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Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal

Also in Media: “Eliot A. Cohen Responds to Donald Trump’s First Week” – The Atlantic – January 29, 2017

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Political Psychology

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21st Century Feudalism, Trump Presidency

We were right. And friends who urged us to tone it down, to make our peace with him, to stop saying as loudly as we could “this is abnormal,” to accommodate him, to show loyalty to the Republican Party, to think that he and his advisers could be tamed, were wrong. In an epic week beginning with a dark and divisive inaugural speech, extraordinary attacks on a free press, a visit to the CIA that dishonored a monument to anonymous heroes who paid the ultimate price, and now an attempt to ban selected groups of Muslims (including interpreters who served with our forces in Iraq and those with green cards, though not those from countries with Trump hotels, or from really indispensable states like Saudi Arabia), he has lived down to expectations.

Read the whole thing: Eliot A. Cohen Responds to Donald Trump’s First Week – The Atlantic – 1/29/2017.

Also in Media – “Inside Nick Kouvalis’s fake news strategy ” – Macleans.ca – January 11, 2017

29 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Epistemology, Journalism, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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Active Measures, disinformation, Far Right, North America

At 6:25 p.m. on Jan. 2, Nick Kouvalis sent out a tweet suggesting that the Canadian government was, among other things, directly funding known terrorist groups. Kouvalis, who is campaign manager of Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, has a history of posting provocative, absurd and often completely false information. He does so, he says, “to make the left go nuts.”

Source: Inside Nick Kouvalis’s fake news strategy – Macleans.ca

“Current Communist Goals – 1963 – Herlong’s Remarks

29 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

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45 Communist Goals, Herlong's remarks, political history, totalitarianism

BackChannels readers will find the piece in several forms around the web as it has caught the fancy of partisans of various stripe.

It might be fund to annotate each of the 45 remarks (anyone want to write the paycheck?), for each appears to resonate today with two egregious large movements in east-west politics: Putin’s politically absolute position as the leader of a now ulra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian state and, sigh, the American Far Right’s penchant for mirroring Moscow with a correspondingly stiff accusation.

On the reading of  Skousen’s book — still in print and ever popular! — BackChannels feels overstocked, underfunded, and out of shelf space.

The bookends of Horseshoe Theory: strident communism and socialism on the Left | rabid libertarian fascism on the Right: may God visit the pox on both their houses.

BackChannels has reset the layout to suit the medium.  Forgive any awkward typographica spacing for a while (the editor’s ageing).


Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.  At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen: [From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

  1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
  2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

  3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a
    demonstration of moral strength.

  4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless
    of whether or not items could be used for war.

  5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

  6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

  7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

  8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise
    in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

  9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed
    to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

  10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

  11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand
    that it be set up ‘as a one-world government with its own Independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

  12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

  13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

  14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

  15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

  16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

  17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current
    Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations.  Put the party line in textbooks.

  18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

  19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

  20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing,  policy making positions.

  21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

  22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
    An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

  23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness,
    repulsive, meaningless art.”

  24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

  25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity
    in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

  26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity, as “normal, natural, healthy.”

  27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit
    the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

  28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression n the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

  29. Discredit the America Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of
    step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

  30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

  31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American
    history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more
    emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

  32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture-education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

  33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist
    apparatus.

  34. Eliminate the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.

  35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

  36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

  37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

  38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all
    behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.

  39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of
    gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

  40. Discredit the family as an institution.  Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

  41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
    Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence
    of parents.

  42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of
    the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

  43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self government.

  44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

  45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World
    Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and Individuals alike.

Source: http://nwlibertyacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/communist_goals.pdf

Related on the Web

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Cleon_Skousen:

After losing his police job, Skousen founded a group called the All-American Society, which Time magazine described in 1961 as an “exemplar of the far-right ultras.”[17] Throughout the 1960s, Skousen was also admired by members and leaders of the John Birch Society, although members of the more mainstream conservative movement and the American Security Council[4] snubbed him out of fear that his controversial views would hurt the credibility of the conservative movement. Skousen used Birch Society magazines as source and reference material,[7] and was pictured on the cover of its magazine, American Interest. Although he was never officially a member of the organization, he was a member of its speakers’ bureau and lectured at John Birch Society events throughout the United States for many years. A 1962 FBI memo described Skousen as affiliating with an “extreme right-wing” group which was promoting “anticommunism for obvious financial purposes”.[4] Skousen authored a pamphlet titled The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society, characterizing criticism of the Society as incipient communism.[12]



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

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1561529/posts (about the same thing as here).  🙂

–33–

Barbaric Damascus – Mortality Report at End of 2016

28 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

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2016 mortality statistics, barbarism, Syria

During the period of October 1st, 2016 to December 14, 2016, the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies (DCHRS) documented 1753 civilian victims, who were killed in Aleppo by Russian and Syrian regime forces. Among these civilians, there were 243 children and 120 women at a ratio of 14% and 9% respectively. As of December, extrajudicial killing began to take place and the number of victims that DCHRS was able to document is 82 victims.

Source: Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies.  “Statistical Analysis of Aleppo’s Victims During Oct 1, 2016 to Dec 14, 2016”.

Warning: while the page referenced features charts and graphs detailing casualties and the causes of mortality, it also provides earlier and horrific images of the victims of war, many of them children.

syria-war-dchrs-170128-0751-dim

The screen capture provides one example of charting available, which is larger on the page referenced.

Related

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/316485-trump-needs-a-new-approach-to-syria-bottom-up-defense – 1/27/2017.

–33–

Also in Media: “Revival of the Red Infiltration” | Visegrad Insight | January 24, 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media

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21st Century Feudalism, Active Measures, east-west relations, Moscow, political manipulation, Russia

According to polls conducted by GLOBSEC Trends, about half the populations of these three countries see their country’s position in Europe as something in between the East and the West, with almost half of their citizens preferring “neutrality” to any polar adherence. In effort to divide the societies further, these already doubtful segments of the population are being carefully targeted by hostile disinformation operations. If we take into account the actions of political leaders, which Lenin would call “useful idiots”, the impact is already measurable.

Read more! “Revival of the Red Infiltration” | Visegrad Insight

Module: ABC’s Trump Interview on January 25, 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

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21st Century Feudalism, critical reading skill, democracy, free press, information integrity, interview, populism, President Trump

President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 1)
President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 2)
TRANSCRIPT: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews President Trump

Experience the interview first — no filters, no judgments, no intermediaries — just you, the media consumer, and President Trump and ABC anchor David Muir.


Not thirty seconds into the interview, Trump answers a question about being changed by becoming President: “I can be the most Presidential person ever other than possibly the great Abe Lincoln . . . but I may not be able to do the job nearly as well if I do that.”

Huh?

If the President does not intend to be the “most presidential” President ever — or at least up there with the finest and most fondly remembered of American Presidents — then what is that aspiration?

Ten days ago, chess champion and Kremlin critic Gary Kasparov posted on Facebook this excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 1855 “Letter to Joshua Speed”:

lincoln-quotation

There’s Russia again – and the mention of its frank despotism.

About eight years ago, Andie Brownlow writing for the conservative American Thinker (August 30, 2009) had this to note about Soviet-style ideological subversion:

The point of this “Ideological Subversion” was to weaken an enemy country, strip its culture and corrupt their values to a point of complete vulnerability. Mr. Schuman describes it as:

[An] overt…slow process…[to] change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.

The first step, Demoralization, has already been completed in America and continues to perpetuate itself. The Obama Administration policies are accelerating the second step of Destabilization and rapidly approaching the third phase of Crisis.

As you have read, Brownlow, opining in 2009, had taken aim at the Obama Administration!

The Trump Presidency has arrived, and the laudable and scrupulous Big Press, the majors, are hot with articles on the President’s ego and the Administration’s credibility and integrity in its discussion and presentation of information.

From historical experience, the business — it is a business, and one particularly loathsome and pernicious! — of messing up someone else’s “information space” may be characterized as part of Soviet KGB “Active Measures”.

Has that been happening here in the United States?

Has Moscow had a hand in it?

Have we through our own now immense and unfettered online press — and may it be always so! — been doing it to ourselves in the cause of being strident enough for obtaining notice?

Perhaps the answers don’t matter so much.

At base, the only issue having to do with the national experience of media involves the popular and professional assessment of the credibility and integrity of information encountered.

BackChannels could promote an opinion, and perhaps has, but would rather the BackChannels reader take patient time to look into the matter as well and form some new opinion about both the Marxist-Leninist mission of the former Soviet Union and, now one month more than 25 years later, the ultra-nationalist imperialist mission of today’s Russian State — and then ask where Trump has positioned, or may position, the United States of America in light of that well-remarked — and by no less than the great President Lincoln himself — habitual Russian despotism.

–33–

FTAC – Trump and America’s Broadest Divisions

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics

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American politics, authoritarianism, democracy, New Nationalism, red-green alliance, Trump Presidency

I’m not going to jump all over Trump’s case. We in the United States have become a deeply polarized people given to extremes.

The general layout:

“Brown” – New Nationalism – Conservative – Far Right

“Red-Green” – Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists – Far Left

Neither “Brown” nor “Red-Green” should be defining classically liberal American politics, but those color codes have made deep inroads into both of our political parties, and that’s leaving the middle and moderate ranks anemic, or at least looking so.

I’m remaining stuck in the middle!

🙂

As always, and also, I want to follow what actually happens over a little bit of time — the famous “First 100 Days” may do — before becoming strident about predictions — and I hope never to confuse “political conservatism” with “conservatism in research”, i.e., careful data collection and thoughtful analysis over time.


BackChannels does not want to practice writing the same article over and over; however, with repetition of some ideas comes increased compression for the same.

If nothing else, this post — and this blog — advocate for empiricism and high integrity in journalism matched by some breadth in knowledge and insight.

Critical reading and reasoning abilities also count in the politics we American have either dealt ourselves or allowed to overtake us.  If en masse we’re subconsciously intent on becoming, keeping, or aligning ourselves in brutal, vicious, and vulgar mobs, then power may become the permanent province of an immensely wealthy business and political elite, i.e., our democracy will simply melt away into just another authoritarian, capricious, feudal, and spirit crushing nightmare.

–33–

Also in Media: “New Book Fails to Convict ISIS of Islamic Heresy” – Philos Project – January 23, 2017

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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Islamic terrorism, political psychology

Speckhard herself provided insight into the Islamic doctrine that motivates individual jihadists to sacrifice their lives on behalf of groups like the Islamic State. “The vision of hell in Islam is fiery and horrific, and there is no way – aside from relying on Allah’s compassion – to guarantee on the final day of judgment that one’s good deeds will outweigh the bad – except by dying as a ‘martyr,’” she said. Thus, “desiring to martyr oneself is a story I’ve heard many times from Islamic extremists who fear the everlasting repercussions of their sins.“

For Muslims growing up in Western culture, a strong tension exists between conservative Islam and Western freedoms,” Speckhard added, pointing out that this mindset makes jihad martyrdom particularly attractive.

Read more: New Book Fails to Convict ISIS of Islamic Heresy – Philos Project – 1/23/2017.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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