• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

Link Plus a Note on Intellectual Battlespace

05 Tuesday May 2015

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

≈ Leave a comment

Thanks to UC Berkeley and surrounding colleges like San Francisco State (where Bazian did his undergraduate studies and led a Palestinian takeover of that campus as class president), Bazian’s campaign keeps gaining legitimacy as it aids the endless war against both the United States and Israel by militant Islamists including those who are fighting U.S. troops abroad.

Kaplan, Lee.  “Taxpayers Made to Pay for Islamic Indoctrination in US University.” Shoebat.com, May 4, 2015.


BackChannels intends to continue navigating the center of the political channels, but the above from the vigilant of the anti-Jihad brings up the greater issue that is the infiltration of American intellectual assets by supports of such as Hamas.  This blog locates this kind of incursion in the great “Syndicate Red Brown Green” effort to obtain more resource through political mafia means and in the process weaken the United States and NATO and related circles of influence and power as arbiters of the lawful.

That’s a lot to say in a very short space, but basically, the politically lawless and most venal of the world — that “Khamenei-Putin” thing — have extraordinary access to cultural centers throughout North America and the world, and if they’re going to be confined by opposition and resistance, it will be through the methods of the lawful, from blogs to journals to tenure committees . . . .

Addendum – May 9, 2015

In his introduction to a timely volume of essays, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel, Paul Berman provides a witty summary of the efforts by university boycotters to frame their campaigns as “modern and progressive” when in fact they are “disgraceful and retrograde.” But the truth is that anti-Semitism never needed a sophisticated veneer in order to win susceptible recruits among the educated and the allegedly enlightened.

Wisse, Ruth.  “Anti-Semitism Goes to School.”  Mosaic, May 4, 2015.


From The Awesome Conversation (May 9, 2015): “We’re going to be battling these forces back a long time. For that, there’s not better forum and place than the United States where free speech lives and malicious speech becomes recognized and known for the intellectual barbarism it represents.”

# # #

Garland – Texted + Comments on Freedom of Speech

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Journalism, North America, Politics, Religion, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

discomfitting speech, free speech, freedom of speech, Garland, terrorism, Texas

Texted last night and this morning by one of BackChannel’s friends —

5/4/2015/0018

In the cab.  Men actually left vehicle and were on foot.  Swat told e . . . .

5/4/2015/0837

Not having fun.  Police officer shot led times two.  Bomb squad.  We have been moved to a hardened position.


The event was sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and attended by its president and co-founder, Pamela Geller — who is also president of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). Both are listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Jamieson, Alastair.  “‘Draw Muhammad’ Shooting in Garland: What We Know About Texas Attack.”  NBC News, May 4, 2015.


Since when has earnest and honest — not disingenuous, not libelous — speech been framed as “hate speech” — and with the speakers branded as a “hate group”?


Have you met the Stepford students? They’re everywhere. On campuses across the land. Sitting stony-eyed in lecture halls or surreptitiously policing beer-fuelled banter in the uni bar. They look like students, dress like students, smell like students. But their student brains have been replaced by brains bereft of critical faculties and programmed to conform. To the untrained eye, they seem like your average book-devouring, ideas-discussing, H&M-adorned youth, but anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in their company will know that these students are far more interested in shutting debate down than opening it up.

O’Neill, Brendan.  “Free speech is so last century.  Today’s students want the ‘right to be comfortable’: Student unions’ ‘no platform’ policy is expanding to cover pretty much anyone whose views don’t fit prevailing groupthink.”  The Spectator, November 22, 2014.


I had been writing a series of columns in the Village Voice about certain thought police at that very paper.  I had found out that on Monday nights, when the paper went to bed, some editors and copy editors — without telling the writers — were cutting out certain words, sometimes sentences and paragraphs, that might offend the Voice’s constituencies.

Hentoff, Nat.  “Free Speech for Me — But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.”  New York, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1992.


Where are we today?

How did this happen that comment and criticism of Islam — the same would seem much more safe and secure when the target of critical speech involves Christianity, Judaism, and every other religion expressed in the brave and free United States of America — has been framed as provocation for violence and seems to be being made to serve to excuse it?


Nigger.

Want some more?

Kike. Wop. Spic. Kraut. Dink. Jap. Mick. Honkey. Frog. Greaseball.

How’s that?

Context and intent count.

Just so no English language speaker is caught short or left behind while trading the dozens, The Racial Slur Database lists some 2,649 of these pejoratives.

Contempt, which is what epithets express, contribute to our defensive arsenal in language: they are the weapons we reach for when we are done with words and reason and, overall, ready to rumble.

Sometimes they come out when rumbling.

Oppenheim, James.  “N-Word Metonymy – Richards, Schlessinger in Context.” Oppenheim Arts & Letters, August 18, 2010.


Pamela Geller, the organizer of the Texas “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, that ended in a terror attack on a police officer, said on national television Monday she’d do it again – that free speech is way too important to cede to Shariah law extremists.

“Clearly what happened is indicative of how needed this conference was,” said Geller, on “Fox & Friends,” in reference to the violence that came on the tail end of the cartoon drawing contest, as WND previously reported.

Pamela Geller: ‘There is a war on free speech’

Said Pamela Geller: “Inoffensive speech needs no protection; offensive speech needs protection.” (about 1:40 into the Fox video).


Ad hominem attacks and epithets may be offensive and also protected speech too, but add virtue to Geller’s so-called hate speech: considered and contemplated, well researched, respectful, clearly delineating “the terrorists”, albeit in absolute terms, while — for readers who actually care to look into this issue — recognizing Islamic humanists and reformists and other Muslims often in the path of jihadists themselves.

Related on BackChannels: Shimmer.

On the web, where most of my experience of the world arrives mediated, I have seen the development of a new global across-the-broadest-campus intelligentsia, and perhaps that soon should be the focus of a BackChannels post.


When contentious issues and conflict are worked by the public, is God like a cook watching over a simmering pot on the stove?

Too cool, and the food doesn’t transform — it needs some serious heat; too hot, and the pot boils over or boils out — those conditions need some serious cool.

Additional Reference

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/2015/05/03/garland-curtis-culwell-center-swat/26848435/ 5/4/2015/0828 CDT

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20150503-breaking-gunfire-reported-at-anti-islam-event-at-garland-isd-facility.ece – 5/3/2015/0715 CDT / 5/4/2015/0830 CDT.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-shooting-organisers-of-prophet-mohamed-cartoon-contest-condemn-attack-as-war-on-free-speech-after-police-kill-two-gunmen-10223333.html – 5/4/2015/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/04/why-a-woman-named-pamela-geller-organized-a-prophet-muhammad-cartoon-contest/ – 5/4/2015.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5676/free-speech-erosion#.VUZKkPjMqRo.facebook – 5/3/2015.

Addendum

Pamela Geller is a 56-year-old Jewish arch-conservative from New York, a vehement critic of radical Islam who organized a provocative $10,000 cartoon contest in this placid Dallas suburb designed to caricature the prophet Muhammad.

Elton Simpson was a 30-year-old aspiring Islamic militant from Phoenix who fantasized to an FBI informant about “doing the martyrdom operations” in Somalia and was convicted in 2010 of lying to the FBI about his plans to travel to the volatile eastern African nation.

Kaiman, Jonathan, Tina Susman, David Zucchino.  “Texas attack refocuses attention on fine line between free speech and hate speech.”  Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2015.


From the Awesome Conversation:

The “Islamists” — which noun we use to set them apart from Muslims who are not “Islamists” and have been frequently the targets of the same — have a deep investment in force of will and intimidation. Control, locus of control, need for control, motivation for sadism, etc. are more topics worth concentrating on.

Americans know — and I believe I’m within reason saying this — that Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer exercise and represent free speech in action accommodated to American constitutional principles. Ascribed to Patrick Henry: ““I may not like what a man says, but I shall defend to the death his right to say it!” That’s it.

We don’t shout down opponents; we don’t deny anyone a soapbox. We may choose not to listen to their rants; we may choose to not invite our “verbal adversaries” to our house parties. But we don’t shut them up lest we ourselves suffering being shut up.

While Geller and Spencer have been “framed” — called, described as, denoted as, accused — as “Islamophobes”, the truth is that practice will simply elicit its opposite, sooner or later, in political reaction. I’ve shared the Back-Channels concept “Shimmer” with Geller — didn’t hear back — and out of no cause or motivation not my own but solely curiosity and enthusiasm for the broadband web, I’ve made acquaintance and friends across the Islamic world.

Religious teleology adjusts to many forces across time. The Catholic Church maintained the charge of Deicide against the Jews until into the early 1960s, and the Lutheran Synod in America tooks its time ejecting, at least officially, the same. In other aspects, the Jesuits continue writing letters to Jesus and God only knows — or only God knows! — the ways in which people profess faith and integrate themselves with a spiritual program or script . . . or come to the immense opportunity to adjust and update the same in fact or emphasis.

This too is a part of Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/NewAgeIslam

Such missions (thank you for being here) have become a day to day part of global intellectual life.

Reference URL: New Age Islam.

# # #

“One Earth, Many Worlds” – From Anti-BDS to Arab Shift, A Note on Intercultural Adjustment

03 Sunday May 2015

Posted by commart in A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, cultural evolution, ethnolinguistic politics, global salon

The resolution, which is expected to be signed next week by Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, declares that the BDS movement is “one of the main vehicles for spreading anti-Semitism and advocating the elimination of the Jewish state,” adding that BDS activities in Tennessee “undermine the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, which they are fulfilling in the State of Israel.”

Furthermore, the resolution states that the BDS movement and its agenda are “inherently antithetical and deeply damaging to the causes of peace, justice, equality, democracy and human rights for all the peoples in the Middle East.”

Algemeiner.  “Tennessee General Assembly Becomes First State Legislature to Condemn BDS.”  April 22, 2015.

The story appeared on the Facebook page of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations. Congruent with the above, which was published two weeks ago, comes this from last week:

It all began as a personal project by a young Israeli Arab who lives in northern Israel. He wanted to use social networking to convince other Israeli Arabs that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are not some “army of evil” and that its soldiers are not as bloodthirsty as they tend to be portrayed in Arab propaganda films. He soon learned, however, that in the digital age, there is no end to surprises. Instead of messages and responses from the Israeli Arab audience he was targeting, he began receiving messages of peace and love from young Arab men and women from across the Arab world.

PJTN.  “Arab youth use social media to send message of support for Israel.”  April 30, 2015.

In a world where every day is somewhere a first day, the mind of the world goes through its day magnificently housed in about 7,000 living languages.  As it seems to BackChannels easier to lose a language than to invent one, the idea of preserving the library — what constitutes an “us” if not a language? — might come first.

While that sounds delightful — for what dual-language reader would care to be confined to the lingua franca that has been English? — our languages and the spirits represented in them come freighted with some heady components and related cultural ambitions and habits, and not all awake feeling harmonious.

Those that do, however, have some work ahead of them.

One Earth, Many Worlds

The new global intelligentsia — have we not all just shaken virtual hands over the past seven common broadband and about 20 popularly connected years or so? — has now to revisit its multicultural, multilinguistic packages, the beliefs, histories, myths, morals, and values contained within each separable ethnolinguistic enclave, and fundamentally adjust to a true changed revolutionary circumstance.

# # #

On Reading BackChannels – A Note on Small Adjustments

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Notes On Reading BackChannels

≈ Leave a comment

BackChannels may place and remove some posts from time to time without explanation.  If a viewer finds a “URL Not Found” page . . . there’s no need for worry.

# # #

Soviet Anti-Semitism, An Example from Andrew and Mitrokhin’s _The Sword and The Shield_.

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, Soviet Era

In January 1953 the MGB was officially accused of “lack of vigilance” in hunting down the conspirators.  The Soviet news agency Tass made the sensational announcement that for the past few years world Zionism and Western intelligence agencies had been conspiring with “a terrorist group” of Jewish doctors “to wipe out the leadership of the Soviet Union.”  During the final two months of Stalin’s rule, the MGB struggled to demonstrate its heightened vigilance by pursuing the perpetrators of this non-existent plot.  Its anti-Zionist campaign was, in reality, little more than a thinly disguised anti-Semitic pogrom.  Shortly before Stalin’s sudden death in March 1953 Mitrokhin was ordered to investigate the alleged Zionist connections of the Pravda correspondent in Paris, Yuri Zhukov, who had come under suspicion because of his wife’s Jewish origins.  Mitrokhin had the impression that Stalin’s brutal security supremo, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, was planning to implicate Zhukov in the supposed Jewish doctor’s plot.  A few weeks after Stalin’s funeral, however, Beria suddenly announced that the plot had never existed, and exonerated the alleged conspirators.

Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin.  The Sword and The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB.  Page 2.  New York: Basic Books, 1999.


In the “Russian Section” (of the in-house library), the above title is appended “UR” for unread.  BackChannels hopes to update that status soon.  Even so, with the theme of anti-Semitism emerging on the second page of a mighty classic, so it appears, among the scholars, the same may inform the character of today’s “Solidarity” organizations and their updates on Soviet disinformation and propaganda programs that produced the privileged and the privileges of the Party.

These historic incidents and the portent of books like The Sword and The Shield may be easily accessed by the lay public as well as scholars, but time having become the new space, information has become the vegetation on the landscape, and large packages so easily spied on Amazon may not be so easily opened.  With each passing year — the volume was published in 1999 — fewer and fewer readers, lay or scholar, are likely to have the experience of seminal works.  For the most part, the public won’t know, won’t have personal or transmitted historic memory, giving cognizant autocrats freedom to deliver the past to their constituents.

Related on BackChannels: “Rhetorical Objects — Anti- Anti-Semitism & Anti-Semitism” (April 20, 2014).

Addendum

This crossed my desktop late this afternoon:

The ultimate goal of state censorship is self-censorship among the citizenry. If you can get the people to police themselves, and each other, it takes part of the burden off the state and also makes people complicit in their own oppression. And so it’s disturbing to see things take this turn in Putin’s Russia. As the New York Times reports, Moscow bookstores removed from their shelves–voluntarily (sort of)–their copies of Maus, the pathbreaking graphic novel of Nazi crimes against the Jews. It’s the “voluntarily” part of this that stands out, and makes it clear that Putinism has not been, and will not be, good for the Jews of Russia.

Mandel, Seth.  “Dark Days Ahead for the Jews of Russia?”  Commentary, April 28, 2015.

# # #

Baltimore – Recognizing “Shut it down!” And Shutting It Off

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-authority, anti-west, Baltimore, Far Left, politics, responsibility, rhetoric, rioting, unrest

When the Ferguson riots broke August 9, 2014, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left got busy churning out “false flag” accusations involving New Establishment elements for incitement.  In related search, “DHS Is Employing Agent Provocateurs and are Behind the . . .”; “Ferguson Witness: Government is Planting Provocateurs in . . .”; “Busted! ‘Agent Provocateur’ Caught Red Handed in Ferguson!”  With such as those, BackChannels would happily invoke its mouthy “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” and remind that the old KGB proved adept at “false flag” manipulation of the Russian constituency with, among other episodes, the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”, today relentlessly examined and rehashed by Miami University scholar Karen Dawisha in her book Putin’s Kleptocracy (listed in the “Russian Section”).

The injury and death of Freddie Gray will receive — is receiving — the scrutiny deserved regardless of the public press “for justice” (without injustice proven but certainly suspected) and the spillover into violence.

This is what promotes that violence:

Malik Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based group that called for the demonstration and advertised it on social media, told the crowd that he would release them in an hour, adding: “Shut it down if you want to! Shut it down!”

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay and Stephen Babcock.  “Scenes of Chaos in Baltimore as Thousands Protest Freddie Gray’s Death.”  International New York Times, April 25, 2015.

Shut what down?

Shut “it” down!

A city, a society, a long fought quest for equality and justice frequently achieved.

Yesterday in WND, conservative journalist Aaron Klein noted of Shabazz, “Not a single news media outlet quoted above informed its readers of that which a simple Google search of “Malik Shabazz” reveals. As highlighted on his Wikipedia page, until October 2013, Shabazz notoriously served as the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party.”

Klein goes on to note in relation to Shabazz episodes involving voter intimidation (“using such phrases as ‘white devil’ and ‘You’re about to be ruled by the black man, cracker'”), anti-Semitic invective, and incitement.

Earlier today, The Baltimore Sun noted the notables in attendance at Freddie Gray’s funeral, and BackChannels would suggest all of a different mein — and with Dick Gregory present, some of a different era — than Shabazz.

Shut “It” down?

Violence and looting overtook much of West Baltimore on Monday, seriously injuring several police officers and leaving a store and several vehicles in flames.

Dance, Scott.  “Riots erupt across West Baltimore, downtown.”  The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015.

Shutting Not Much Down, But Some appears to be continuing into the evening.

With generations of of the Left to Far Left in town, one’s ears may tune to the rhetoric to come: will it be accusing, ad hominem, venomous?  Will it be responsible, encouraging inquiry, open observation, and discussion?  In what part either?

Shut it down?

That kind of talk, yes.

Cited and Other Reference

Dance, Scott.  “Riots erupt across West Baltimore, downtown.”  The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015.

Klein, Aaron.  “Media Fail to Identity Leader of Baltimore Riots: Ex-New Black Panther chairman a notorious racist.”  WND, April 26, 2015.

Marbella, Jean and Jonathan Pitts.  “Friends, family bid farewell to Freddie Gray.” Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015.

Schwartzman, Paul and Dana Hedgpeth.  “‘Another life gone’: Hundreds gather for Freddie Gray funeral in Baltimore.”  The Washington Post, April 27, 2015.

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay and Stephen Babcock.  “Scenes of Chaos in Baltimore as Thousands Protest Freddie Gray’s Death.”  International New York Times, April 25, 2015.

# # #

“Unspeakable Stories. Unspeakable.”

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

conflict, sadism

Posted to YouTube 4/24/2015.

Source: Pesta, Abigail.  “Iraqi woman most wanted by ISIS gives tearful account of extremist group’s atrocities.”  Women in the World in Association with The New York Times, April 23, 2015.


I spoke last Wednesday night at Brooklyn College, if you can still call it that. Every seat was filled – 80 percent by Muslim students. If this is the future, it is murder. The sneers, the jeers, the laughter – my discussion of the most savage jihad acts was met with huge peals of laughter. It wasn’t a talk; it was a vicious circus: lawless and shameful.

From the moment I began to speak, the Muslim students were cackling and catcalling with Jew-hating remarks and jeers.

http://pamelageller.com/2015/04/pamela-geller-wnd-isis-at-brooklyn-college.html/#sthash.clTfmR90.dpuf – The event took place April 22, 2015.

Last fall, The New York Times referred to ISIS as a “cult of sadism” (October 2, 2014), noting of the center of ISIS power in Iraq and Syria, “In this confused and complex landscape, the Islamic State seems a model of remorseless clarity.  We have not seen the last of its horrors.”

Recommended for insightful reading in the psychology involved: any of the works of Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin.

Related on BackChannels: “JiSadists — An Update on Westgate Mall Barbarity.”  October 1, 2013.


BackChannels got its start elsewhere with comments on the 2006-7 assault by al-Shabaab on Somali, and its author then noted its caprice in dealing death to Muslims.  The al-Qaeda-type group appeared then to have the conscience of an earthquake or typhoon, both mindless forces of nature, which is to say it appeared to have no conscience at all.  After seven years, the only change marked by Daesh appears to be the amplified scale of the firepower, the general warfare, and the vacuous horror visited on those whose bodies, minds, and souls it destroys.


While al-Qaeda was once the most barbaric terror group in the world, that dubious label now goes to ISIS.

http://abc30.com/news/filmmaker-interviews-isis-fighters-for-documentary/680517/ – 4/24/2015.

I know this piece is all over the map . . . but what fresh observation from media is wanted?

From the documentary filmmaker mentioned in the above article, Itai Anghel:

Posted to YouTube 1/18/2015.

Addendum

From the Awesome Conversation, one friend asked in reference to this piece, “Where are America’s most prominent feminists? The Naomi Wolf, Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman? sadly many are Jewish.”

BackChannels would suggest that some mouths have been trained in a certain political aesthetics: what is “cool”.  Some people will stick with “what was cool” even while time wraps layers of change around them, and they become like amber, old, shiny, and fixed.

The developed empathy that drove a humanist liberalism would do well to confront new challenges.  The Jewish community, conservative and liberal, will always address abuse, disconcern, neglect in the promotion of human dignity and human rights, but it may need to update now and then its assessments of the ambitions of its fellow travelers.

# # #

FTAC – Advertising by the Different Jihad’s Anti-Jihad

23 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, Islam, reformation

Geller-TransBanner-tif-cr-524x

VICTORY!Judge rules for us in AFDI vs MTA:”The [MTA’s} theory is thoroughly unpersuasive” #WIN http://t.co/7nkCXIrTd7 pic.twitter.com/EtdlRs2kZL

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) April 21, 2015

If the screenshot banner copy is unclear or too small to read, it says, “‘Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah’ — Hamas MTV.  That’s His Jihad, What’s yours?”

 Comment From The Awesome Conversation

The Geller and Spencer and other anti-Jihad shows ask of Islam sufficient introspection and courage emphasize virtue, reform if necessary, and put both the 20th Century inspiration for the “Muslim Botherhood” and related poison-in-the-head out of business so that more of the world can get to work on other things.

However, the conflict and violence that assaults us daily by way of global media — and investment in this region of discussion — hasn’t only to do with Islam: it has to do with the interpretation of power — absolute and feudal or distributed and democratic. “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” are of a type, and Islam, especially in the middle east, has been “played” (ref.: Pacepa and Rychlak) and plays to their deeply medieval world vision and the image they have of themselves in it.

The Jews continuously, famously, remove themselves from cults of godlike personality and continue eternally in search of the Promised Land. Instead of imposing, the commune invites, and perhaps after Hillel, some ideas about a common humanity become borrowable but also political and little bit crooked (in Judaism, for example, all of the prophets are drawn as faulted humans, deeply so, and kept separate from God). For our grandiose delusional dictators fascists malignant narcissists, the limitation perhaps seems a deep affront and “control”, sadistic and total, becomes their thing. Must we have them? “Syndicate Red Brown Green” and NATO, more or less, are wrestling over it. Hamas is way down on the food chain (thank Khamenei, among others, for keeping it in business) but it’s leveraging some Islamic zeitgeist to produce chaos, fear, and sorrow around itself serves the larger press of the feudal mode.


Not only “the awesome conversation” elicits the above but also simply visiting these themes — conflict, culture, language, psychology — day after week after month after years: things come to the surface.  Some become so familiar as to become blog-based tropes:

No Moses — no Muhammad

Hillel the Elder –> Jesus, Paul, Constantine –> Muhammad

The Torah begins with God

The Torah, closely read, compels progressive ethical and moral argument

Syndicate Red Brown Green (post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia; new national socialists; Islamists)

Expect some items to show up on the “Alpha – Zulu” page of this blog.  Others may be simply plugged into meditative political writing as fit.

The tests of will in conflict that BackChannels has come to perceive has been very much within the medieval vs modern template, which would be fine if the medieval proved good.  The matter, however, has been complicated by a dark portion in psychology, i.e., the compulsive, endless, and helpless fascism and sadism of the malignant narcissist.  Too often, capricious power — power considering itself above all natural laws and inclined to create and make the same to suit itself without limits — comes to impose suffering on others with impunity.  It (!) appears to prize the annihilation of others and the erasing of time out of the urge to exist in a timeless world entirely of its own fashioning — and doing so it dooms itself to annihilation.

Additional Reference

Miller, Michael E.  “Killing Jews is worship posters will soon appear on NYC subways and buses.”  The Washington Post, April 22, 2014.

# # #

← Older posts
Newer posts →
  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Recent Posts

  • All At Once–War
  • On X: Final Comment on Trump-Putin
  • On X: American State of Affairs: Notes to Anders Aslund.
  • On X: Cowards and Criminals Negotiate Russia v. Ukraine
  • The Destructive Power of Lies: Active Measures and Destabilization and Influence Operations
  • East-West Rivalry: Trump-Putin Divide the World

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • IRT Images Research Tropes
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • OnX
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Qualities of Living (QOL)
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Guinea
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
      • Serbia
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Create account
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

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.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • BackChannels
    • Join 356 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar