07 Monday Dec 2020
The world that has become Internet-enabled now experienced the most efficient and private of computing experiences imaginable. Looking things up — and relaying some part through autonomous publishing — has become easy, and so here I will offer just one link to the history of the day: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pearl-harbor-bombed.
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30 Monday Nov 2020
With two critical Iranian leaders assassinated — Qasem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — and an American President determined to blunt the tip of the spear aimed against the west, the prospect for “fireworks” appears that much closer. Ever big on packing the Big Picture into a small space, I’ve done that here with ramble and signal but not chaos. Old Communist and Islamist politics persist in the latest states of affairs although the old Communists have produced breathtakingly wealthy elites and the chief among Islamists has been long known as a thief enriched by the plundering of ordinary Iranians.
Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran represent an anti-western alliance committed to political absolutism by all and any means necessary. At least two of the three, Moscow and Tehran, represent also kleptocracy (see Reuters’ “Assets of the Ayatollah”) or mafia-type power (reference Ben Judah or Luke Harding), and together they keep the west bothered. Tehran, in malign narcissistic fashion, has covered its own crimes with deflections and dogma–it’s not strength that propels its fantasies of nuclear annihilation but regime weakness expressed through medieval fantasy. The clinical, dispassionate, and modern and prudent west may be building down Tehran’s capability, confidence, and coordination for aggression.
The old “Red-Green Alliance” is in the mix too with some persistent communist cant woven into the Houthi challenge in Yemen. The World Peace Council persists — as do graduates of Patrice Lamumba University — and the pack may view Tehran as an alley in thuggish political fashion. More important than political dogma: an heroic image to be created by marching forward into glorious past while holding each fantasy in place by main force.
Stated by Trita Parsi in 2017 (yes, just a quick look-see on my part): “Another emerging threat comes from Iran’s domestic politics. Presidential elections next month may put Iran’s foreign policy back into the hands of the country’s hard-liners, who, much like Mr. Trump, define their country in opposition to the world” (“The Coming Crisis With Iran”, The New York Times, April 20, 2017).
“Malignant Narcissism” begins with “Narcissistic Mortification”, i.e., the humiliation of the “Great Leader” (somewhere in childhood). Why everyone else has to be made a part of the compensation (measured by the Great One’s estimation of his own “Narcissistic Supply”), I’ve no idea but that the worst of the worst needs must have both an adoring audience and a horrified one.
Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran have bent themselves on feudal and medieval lusts for the conquest or control of their targets by any means necessary and all available, and then some, and each has demonstrated a remarkable political anomie in the handling of those affected by their strategies. Beijing has been making a name for itself as a culturally and politically predatory lender; Moscow: live fire “demonstrations” all over Syria to goose its defense industry sales; and Iran — just have a look at how it has treated the places in which it has chosen to facilitate aggression, especially in Yemen and Syria.
What to call the present Sino-Russo-Iranian cooperation against the west?
Tripartite Imperialism.
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28 Saturday Nov 2020
This assassination campaign began in the aftermath of 9/11 when Pakistan allowed Taliban fighters and other allied fighters who were forced to flee Afghanistan to resettle in parts of former FATA. Over the years, these groups systematically eliminated tribal leaders and politicians who raised their voices against them. To this day, the Pakistani state has not solved any of these murders, perhaps because it has been tacitly using these unlawful groups to foment instability in Afghanistan and consolidate its influence over the region.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/6/12/pashtuns-struggle-for-rights-cannot-be-silenced-through-violence/
6/12/2020
Inspiration for this post: a conversation anchored in South Waziristan involving political chaos and violence believed supported by Pakistan’s military accused of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan and paying thugs to upset tribal order in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Now it has so happened that Pakistan’s Defense suffered two casualties at a remote outpost last week, which may have given license to the state to increase the force of its containment of its complement of the indigenous Pashtun whose population spans the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The restiveness has been complicated lately by the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (see also https://www.brookings.edu/research/at-all-costs-how-pakistan-and-china-control-the-narrative-on-the-china-pakistan-economic-corridor/ – June 2020).
What follows are thoughts from the lengthiest of observations having to do with the Pashtun’s natural position between state forces and processes having to do with international development and war much, much larger than themselves.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/11/27/a-short-note-on-chinas-contemporary-political-sins/ – 11/27/2020
When our President Nixon (a long time ago) initiated a new relationship with China, it was with hopes to offset Soviet Russian power and bring China closer to the normative behaviors of the modern world expressive of global compassion supported by international trade. On the topside, we do things for one another. Rather on the surface, well, we do things for money — and that makes “big picture” sense of Asian labor and western raw goods and Asian finished goods sold (for good profit — good markup — in western markets).
Mercantilism has been much the way of the world.
In the modern open democratic and liberal west, the abuses and excesses of business have been tempered through the actions of elected administrations, legislatures, and courts in the interests of electorates and justice. In the west, capitalists and wealthy have not gotten free rides from popularly elected governments even if seeding political careers and wins with their own money. There are just too many with too many differing motives for playing that game broadly.
In Asia, perhaps, money — and with China, now overwhelming wealth — does its work between elites and military behind closed door (“behind the curtains” goes the phrase fit to medieval politics) — and guess who’s in the way of the greater enrichment and glory of the disinterested or remote powerful?
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It doesn’t help the Pashtun — and whoever and for whatever reason — to attack PakDef military posts (IF that is what has actually happened recently), for that gives the military excuse to bother or maraud the Pashtun community.
With regard to some Larger Forces — here, Chinese and Pakistani trade interests representing government, military, and private entities — “anomie” (worth the looking up) may be a real issue.
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Don’t look to Russia for help — that state has minted defense sales using Syrians as targets for demonstration of its wares. In the AfPak region, its arms, however acquired, have helped sustain what looks to me an unfathomable misery borne of endless low-intensity conflict that has no end without financial, political, and religious insight plus political will and near immediate reconciliation.
China Pakistan Economic Corridor
The draconian nature of the FCR lies in the concept of “collective punishment”, where a whole tribe can be punished for the crime of one member of the tribe. It is telling that even after British India got its independence in 1947, the people of ex FATA were still facing the same colonial legal injustice till the year 2018. And while things definitely have changed on paper, there still is a long way to go before there is a change in the situation on the ground.These draconian punishments have always served a purpose, whether it was British India of the 20thcentury or the Pakistan of the 21stcentury. These laws are meant to subdue a population into giving up their rights, so that they can be sacrificed on the altar of “greater good”. Goes without saying that this greater good, has never been good for us, the people of ex FATA.
Dawar, Mohsin. PDF. Hudson Institute Roundtable Presentation, Washington, D.C., October 19, 2018.
Launched in 2015, CPEC is a logical partnership for China and Pakistan—two close allies keen to cooperate on much-needed infrastructure projects in Pakistan, while contributing to China’s strategic goal of facilitating access to far-flung markets and expanding its global footprint.
However, when Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party took control in 2018, the Belt and Road Initiative was coming under increasingly sharp global criticism for a lack of transparency, for burdening host countries with high debts and for questionable investment practices that included excessive use of imported Chinese labor.
Kugelman, Michael. “Can Pakistan Reboot Its ‘Belt and Road’ Partnership with China?” World Politics Review, September 25, 2020.
Chinese Banking and Development Worldwide : flexes China’s financial muscle while leveraging infrastructure building expertise into a gateway for Chinese labor — which accompanies its projects — and through that mechanism Chinese cultural influence agents. As much would update the Cold War Era Soviet practice of sending thousands of Communist agents into the Middle East as embedded in the labor contingents attached to development contracts in targeted states.
PakDef | ISI –> Taliban encouragement : goad to Kabul : encouragement of “Islamism” within : further marginalizing of the Pashtun as a coherent and cohesive political force.
The above two paragraphs represent my thinking in cryptic fashion. If the world were practical and less inclined to fear and threat — as well as deeply dependent on international arms sales that support manufacturing bases and untold wealth in related Research & Development competitions — the promotion of dogma into violence — or “extremist dogma” — would be less attractive. As it is, “The Terrorists” (wherever “who” has become both ambiguous and ubiquitous) have turned out handy for some elites in the world’s more corrupt and cynical circles of military and political power.
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21 Saturday Nov 2020
Tags
California Social Decay, Community Planning, Economic and Geospatial Distribution and Planning, qualities of living, Tiny Home Movement, Tiny Home Villages
You are wrong, Turning Point USA.
Qualities of Living (QOL) anywhere involve complex economic, political, psychological, and social arrangements, the same that have states adjusting infrastructure and tax-related variables to attract business (see Foxconn, Wisconsin for an egregious example of bending over frontward) and put populations and jobs together with the help of appropriate transportation systems, none of which are ever without local, state, and Federal government support in one form or another.
It’s good that California is losing population while the host of America’s “activists” and economic developers wrestle with basic floor-level habitability and standards issues.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/04/an-american-report-card/
Of course, California’s compassion, generosity, and wealth have done their job in attracting both labor and predatory elements, but with regard to the latter and the impoverishment and ravaging of the seemingly marginal, the state that also glamorizes its demimonde (see, for example, the film _Barfly_ or, really, just about any modern product playing up the mix of crime and wealth) has drawn exactly what is has created and invited.
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I saw Patrick Moynihan years ago at a subcommittee hearing in D.C. on growth, and he noted that the difference between Columbia, Maryland and Calcutta, India was . . . government and planning. He was right. I would add culture and the vision in total of our own humanity.
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Sweep California’s social issues off the rug or under it has seemed to me the persistent conservative stance. Perhaps (as complement to other “Turning Point” businesses picking up the broken pieces), engagement with corruption and crime, distribution of population, site-locating of new financial hubs elsewhere (!), and development of small homes communities for those looking for their next California in the interior, would be the better way to go.
For America’s 328-million souls, the “report card” is not that awful but what comes of a kind of geospatial political affliction in population affects the entire nation. Those you seem to need to label as enemies are your fellow Americans, and many among them appear to be engaging issues you just don’t want to see.
The meme’s featured fellow is actually . . . rather clean cut — great teeth, clean clothes, finely photographed!
My confession: life’s a lot cozier and secure viewing the world from my desktop as opposed (for this moment at 65+ at which I need to work on my own “fitness level” before further adventure’s forth) to playing a male Dorothea Lange — and what she saw was the economic migration out to California. However, two examples among the more brave with friends and partners: Mark Horvath documenting the homeless via his work published on Invisible People TV; veteran war photographer James Nachtwey via a Time “Special Report: The Opioid Diaries” (2018). In the world far from the armed and gated bastions of wealthy Californian conservatives — at least a few, I’m sure — “Turning Point” has a different meaning. However, there’s much more than the narcotics trade at work within California producing conditions for social ills and outbound migration. Issues: affordability, crime, desperation, greed, and — out of practical necessity as well as individual personality factors — plain old cold-shouldered inhumanity.
What is to be done?
🙂
For improved Qualities of Living (QOLs) for any Area-Squared, it might help if governments try to balance population with variables associated with basic physical and psychological security. For the troubled floors of myriad urban and rural economies, the only process answer for that is to know who has come from where with what purposes at heart — know thy community — and start to encourage the development of distributed alternative resources for living reasonably, lawfully, and with hope.
I would add here the necessity of serious criminal “filtration” associated with the end-to-end channels of the Transnational Crime Industries. Suffice it to say there are currents and pools of “dark money” all over the world, and all of them scrape from off the streets of the world. With regard to that theme, BackChannels would rather write fiction.
The data provided by LAHSA showed that 31% of those leaving the shelters went back to the streets and 35% to unknown destinations. An additional 13% found other temporary housing, either with friends or family or in a program; 4% checked into a mental hospital, detox program or nursing facility; 2% went to jail; and seven — less than half a percent — died.
Fewer than half the placements in permanent housing included supportive services, such as case management and housing assistance. Most were in subsidized rentals or with family or friends.
Oreskes, Benjamin and Doug Smith. “Garcetti’s signature homeless program shelters thousands, but most return to the streets.” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2020.
Who lives how and why on the streets of the nation may come down to canvasing and filtration.
Who are “The Homeless”, really?
Activist Mark Horvath refers to the homeless as “Invisible People”.
Well, they’re not “invisible” anymore, and they’re providing impetus for innovations in basic minimum housing design, shelter placements and programs, and perhaps thinking about “client” autonomy, character, and drift.
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20 Friday Nov 2020
Is America sure it did the right thing? And why has he any support left? Are his followers dumb? Are the trolls on Facebook that good? Have Americans really wanted a “mafia state” of their own?
Trump chose Paul Manafort for his first campaign manager.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-trump-bankrupted-the-taj-mahal-2017-5
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/mike-kelly/2020/01/24/donald-trump-still-owes-money-to-contractors-who-built-taj-mahal-atlantic-city/4547037002/
Trump and his organization “lies up” his projects, screwing his subcontractors out of untold millions. The Taj was just one project “inspiring” countless lawsuits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Sater
There’s a lot more, especially as regards the Russian story.
Russia is a nationalist dictatorship under Putin.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2020/09/15/trumps-sale-palm-beach-mansion-gains-scrutiny-again/5798386002/
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Did-Putin-buy-Donald-Trump-13463782.php
What more do you want?
https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/
The Internet Research Agency trolled for Trump.
The truth about Russian-borne disinformation: it’s designed to break us apart, Far Left and Far Right. Americans who lean Left have become (with disinfo) suddenly Communist and those leaning right get salted as something like white Christian nationalist extremists . . . .
The country has had four long years with this guy, and it voted him out.
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19 Thursday Nov 2020
Tags
agitprop, American character, American Integrity, disinformation, National Character, political agitation, propaganda
Here’s the culprit —
— and you know how it’s done: someone pastes up the art, slips it into the Internet Wild absent of context and any thematic evaluation, and out it goes to intellectually poison the gulls.
Here’s a note From the Awesome Conversation with reference to “Biden on the 1994 Crime Bill” on the FactCheck website.
Agitation/Propaganda (agitprop) is never clear, accurate, or complete. It is always twisted, lacking in context, in detail, and integrity.
Excerpted from the above URL.
“Nearly 40 African American religious leaders released a statement supporting the bill, saying: “While we do not agree with every provision in the crime bill, we do believe and emphatically support the bill’s goal to save our communities, and most importantly, our children.”
Now I have to ask my fellow Americans: what kind of person, what mentality, what measure in irresponsible character grabs an attention-getting image with potent political content or suggestion and goes with it without at least a look into the claim?
That person — the person who would do that — that’s not an American.
We’re a real country full of real GOOD people working difficult issues as we go along, and if we’re not that today, let’s get back to that real fast!
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19 Thursday Nov 2020
In the United States and the United Kingdom, the new right has broken with the old fashioned Burkean small-c conservatism that is suspicious of rapid change in all its forms. Although they hate the phrase, the new right is more Bolshevik than Burkean: these are men and women who want to overthrow, bypass, or undermine existing institutions, to destroy what exists.
Applebaum, Anne. The Twilight of Democracy. New York: Doubleday, 2020.
If you’re feeling at sea with America’s now dramatically confused, polarized, and shifting political landscape, this book may offer a steady deck and a good look around at how we humans have organized ourselves and where forces may be taking us faster than we know.
Applebaum, Anne. “The World is Never Going Back to Normal.” The Atlantic, November 18, 2020.
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16 Monday Nov 2020
HE lies.
HE has lied to his business associates, his followers, and his wives.
HE has lied about Americans and about The Press.
HE has lied about America’s Democracy and Freedom by making up enemies out of whole cloth and by demanding from defense and security officials (and possibly military officers — remember Colonel Vindman — as well) loyalty not to the Constitution of our nation, but to himself.
Yeah, well, a couple of days ago, HE had his minions hot on dead voters with mail-in ballots.
Since yesterday: rigged voting machines!
Whatever.
The main thing for Trump is that HE bend reality (for HIS fervently hopeful faithful) to make it look like HE — and THEY — were cheated and HIS seizing office through THEIR violence (with help from HIS government’s forces) would be just.
Enough with “HE”, “HIS”, “THEY”, and “THEIRS” — you get the diabolical picture.
While Trump may develop his own private media empire, he would have other options as a Putinesque dictator. He could, for example, simply have an assign mention to a publisher — or a publisher’s confidante — a preference for the hiring of one editor or journalist over another. Word gets through (from The Boss), and that’s that.
In the fashion of television drama, Trump’s kind of slick underhanded power (remember–and give it your best smoked gravel voice: “it’s only business”) might help an ambitious journo miss a career (and potentially history-altering) meeting (“you know what I mean?”).
Peter Pomerantzev’s book tells of a world in which Power designs and orders “reality” — or its perception — sufficiently to keep Putin & Co. in loot while the public has its thoughts, which then matter not so much.
If you’re in with power, life’s good!
Or at least it will look good.
If you’re out of the “systema” — as Russia’s hoodlums refer to it — not so great . . . and the reality on the outs ain’t about looks.
“A Note on the Far Right’s Epoch Times” – 11/9/2020.
“Fake News! Genuine Fake News! The Real Fake News! Get Your Fake News Here!” – October 23, 2017.
“FBI, ANTIFA, and Swamp Gas” – 7/1/2020.
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BackChannels 