“Everywhere the Jews have been they have committed unprecedented abominations.”
http://www.meforum.org/3022/anti-semitism-prevents-peace – Summer 2011.
19 Sunday Oct 2014
Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
FTAC – On “The dictator Khamenei-Putin-Assad . . . .”
17 Friday Oct 2014
I’ve joked about the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei — together they are defending political absolutism”, but recently I’ve become curious about the roles played by Putin’s FSB and Khamenei’s VEVAK in the middle east and in relation to drawing down U.S.-NATO resources and resolve.
Khamenei coming out and pointing the finger the CIA for ISIS, a huge absurdity, makes me want to point the finger back at VEVAK by way of blackmailed private money in KSA and Qatar. I know I know I know and promise not to indulge further in conspiracy-think but given the consolidation of wealth in Iran’s Setad operation, the dictator “Khamenei-Putin-Assad” might make some sense.
The public — any public — knows one thing about secrets-keeping in times of war: if the authorities aren’t talking candidly, conditions might be larger and worse than imagined.
Two items inspired the note in the Awesome Conversation: one was the initiation of Russo-Iranian military exercises in the Caspian Sea (Times of Israel, October 17, 2014); the other was Khamenei’s off-the-wall accusation through his Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi of combined Mossad, MI6, and CIA involvement in launching, so I call it, “BadDaddy’s Islamic Hate” AKA “ISIS”.
Should that finger pointing not be pointing back at the Islamic Devilution in Iran?
Too much politics “behind the curtains” destroys democracies and perhaps only temporarily strengthens despots. What is certain today would seem Putin’s deeply callous (for Sochi: $51 billion; for Syrian relief: $0) relationship with a Syrian regime that set off on political suppression by jailing and torturing children caught up in protest, appears to have moved to spare ISIS and related positions while bombing the hell out of noncombatant targets, and appears now to be sucking NATO toward collision on both Iraqi and Israeli flanks.
That Iran would undertake to create an enemy designed to distract Washington and that it might clean up should it make major gains makes more sense than Washington creating the monster against which it has been actively flying missions and seeking a strategy to undermine ISIS in every way possible.
So if ISIS has not been a Washington project, whose baby might it turn out to have been after all?
Who invested some seed money in it?
Given the criminal abuse of its own subjugated people – by theft or by hanging — and its long demonstrated indulgence in deception, deflection, and dishonesty with others, might it be . . . ?
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FTAC – Chompskyitis
16 Thursday Oct 2014
Tags
Chomsky, conflict, conspiracy theorizing, ISIS, Islamic Small Wars, politics, secrets keeping, VEVAK
Noam is a bright little boy who got a lot of attention in the campus-borne movements of the Vietnam Era, and he’s been loyal to causes and figures throughout at the expense of honesty and integrity.
This catches up with him as linguistics proves larger and more surprising than even himself (reference: Daniel Everett, linguistics) and as the absurdities in his position become glaring.
I had a friend suggest to me this morning that VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service, has leveraged private money in KSA and Qatar to seed ISIS and is using the same to drain US-NATO resources, overrun Sunni Islam, and then lend itself to the same behind-the-curtains methods used to get it started but in the end to take it apart, finish it off, and leave the Islamic Devilution in Iran in charge of a larger world and its wealth (look-up: “Setad, Iran”).
Well, why not?
It makes as much sense as Chomsky’s disingenuous New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left patter.
Source of inspiration:
http://topinfopost.com/2014/10/06/noam-chomsky-the-united-states-created-isis – 10/6/2014.
War by proxy, war planning behind the curtains, hijacked religions, hijacked states (including perhaps the United States of America by a Manchurian Obama) appear to be themes playing in the background of the Islamic Small Wars.
What are the world’s secret security services and intelligence operations doing . . . right now?
?
And is Obama addressing ISIS as an acute challenge deserving sorties while Iraqi Sunni and Shiite communities sort themselves out far enough to enlarge the scale and scope of the war or get around it (together) now?
Have the Ayatollah and the capitalist and piratical Setad umbrella become powerful enough to blackmail or otherwise manipulate pockets of private wealth in Saudi Arabia and Qatar?
BackChannels will refuse right here to pull an Alex Jones on you and fly whirlybird style into thin air, but there is the region of the hidden, private, and shameful (probably) in which politics takes place off stage and lives are destroyed in the maniacal gathering of power to an immense fragile malignancy.
Pair for entertainment: VEVAK : ISIS
There will be records, and when it’s all over some day, perhaps we will be able to read them together.
Posted to YouTube in 2011:
Dig the English accent, the cocktail lounge underscore, the glamour, and pour me a martini, stirred, never shaken.
Related Reference
http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2010/05/chomsky-think.html – 5/17/2010.
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15 Wednesday Oct 2014
Recently, I addressed the Hillel House at Rutgers University on human rights in the Islamist World — matters on which I have worked, as a physician and a Muslim woman, for many years. The Hillel House filled with a sea of youths from diverse backgrounds: Jewish men and women, Muslim men and women, many ethnicities, a uniquely American tapestry.
The students listened as I spoke of Riyadh, Malakand, Mingora, Karachi, and the many places in between; I described how Islamism legitimizes lethal intolerance of women and minorities of Muslim and other faiths, how Islamism eliminates democratic freedoms, and how it places anti-Semitism at the core of its theology.
http://www.nationalreview.com//article/390314/company-prophets-qanta-ahmed – 10/15/2014.
Islam – Two Recent Political Attitude Surveys
15 Wednesday Oct 2014
Reference on this blog: “Shimmer”.
Update – October 9, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/06/ben-affleck-and-bill-maher-are-both-wrong-about-islamic-fundamentalism/ – 10/6/2014. The global survey highlights tell at least a story suspected: attitudes are different in North America from those predominant in Asia and elsewhere.
As with other mirage, as one in fact draws closer to the object sought, the shimmering stops and more solid details maintain their appearance with solidity.
Update – October 15, 2014
The most striking as well as encouraging finding is that ISIS has almost no popular support in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Lebanon – even among Sunnis. Among Egyptians, a mere 3 percent express a favorable opinion of ISIS. In Saudi Arabia, the figure is slightly higher: 5 percent rate ISIS positively. In Lebanon, not a single Christian, Shiite, or Druze respondent viewed ISIS favorably; and even among Lebanon’s Sunnis, that figure is almost equally low at 1 percent.
http://fikraforum.org/?p=5608 – Distributed 10/14/2014 by The Washington Institute. The web page summary has attached to it the full PDF report.
The BackChannel’s page “Shimmer” launched to suggest that factual data should exist somewhere between the apologist’s “ISIS does not represent Islam” and the strident anti-Jihadist’s “Islam is represented by ISIS”.
It should be noted that Islam-defending apologist and the strident Jihad watcher share the same abhorrence as regards what ISIS represents. In contest, however, one argues that Muhammad the Messenger and the Qur’an are okey dokey and some Muslims are nutty (and need to be dealt with) and the other’s analysis suggests Muhammad’s battlefield history — with the Banu Qurayza signal to what was to come — plus the contradictions within the Qur’an plus patently vicious Hadith, including the counsel to deceive the infidel, are just plain ugly all the way through.
Now we’re starting to see numbers.
From a dimensional perspective, fog floats with them: the reduction “ISIS bad : Brotherhood good : Hamas very good” (suggested by facets of the Fikra Forum report) is a head scratcher: what central beliefs and tenets and related attitudes constitute irreducible surveyed objects of interest?
While the “Islamic Small Wars” burn everywhere beneath the surface or on it, the want to address those “beliefs, tenets, and related attitudes” as candidly, completely and specifically as possible remains compelling.
Related and Recommended Reading
One woman gestured to her hijab, her face flushed, shouting: “Who are you to talk about these victims, when you aren’t even visibly Muslim?” For good measure, she added that I was personally responsible for the post 9/11 escalation in the harassment of veiled Muslim women.
I was stunned.
Update October 24, 2014
http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-concerns-about-extremist-groups/ – 9/10/2013. This poll predates the other two, but it belongs here as may Daniel Pipes’ classic “How Many Islamists?” from 2003.
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FTAC – ME – Comment – Political Absolutism
13 Monday Oct 2014
The alternative axis of power — “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”, which may be more accurately expressed as “Khamenei-Putin-Assad” — is predicated entirely on the destruction of Jewish ethics, morality, and thought that has contributed mightily to the intellectual construction of the Judeo-Christian / Greco-Roman west. The west did not start out where it has arrived, but where it has arrived — equal rights, human rights, rule of law (rather than of men), democracy rather than despotism, etc. — stands as an affront to piratical dictatorships worldwide. Catch on and hang on or let go and get lost (so ISIS — bank robbers, plunderers extraordinaire — can pick you up) that sense of dignity in self and dignity in others might well be, ultimately, the “gift of the Jews”, from Moses to Muhammad in those parts speaking to the “better angels of our nature”. Putin, Assad, Khamenei are each believers in political absolutism. So is Baghdaddi. They may not know that they are really fighting together on the same side.
The tropes are going to take over, e.g., “Putin-Assad-Khamenei: together they are defending political absolutism.”
There’s some truth in them.
Perhaps they – so many repeated kernels, ideas, and puns – just need a page of their own.
Be that as it may, conflict involving “the west” may ultimately devolve to democracy vs despotism.
The details may be complicated, God knows, but the theme may be also just that simple.
Either have a voice in the governance of one’s geopolitical space — or not; either be free among those free to say yes and no to life’s challenges and opportunities — or be enslaved and have a host of decisions already made for you. Such choosing between good and evil should be stark, but for some torn between a lonely idealism and the seductions set out by tyrants — or promoted by their agents, manipulations, and money — such choosing becomes deeply confused.
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FTAC – RANT – Pakistan – Bleating Hearts
13 Monday Oct 2014
Americans are not victims of America.
We own America.
We work for America as Americans and whether in private industry or government, we and every neighbor is in one or the other, Main Street to Wall Street, police station to military barracks in the far reaches of the world.
Hate America, undermine America, blame America — look in the mirror.
When aid to Pakistan, domestic and military, reaches Pakistan, it’s in Pakistani hands to spend. If much of that spending gets lost, goes without audit, does not make it to The People of Pakistan, does not improve security or domestic qualities in living, we didn’t spend it: we gave it.
Secrets-keeping governments naturally inspire conspiracy thinking and paranoia. Knowing this, in the U.S., we divulge our secrets, many, most, and all across time. Some decades may pass between act and acknowledgement but the truth (here) always surfaces. Our real armies don’t wear uniforms. Sometimes they don’t even get out of their jeans and sweatshirts, but they’re up to their elbows in historical research that may be and will be examined by peers and third parties and very possibly by God Almighty himself. That knowledge tends to make everyone responsible.
Such as ISIS love ambivalence, doubt, and weakness in targets, and the degree to which the same will sacrifice others not for God but for plunder and the merciless dominance of others is breathtaking.
If you think Iraq was a mistake, look over Saddam’s palaces built on the backs of his people. Ask the Marsh Arabs about the destruction of their timeless way of life. Ask the Kurdish people about what it’s like to be gassed en masse by an implacable tyrant. Speak to the Shiite about serving the Baathist “cause”.
Really hate the west: stop taking our money, time, resources, ingenuity, and available spending. The “west” for its part could and should do better to encourage better ecological and labor practices in its trading partners plus greater insistence on democracy and human rights. Beyond that, we give — Pakistan spends. If the state has problems with itself, swap out the politicians in the next round of elections.
Whether through the sewage pumped out by the solidarity movements are loose souls wandering in the shadows of one fascist past or another, there are global “Hate America First” crowds.
When cozy, they talk, inventing words that never existed, but it makes some feel good to have a central fixture for pelting with verbal stones.
Sound like something of which you may be aware?
Well, that’s language for you. It has echoes, ghosts, mirage, murmurs, and reminders, and while it may be easy to go with so many programs that create ideas and relationships in our heads, we sometimes stop to think a moment about Iraqi poverty in the age in which Saddam Hussein maintained his palaces, and then we say “wait a minute — let’s have a closer look at how that works.”
That’s all it takes sometimes: a closer look at gross inequality, injustice, implacable will, and the numbing cruelty that accompanies them.
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FTAC – Droning Chat
13 Monday Oct 2014
It’s a deeply cynical article in multiple. For one thing, Malala has a voice all her own, and she has made that voice make a difference in the world, and for that reason — for education, for equality, for freedom, for peace — she has gotten the ears of the truthfully free world.
Nabila Rehman is indeed a victim of the “war on terror” — which like the one on drugs is also a conflict involving people, many of whom either are or start out innocents. The level of effort, from Pakistani military runs with tanks (how come there seems to have been not much interest in the last sweep through the frontier?) to drone to shootouts to handcuffs and jails — responds to the character of challenge and resistance in the field: get the field down to where military or police may make arrests and more people live.
That civil or governed field isn’t there yet, and the drones correspond to keeping boots, not only American, off the ground, and the violence (compared to that which goes before a marching army) as low as that technology allows.
Now addressed: how did grandmother or family get on a target list in the first place?
It’s not easily done.
Somebody has to be noticed first.
As with Hamas in Gaza and elsewhere throughout the Islamic Small Wars, civilians get used badly, not only killed and maimed in the crossfire. Unlike computers and phones, minds may hold plans or signals that cannot be hacked (courier service). Homes and adjacent property may shelter tunnels, weapons depot, operations centers, etc. The God Mob may twist arms to get innocents in front of their evil doing, but that’s part of the hell that creates refugees — and damaged-for-life children.
I do commentary, not war planning or anything approaching “field operations” but as a writer, one wants to fill in the blanks: how did the target become a target? I would want to know that much before reviewing the dismal facts (“on the ground”) flowing down from that decision.
Inspiration:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/malala-nabila-worlds-apart-201311193857549913.html – 11/1/2013.
The year-old Al Jazeera story was played against Malala’s recent Nobel Prize.
As there are people who believe that America (or the Jews, often enough) control and manipulate the world, there are writers who skinny on up that tree when the truth is there’s a lot of plain bad behavior, chaos, and danger out in the wild. If the “Islamic Small Wars” (from Afghanistan to Yemen) could be solved with detectives, poets, and detachments of military and paramilitary polices, they would be handled just that way, and the drone bombings (which frequency has diminished) would diminish with reductions in terrorist attacks on persons and populations.
I have no apparent idea as to how a specific grandmother, family member, or home or home site gets on a target list, but it doesn’t happen with an “oops” by the hand of fate: somebody saw something, said something, investigated something — and the results are awful but much the same (but less) than market and mosque bombings and raids against military and police barracks. Somehow, in the creation of anti-west opinion, a lot of information goes missing.
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