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~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

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Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

FTAC – Syria – Medieval vs Modern

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

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absolute power, ethnolinguistic co-evolution, global cultural richness, medieval vs modern, peace, Syria

Natural ethnolinguistic cultural separation, survival, and co-evolution should be, imho, a global standard in the understanding of the foundations of the peace. Viewed through that prism, Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, and Pashtun have claim to the lands that bore them into being, culture and language themselves representing a People’s struggle confined to living with themselves and their ecological environment.

The politics in play in Syria have pitted the medieval worldview promoted by despots intent on keeping themselves in “absolute power” against the power-distributing and checking forces of the west in its post-Enlightenment phases. The same has also pitted as post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia against the arc of NATO or westward-moving states. The once Arab and Soviet-promoted anti-Semitism cultivated in Syria has probably contributed to impeding efforts to get in the way of the creation of the tragedy.

In fact, the good of the western world certainly do pray for Syrians. Whether by way of Judaic, Judeo-Christian, and perhaps (or soon) Judeo-Christian-Islamic “Ethical Monotheism” or by way of “Ethical Humanism” or “Secular Humanism”, western ideals involving mankind tend toward egalitarianism (none are supreme by virtue of birth) and universalism (our values and principles are accessible to all).

It is important to see Putin, Assad, and Khamenei or “Syndicate Red Brown Green” or “Post-Soviet Neo-Feudal” Russia as expressive of a medieval worldview now long superseded by arrangements attached to functioning international conventions and law and trade.


Posting to this blog has slowed quite a bit as its editor wishes not to keep saying the same things over and over and over and over . . . again.  Certain criminal behaviors involving “non-state transnational actors” and certain state leaders and their followers fit medieval concepts involving their own legitimacy and the concomitant development and sustaining of the immense power and wealth they’re able to personally amass or commandeer.  Whatever the superficial banner representing the character of the enclave of a dictator or “malignant narcissist”, the range may be better noted by scale (start with the pirate’s cove and work on up to the national socialist dictatorship) than by nominal affinity with some system of mystical belief.  The name of the eternal game for those committed to the latest fascisms: money.

On BackChannels, the concept “Syndicate Red Brown Green” reflects elements from movements within the communist / post-communist worlds, the worldview of the New Nationalists (Orban, Erdogan, among others), and, of course, that of the hipster “Islamists” so devoted to general destruction and the destruction of Israel and Jewry worldwide in particular, and it attaches to the leadership, which cleans up (makes a lot of loot) on what it can “put over” on followers and marks while maintaining vast systems of patronage.

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Allah Islam – important documentary about Muslims in Europe

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

(Initially published August 8, 2014 by Forest Rain).

Forest Rain's avatarInspiration from Zion: This is a Love Story

Everyone around the world needs to watch this important documentary by Zvi Yehezkeli and David Deryi. This was created two years ago and in that time, the situation has become more extreme.

I strongly urge everyone who cares about freedom and Western values to show this in their communities. Show this in your church, your synagogue, your school. People need to open their eyes to what is happening around the world.

See what Muslims in Europe have to say about themselves, their goals and their culture. Look how Europe is changing…

It is not about Israel or even about Jews. This is about a clash of civilizations. France, Sweden, Belgium, England… the problem is not “over there”, it is on your doorstep.  If not today, it will be tomorrow.

Listen and learn. 

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Brussels – A Note from Correspondence

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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

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Tags

Brussels, counterterrorism, Islamic Small Wars, medieval vs modern

I can guess at the choices faced by governments better than charting out the answers.

How many Muslims currently serve in the Uniformed Services?

How many of those have committed treason in direct deed or by facilitating a “Green on Blue” attack?

The services certainly have the data from events in the combat arenas plus Fort Hood, but I’ve no idea whether anyone has bothered compiling and assessing that data for the purpose of channeling Muslim personnel.

In Israel, a vetted Muslim officer has produced honor for himself, his service, and his country: http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/theres-only-one-country-in-the-middle-east-that-could-produce-a-soldier-like-me/

In the United States, Nate Terani has done the same.

As you know, but I will repeat myself, I have seen an “Islamic Small Wars” breaking down into medieval and modern parts, and it appears to me the modern are growing their ranks while the medieval, like those producing today’s assault in Brussels, have made themselves the targets of massive transnational counterterrorism criminal investigations. The west will roll them up through the end of the year (a year that will also mark the 25th year since the dissolving of the Soviet, and the two, the Soviet and global terrorism, have never been unrelated).


No one today should blame Moscow for Brussels, not even in the most twisted of theatrical political thinking, but the perverse clinging to Medieval Political Absolutism and the relation of that to the criminal part of feudalism should perhaps not be overlooked.  When the assault on Brussels is taken apart, the experts will certainly attempt to reverse engineer every aspect of the attack back to who acquired the explosives for it, how, and involving whom.  The criminal act that makes the headlines may not be separated from the flowcharts of less visible crimes — where did the money come from? Who built the bombs?  Who else was in on the conspiracy? — associated with its design and management.

My somewhat extreme correspondent had wanted all Muslim personnel banned from U.S. military service.  Ridiculous — and on this basis: the mass casualty and recruiting center assaults that have taken place on American soil have each been preceded by caution-creating behavior, language, travel, or foreign warning sufficient to urge detention, investigation, or refusal to enter the country prior to each event.  After the attack in San Bernardino, the excuse that there had been “no warning” may be dismissed.

On a related note, Mitchell Gray’s book, I Heard You Were Going On Jihad: How a Minnesota FBI agent may have prevented a second wave of attacks before 9/11 and exposed the Oklahoma terror network certainly raises questions about the Federal government’s working methods as regards possible foreknowledge, but it doesn’t shift responsibility for the 9/11 attack away from the Jihadists that commandeered a handful of airliners.

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BDS (Cult) Modules

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

BDS, criticism, Soviet post-Soviet, youth cult

This page may turn out a work in civilizational regress as so many leftward and youthful peacocks climb the virtual barricades “in solidarity” with the Palestinians, eliminating economic development and jobs, fostering Arab apartheid politics (check out those holding pens called “camps” in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria), and serving Hamas billionaires, among others, along their disinformed way (ah, but that’s what youth is for).

++++++

Founder: Omar Barghouti, M.A., Tel Aviv University.


“Norman Finkelstein on BDS” — Posted to YouTube February 15, 2012.


“Noam Chomsky 2014 The BDS Movement and Tactics” — Posted to YouTube July 13, 2015.


“SodaStream Palestinian Employees Farewell” — Posted to YouTube March 2, 2016.


On BackChannels, “FTAC — Tip to the KGB’s Amplification of Middle Eastern Anti-Semitism” (October 12, 2015); “FTAC — Approaching Anti-Semitism and the Medieval Revanch” (October 22, 2015); Syndicate Red Brown Green; Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.


Hamas

Blake, Matthew.  “Hamas admits it DID use schools and hospitals in Gaza Strip as ‘human shields’ to launch rocket attacks on Israel – but claims it was ‘mistake’.”  Daily Mail, September 12, 2014.

Danan, Deborah.  “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires — How Hamas’s Leaders Got Rich Quick.”  The Algemeiner, July 28, 2014.

Freimann, Myer.  “Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels.”  Tablet, July 25, 2014.

Greenfield, Daniel.  “Palestinian Authority: 1,700 Hamas Millionaires in Gaza.”  Frontpage, March 24, 2014.

Levy-Weinrib, Ella.  “Meet the Hamas billionaires.”  Globes, July 24, 2014.

Peskin, Doron.  “Hamas got rich as Gaza was plunged into poverty.”  YNet News, July 15, 2014.


Borschel-Dan, Amanda.  “10 years later, how BDS became the politically correct way to delegitimize Israel.”  The Times of Israel, July 9, 2015.

Greenfield, Daniel.  “S-BDS: The Rise of Stealth BDS.”  FrontPage, April 29, 2016.

Horowitz, Adam and Philip Weiss.  “The BDS Movement at 10: An Interview with Omar Barghouti.”  Mondoweiss, July 9, 2015.

Israel & Judaism Studies (IJS).  “Zionism — Its Origins and Aspirations”.

Jacobson, William A.  “Vassar student gov’t passes anti-Israel BDS Resolution.”  Legal Insurrection, March 6, 2016.

JTA.  “Students at Canada’s McGill University Reject BDS Motion.”  Haaretz, February 29, 2016.

JTA.  “Vassar College student government passes BDS resolution.”  March 7, 2016.

Kaplan, Lee.  “An ISM Volunteer Activist Learns the Truth About the ISM: Human Shields for Terrorists Out to Destroy Israel.”  Stop the ISM, n.d.

NGO Monitor.  “BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions)”.

Rothstein, Annika Hernroth-, “I Love Adolph Hitler”: BDS at South African Universities.”  The Tower, 31 (October 2015).

Sorin, Gerald.  “Academic Boycott: Free Speech or Sordid Vilification of Israel?” Haaretz, March 20, 2015.

Vassar BDS.  “Vassar Boycott Divestments, Sanctions (BDS) Resolution.”  February 1, 2016 by Vassar BDS Coalition.

Updates

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/50-us-governors-join-ajc-initiative-to-support-israel-fight-bds-300459614.html – 5/17/2017.


 

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FTAC – On the Meaning of Al Aqsa

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ideation, middle east conflict, modern medievalism, neo-feudalism, political manipulation

I can’t endorse the sentiment, ______, having taken a moderate course, but I hope that more and more Arabs will take note of the abuse of the refugees at the hands of their leaders and the medieval disinformation and manipulation campaigns that have led to The Preoccupation not only with the Jews but their own self-concept and status in the world. Too many fathers like al-Husseini have put them on the worst imaginable track, i.e., the emulation of Hitler and the Nazis. Some who have embraced that most may be due to wake up from the nightmare within them that has long masqueraded as their dream.


BackChannels now has plenty of information as to how the Israelis, the west, the refugees of 1948 and their generations, got to this unpretty pass.  The themes erupting in WWII — that Stalin-Hitler thing — have been sustained in the middle east conflict; the Soviet promotion of anti-Semitism in the middle east and the concomitant terrorism of the PLO and PFLP have been similarly and perhaps exhaustively covered; the formation and presence of what has been referred to here as “Syndicate Red Brown Green”; the self-dissolve of the Soviet on December 26, 1991 also has been remarked in these virtual pages, as have the feudal kleptocracies kept floating along in its place and around it; less has been remarked as regards the post-Cold War Era around the world, but BackChannels believes we’re in that realm as this is being posted.

All in all, and with Khamenei pressing for Israel’s destruction while a smattering of Sunni-majority states brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization (that move took a while plus some “war by proxy” on Iran’s part), the world, even in one of its most medieval appearances, appears to want to move forward, not backward — and forward would seem toward the classical liberalism of the west.

The comment to which the excerpt responds called for the realization al-Husseini’s manipulative lie: the Jews haven’t any desire to “take over” Al Aqsa Mosque — never did and never will — because while being Jewish involves attending to self defense, it also involves being about and for others, and that includes the Arab brother and sister.

Two of Hillel the Elder’s most famous statements ring down through the ages: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.”  That is an idea predicated on the concept of human self-restraint.  Israel may produce harm when harmed itself, but it does not have to prove its power through making others suffer with impunity.  If met with the force that would do that to people, including its own people, then it may answer in kind.

The second of Hillel’s language-based corrals:  “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am not for others, what am I?  If not now, when?”

Some Palestinians may be surprised to find Israelis for them in peace, but peace is needed as part of a sea change in the character of our humanity.

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Books – Reading Recommended – Maslow

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Psychology

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Tags

authentic self, freedom, human development, human performance, humanism, individuation, Maslow, psychology, spirituality, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

An indisputable fact about the work of A. H. Maslow is that it gives off sparks — very nearly all of his writing gives off sparks.  An attempt to understand this by thinking of him as simply a psychologist would probably prove futile; he must first be thought of as a man, and then as one who worked very hard at psychology, or rather, who rendered his growth and maturity as a man into a new way of thinking about psychology.  This was one of his major accomplishments — he gave psychology a new conceptual language.

Geiger, Henry.  “Introduction: A. H. Maslow”.  P. xv.  The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.  New York: The Viking Press, 1971 (Second Printing, 1972). 

While for some, life may be about the balance of forces involved in charting individual courses; for the Moslowans, life may be more about becoming, and that by way of the development of an authentic person (on the inside) and struggle with the world to enjoy that person and the related engagement with, indeed, the external forces of the world.

Of all the books encountered in the life of the BackChannels editor, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature produced the greatest hope and longing and it reset the editor’s personal course — and a great course it has been — entirely.

Readers from every walk in politics and religion may find the journey taken with Maslow perfectly universal in appeal and practicality.

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FTAC – On “Why the Jews?”

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

absolute power, anti-Semitism, bigotry, criminality, fascism, God as concept, integrity and social order, lawlessness, medievalism

. . . it (anti-Semitism) doesn’t go away because the Jews and the mixed multitude that left Egypt with them perpetually represent an affront and rebuke to “absolute power”. God proves greater than Pharaoh, is completely separated from man and moved beyond the solar system to somewhere beyond the universe. It’s a good program, for we see what men do when they confuse themselves with God.

From the tyrant in the family to the one that heads a state, their own messianism and narcissism work them into committing crimes from which they cannot retreat, and from that point, they loath the Jews for the threat presented to their own unbridled impulses. In the medieval mode, the clever whip the crowds for their own affirmation and as prelude to theft and murder on an unheralded scale.

It’s never only the Jews: note what Assad has done to Syria and the Syrians, who have been culturally programmed to hate the Jews and hate the west without understanding that they themselves have been the targets of, again, the absolute power of the dictator.

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FTAC – A Comment on Attitudes and Beliefs and Religion

08 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

attitude-belief theory, political psychology, political science, political topology, politics, religion, social science

I believe in Judaism, but I don’t want to see a religious court developed in place of a secular one.

As an American, I appreciate the symbolism of the Jordan River as depicted or used in the Torah, but my river is the Potomac and my soul altogether American.

_God is Red_ by (Native American) Vine Deloria, Jr. makes an interesting case in regard to the relationship between a land and its people.

Also of basic interest may be Daniel Everett’s _Language: The Cultural Tool_ and _Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes_, both of which tell about our use of language as a tool of survival.

Those “internal variables and functions” operate with and through language over a base of emotional turmoil and valence.

In “Attitude-Behavior Correspondence” studies (at least back in the 1980s), for some, “Attitude = Belief x (Affect x Intensity) / Primacy”. What needs looking at are the arrangements of multiple beliefs. In survey form with the Likert scale, “Do you believe in God?” (1 = Not At All, 5 = As Strongly as Possible” becomes one question and “Do you believe that Muslims can never be friends with Christians and Jews” (1 = Completely Disagree, 5 = Completely Agree).

Add 38 more questions, distribute to 150 students on one campus somewhere, apply regression analysis to the response set, and see how “beliefs” — or statements about beliefs — correlate with one another.

Recapitulate on another campus.

Recapitulate with another age group.

Such studies can go on a while, but I would suggest that through social science and other methods, one will find certain beliefs, like the belief in God, primary, and other beliefs, like that having to do with not being friends, either dismissible (“completely disagree”) or minimized in the mind of the surveyed subject, and, when aggregated (through survey method), also minimized.


“Attitude = Belief x (Affect x Intensity) / Primacy” may be the BackChannel’s author’s own addition to the more customary configuration, “Attitude = Belief x Affect”.  It simply adds in the intensity of good or bad feeling (“affect”) about a belief and it recognizes that some of what we believe about our existence — start with one’s own name, which is fairly “low level” or basic in the programming of our own personalities — may be more dear to us than other aspects of an object, including ourselves as our own possession.

As regards an “American religion” — might there be such a thing? — BackChannels may turn some attention to revisiting early American literature and the classic visitor commentaries.

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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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