This past election season suggests that my fellow Americans have drifted — by way of whatever stimulus — into the “New Nationalism” represented by Trump and the toxic Far Left “Red-Green” impulses that have gotten deep into the Democratic Party.
When information is unreliable or the public can no longer make sense of it, political power may be shifted to a more informed elite of uncertain character. The uncertainty seemed about equal during the election season, but we all know that Paul Manafort proved an embarrassment and liability to the Trump campaign, and the relationship with Russia remains a presence as Moscow blithely participates in the barbarism on display in Syria.
I think Americans and others should be familiar with web searches along the lines of —
Trump, Manafort Trump, Sergei Millian Manafort, Kalimnik
I think Islamic Terrorism has been used to stimulate both patriotic nationalism in Moscow’s targets and to promote a loopy combination of interests representing “old comrades” and neo-Islamist Muslims.
What has happened to those closer to the “center of the aisle?
I think we’re here but positioned only to respond the amplification of politics as described — “Brown” vs “Red-Green” — across the two-party divide.
“I am deeply troubled by Mr. Tillerson’s vocal opposition to U.S. sanctions on Russia following its illegal invasion, occupation and annexation of Crimea, Ukraine, and his close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. Exxon Mobil also has a troubling history with climate science and the environment. Mr. Tillerson has demonstrated he knows the corporate world and can put his shareholders’ interests first, but can he be a respected Secretary of State that puts the national security interests of the American people first? It remains to be seen.“
I also want to know more about Mr. Tillerson’s worldview, because I found many of President-elect Trump’s foreign policy statements as a candidate, and now as the next President of the United States, to be disturbing at best and frightening at worst. And I know many of our allies did and do as well.“
As the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I look forward to meeting with Mr. Tillerson as I lead my Democratic colleagues through a thorough, thoughtful confirmation process where we will scrutinize his record, experience and qualifications for the job.
— The whole legitimation of Kadyrov is the ‘victory’ in the Chechen war.
Do you remember how he appeared from nowhere in 1999? The terrorists blew up our houses (in the reality Russian secret services did that) and all of a sudden a heroic military officer appeared and stopped the terrorists, calmed down Caucasus, proclaimed the war. Putin cannot declare Kadyrov as an enemy and liquidate him as some military bosses would like – that would mean that Putin deceived us all of these 15 years and that all of his politics failed. Closing the ‘Kadyrov’ project is a solution required by the security forces. They use the murder of Nemtsov (organized by themselves) as a pretext for the closure of the ‘Kadyrov’ project. It is obvious that the direct executors of the murder were captured- and they are Kadyrov’s people. Investigators want to question people close to Kadyrov, and Kadyrov himself. And it is a sharp political conflict, which unfolds now between military bosses and Putin. This conflict is a lot sharper then the conflict between Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko.
“Is there literally nothing that can shame you?” Power said. “Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child, that gets under your skin? That just creeps you out a little bit? Is there nothing you will not lie about or justify?”
The Constitution emphasizes equality for all beneath the law and forbids the establishment of a relationship between the state and any church, mosque, synagogue, or other symbol of faith. ALL are free here to practice their faith — in private and at private expense — in a civil and lawful manner.
The United States is a Christian-majority state, but it is not a Christian state by law or even exclusively so within the spirit of its laws. It’s true inheritance may be characterized as “Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian”. To the extent that Islam has borrowed from Judaism and recognized Christianity and in the better aspects of the Qur’an, say those emphasizing freedom of religion (“There is no compulsion”) and integrity (Muhammad’s emphasis speaking the truth), we’re good as a secular humanist society.
If one were to take the coldest view of the political science attending “Allahu Akbar Terrorism”, it would be to note that each attack has naturally promoted traditional patriotic nationalist and religious responses. “Damned Arabs, damned Muzzies” shouts a part of the public and off it goes to Brexit in one state and resurgent white bread Christianity in another.
The truth about that comfortable extremism — often our own! — may be anchored elsewhere.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told Al-Monitor, “The Meshaal-Lavrov meeting shows Russia’s interest in the Palestinian cause and comes as a continuation of the periodic meetings held by Hamas with regional and international parties. However, there were no discussions in the meeting regarding the possibility of Russia playing the role of a mediator to reactivate the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, although Lavrov and Meshaal have stressed its importance in general.”
This blog also may be searched for “Russia, anti-Semitism” for further enrichment — but as much may return this note to the wisdom of secular governance and its producing for all of its constituents equality under the law and zero, zilch, nada, never ever compulsion to either choose an “official religion” nor feel intimidated in the classroom or anywhere else as regards having by way of choice or legacy a different minority path.
I could wag the finger all day in the direction of Putin and his inner circle and the Phantoms of the Cold War (arisen from the Grave of Communism as Ultra-Nationalist Fascists), and I would still have to deal with the resistance posed by 15 years of the greater population dwelling on “Islamic Terrorism” with nary a look back at the Cold War, much less a look forward to Russia’s transformation into an ultra-national neo-imperial state.
BackChannels achieves some compression of ideas and observations, and it has broad reach — it’s accessed annually from more than 140 nations — but it barely “pings” in the Foreign Affairs, International Relations, Political Science] communities . . .
Although no one knows how Trump will embark on his newly informed foreign affairs journey, everyone knows that this may be Trump’s first “real job” in a long time, and it’s not, as we say here in the U.S., “at will”: the President will be stuck with the Oval Office and answering to a government far greater and more powerful than himself, not to mention the people it represents.
My glance at the headlines suggests you may have been disinformed.
It really underestimates how well the American professional political community — analysts, scholars, politicians — see Moscow as Putin has rebuilt it and sustained so much Soviet Era baggage and its inability to chart a middle course anywhere — but it may please those less engaged in politics.
This morning, I glanced at a Foreign Policy (Magazine) headline on how democracies fall apart. I should get to that article, but the official state remains quite robust. Trump may do the right great American things despite himself and, to lay in Churchill’s observation, without having to try all the wrong ones first.
This is a dangerous period for everyone as Putin with Khamenei and through Assad has chosen to demonstrate a depth in callousness, cruelty, dishonesty, and madness in Syria beyond anything witnessed anywhere else in the world in recent memory.
For five years or so I have seen repeated in untold visual analogs the image of a child’s hand gripping a mother’s forearm — no bodies — in relation to the indiscriminate bombing of noncombatants in Syria. Such murderers seem to be begging to be stopped — and maybe that would be a mercy — but the just poking along western response has been to watch the Russian economy wither while Assad burns Syria into an unsustainable nothing — except, perhaps, as a base for Russian military presence — and neither Moscow nor Tehran get anywhere with horrifying the world.
I’ll probably copy my response to an “FTAC” post on the blog. It has in it the prayer that the state prove stronger than its leading statesman, and I think the odds fair that it will do that if a President — any at any time — embarks on a dictator’s mission.
Imagine turning one economically challenged and environmentally troubled middle eastern state into a complete theater of politics and war.
Imagine producing every element in that state and managing the same for political gains in the world beyond its borders.
Then put a label on the production:
Assad vs The Terrorists & Assad OR The Terrorists
Why put on such a show?
To assert the power of absolute power and demonstrate the maniacal ability to visit suffering on innocents with impunity.
To produce a terrorism center that helps goad the west toward patriotic but autocratic and xenophobic nationalism in a way that divides states and encourages the abandonment of core values, especially cultural pluralism and religious tolerance.
To blackmail the west toward choosing to having in power a tyrant as opposed to an equally criminal and tyrannical movement.
To threaten the west — the European Union and NATO — with the monetary, security, and social costs associated with mass migration infused with criminal elements.
To produce a useful tool — “The Terrorists” / ISIL and other al-Qaeda type bands and organizations — with which to demonstrate military prowess in line with a fascist state script.
Herewith, a brief listing of citations building up to the image, quite correctly, of a murderous totalitarian mentality in action in Syria.
The regime continued losing ground over the summer of 2015, provoking a direct Russian intervention in September 2015 that was explained, quite falsely, as an effort to destroy IS. Moscow trained its firepower on the mainstream armed opposition, systematically targeting the parts of the opposition supported by the West, which actually opened space for IS to expand. In July 2016, Russia even attacked US-supported forces that only fight IS.
Rather than counterterrorism, the actual Russian intention was to secure Assad militarily and then extinguish all workable alternatives, thereby rehabilitating Assad politically. To disguise this fact and rewrite the narrative of the intervention as one of anti-extremism, Russia’s ruler, Vladimir Putin, sought to end the major offensive phase of the intervention in March 2016 by pushing IS out of Palmyra.
Defiance! The word is not a bad one when it comes to religion. Because it is on the heels of many, an act of defiance that religion has become healthier, stronger, more tolerant, and certainly more enjoyable. Martin Luther hammered his edict into a wooden door, and the empire of the Catholic Church was shaken. Colonists fled Europe. Their defiance against the belief that the state had any right to meddle in the private worship of the citizen proved a powerful motivation to escape. Resistance against government constraint of private acts of worship caused them to load onto their wooden ships and set sail. The Mayflower Compact sprang to life at Plymouth Rock, and the giant-hearted turned their faces into the harsh wind. Some shivered and died from the cold, while other starved to death in Jamestown. But the strength in their bones carried fires of conviction into the marrow of their future generations.
Defiance. America remains a powerful societal example today because of acts of religious defiance.
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