Category Archives: Also in Media

FTAC: After the Mueller Report, The Tarring Will Stick

25 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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While the Democrats have some post-Soviet issues on the Far Left — and the Republicans seem to draw the White Far Right — I believe Americans are perceiving a deeply paranoid, aggressive, and vindictive Administration freighted with shady figures (like Manafort) on the ride in and packed with sycophants (like Stephan Moore, the latest nomination for the Fed), today.

Mafia “Don”? Laundering the Authoritarian President’s Image

It was just one book (by a liberal) and may be let go, but since its publication, there have been many others, each researched and defended by its author, most with impeccable credentials. Now even the Mueller Report is being redacted — whatever the “eyes only”, the public isn’t getting the whole story, so there has to be something of value in the volume worth keeping from the public.

Whatever this report says, here’s what I know: when I was at Cambridge Analytica, the company hired known Russian agents, had data researchers in St Petersburg, tested US voter opinion on Putin’s leadership, and hired hackers from Russia – all while Bannon was in charge.

Christopher Wylie in the below displayed tweet.
https://twitter.com/chrisinsilico/status/1109983298397310976

In the way of communists and fascists alike, Bannon, the “populist”, has decamped himself into an Italian monastery befitting his own self-concept.

It’s a nice place.

https://www.dw.com/en/italian-monastery-turns-into-hotbed-of-bannon-fueled-nationalism/a-47930804

Such impressions add up, albeit among those who follow the news and query the Internet. The image of the President and his helper has not been authentically “populist”.

With Donald Trump, his once-trusted lawyer, his once-esteemed campaign manager, his brag, “I just you all a lot richer”, his Miami real estate, one of the world’s dirtiest / most glamorous markets, the story’s just not going to wash away, not matter how loud he may be about vindication.

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-ties-to-cambridge-analytica-facebook-data-run-deep-2018-3

Bannon has said he doesn’t remember buying the data . . . .

Also Related Online

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate – 7/13/2017.

I own it, haven’t read it, but it’s the kind of thing that pops up on Amazon with the search string, “Trump, Collusion” — there are also Trump collusion dismissals, but in that category, Roger Stone places high — I’d rather read (and trust) Guardian veteran Luke Harding.

BackChannels cited a BackChannels post on Craig Unger’s book. Here’s the direct link to the book on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X/ – 8/14/2018

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FNS: Nearing the End of ISIS in Syria

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Syria

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Baghouz – Internally Displaced: 43,000.

Regarding the women . . . the mothers —

Many of them have fled from town to town to town under bombing. They have seen the most terrible things in war. And yet they are true believers. It’s going to take a lot to get them to change their minds.

https://www.channel4.com/news/speaking-to-the-syrian-and-iraqi-women-still-loyal-to-islamic-state-who-married-fighters (3/5/2019)

US-supported forces besieging Islamic State holdouts in the Syrian village of Baghouz cannot cope with the more than 43,000 men, women and children who fled the battlefield and are currently being held in an internment camp and prisons in the north.
Among those who fled are 500 foreign jihadi wives and children. The women, who are held in a separate compound from other escapees, say their husbands are fighting, are fugitives, are dead or are in prison.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/kurdish-led-forces-struggle-to-cope-with-escapees-amid-baghouz-siege-1.3815462

The Pentagon rerouted millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and vehicles from Iraq to Syria in the second half of 2018, Al-Monitor has learned, as US-backed forces cornered the last remnants of the Islamic State (IS).
In a series of notifications to Congress reviewed by Al-Monitor, the Defense Department said it had determined that a bevy of supplies purchased by the Pentagon for the Iraqi military would instead go to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Pentagon sent lawmakers its last reprogramming notification for 2018 on Dec. 31, 12 days after President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/03/us-shifts-weapons-iraq-syria-pentagon.html#ixzz5hOnD1L2

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/03/us-shifts-weapons-iraq-syria-pentagon.html – 3/4/2019.

While much of the U.S. presence in Syria has been diminished, the transfer of war equipment and materiel to SDF forces tells Damascus (Moscow and Tehran) that nothing’s over as regards their intents to sustain medieval absolutism (and its characteristic sadism, power in that mode being the power to inflict suffering on others with impunity).

While some idiots view east-west conflict in the region as being all about oil, the cynicism conveniently overlooks the more compelling of ethical and moral arguments for the defense of some goodness still in the world.


BEIRUT — As Syria’s government consolidates control after years of civil war, President Bashar al-Assad’s army is doubling down on executions of political prisoners, with military judges accelerating the pace they issue death sentences, according to survivors of the country’s most notorious prison.
In interviews, more than two dozen Syrians recently released from the Sednaya military prison in Damascus described a government campaign to clear the decks of political detainees. The former inmates said prisoners are being transferred from jails across Syria to join death-row detainees in Sednaya’s basement and then be executed in pre-dawn hangings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria-bodies/ — 12/23/2018
https://twitter.com/the_rojava/status/1103004321422209024

God must be in the mind and a malign narcissism in the heart that produces so painful a mission as that of doing God’s will on earth by striking terror into the souls of others. Add: beheading, burning, enslavement, mass murder, rape, and torture.

God has helped the Islamic State jihadists in Baghouz lose everything but their madness.

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Trump: “A Racist, A Con Man, and a Cheat” Says Michael Cohen

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

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

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Created by BackChannels / Commart from C-Span video:

Cohen’s hearing before the Congressional committee turned into a fine display of Republican viciousness. Cohen, convicted of earlier Trump-associated crimes, i.e., lying to Congress to protect The Boss, made a fair target for discrediting, but the barrage of indictments and innuendo launched by Representatives Jordan, Green, Comer, Hice, and Gosar, among others, either served to deflect attention from President Trump or to provide a lasting display of the kind of persons the Republican Party has seen elected to power.

Below: C-Span’s live feed of the hearing.

Live at initial posting of this blog.

Showing up on Twitter during the early portion of the hearing:

https://twitter.com/Lindsey_Esq/status/1100784095607603200

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Good Morning, India and Pakistan

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Asia, BCND - BackChannels News Day, Fast News Share, India, Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan

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Start with the cassus beli on this long journey backward to barbaric feudalism and wars founded in religious animosity and contempt.


(SRINAGAR, India) — The death toll from a car bombing on a paramilitary convoy in Indian-controlled Kashmir has climbed to 41, becoming the single deadliest attack in the divided region’s volatile history, security officials said Friday.
A local Kashmiri militant rammed an explosive-laden van into the convoy along a key highway Thursday. In addition to the dead, the attack wounded nearly two dozen other soldiers, India’s paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force spokesman Sanjay Sharma said.

http://time.com/5529661/soldiers-kashmir-car-bomb/ – 2/15/2019

Related page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BackChannels/

Related Online: BBC: “India Pakistan: Kashmir fighting sees Indian aircraft downed.” February 27, 2019 6:40 EST | “IAF strikes in Pakistan live updatesw: IAF shot down Pakistani fighter aircraft; one Indian pilot missing in action, MEA says.” The Times of India, February 27, 2019.

If you have news from Kashmir, either side, feel welcome to share it with BackChannel’s editor via the contact page.

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Nigeria: Troubled Elections

23 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Also in Media, BCND - BackChannels News Day, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Nigeria, Politics, Regions

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Mash-up.

Feed from mobile phones —

In the news —

Related for Background: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/431071-high-stakes-in-nigerias-elections-for-impoverished-citizenry-and-us

Related Online: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/23/africa/nigeria-elections-blasts-intl/index.html ; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6736961/Delays-threats-attacks-fail-deter-Nigerian-voters.html .

Official appeal on Twitter for Nigerian election incident reports —

And the election parade, as it were, from a so-far calm point of observation.

The world may be still a mystery online: where’s the action? 🙂 What’s coming off it in social media? What could do with authentication but for which the blogger’s desktop is rather out of the loop (for not being there)?

“They just burnt our votes!”

— APC Thugs With Help Of Securities Destroying Ballot Materials In PDP Strongholds.

This is how Buhari hopes to remain in power. Disenfranchisement, intimidation and burning of the Votes of thousands of voters in PDP Strongholds. – Hope For Nigeria (on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopefornigeria/ ).

The peaceful change of power by fair and free elections marks democracies, but what are these between states that year after year as corrupt and despotic beneath a veneer of civil democratic governance?

The civilizational narcissism associated with Islam in Nigeria, mostly in the north, has an incumbent Muslim president (Buhari) who has packed the top tier of his military and police services with Muslim officers, and the Christian communities know as much. Between widespread poverty and religious animus and the prospect of Islamic tyranny, the thugs seem to come out to ensure their side remains superior in political power, and generally speaking that has been the Muslim side.

Related on BackChannels on Islamic Civilizational Narcissism (published in 2012): https://conflict-backchannels.com/2012/10/19/mobarak-haider-blasphemy-and-civilization-three-youtube-clips/

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One, two, three + 1: Tired Phantoms of the Soviet

21 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Fast News Share, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela

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One, two, three — Ukraine, Venezuela, Sudan — each dictatorship associated with Soviet / post-Soviet political methods. Yesterday, it was the great talk of communism and socialism that yielded so much power to so despicable a kind of peacock thug among leaders — Yanukovych, Chavez and Maduro, al-Bashir, leading their states not to greatness but into dependence on themselves, at best, and state practices that may be regarded as rule of the strong by way of brutality.

Ukraine

Ukraine challenges Russia’s veto right at Security Council. February 20, 2019. Related: https://www.unian.info/politics/10454169-poroshenko-time-to-deprive-russia-of-its-veto-right-at-un.html

The next headline from UNIAN: “33 European states call on UN members to consider non-recognition measures against Russia for Crimea” (February 20, 2019).

Venezuela

Two days earlier the 29-year-old was running through his neighbourhood with a wide grin, draped in a Venezuelan flag.
“Maduro get out, you son of a bitch,” he cried in the empty road outside his home in a defiant a video uploaded to social media.
Then the feared Special Action Forces (FAES) police unit came knocking. “The people who killed him were wearing uniforms and had ski masks,” a family member who didn’t want to be identified out of fear of more violence told The Telegraph.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/20/nicolas-maduros-special-police-unit-keeping-working-class-neighbourhoods

Sudan


UC26E11 POETRY FOR SUDAN, Posted to YouTube February 20, 2019.

Sudan-Related Online

Africa News. “Sudan protest hub: Sit-in by top private telecom employees.” February 21, 2019.

AP. “Sudan Government Arrests Opposition Leaders Ahead of Protest.” VOA, February 21, 2019.

https://youtu.be/kkT6hlK13A0
Posted to YouTube February 20, 2019.
Posted to YouTube February 21, 2019.

Bonus: Syria

If the world is able to look back on this period . . . it will be sick with its memories. Bashar al-Assad with the support of Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei managed to physically destroy half of his state while running about half of its population as well. Now that the he has regained some areas, the past has come knocking for the release of prisoners.

Posted to YouTube February 20, 2019.

Scanning for news, rejiggering it, “scraping” as bloggers may call it — all takes time. Of late, BackChannels has been wondering what one has gotten back — or just created — from each days sail out into the sea of web-borne news. In the spirit of philosophy, one might enjoy the consolation of having seen and relayed a very small shard of time in the world.

This post has featured web artifacts dated February 20 and 21, 2019 having to do with four conflict-hot states: Ukraine, Venezuela, Sudan, and Syria. Central to the historical narratives of each: autocratic and still medieval Russia, Imperial, Soviet, Post-Soviet. The bereft and hungry of the North established tribes in Kiev around the 9th Century and lived and ruled in the feudal manner by way of the standards of the age. Contracts, expansions, hardships exceeding in excessive suffering practically every possibility short of the Holocaust — I have in mind the Mongol Invasion — and here . . . at the end of two modern revolutions and three distinct experiments with government unable to escape a paternal (and these days criminal) paternalism, . . . well here comes perhaps a different end to empire: Moscow has invaded Ukraine and Kiev is fighting back, making the sacrifices every day it must for freedom through democracy.

Venezuela’s “mafia state” will never be able to return Moscow’s “investment” in post-Soviet support — another more responsible government is needed for that.

Sudan has only this day to lose an ageing despot whose control of his state has come down to “shadow brigades” and the muzzling of truth-telling journalists. He doesn’t like the way he looks in Sudan’s newspapers. I wonder how he’ll feel when he sees himself in history.

And al-Assad: behold his greatest near accomplishment across eight punishing years of the KGB theatrical, “Assad v The Terrorists”:

Posted to YouTube January 5, 2017

Similar: Aleppo; Damascus suburb; Raqqa.

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Coffee First, Communicating Next, Brunch Later

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Also in Media, BCND - BackChannels News Day, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share

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Welcome to BC’s morning.


— For the past five months, Swedish television SVT has had access to a large quantity of classified documents detailing Danske Bank’s dealings with Swedbank. There were a large number of transactions between the banks’ clients between 2007 and 2015.

The analysis reveals that 50 of Swedbank’s customers that show several risk indicators of suspected money laundering have funneled a total of USD 5.8 billion through the bank.

https://www.svt.se/special/swedbank/english/

Related 58-minute program: “Uppdrag granskning: Sasong 20 – Swedbank and the money laundering” (English subtitles) — and BC’s going to watch it.

Do companies love misery together?

Swedbank’s woeful story has a companion and near neighbor: Danske Bank (“Danske Bank pulls out of Russia, Baltics after money-laundering backlash”, Reuters, February 19, 2019).

Little — or lesser — birdies (BackChannels, aloft on small wings and little nourishment refers to itself) have been known to tweet first thing in the morning.

Not only in America these days (does Macron tweet?), but even one tweet among millions of followers . . . wow . . . .

BackChannels wrote about Reflexive Control and the “New Nationalism” many, many moons ago — and here’s that term today on the cover of Foreign Affairs: “The New Nationalism” (March / April 2019 magazine — the online series URL has the embedded date of “19-02-12).

Reheat the coffee; warm up a slice of caramel cake; watch that Swedbank documentary — what can a poor boy to do but to play online as a street fighting — c’mon you Phantoms of the Soviet! — ham?

“Mick” 1969

Right spirit, but (oy) what a long, strange trip . . .

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Bloody Bashir’s Troubles: An Angry and Hungry Sudan Narrows Its Eyes

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Also in Media, BCND - BackChannels News Day, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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See tweet further on in this piece for the original.

The Sudanese have only to look toward Syria to know how bad revolution before a tyrant may become. While the spectacle of the Syrian Tragedy may have been expected to quell enthusiasm for a similarly motivated revolution in Sudan, it appears to BackChannels at this hour that caught between starvation and a tyrant, the Sudanese motivation — and perhaps the motivation of the military as well — may grow the violence and the level of direct threat encountered by President(-for-Life) Omar al-Bashir.

One blogger, Martha Leah Nangalama, has already picked up on a Middle East Monitor post reporting today Bashir’s evacuation from a mosque.

Of particular and peculiar interest in that story may be the bonding expressed between dictatorships

In Ankara, deputy chairperson of the ruling Justice and Development party Cevdet Yilmaz also expressed support for Al-Bashir’s government after a meeting with the Sudanese ambassador on Wednesday

“We support the legitimate government of Sudan. Turkey has faced similar ploys many times,” Yilmaz said, adding that Turkey is confident that the government is sensitive to the demands of the Sudanese people and would avoid violence.

Although Erdogan’s Turkey exploits NATO for its military defense from Russian aggression in that dimension, it has effectively destroyed democracy in the state and bonded with Russia — or leveraged itself — with the “Turkish Stream” energy project. Basically for the Turks, liberal democracy and freedom have died in their homeland, and they have become part of an increasingly family-run business masquerading some as a sultanate.

DW has placed emphasis on “anger over dictatorship, not bread” in its handling of the story:

“In most of Sudan’s almost 170 cities and big towns, someone has been shot. In some of them, more than 15 people have been shot. The shooting is happening through unofficial types of militia that the regime is using,” says Khansaa Al Kaarib, a Sudanese human rights lawyer and activist.

“For 30 years, this is what the Sudanese people have been getting from Bashir: Killing, killing, killing and more killing. People are simply fed up with this and they want to change this regime. They want to get out of the perception of a people lying under an ICC-wanted criminal, as soon as possible.”

Syria Redux?

https://twitter.com/Mo7a7amid/status/1076401992543674369

The Sudanese story has had a similar start with a modest protest driven by hunger — i.e., economic protest with ecological variables in play — met by escalating means of repression, including live fire that taken or produced martyrs that in turn have become the focus of additional protests.

Ukraine potential?

For Sudanese now active in shutting down Bashir’s goverment and replacing with a government more modern, responsive, and responsible, here is the voice from that other protest against continued (and Russian) feudal political absolutism as once represented by the corrupt and thuggish Viktor Yanukovych:

Posted to YouTube, February 10, 2014.

BackChannels awaits the Sudanese version: “I am Sudanese, and we have tired of the war criminal in Khartoum . . . .

Related on the Web

Abadian, Ramin Hossein. “Bread revolution in Sudan.” MEHR News Agency, December 26, 2018.

Awsat, Asharq and Ahmed Younes. “Sudan’s Bashir Secretly Visits Damascus to Revive Ties.” December 17, 2018.

DW. “Anger over dictatorship, not bread, fueling Sudan uprising.” December 29, 2018.

El- Affendi, Abdelwahab. “Sudan protests: How did we get here?” Al Jazeera, December 28, 2018.

Elmileik, Aya. “What prompted the protests in Sudan: Protests that started over the rising costs of bread and fuel have now widened with calls for the overthrow of al-Bashir.” Al Jazeera, December 26, 2018.

Ibrahim, Omar. “why are the Protests in Sudan Important for Egypt?” Egyptian Streets, December 27, 2018.

Keeley, Gregory. “Keeley: Russia Reminded Us It’s Time to Kick Turkey Out of NATO.” The Daily Caller, December 28, 2018.

Middle East Monitor. “SUDAN: Bashir evacuated from mosque as protests continue.” Martha Leah Nangalama, December 29, 2018.

Reuters. “Sudanese Security Forces Use Tear Gas to Disperse Anti-Government Protesters.” U.S. News and World Report, December 28, 2018.

Sudan Tribune. “Sudanese professionals call for new anti-government protests on 31 December.” December 29, 2018.

Posted to YouTube December 29, 2018.

Channel 4’s retelling has a biblical sound to it: “Beatings. Mass arrests. Teargassing . . . .”

Sadly, BackChannels may be able to add the additional seven plagues to what has most recently been ascribed to the less than beloved dictator Omar al-Bashir.

“Death squads” have been given mention as well.

Six more plagues to go.

And God is Greater.

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