Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

FTAC: The Big Lie About Israel and the Whipping of the Mob – Palestinian Subjugation by Hamas

04 Saturday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East

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From the Awesome Conversation:

A narrative through which the Palestinians have been lied too for more than 70 years is not something either Israelis or Palestinians need to or should respect. The soul of the conflict sustained by PLO / PA has to do with (genocidal) Palestinian intentions for Israel far more than the history of the place, and those old lies, that propaganda from another age, need to drift into the past and, at some point, be sealed in it.

Screen capture, May 4, 2019 at 5:50 p.m. EST. Message: “Al Quds will extend the range of rockets. Dimona. Ashdod Port. Ben-Gurion airport and Haifa refinery will be on fire.”

What was the lie?

It has gone something like this: “The Jews stole your land and God wants you to seize it back!”

As lies may, this whopper apparently sounds true to the disinformed, ill-educated, impressionable, and simple minded, but it is not a true statement — and for that not the kind of thought intended to improve the lives of Palestinians in any meaningful dimension, financial, physical, psychological, or spiritual.

What that lie has done is simply deflect attention from marauding, mediocre, and murderous “leaders” and their sponsors who have used the same to promote worldviews — there have been two or more broad inventions (Pan-Arab Nationalism; Islamic Extremism) — certain to serve their own egos, social standing (in politically disciplined circles), and wallets.

Russia has made an art of amplifying the resentments of their marks — those who will serve them — and enraging them.

Soviet cartoons distributed in the Middle East to leverage “the masses” into the Soviet camp.

The Palestinians have been corralled into apartheid Arab camps like Yarmouk (neither love nor mercy were shown them in the course of the Syrian Civil War), politically repressed in Gaza and the West Bank, and treated as human shields fit for martyrdom with a little push — or abandonment — by their governments.

For the Palestinian main base there has been no end to subjugation by the PLO/PA and Hamas and related abuse, corruption, and neglect. For Palestinians in the Diaspora — and for the hipsters on the Far Left that endorse counterproductive and misery-sustaining efforts like the “Boycott Divestiture and Sanctions (BDS) Movement” — there hasn’t been a better time to have an independent look into any of the following:

Hamas Human Rights Abuses and Political Repression

Israeli Expansion Via Defensive Arab Wars of Annihilation

Ottoman Administration of the Land Registry of the Region

Palestinian Economic Development and Marketing and Shipping To and Through Israel

Palestinian-Serving Qualified Enterprise Zone Programs

Zionist Land Purchasing Programs

The Palestinian relationship with the Soviet KGB and the phantoms of it have not been fruitful for most Palestinians – but how would Palestinians subjugated by Fatah and Hamas know that? How would those driven mad with resentment and bad information undo their training?

Global News, Canada, May 4, 2019. Related:
Akram, Fares. “3 dead after Israeli airstrikes target Gaza in response to 200 rockets fired by militants.” Global News, May 4, 2019.
Sky News, August 6, 2018. Backgrounder.

Related on BackChannels: “Hamas Urges Palestinians Toward Injury and Death.” May 14, 2018 | “FTAC: MEC: Palestinians: A People Waiting to be Born Again, Honestly.” October 20, 2018.

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Ukraine’s Portent: A Dying West or Continuous Resurgent and Robust Democratic Revolution?

04 Saturday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Russia, Ukraine

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Once inured to suffering associated with Russian arms and will, the liberal democracies of the west risk watching the heat rise — or the surroundings change — while being lazed into unconscious acceptance.

Screen capture LiveUA Map May 4, 2019.

Ukraine’s five-year-old “frozen conflict” has not been forgotten by EU / NATO, which methodically if slowly has focused on containing the irritating Bear now pummeling Mariupol and targets north by northwest along a line of embattled territory on the western edge of Donetsk Oblast. In addition to a vigorous round of military exercises conducted by NATO in 2018, typified perhaps by the 31+ nation Trident Juncture 18, the United States has continued training-related deployments to Ukraine in a “train-the-trainers ” effort to improve Ukraine’s defense against greater incursion by Russian forces.

Not to flack the rah-rah: Ukraine has been made to pay a near daily — or daily — price in injury and death for having become a Russian test bed (no different than Syria) for Moscow’s defense technologies and “hybrid warfare”.

Russia’s cynical “Passportization” program appears also under way with the only resistance to it to be found in Ukrainian disinterest.

The Russian propaganda mill plies a familiar routine with web videos: the most recent shelling appears to come from Ukrainian forces without cause (I’ll leave the look-up on such as “Donetsk, fighting” to the reader). However, as displayed on any given LiveUAmap, Russia’s military-integrated activity should seem clear enough.

Primary source for this section:

Chang, Felix K. “Are the Russians Coming?: Russia’s Military Buildup Near Ukraine.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, February 25, 2019.

Drawing from the above source, this is what BackChannels tallies for undeniable Russian military presence in proximity to Ukraine’s border:

12 Battalions
340 Helicopters
500 Tactical Aircraft

Derived from the same source but focusing on what has been observed in relation to Russia’s military presence on the Crimean Peninsula:

A-50 AWAC (1)
BMD-2 Infantry Fighting Vehicles
IL-76 Military Transport Aircraft
S-300 Air Defense Batteries (2)
S-400 Air Defense Batteries (5)

Analyst Felix K. Chang’s winter 2019 observation for the Foreign Policy Research Institute:

“Together with two other S-300 air defense batteries nearby, Russian land-based air defenses in the region could simultaneously launch as many as 192 surface-to-air missiles. Interestingly, their crews have been training to counter not only hostile aircraft, but also sea-launched cruise missiles, seemingly in preparation for a NATO intervention. Whatever the case, the airspace above Crimea and Donbas has quickly become among the most well-defended in the world.

For cruising through related offerings on YouTube and elsewhere on the web, the open source seems short of up-to-the-minute Ukrainian war reportage but for the Live UA Map, a conflict pin board, and reporting by Michael MacKay via Twitter and through his column in Radio Lemberg.

BackChannels has been seeing the numbers, finding Russian-side videos (in which the fire always comes from Ukraine, not the Russian-backed separatists that provoke it), and finding videos from when the conflict was all bloody new, shocking, and hot. Now it’s still bloody and plenty hot, but it has become a part of the daily fare in the world’s conflict-related horror show.

Perhaps a warning should be issued: once inured to suffering associated with Russian arms and will, the liberal democracies of the west risk watching the heat rise — or the surroundings change — while being lazed into unconscious acceptance.

MacKay’s tweet, much in line with thinking by America’s Democrats and possibly some Republican moderates, begs a few questions about Ukraine’s “frozen conflict” among others: how much “patience” has the west? How much destruction and how many lives lost is acceptable before jawing about Russian barbarism and kleptocracy and posturing about western defense support and strength lose their charm?

Russia has recently claimed victory in Syria. This is what that looks like:

Ruptly, January 20, 2016

With the winter-is-coming cloud of nuclear warfare hanging over east-west confrontation — and with the incredible billions of dollars laundered out of transnational criminal enterprise spiked into the bloodstreams of states — the way forward for the democratic attenuation of political power and the promotion of faith in rule of law may be difficult to see. While one may hope for hope in that regard, locking related conflicts into one place without limit seems itself dispiriting and on the side of evil.

For how long may Ukraine be expected to endure a Moscow-engineered “status quo”?

And for how long may EU / NATO — already somewhat compromised by Moscow’s use of Islamic Terrorism and Syrian mass migration to induce / “inspire” the western “New Nationalism” — abide Moscow’s favor for Feudal Political Absolutism (worldwide) and its concomitant eroding of the ideals, principles, and values associated with democracy and the still open societies of the west?

PBS NewsHour, May 2, 2019. For more information online:
Wilmont, Simon Lereng. The Distant Barking of Dogs.
VOA, April 9, 2019, prior to elections.
UATV English, April 30, 2019

Related on BackChannels:

Reflexive Control Process: “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” -> New Nationalism –> Neo-Feudalism

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

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Venezuela: Background for the Liberal Perspective

03 Friday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, South America, transnational crime, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State’”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns’”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos’”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

Instead of abetting or encouraging the survival of President Nicolas Maduro’s now brutal regime in Venezuela, Representative Ilhan Omar may do better to review how starvation came to visit the South American state — wondrously rich with resources — in the first place.

Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck it Poor.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.

Venezuela as petrostate had a fine run on high and rising oil prices, but as crude pricing fell, the state discovered discovered itself as yet . . . undeveloped — and foremost in its oil sector. From the above cited Foreign Policy piece:

The problem for Chávez was that many of the PDVSA’s then-managers wanted to increaseproduction, by continuing the development of Venezuela’s technically challenging heavy oil fields. To do so, they needed to reinvest more of the company’s earnings rather than hand them all over to the government. So the managers had to go.

It was only the beginning of the mismanagement of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

What about other sectors of the economy?

On agriculture, here’s an excerpt from The Washington Post (Mariana Zunig and Nick Miroff, “Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them”, May 22, 2017):

“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”

Several of his cavernous hen houses sit empty because, Escobar said, he can’t afford to buy more chicks or feed. Government price controls have made his business unprofitable, and armed gangs have been squeezing him for extortion payments and stealing his eggs.

As well known to other communist and socialist bureaucracies, the government owns all, but to play the role of an enlightened hub for all that the state needs and needs to share equally, it has to have something to distribute. As the oil economy collapsed, much around it appears to have caved as well.

Add desperation to insolvency: what the government hasn’t discouraged, ordinary thieves — not to blame them too much for their response to starvation — have apparently stepped in to pick up the slack.

Alas, also, Venezuela’s program had some items it distributes all too well for cash:

The network used a string of heavily guarded nightclubs to generate profits from the forced prostitution, which where then laundered through at least eight companies the group owned.

Thirteen victims were rescued and more than 2 million euros (almost $2.4 million) worth of properties, cash, jewelry and vehicles, as well as weapons, were seized as part of the operation.

Albaladejo, Angelika. “Transnational Sex Trafficking Rings Cash In on Venezuela Crisis.” InSight Crime, June 28, 2018.

Basically, Maduro’s dictatorship and its military (and the state’s mafia) have had between narcotics — noted at the top of this blog — and sundry other criminal undertakings — some nefarious ways of raising cash for themselves.

In the global politics, the regime has also the support of other feudal and absolute powers: Beijing and Moscow have both made arrangements with the hard-struck “socialist” state, and Turkey, famously, has been buying up Venezuelan gold now scraped off the earth by others scrambling for useful cash.

The state of war has become a constant between Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, but the issues are worked either “by other means”i.e., “diplomacy” or through punitive measures that would be violent swipes — and they are that — without the gun play. What works and how far it goes may be indicated by Venezuela’s continuing decline into chaos, darkness, and despair.

The western-supported alternative President Juan Guaido has been able to inspire defections — and that is saying something about the state of the Venezuelan state — but not yet raise the army to compete with Maduro’s heavily leveraged forces.

Related on the Web

O’Connor, Tom. “Russia, China and Iran Defend Support for Venezuela, warn U.S. Cannot Tell Them or Latin America What to Do.” Newsweek, April 15, 2019.

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FTAC: Regarding Palestinian Dissent

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_boundaries_of_Palestine_(plain).svg (Creative Commons) | Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region)

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/23/palestine-authorities-crush-dissent

This is the report: https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/10/23/two-authorities-one-way-zero-dissent/arbitrary-arrest-and-torture-under

Regarding Palestinian Land Ownership: http://www.badil.org/en/publication/periodicals/al-majdal/item/1055-land-ownership-in-palestine/israel-1920-2000.html

“Palestine”, so declared in the course of Roman conquest, has never been a sovereign power but a suzerainty through all of its existence.

“The Palestinians” have never before been a People, but given 70+ years of the Arab Apartheid that stranded the refugees of 1948, one may grant that the Palestinians are a unique People desperate for autonomous, responsible, and responsive modern governance.

We know the Palestinians are not getting that governance.

This is the kind of “governance” meted to Palestinians by Hamas:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14057/hamas-gaza-protests-torture

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Pierre Rehov’s Documentary “The Origins of the Palestinian Cause” and Related Reference

24 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia

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Published on Vimeo March 10, 2019

Pierre Rehov’s Middle East Documentaries

Pierre Rehov on Vimeo

The Soviet / post-Soviet Left / Far Left has in it some of Russia’s Olde Anti-Semitic Poison, as batched by Tsar Nicholas II’s secret political police, the Okhrana, and labeled The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Were it not for the transfer of that poison into Germany through White Russian emigre fleeing the Bolsheviks, the 20th Century may have played out quite differently. Credit Max Erwin von Scheubner Richter with pouring the same poison into Hitler’s ears and thereby inspiring The Holocaust.

The Palestinian main base, much defined by post-WWII Arab Apartheid — i.e., political separation of the refugees of 1948 to be exploited as a weapon against Jews, Israel, and the west — seems seldom to have a clue as to just how sorely it has been abused by Palestinian “leaders” who have stood on their backs to make themselves millionaires and billionaires many times over.

Related on BackChannels

Palestinian KGB

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/10/20/ftac-mec-palestinians-a-people-waiting-to-be-born-again-honestly/

FTAC – “These Too Are Palestinians”

BDS (Cult) Modules

FTAC – Tip to the KGB’s Amplification of Middle Eastern Anti-Semitism

FTAC: Antidote to What Poisoned the Palestinians

FTAC: Middle East Conflict: Back to Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter and Forward to the Plundering of Palestinian Misery by Palestinian Leadership Elites

Excerpt – 1920s – The Spread of Hate – Russia -> Germany | An Excerpt from Laqueur

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FTAC: Brief Note Re. Poland and the Holocaust

21 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Poland, Russia

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The topic is perennial: “The Poles did nothing to stop Hitler”; “The Poles murdered the Jews”; “The Poles were the worst of anti-Semites”; etc. So here is one fast response to all of that.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetl/ –> Marian Marzynski’s documentary on PBS “Frontline”.

The Holocaust may be unique in this overlooked way: it was an event so damning of the character of our species that it has been and may remain visited universally over time. The experience of it has given over to the memory of it. Each soul that visits The Holocaust, and there are many ways now, will experience and respond to it differently.

Compiled by the Polish American Librarians Association, a new list of recommended reading emphasizes books that effectively examine inflammatory questions that may never be fully answered or understood but continue to be asked: Did Poles collaborate with the Germans? Why did Poland have the largest Jewish population of any country in Europe? Why did the West disbelieve information about the death camps that was gathered by the Resistance? Why didn’t more Jews resist? Why was Poland the only country in which the death penalty was imposed for Christians harboring Jews? Why was the response of the Catholic Church so meek? Why, by far, are there more Polish names on the roll at Yad Vashem of Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews than any other nationality?

http://palalib.org/collection/poland/ (current)

Three million Poles were also taken by the Holocaust.

And there’s no denying the theft and inhabiting of Jewish property by the Poles.

Nonetheless, lose the black-and-white thinking.

For the energetic, two lesser known proper nouns might be worth a look-up in relation to The Holocaust: “Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter”; “Michael Kellogg” (The Russian Roots of Nazism).

Kellogg’s book: https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/111/5/1618/14004

I had left the nouns — Kellogg and Scheubner-Richter — without URLs to encourage readers of the thread to make a little bit of effort to know the true kernel of The Holocaust.

Additional basic reference online: http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/ | https://www.yadvashem.org/ | https://www.ushmm.org/

Recommended for viewing: “Image Before My Eyes: A History of Jewish Life in Poland before the Holocaust”.

Addendum in Response to Comment

The Polish experience of the Holocaust had been mixed and not in any small or trivial way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation tells a part of the story of horror for those in whom the Nazis found no value.

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Burning of Notre Dame: Indescribable, Ineffable, Inexpressible

15 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Screen capture from CNN video featured at the end of this post.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/notre-dame-fire/index.html

The heart of Paris has been burning for hours.

It’s sad.

Is that it?

The burning of Notre Dame is beyond sad, profoundly sad, cosmically sad, and sad beyond belief.

Pile on the adjectives — there is nothing that will come close.

What history have you seen?

Think of the history it has seen (start year: 1160 A.D.)

Tonight: grief.

One may hope that grief shared worldwide.

Did you work at Notre Dame or in any of the businesses serving its limitless parade of tourists?

One may hope the governments of Paris and France, first, then God, and then everyone else considers your well being especially this night. Tomorrow will not be just another day.

Tomorrow: expect to read about economic and environmental impacts, the destruction (and possibly saving) of priceless art, and the modern memory of an architectural space that has been ever consoling, reassuring, always there, defining “normal” by day, and beautiful, so I have heard, at night.

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Venezuela and the Liberal Progressive Stance

03 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Caribbean Basin, Central America, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Cuba, El Salvador, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Guatemala, Honduras, International Development, Mexico, North America, Political Psychology, Politics, South America, United States of America, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State'”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns'”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos'”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

North American Continental Appetite for Narcotics
–> Cash –> Central / South America
–> Cartel –> Gangs –> Related Violence
–> Corruption of Authorities
–> General Insecurity
–> Displacement of Population | Northern Mass Migration

If you’re on the Soviet / post-Soviet flavored Left / Far Left Progressive Movement, the same that might obtain its image of the world from, say, 927+ or Mint Press, at least consider reading Christopher Dickey’s report on the Cuba-Venezuelan connection and the InSight Crime series on narcotics trafficking and the accumulation of wealth by nominally “communist” and “socialist” so-called “leaders” in captive Central and South American states.

Related Online: https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/369700/100million-diva-whitney-houston-blew-fortune-on-crack/
Related Online: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2018/November/mexico-and-unodc-present-second-opium-poppy-cultivation-survey.html (November 2018). Other states have poppy fields, of course, but the expansion of cultivation in Mexico for the production of heroin in North America should be perhaps more widely acknowledged.

Breaking: Montoya-Galvez, Camilo. “Senators Introduce bill to send $400 million in aid to Venezuela, strengthen sanctions.” CBS News, April 3, 2019.

In familiar Orwellian fashion, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left simply ignores the sustained Soviet / post-Soviet investment in the underworld and what it does to societies everywhere it travels.

For decades Venezuela treated its oil reserves — as has Russia — as plunder for The People, which it was, while all the while failing to diversify its internal and trade economies. Who cared? There was money for everything — until oil prices fell.

And then there was nothing.

Or what was left were the sideshows: the selling off of gold reserves; the cocaine trade; sex-related human trafficking; and, nearer to this miserable late date, displacement and the bartering of everything.

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