only to having made note of the KGB-Palestinian relationship a time or two and to asking the apparently novel question: why has the world not focused on the Palestinian’s feudal internal politics and the community’s historic emotional dependence on Moscow?

What earlier Arab intransigence, anti-Semitism, and KGB ends have done to the Arab refugees of 1948 (at that time, left stranded between armies) has perhaps today an unspeakable quality as vast sums intended for the community’s development have been diverted to war (“Resistance!” they call it) for more than 73 years — and the Palestinian main base has gotten nothing out of that deal but absolute rule (no elections!), corruption and exploitation, Gaza (for Hamas!), neglect, political repression, and, as a sop in the press, the globally distributed artificial image of an heroic narcissism for ultimately gazing upon themselves.

Related Online

The easiest of related web searches: “Fatah, corruption”; “Hamas, corruption”; “Palestinian child soldiers”; etc. Have curiosity, and you may travel online to your heart’s content. Nonetheless, I’ve listed a few ready references with which to click through to both greater knowledge and reflection.

Amnesty. “Gaza: Journalist facing prison term for exposing corruption in Hamas-controlled ministry.” February 25, 2019.

Bates, McKenna. “Telling the Truth About Palestinian Child Soldiers.” The Algemeiner, March 8, 2020.

Council on Foreign Relations. “Corruption in the Palestinian Authority.” April 5, 2018.

Dwek, Nimrod. “Hamas, Fatah: The tragedy of corrupted regimes – opinion. The Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2021.

Faus, Jocogo Salvador Mico. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “Hamas’ child soldiers.” Atalayar, May 12, 2021.

Freiman, Myer. “Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels.” Tablet, July 25, 2014.

GAB, The Global Anticorruption Blog. “A Closer Look at Corruption, Hamas, and Violence in the Gaza Strip.” June 28, 2021.

Giovannetti, Megan. “Palestinians furious and fed up with corruption of Abbas’s ‘mafia’ PA.” Middle East Eye, February 15, 2019.

McGreal, Chris. “Fatah struggles with tainted image.” The Guardian, January 24, 2006.

Starr, Michael. “Why Are Palestinian Child Soldiers Ignored.” The Times of Israel, February 19, 2021.

Ali was incredulous. “You call them a government?” he asked. “I call them mafia.”

For the 22-year-old Palestinian resident of the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, is a corrupt institution that benefits only an elite few.

Giovannetti, Megan. “Palestinians furious and fed up with corruption of Abbas’s ‘mafia’ PA.” Middle East Eye, February 15, 2019.

Addendum to Reference After Initial Publication

Caligiuri, Gabriel. “The Crescent and the Sickle: A History of “Free Palestine.” Frontier Alliance International, November 1, 2024.

Heinze, Eric. “Russia is the global leader in Jew-hate.” The Jewish Chronicle, February 24, 2017.

Liberpedia. “Palestine/KGB”.

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FTAC: One Comment on Dying for Mendacity in the Palestinian Territories

21 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia

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***

Stop lying to yourself!

There has never been a sovereign nation-state called “Palestine”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_%22Palestine%22

On the dishonest tack foisted upon the refugees of 1948 and subsequent wars by Arab and Communist — and now Islamist — interests, there never will be a state recognized by responsible Israelis, Europeans, North Americans, or others worldwide. Some idiots in official diplomatic circles and many on the know-nothing (Far Out) Left will encourage you to death, but history and the worldwide community of historians and political analysts possessed of integrity will never rewrite or revise their subjects to suit your egotism, emotions, or narcissism or, ultimately, Jew hate and want of absolute and capricious power.

The sooner Palestinians wake up to History Undeniable, the sooner Israelis and Palestinians may stop dying in the path of poisonous falsehoods.

Recommended related look-ups: KGB, PLO | Iranian proxy, Hamas

The Palestinians, now a community in situ, have let Moscow and others lie to them through their own leaders, and the price paid for that has been more than 73 years of sustained conflict, death, and dislocation.

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FTAC: A Note for the Self-Sabotaging Left

14 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology

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In strident tone, the proto-fascist “hoo hah” of America’s Right/Far Right precludes here any but the most gentle introduction to Russia’s Soviet / Post-Soviet efforts to drive extremism on the Left and Right. In relation to that – and more specifically the Middle East Conflict and the intellectual poisoning of “revolutionaries” whose efforts actually sustain the misery (!), I’ve posted similar to the following on Facebook and Twitter —

Elements on the Left supporting “Palestinian Liberation” have frightfully little knowledge of the Cold War background behind their own pernicious intellectual channeling, and they may not understand the extent to which they themselves are responsible for sustaining the middle east conflict. I’ve about run out of breath harping on “KGB, PLO” and other nifty look-ups. With personal insecurities tending to reject good — clear and accurate — information that doesn’t support the latest in “revolutionary” narratives (now old, well worn, and wearing out), it’s hard getting through with integrity and intelligence. Nonetheless, my short list for Palestinian apologists and Solidarity sorts —

Hamas, Iranian proxy
Ion Mihai Pacepa
KGB, PLO
Russian Active Measures
Zionology

There are in the world many who for insecure ego matched to an unhealthy narcissism will lie to themselves and their people for misplaced admiration.

Weak cases present lies; strong cases don’t need them.

With “broadband Internet” well distributed internationally and the World Wide Web fully open in the west, there should be less room for ingesting fabrications and other forms of lies and the political conceits built on them — and there should be no room for ignorance. For those leading today’s cultural and political revolutions, here are a few additional suggested look-ups —

Dishonesty
Disinformation
Disingenuous speech

Free speech, conspiracy
Free speech, defamation, libel, slander
Free speech, incitement

Integrity

Palestinian corruption
Palestinian political repression

No one has abused, deceived, exploited, or lied to ordinary Palestinians quite like the once KGB-guided (PLO and others) and now Tehran-supported (Hamas, among others) organizations most claiming the defense of the same. The political cant and propaganda invented to install a nearly permanent war — and block and goad for the expansion of liberal and comparatively high-integrity democracies — has long been a foundational component of a duped “Far Left” whose dogma appears popular but whose decision-making and financial spending turns almost inevitably into enrichment schemes primarily benefiting the closed circles of their leadership. As much transpired for the Soviet nomenklatura and, in general, the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU) back in that day — the same elites got first crack at the post-Soviet fire sale of Russian state assets, the same that produced the oligarchs — and the same has served ultimately to undermine the integrity or sincerity of similarly “Marxist” oriented political entrepreneurs.

Whatever their purposes, all do-good nonprofit organizations needs must make money, and some exploit sensational claims to do it. However, and in relation to the Middle East Conflict, why do that when authentic concern would devolve to integrity and the recognition of a full plate of fair basic concerns that neither Fatah nor Hamas nor any other “revolutionary” organization has done much to tackle?

From my perspective, while “Marxism” has been ever fashionable and hip — who doesn’t want a better world — its promoters have long been more about power, prestige, and wealth themselves than about environmental and human progress and stewardship. In related reference, I’ve cited two BackChannels posts, one on Jacob Zuma and his slip with kleptocracy in South Africa, the other on the East Jerusalem enclave of Shuafat that Palestinian leaders demanded to managed autonomously, and it too appears to have been a kleptocratic enterprise (some sanitation issues have seen improvements, however, since its publication). ]

One hope the Palestinian communities in Gaza and the West Bank may claim: hope for honest and practical appraisal, evaluation, and feedback across dimensions and based on modern democratic and rule-of-law expectations. Anything less may sustain their captivity in the brutality of the medieval past.

Reference

BackChannels. “FTAC: Mandela –> Zuma –> Perhaps the end of ‘Arisocommiecrats’.” September 11, 2017.

BackChannels. “Shuafat: On the Edge Between Good and Evil”. February 24, 2019.

Cullors, Patrice and Asha Bandele. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. New York: St. Martin’s Press, January 2018.

Eid, Bassem. “Bassem Eid: An Open Letter to My Palestinian Brethren.” Investigative Project On Terrorism, May 19, 2021.

Eid, Bassem. “Palestinian analyst: Gazans feel like hostages to Hamas.” Australian Jewish News, June 9, 2021.

NAACP. “Toolkit: Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” 2021.

General Assembly, United Nations. “United Nations Millennium Declaration 55/2.” PDF. September 18, 2000.

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