Where it may have begun —
How it may have been sustained —
Where it may have ended this day —
Related on BackChannels
Related Online
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Afghanistan’s Violence-Stalling Peace-Encouraging Doha Agreement
29 Saturday Feb 2020
Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal
Threat Assessments Unthinkable, But They Are Here — and Sometimes Actionable
27 Thursday Feb 2020
Two articles have caught my attention from the damnably nasty regions of Biological and Chemical Warfare:
COVID-19?
It may be a taste of poison on the sophisticated tips of the arrows developing in radically different kinds of quivers.
One bullet point from the list included in the Defense One article:
In 2015, then-president of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences He Fuchu (贺福初) argued that biotechnology will become the new “strategic commanding heights” of national defense, from biomaterials to “brain control” weapons. Maj. Gen. He has since become the vice president of the Academy of Military Sciences, which leads China’s military science enterprise.
What New Demons are these of formerly great Dynasties?
Totalitarian genius cannot be but evil.
Drone Bomb Swarms?
From The Jerusalem Post piece:
The greatest threat confronting the US and Israel may be swarms of drones armed with chemical weapons released by Iran or ISIS, an ex-CIA official has told The Jerusalem Post.The warning takes on greater meaning following a call on January 28 by ISIS’s new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, to direct greater attention to attacking Israel and Jews, including using chemical weapons.
In relation to the latter piece, attack have been already thwarted but with the details withheld by the CIA.
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FTAC: Jews Beware Conservative Agitprop
27 Thursday Feb 2020
The Facebook post directed to a publication that screamed, “Report: Chief Dem Staffer Says Office Doesn’t Care About Anti-Semitism.”
So there!
The poster had claimed that not one of the Democratic Party candidates for President had condemned anti-Semitism within the party.
That might be so — and here the modern propaganda challenge weighs in: how much TIME has one to check the assertion?
And how cogent is the issue, really?
And can anything be done about it?
Always check the dateline, sez I!
January 19, 2018 – and fairly balanced by journalist Aaron Bandler, who at least sought to verify the alleged quote by an “unidentified staffer” (to Sen Patty Murray, D-WA) that began this way: “We don’t care about anti-Semitism in this office. We care about transgenders, we care about blacks. We care about Hispanics, we care about lesbians . . . .” Bandler checked, and Murray’s office disputed the accusation, suggesting, at the least, that a responsible Democratic senator would not endorse such a claims if it had been made!
Before coffee, right?
“Not one Democratic Party candidate condemns anti-Semitism within the Party!”
And there’s the proof of an article right there — expect it dates back more than year, so it had to be dredge from that past, and then it doesn’t really pan out, but, hey, the damage, presumably, would have been done.
Who else (but yours truly) would take a second look?
Instead, heads will nod!
This answered the “What is to be done” part of the puzzle earlier this morning.
Editor here — and Indie Influencer, perhaps — chose to tweet Seema Nanda, CEO of the Democratic Party with this:
Another “Seema Nanda” is a mathematician, and I tweeted in a hurry.
😦
A mistake was made, and I will apologize here for my confusion — and what might have been a stunning opener but may be still no less true for being a little less custom than supposed. So let it fly — the American Democratic Party will have to grapple with devious Republican agitprop — near disinformation and innuendo — as the opining season heats up many fold for the November contest.
Related on BackChannels
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FTAC: Middle East Conflict (MEC): The Peace at Hand
26 Wednesday Feb 2020
Tags
Islamic extremism, MEC, middle east conflict, Middle East Peace, New Palestinians, political extremism
Think Peace.
It’s already at hand.
The energies and numbers of Israelis and Palestinians engaged in cross-cultural activities (like this one with Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi), in trade, even in commiseration, have been stable and strong for years.
Do the extremists the west calls “terrorists” authentically represent Islam?
Do yesterday’s rockets from Gaza represent today’s Palestinians?
The PLO/PA and Hamas have ways of making the news look bad.
Other Palestinians, however, have ways of getting things done despite the efforts of the Phantoms of the Soviet to repeat their declarations — year after year for 72 years — while handily lifting some money from Palestinian pockets and skimming more from UNCHR revenues intended for Palestinian development. While the war that exists in the minds of Palestinian “Leaders” — and ticks off the IDF most of all — goes on and on and on and on, Palestinians have long been working.
Here are a few references that BackChannels regards as positive indicators for the region. The URL titles provide the story headers:
https://institute.global/insight/middle-east/israeli-palestinian-trade-depth-analysis – 10/17/2018.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/quietly-israeli-high-tech-companies-contract-gaza-engineers/ – 9/20/2017.
https://www.jns.org/report-palestinian-economy-flourishing-despite-pa-financial-crisis/ – 8/25/2019.
https://www.thenation.com/article/palestinians-israelis-mourning-our-dead-together/ – 5/22/2019.
Rawabi, Palestinian Territories
https://www.businessinsider.com/west-bank-palestine-rawabi-city-israel-news-2018-10 – 10/20/2018.
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Active Measures
13 Thursday Feb 2020
Tags
Active Measures, authoritarianism, democracy, dictatorship, disinformation, freedom, integrity, medieval v modern, perceptual control, totalitarianism
As BackChannels Would Define It
Active Measures — The collection of Russian Agitation, Disinformation, and Propaganda Methods made evident through covert or subtle Influence Campaigns applied to wrecking the political coherence and cohesion of EU/NATO for the purpose of reestablishing Political Absolutism in the same and then using the most thuggish of feudal and medieval methods to leverage loyalty and wealth from them for contribution to the Greater Imperial Glory of Moscow, the Russian “mafia state” it has come to represent, and the immense enrichment of its oligarchy.
Indeed the west, the melange of classically liberal democratic open societies built and structured around fair dealing, freedom, and integrity and related humanist and liberal ethics, principles, and values has been unprepared for covert agent provocateur, e.g., covert agitators Far Right and Far Left, disingenuous publications, false front organizations, trolls, etc.
I’ve chosen to demur from producing “long copy” and a lengthy reference section for this post. Awareness of “Active Measures” — the kernel of Russia’s covert campaign to degrade and ruin the democracies of the west — should suffice for both the interested and the unwittingly vulnerable.
Related Online
According to rough Central Intelligence Agency estimates presented in US congressional hearings in 1980 and 1982, Moscow spends some $4 billion a year on overt and covert propaganda, with some $3 billion of this going to Pravda, Tass, and other overt activities and the residual $1 billion presumably going into covert disinformation. Georgetown University Prof. Roy Godson, coauthor with Richard H. Shultz of the book “Dezinformatsia” says the Soviets employ 15,000 in “active measures.”
“Active measures” — the term came into use in the Soviet Union in the 1950s — include international front organizations, agent-of-influence operations, and forgeries. Front organizations straddle overt and covert measures, Godson and Shultz explain. The International Department of the Soviet Communist Party “coordinates the activities of these organizations,” but “the fronts actively attempt to maintain an image of independence.”
The flagship of these fronts is the World Peace Council.
Addendum — From the Awesome Conversation
Through the Cold War Era and now with Putin leading the Russian Federation, the purpose of Soviet / post-Soviet “Active Measures” has been to fragment EU/NATO for the purpose of Russian expansion and its feudal practices. A video like this one — the same as above on this page — will help a little bit with understanding the greater east-west politics and the tension between the worlds of “Absolute Power” and the open democracies of the west.
Active Measures” represents an international (RF v EU/NATO) dispute over the future, not only an American one.
If we are at one the other’s throat, Moscow will have succeeded in exploiting our natural political arguments and issues by heightening them and undermining our national political cohesion and coherence, thereby weakening our state and degrading our democracy.
Regarding “Far Out Left” and equally distant Far Right tendencies, the related foreign and disingenuous domestic manipulations of political perception targets us all.
Addendum – Miscellaneous Quotations and Reference Having to Do with Disinformation
“It was unthinkable before Trump for anyone to run this kind of disinformation campaign from the White House against the American public,” according to Jonathan Rauch, the author of the forthcoming book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. As a result, we live in an era defined by epistemic chaos and noetic disarray, one in which a large portion of the population embraces falsehoods and fairy tales and thinks of them as “alternative facts.”
The deceit being dispensed by Trump & Company is hardly universal, but it is extensive, which is why defeating Trump was essential if we’re going to move away from perspectivism as the interpretive theory in our politics. But objective reality as a concept—truth as something that exists independent of affect, independent of subjective narratives, independent of whatever a partisan information silo claims is true—has been badly damaged. Among the most urgent tasks facing America, then, is to strengthen our regard for what Plato called episteme over doxa, true knowledge over opinion, reality over fantasy.
Wehner, Peter. “Trump’s Most Malicious Legacy.” The Atlantic, December 7, 2020.
A Diffuse, Unregulated Network of Propagandists
In the Cold War, the Communist Party defined the USSR’s information strategy from the top down. Today, Russian information warfare is waged by a variety of groups that have different interests, domestically and internationally, and different connections to the outside world. Modern Russia is a loose, networked state with multiple actors allowed to conduct domestic and foreign policy, usually to benefit corrupt political groups around (and including) Putin. These different groups influence state strategy both directly and indirectly;some have their own areas of interest, such the oil company Rosneft’s interests in Africa and Latin America.
As a result, Russian information warfare is not consistent and strategic; its fundamental quality is tactical opportunism, which of course leads to inconsistency. This inconsistency makes attribution difficult or even misleading. We still cannot be certain, for example, which particular vested interest was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee in the US. It is possible that business groups under sanction in the US organized the hack because they believed that a President Trump would lift the sanctions; it is equally possible that the FSB organized the hack with the idea of undermining Hillary Clinton, for geopolitical reasons. Either way, it is likely that the actual hackers were criminals, hired for this particular purpose, and not state employees.The Kremlin, in other words,is just one of myriad actors pumping out disinformation, alongside domestic media as well as the teenagers in Macedonia who produced anti-Clinton fake news for personal profit.
Excerpt (on page 68) from Cull, Nicholas J., Vasily Gatov, Peter Pomerantsev, Anne Applebaum, and Alistair Shawcross. “Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against It.” Final Report (PDF). LSE Consulting, London, October 2017.
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FTAC: The American President Who Could Care Less About America’s Foundational Ideals
13 Thursday Feb 2020
Who in support of our Democracy can afford to be neutral about a President who appears to be operating on an authoritarian basis using rules of his own? It has been one thing to “let the horse run”, see how he works, and watch what he does. It’s another to turn our back on a hard-won — fought for, died for, paid for — nation devoted to fair play and integrity right beside the principles and spirit that produced our foundational documents.
Admiral McRaven knew his business and his country and what he represented every day as a four-star admiral. That’s not an Obama thing or, particularly a Democratic or Republican thing. It’s an American thing unless the Nation has forgotten why it exists as a unique and now long-lived democracy.
This President shrugs off resignations by the most competitive and experienced professionals in their fields: diplomats, investigators, intelligence executives, military executives, prosecutors. He believes everything we do happens by way of political chicanery and force — or “clevers” — and not much has to do with anything worth believing in, much less dying for.
These pieces by Harbough and McRaven tell of a different America, one more admirable, more noble, more deserving of extraordinary leadership and sacrifice.
BackChannels. “United States of America — Basic Training”. February 2, 2017.
Harbaugh, Ken. “There Should Be a Veteran Running for President.” Time, March 18, 2015.
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ALW & FTAC: On Pharaohnic Power, the Jews, Israel, God, and Supersessionary Conflict
06 Thursday Feb 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom
Inspiration lay in opportunity for a wrap up.
When I have figured out how to address unutterable greed and jealousy, I’ll be certain to produce the Nobel-winning results of that cogitation here.
A Little Wisdom From the Awesome Conversation
There are differences between empirically explored histories (and their debates) and what people believe in relation to their own cultural, religious, or spiritual histories. With that much noted, I have long believed that the Jews chose to stand against Pharaoh, a tyrant, and in this day a figure representing the “Malignant Narcissist”, a term of art for the general affliction in psychology associated with those who represent Absolute Power Systems. The Jews — or God through the Jews — were to separate the power of God (“Master of the Universe”) from Pharaoh, a source of torment to the Jews and others — note: the Exodus involved not only the Jews but a “mixed multitude”, i.e., all who would join the Jews in flight from Pharaoh.
Then comes the “Promised Land”.
For the Jews, Israel is the authentic Land of the Hebrews. There is in history no other Jerusalem nor Israel. Christian and Muslim recognition of Israel and “The Holy Land” has been legend and as widespread — and accepted (by Muhammad, no less) — as the supersessionary competition by the same for proof of the direct imprimatur of God.
The position — that of demanding to be shown God’s exclusive favor — has been always absurd, God (or the idea of God) being always the greater entity in the relationship.
For those willing to give a little in the interest of greater love and greater peace, Earth at this moment supports the following human inventory: fewer than 7,000 living languages; about 4,300 religions. I should look into the number of ungodly dictatorships (and mafia states) in relation to the number of modern democracies struggling to sustain common public political consensus while delivering rule-of-law and the greater development, justice, peace, and prosperity that is known to follow from both.
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After Holocaust Remembrance Day, Remember – And NEVER Forget
28 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism
BackChannels 