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Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

FTAC: For Conflicts, Middle East and Others, a Day for Denying Intractability and Embracing Optimism for a Much Better Global Tomorrow

15 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, International Development, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Transition, A Modern Politics, Future Solving, Globally Forward Thinking, Medieval to Modern

Inspiration

My conversational partner, an Israeli, said, “Some problems don’t have solutions. That’s a concept that’s especially difficult for Americans to understand.”

From the Awesome Conversation


There are no intractable political challenges for any authentically modern and progressing democratic society and state.

Rawabi has been brought into existence by Palestinian wealth and is in business with western Fortune 500 companies, including Mellanox.

Here’s another project launched — i.e., off the draftsman’s board and under construction today — in an unlikely place:

https://www.neom.com/index.html

The world is neither hopeless nor helpless in light of its collective issues and future. It may be crime ridden, fractious, and violent, but the measurable qualities of evil may be diminished with time. We have not, thank God, had our World War III but while living perpetually in a state of competition or conflict with China and Russia — those may be considered the Orwellian two other powers — we have developed sustained lower-intensity conflicts and the transnational crime organizations that fuel their fires. Well, if we can develop greater conscience in some, temper greed, and deal with practical pressures, we might be able to draw those down.

If the Devil’s winning, Mark, it’s our own fault (for not understanding how the Damned Thing works).

For corrupt Palestinian leaders, the real primary incentive appears to be relationships with elites yielding money and personal security. Some at the top of that heap should try purchasing a less self-centered and parochial conscience.


From whence comes the broader consideration of others in the world by those who by way of their own wealthy and powerful circumstance have the wherewithal to lead it?

In casual talk, I’ve suggested evolution.

Why not?

Nature grows our minds.

In more serious psychology, altruism, caring, conscience, love, and the related apprehension of duties, obligations, and responsibilities toward others seem altogether healthier characteristics than fearful and compensating tendencies toward the meanest and smallest minded expressions of the will to survive as a will determined to destroy or dominate others.

For those with seriously Up There — Plutocratic — Clout, which is the better direction and why grind against it?

Why not formulate ideas and programs better fit for both a challenging global and personal future by simply enjoying what has characterized the past in dogma and politics — there’s no need to dishonor the past for anyone — while moving on to “well, we are all here on just this one marble of an island in space and time — and our first priority should be keeping our own conditions — environmental and broadly social — better than survivable”?

There are those with the power to drive forward of their own circumstances and life experiences, the present is always the place in time (and there is no better) where some cultural rivers and their ideas (and associated behaviors) needs must dissolve in their own delta while others — more fit for future time and space — flow from new wellsprings.

Related Online

Neom

Rawabi

Wherever we are in time — this moment! — we’re not going to be in the same place tomorrow. It may look that way on the outside — same writer here, same desktop: differently informed and perpetually gathering, recombining, reformulating ideas, information, plans.


Posted to YouTube by April 5, 2063, January 30, 2019.

–33–

One Uniquely Modern American – United States Senator Kyrsten Lea Sinema

15 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Politics, United States of America

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A Modern Politics, Arizona Modern, Conservacrats, Kyrsten Lea Sinema

Sinema is considered a moderate or conservative Democrat and a proponent of bipartisanship.[4][5] During the 116th Congress, she voted with President Donald Trump‘s position roughly 25% of the time, the third-most of any Democratic senator, behind Joe Manchin and Mark Kelly.[note 1][6]

Wikipedia. “Kyrsten Sinema”.

NO to the inclusion of a $15 minimum wage in the latest COVID relief plan; YES to the Navajo Nation’s COVID related ‘Major Disaster Declaration’ — Arizona’s one-year-old Senator has chosen for navigation between deeply polarized camps a middle mixture of open bisexuality, conservative thought, and freedom-loving liberal ends.

Related Online

About the Conservacrat Senator from Arizona

BallotPedia. “Kyrsten Sinema”.

Everett, Burgess. “The most influential Democrat you never hear from.” Politico, February 12, 2021.

Fitsimons, Tim. “Kyrsten Sinema makes history as first bisexual member of U.S. Senate.” ABC News, November 13, 2018.

GovTrack. “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema”.

Kyrsten Sinema, U.S. Senator for Arizona

Nwanevu, Osita. “Arizona’s Democratic Senators are Already Angering the Left.” Soapbox, The New Republic, February 15, 2021.

Scott, Eugene. “Kyrsten Sinema broke a slew of barriers with her Senate win. So how was identity a nonissue in her race?” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018.

The Lily. “Kyrsten Sinema is bisexual and claims no religion. But identity was a nonissue in her winning Senate race.” November 24, 2018.

Wikipedia. “Kyrsten Sinema”.


About Kyrsten Sinema and Sgt. Daniel Somers

Dolsten, Josefin. “6 years on, parents of Jewish Army vet who took own life still fight for change.” The Times of Israel, August 5, 2019:

“To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand,” he wrote. “Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA [the VA’s Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance]. Any blame rests with them.”

Dolsten, Josefin. “6 years on, parents of Jewish Army vet who took own life still fight for change.” The Times of Israel, August 5, 2019.

Sinema, Kyrsten. “Sinema Introduces Daniel Somers Network of Support Act.” Senator’s Senate Web Page, May 14, 2019:

Sgt. Somers served two tours in Iraq and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD upon returning home. He lost his life to suicide in 2013. After Sinema learned of Sgt. Somers’ story, she worked with his parents, Howard and Jean Somers, to introduce and successfully pass the Daniel Somers Access to Care Act, which ensures veterans who worked in classified jobs can receive behavioral health services in an appropriate care setting. Now, Sinema is working with the Somers to expand their network of support concept.

Sinema, Kyrsten. “Sinema Introduces Daniel Somers Network of Support Act.” Senator’s Senate Web Page, May 14, 2019.

Sworn in on the Constitution

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) will be Arizona’s first female senator. The lawmaker is not new to making history, especially when considering the very conservative state that launched her political career, but identity was not a dominant narrative of her historic campaign.

The former Mormon was the first person sent to Congress to claim no religion. After winning her congressional seat in 2012, she was sworn in on the Constitution, forgoing the Bible chosen by Christians — the dominant religion for members of Congress, especially those from Arizona.

Scott, Eugene. “Kyrsten Sinema broke a slew of barriers with her Senate win. So how was identity a nonissue in her race?” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018.
Posted to YouTube by CBS News, January 4, 2019.

–33–

Resource: Cold War; Global Human Rights; Hungary; Freedom; Orban’s Unfreedom

12 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eastern Europe, Free Speech, Hungary, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cold War Information Resource, Hungary, Open Society Archives, Soviet Post-Soviet Russian Dominance


Central European University | Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives


Related Online

Unlike the underground of Czarist times, today’s samizdat has no print ing presses (with rare exceptions): The K.G.B., the secret police, is too efficient. It is the typewriter, each page produced with four to eight carbon copies, that does the job. By the thousands and tens of thousands of frail, smudged onionskin sheets, samizdat spreads across the land a mass of protests and petitions, secret court minutes, Alexander Solzhenit syn’s banned novels, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984,” Nicholas Berdyayev’s philosophical essays, documents of the Czech Spring, all sorts of sharp political discourses and angry poetry.

Parry, Albert. “Samizdat is Russia’ Underground Press.” The New York Times, March 15, 1970.

On the Inconnu Independent Art Group

An appeal from the Inconnu Independent Art Group for funds to produced wooden grave markers to be erected in June 1989 at Plot 301 in Budapest’s New Public Cemetery, the assumed resting place of Imre Nagy and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, on the 31st anniversary of their execution.

Inconnu Independent Art Group/Tamás Molnár, Open Society Archives, June 16, 1989. The page features a woodcut of a totemic grave marker.

Wikipedia. “Inconnu Independent Art Group”.


History. “1956. November 4. Soviets put a brutal end to Hungarian revolution.” Last updated November 3, 2020.


Hungarian Spectrum


Published in 2005, the volume remains incredibly relevant as Putin challenges the liberal and open societies of the west with his version of 19th Century absolutism, aristocracy, and mafia.

Posted to YouTube by British Pathe, April 13, 2014.

According to the report’s methodology, Hungary is now a “hybrid regime,” having lost its status as a “semi-consolidated democracy” due to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s continued assaults on the country’s democratic institutions. https://70868d36203bc22d88a087b52c71fd8c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

The adoption of an emergency law that allows the government to rule by decree indefinitely, brought in after the coronavirus pandemic struck, “has further exposed the undemocratic character of Orbán’s regime,” the authors wrote, adding that “Hungary’s decline has been the most precipitous [they have] ever tracked.”

Gehrke, Laurenz. “Hungary no longer a democracy, Freedom House says: The NGO describes ‘a stunning democratic breakdown’ in the Eastern European country.” Politico, May 6, 2020.

Related: https://freedomhouse.org/country/hungary .


Posted to YouTube by treffynnon19 March 21, 2018.

Posted to YouTube by Vera & Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, September 13, 2012.

Wikipedia. “End of Socialism in Hungary”.

–33–

Short Comment on Trump’s Mob and the Abuse of Language

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Medieval Incitement, Medieval Rhetoric, Orwellian Unreason, Trump's Mob

Recorded by CNN and posted to YouTube February 9, 2021.

Trumpian Sins

Accusation in a Mirror, Inverted, Projected;

Agenda-Driven Disingenuous Speech, Bent and Twisted (More Than Some);

Appeals to Emotion with Incitement Absent of Empiricism and Logic;

Defamation and Slander, Conspiracy Laden, Hazy, Vicious;

Disinformation;

Lies;

Innuendo.


Related Online

Cummings, William, Joey Garrison and Jim Sergent. “By the numbers: President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the election.” USA Today, January 6, 2021.

Kuznia, Rob, Curt Devine, Nelli Black, and Drew Griffin. “Stop the Steal’s massive disinformation campaign connected to Roger Stone.” CNN Business, November 14, 2020.

Related from Literature



Domestic Tranquility

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”


Related on BackChannels

Basic Training

Malignant Narcissism

Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation

–33–

FTAC: Palestinian KGB: Another Remark

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

East-West Rivalry, MEC, middle east conflict, Palestinian KGB

From the Awesome Conversation


I harp on this point with the hope that it will lead to insight into the Palestinian role in more general and profound “east-west relations” — https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html As Moscow has remained “politically absolute” in relation to power, so it has supported corrupt dictatorships around the world and blocked the spread of western liberalism and democratic self-determination and inclusion. The Middle East Conflict remains but one of many now post-Soviet frozen conflicts energized by its defunct Soviet Era framing and covered by the “liberation movement” banner.


From Arafat to Abbas to whoever comes next, Palestinian leaders have been puppets with their string attached to the Russia’s political police services.

–33–

FTAC: Yemen: Houthi: One Question

09 Tuesday Feb 2021

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Agents of Iran, Houthi Zeitgeist, medieval v modern, Post-Soviet Communism, Post-Soviet Dictatorship, Post-Soviet Socialism, Soviet-Style Tragedy, Tehran's Proxies, terrorism, Yemen

From the Awesome Conversation


— Subsidy backlash. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which had extended to Yemen a $550 million loan premised on promises of economic reforms, Hadi’s government lifted fuel subsidies in 2014. The Houthi movement, which had attracted support beyond its base with its criticisms of the UN transition, organized mass protests demanding lower fuel prices and a new government. Hadi’s supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated party, al-Islah, held counterrallies.

Houthi takeover. The Houthis captured much of Sanaa by late 2014. Reneging on a UN peace deal, they consolidated control of the capital and continued their southward advance. Hadi’s government resigned under pressure in January 2015 and Hadi later fled to Saudi Arabia. —

The Houthi act like post-Soviet Communists and appear aligned with the theocratic and thieving regime in Tehran.

Why President Biden would de-list the organization from the designated terrorist roster . . . please, tell me.


Related Online

Robinson, Kali. “Yemen’s Tragedy: War, Stalemate, and Suffering.” Council on Foreign Relations, last updated February 5, 2021.

Swofford, Tammy. “Yemen Revolution, September 21.” The Last English Prince, September 17, 2017.

–33–

Revisiting Ukraine – A Start

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Biden Administration, Ukraine

Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine, February 8, 2021, Liveuamap screen capture.
Live at 1 p.m., February 8, 2021.

Former American President Trump’s tenure proved the nation’s distraction from all but itself with the exception of China for Trumpian finger pointing over the “Wuhan Flu”. Now the state’s perhaps a little startled to find itself again a part of the free and do-good world of the Atlantic Alliance. With concern for Russia’s now baldfaced aggression in Ukraine, President Biden will have to pick up on Russia’s crude squatting there and degrading and subverting industrial and other Ukrainian assets in the process of its imposing its largely unwelcome presence and will.

Posted while live — I’m inclined to take notes.

Related Online

Coffey, Luke. “The Black Sea should be a US and NATO priority.” MEI, February 6, 2020.

Council on Foreign Relations. “Conflict in Ukraine.” Global Conflict Tracker, n.d., last updated February 5, 2021.

Trenin, Dmitri. “Dealing with Biden’s America.” Carnegie Moscow Center, February 8, 2021.

Ukrainian Prism.


Posted to YouTube by Intelligence Fusion, February 2, 2021.

–33–

FTAC: Change: Medieval –> Modern

06 Saturday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Civilizational Change

From the Awesome Conversation


One theme is change and has to do with outgrowing old ways and adopting new ones . . . but on a civilizational level rather than personal; and the other may involved Moscow’s perfidy, if that, in efforts to encourage and sustain the feudal and tribal political and social arrangements and identities that account for the brutality and corruption of dictatorships attached to cultures left behind in geopolitical time. The 9/11 crews, for example, were still fighting the “crusader west”.


Related Online: Anachronisms, Rivers in Time, and Time Bubbles

If Time were a Surface, one where cultures and religions, among other things, have their wellsprings — and boisterous young years — and their deltas — with years fading into abandonment, one could map multiple lines, start to finish, for the gods, tribes, kingdoms, and states — and the attitudes, beliefs, and prayers and rituals once embraced.

The three pieces cited below may at first seem disconnected, but each has to do with recovering or sustaining something installed — conflicts, ideas, relationships — in the past and no longer quite so necessary to the stewardship of Earth and the survival of our species (with the exception of diminishing our numbers with fire).


Harrod, Andrew. “Craig Considine: Islam’s Muhammad Shall Overcome Racism.” Jihad Watch, February 2, 2021.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Sheth, Sonam, Skye Gould, and Grace Panetta. “What we know about Paul Manafort’s connections to Russia.” Business Insider, August 1, 2018.


Above and in the order presented: a contemporary Constantine despoils the syncretic pablum that would diminish a long-standing rivalry with Muhammad’s troops; an explorer on the East-West Sea (a place in Time) suggests Zawahiri’s strings have been pulled by Moscow; and, yes, there was collusion but to be found in relationships and activities beneath them, not in deals.

So, for the future, how may Christian zealots and Islamist fanatics reach their deltas?

Well, they might wear themselves out while having made careers of their conversation — why stop today or tomorrow or in the next 35 years? The quests of each have become institutions — for as long as each may open wallets — and there’s money to be made defending and passing along dogma irregardless of its relevance to other than itself.

As for “authoritarians” or “political absolutists” — the criminals of politics past and future — they’re snagging money in their maneuvers — and most ruin their surrounds while aggrandizing and prettying themselves.


“Anachronisms” would seem things no longer fit to contemporary circumstance and concern.

“Rivers in Time”, as suggested, would be the channels carved by something young at one time — energetic, full, and moving heaven and earth — and later no longer strong but diminished and dispersed.

“Time Bubbles”?

In such Regions in Time we collectively but separately sustain and replay old battles, stubbornly stick to our guns, and confidently believe we’re getting somewhere while going nowhere until one party or the other — or both — find ruin and leave their children or others to find them in history a page or a footnote or not vanquished but vanished.

–33–

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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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