Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

FTAC: MEC: A Possible Beginning to the End of the End

07 Sunday Oct 2018

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, Political Psychology, Politics

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While powerful mercenary, political, and religious forces sustain the Middle East Conflict (MEC), one may hope that nothing evil lasts forever.  That is the one hope that should bridge what most divides Israelis and Palestinians ready to move on with their lives as well as the great wall that exists in time between the region of feudal absolute power and that of the modern democratic distribution of power, rule of law, and responsible and responsive governance.

In the course of a day — and just about every day — the editor of this blog visits the “camps” in which complaint and demonizations prompted by attacks, injuries, and deaths are par for conversation.  Few, however, either side, take in the scope of the conflict in its post-WWII East v West / Moscow v Washington / Feudal v Modern aspect, so BackChannels tries (and tries and tries) to get to thought that is both short but broadening.

Palestinian Incitement –> “Actions” –> IDF Response –> Bereavement, Complaint, Further Incitement –> -/-

For the most part, the angered narrow their vision, speak their own truth, and summon their own choruses when it might prove more helpful to grasp the greater politics and the historic manipulation attending the same.

There are angels and devils in the details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_security_assistance_to_the_Palestinian_National_Authority

International Trade Administration. “Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ).” Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA).   http://web.ita.doc.gov/tacgi/fta.nsf/7a9d3143265673ee85257a0700667a6f/196ed79f4f79ac0085257a070066961d

Related (from the other side): https://www.merip.org/mero/mero111910 (Bahour, Sam. “Economic Prison Zones”. Middle East Research and Information Program, November 19, 2010).

The end of the Cold War should have produced a Moscow different from the one that groomed Arafat, established the PLO, and introduced the world to airline hijacking (in association with the “Palestinian cause”).

It didn’t.

While the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU) found itself diminished and disfavored, the methods, relationships, and rhetoric survived the transition, and I think it’s those phantoms that continue cycling the Palestinians through the same old same old and go nowhere / get nowhere political habits supporting incitement. There’s dirty arms and narcotics money in the conflict also (Barack Obama’s $1 billion cocaine “grant” to Hezbollah — https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/ . It has paid “the other side”, which is larger than it first looks, to keep the Palestinians boiling with the Big Lie — “Israel stole your land” .

I don’t know if there’s too much money in war.

What happens beneath the table produces a lot of heat — defense R&D, manufacturing, trade — on the surface. I believe — or would like to believe — that Moscow benefits more from the sustained conflict than Washington. Be the truth as it may be, the “Phantoms of the Soviet” have rather cooked down their own interests: Assad has pretty much destroyed his own state; irksome Hamas appears not to want another war; Abbas with his KGB record has turned into an old man rattling on about “resistance” without any place to take it.

Should the Middle East Conflict remain a reliable focal point for “east-west competition” with feudal structures and criminality on one side and constructive democratic features and the semblance of order on the other?

After 70+ years — and 26 years past the end of the Cold War — the MEC has to come down, but Palestinian political “cadre” and the main base susceptible to last century’s messaging and propaganda need help figuring out how they’ve been used — and they need to wake to the idea that peace would serve them (and everyone else) much, much better than a continued and mindless “resistance” based on the myth of their own myth founded on simple face-saving misdirection.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

Funny thing about “the truth”: all the small parts fit — the contributions of events and personalities add up — and the whole right image of the past grows stronger with time.

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ALW: Historical Necessities – Humor and Soul

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

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

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Recommended to this editor: David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace (Anniversary Edition, 2009).

Now wish-listed in my Amazon account, it would be a good book to own; however, the bookcases have been filled, and there’s even now a box full of books with bookmarks in them, the desktop having become more my platform than the sofa.

Darn.

The forum for the comment was one of Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi‘s pages on Facebook.  Daoudi, who once took a class of Palestinian students to Auschwitz and had his car torched for the effort, has been a strong advocate for a moderate Islam (Wasatia Movement (Facebook page]) and Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.  As suggested by the lost getabout, such efforts would seem tempered by the politics of the East Jerusalem space from which he prefers to work.

Fromkin’s book would be a good thing to own and read.  However —

I’m overstocked here with books, but if I had house and space, I’d go ahead and expand my library to 4,000 volumes, maybe more.

One thing about the truth in history: when something is true, all the small parts really do fit together.

In that fitting together, however, one may wish to have two essential elements for company: 1) a great sense of humor and 2) a lot of soul.

Previously recommended by yours truly to forum readers: Efraim Karsh’s 2011 volume, Palestine Betrayed.

Purpose: replace strident untrue (Soviet Era malarkey) narratives 🙂 with a broad, common, empathetic, high-integrity telling of history — because history may not be “written by the victors” but in the greater course of time by the decent and earnest among the world’s scholars — that might then provide a firm base of knowledge for all.

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FTAC: Middle East Conflict: Harmonizing on One Page

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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The issue: the symmetrical treatment of history such that Israelis and Palestinians should teach both “The Holocaust” and “The Nakba”.

Rubbish.

Israelis and Palestinians would do well to research and teach history in the direction of nonpartisan and well substantiated truth.

The idea that “history is written by the victors” should be today an artifact of the medieval world, i.e., the world of “absolute power” and thuggish personalities.

In the modern world — and should it wish to be a good one — scholarly integrity should matter most of all (and Muhammad himself is reputed to have said, “One scholar is worth more against the devil than one thousands worshippers”).

The barbarism known to history — medieval rape and rapine, ethnic cleansing, genocide — need not be known to the future, but as much becomes the province of those alive today. If Muslim Fulani gangs and war parties wish to continue their program of razing Christian farming villages — and kidnapping, raping, and slaughtering the residents — that is really up to them, there being no sufficient power (yet) to stop them where they roam, plan, and execute foul deeds.

Integrity, rightness, and righteousness should have qualities that transcend small interests. As often as we may find that not true, we may hope that one day as much will be true.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172348/palestine-betrayed

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Nigeria: A Letter Offering Correction to The New York Times Regarding Dionne Searcey’s ‘Nigerian Herders Face Threat From Farmers Competing for Land’, September 22, 2018

01 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Islamic Small Wars, Nigeria, Politics

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The article features a Gombe State case study that romanticizes the Fulani at peace within their own ethnic and religious community.  My question for you: why not take Taraba, Benue, or even Plateau State in the north central region of Nigeria or the more than 16 states that have experienced horrific violence and see the story through the eyes of the bereaved and dispossessed?

Gombe State, Nigeria-ed

Screen capture of the outline of Gombe State, Nigeria, October 1, 2018.

BackChannels’ editor has been responding to a contact in Nigeria with interest in what this blog has referred to as the “Fulani Land Pirates” — and this has been the year for watching “activity” (brigandage or warfare or both) that has amounted to the ethnic cleansing of Christian villages from the land with either apparent or somewhat implied complicity on the government’s part.

Last month, The New York Times (TYNT) published an overview of the Fulani drifting — in part a response to desertification — and the related conflict, but the journalist chose to paint a romantic view of the Fulani who have indeed lived with the bravado, color, and community known to nomadic herdsmen.  On behalf of Nigeria’s isolated or remote Christian community, the contact took exception to that depiction.

The edited letter was submitted to TNYT last week (October 24), but having not appeared, BackChannels offered to publish it.

Editor,

I am writing to express my disappointment with “Nigerian Herders Face Threat From Farmers Competing for Land” (September 22, 2018) by Dionne Searcey.

I don’t believe there has been a deliberate attempt to mislead the general public and do injustice to the thousands of people that have been raped, hacked or killed by assaults associated with herdsman, but the numbers in the article have merely hinted at the scale of the violence.  Many attacks have involved marauding “troops” with numbers above one-hundred, and as a consequence today there are thousands of people living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in states like Benue, Taraba and Plateau.

Herder umbrella groups like Miyetti Allah that have issued threat of violence and followed through with hundreds of people killed were not mentioned in the article.

Moreover, the failure of security under the present government to arrest these killers was also not mentioned.

Portraying the southern part of Nigeria as a Christian majority viewing herders as beheaders, rapists, or Boko Haram may suggest bias in support of the herders. The truth is the southern portion of Nigeria has accommodated all despite differences in culture and religion.

In fact, most herders have lived peacefully with their hosts until turning without warning to run the same off the land.

In the past few years, the continuous influx of herders into Nigeria coupled with ethnic and religious issues and a complete absence of the rule of law have set loose countless raiders against Christian farmers.

Southern Nigeria has been organized into three large geopolitical zones comprised of 17 states, most of which have suffered murders, kidnappings, destroyed property, and the loss of farmland. At times, related arson has been dramatically political.  The burning of a farm owned by Chief Olu Falaye on 21 January 2018 and the burning of former naval chief Afolayan’s 90 hectares of productive land – oranges, cassava, and palm – deliberately beg the public’s conscience and patience in relation to the desire for earnest state defense.

I also disagree with the article’s position that the President has not done much for Fulani herdsmen.

President Buhari has represented Fulni  interests more than those of any other group. In October 13, 2010 he led a protest to the Oyo state government complaining about the treatment of Fulani herders despite that he was acting on a wrong heading.  He also has tried to grab land to give to the Fulani herders but has been impeded only by constitutional arrangements in which lands are not vested with the Federal government but with state governments.

The article features a Gombe state case study that romanticizes the Fulani at peace within its own ethnic and religious community.  My question for you: why not take Taraba, Benue or even Plateau State in the north central region of Nigeria or the more than 16 states that have experienced horrific violence and see the story through the eyes of the bereaved and dispossessed?

Why whitewash this conflict that at the hands of Kalashnikov-armed Fulani herdsman has seen numerous Christian villages burned and ethnically cleansed in the manner of medieval rape and rapine?

One may concede that cattle rustling is a major problem that affects herders, and that rustlers – as bandits often do – cut across ethnic boundaries (as widely reported in Zamfara State where the majority are Hausa-Fulani Muslims), and the police should up their game on bringing to justice those criminals.

For peace for the near future of Nigeria, ranching would be the best solution to pursue through legal political processes.  The frontier for nomadic herding without boundaries may need to be closed.

Plateua State, Nigeria-ed

Screen capture, Plateau State, Nigeria, October 1, 2018.

Related Online

Odunsi, Wale. “Buhari blows hot over renewed Plateau killings.” Daily Post, October 1, 2018.

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Abbas at the UN & Ageing Canard

29 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia

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I24News, September 27, 2018

Mahmoud Abbas has aged.  Approaching 83 come this November 15, he has stood before the United Nations General Assembly repeating himself and inventing anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist invective in the old Orwellian Soviet way.

In Abbas’s surreal world, Israel must return to “four June 1967” borders, Israeli settlers and IDF “blaspheme against the holy sites” of Islam, and the latest “Nation State Law of the Jewish People” is racist.  In the President’s masked away thinking, no blood shed in defensive war bought the expansion; the “Western Wall” must not belong to the Jews who built it; and a mild declaration more than in keeping with the tenets of a dozen European monarchies must be racist yet.

All that: inside of 2.5 minutes.

The familiar canard follow in language’s best known “dark mirror”.  “The Palestinians” — the Arabs of Jordan and Egypt and the laborers who came into the region as Jewish land purchases produced a new agricultural economy — have the history of what today is Israel, not the Hebrews, not the Jews.  The designated and too well known Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorists become the picture of innocents against the tyrannous Israel and United States.

“The Congress comes out of the blue to say the PLO is a terrorist organization.  How come?”

Answer: continuing violence visited on innocents.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_domestic_weapons_production

While Abbas claims Palestinians have been denied the right to self-determination, it would be difficult to overlook the existence of the PLO/PA government and Hamas as the governing power in Gaza.  Which of either government has not been self-determining?

“We reject the idea of militias . . . .”

?

“We are not redundant . . . .”

After 70 years of Arab abuse and apartheid in camps and through political treatment, BackChannels believes the “Palestinian  People” a body isolated and unique in experience and therefore a “people” but one being born a little upside-down.

Israel most often views the main base of Palestinians as more human than the corrupt “leadership” organizations that plainly exploit them.

Israel-PLO Recognition: Exchange of Letters Between PM Rabin and Chairman Arafat (1993)

Related on BackChannels

“FTAC: Mahmoud Abbas: The Last of the Soviet Era Fixtures in the Middle East Conflict.” September 25, 2018.

“FTAC — “These Too are Palestinians.” September 25, 2016.

“Set: ‘Palestinian KGB’ and Other BackChannel’s Observations Related to the Middle East Conflict.” February 6, 2018.

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A Comment on Kavanaugh and How He Has Handled the Accusation

27 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Ford claimed that, thirty-six years ago, Kavanaugh held her down on a bed against her will, groped her, and covered her mouth when she tried to scream. Ford made the allegation anonymously in a letter to her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who originally declined to share the letter and later referred the matter to the F.B.I. for investigation. Ford has since come forward publicly; her lawyer has stated that she and her family have received threats since her name became public. Kavanaugh has responded with a categorical denial, saying in a statement, “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes—to her or to anyone. . . . I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself.”

The New Yorker. “Live Stream: Watch the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing With Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford.” September 27, 2018.

Loyalty to President Trump and possible-to-probable interference in judicial processes have been thematic from the start of President Trump’s Administration.

While charges remain “alleged”, BackChannels believes Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford utterly authentic.

IF public and Senate opinion comes to the same conclusion, then what will matter most will not be whether as a 17-year-old boy Kavanaugh had assaulted Ford but how he handled the accusation.  He has by his blanket denial effective removed claim to the defense of juvenile behavior and will have been caught lying — and in a breathtaking abuse of power libeling his accuser — as a fully fledged adult.

What malign narcissism brought these politics to the once ever believing, confident, and idealistic United States of America?

Kavanaugh-SenateHearing-180927-1527

Screen capture from hearing, September 27, 2018.

While Kavanaugh brags about his carefully kept calendars / calendar-journals, his voice breaks.  Of course, had he committed an assault with great ambitions in mind, the calendar or the journal would have been the place to write the incident out of the record by not including it.

Also on the Web

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/651941113/read-christine-blasey-fords-opening-statement-for-senate-hearing

In one passage, beginning on Page 92, Judge describes his time working at a grocery store in the context of his drinking problem. Emphasis added.

It was the summer before senior year, and by now, even though I wasn’t drinking every day, I was completely hooked. Going a week without getting drunk was unthinkable. I was spending between four and seven nights with the gang, either at a party or at O’Rourke’s.

Elsewhere in the book, Judge describes one of his acquaintances at the time, someone named “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who vomited in a car after a party.

Bump, Philip. “Mark Judge’s book validates Christine Blasey Ford’s timeline of the alleged Kavenaugh Assault.” The Washington Post, September 27, 2018. Inset: Judge, Mark Gauvreau. “Wasted: Tales of a Genx Drunk”. Hazelden, May 1, 1997.

Epigram by 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.”

September 28, 2018 (and live at posting here).

“The basic principles that underscore the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent on federal judicial nominees require nothing less than a careful examination of the accusations and facts by the FBI,” said Robert Carlson, president of the organization, in a Thursday night letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

“Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote,” Carlson wrote. “Deciding to proceed without conducting additional investigation would not only have a lasting impact on the Senate’s reputation, but it will also negatively affect the great trust necessary for the American people to have in the Supreme Court.”

Raju, Manu. “American Bar Association: Delay Kavanaugh until FBI investigates assault allegations.” CNN Politics, September 27, 2018.

Kav-Sen-Hearng-Sheldon-Whitehouise.jpg

Kav-Sen-Hearng-Klobuchar.jpg

Related Online

Khan, Shamus. “Kavanaugh is lying: His upbringing explains why.” Op-ed. The Washington Post, September 28, 2018.

Liptak, Adam. “A Bitter Nominee, Questions of Neutrality, and a Damaged Supreme Court.” The New York Times, September 28, 2018:

“The Supreme Court,” he said, “must never be viewed as a partisan institution.”

His performance on Thursday, responding to accusations of sexual misconduct at a hearing of the same Senate committee, sent a different message. Judge Kavanaugh was angry and emotional, embracing the language of slashing partisanship. His demeanor raised questions about his neutrality and temperament and whether the already fragile reputation of the Supreme Court as an institution devoted to law rather than politics would be threatened if he is confirmed.

Yourish, Karen and Troy Griggs. “Brett Kavanaugh Testimony: Three Inconsistencies the F.B.I. Investigation Could Address.” The New York Times, September 28, 2018.

Political independence may be America’s greatest prize for free thinkers.  BackChannels’ editor left the Democratic Party about nine years ago and has not registered with the Republican Party since then.

Regarding Shamus Khan’s piece, one may suggest the following, which has been copied from the editor’s portion of The Awesome Conversation online:

What would be tyrannous would be to allow the privileged to mask away crime and impose their will on others without criticism or notice and with impunity. The combination of humanism (all the way back to Cyrus and his cylinder), British empiricism, and American ideals beg for and rely on the thorough examination of criminal acts and, at times, libelous claims.

The FBI has now an additional week to explore the validity of both Kavanaugh’s and Blase Ford’s testimony, and we will see — or hear — how evidence acquired adds up.

It’s not enough to be angry or partisan in such a matter: it’s important to reject assumptions and beliefs in favor of examination taken with the highest integrity.

This morning saw a follow-up:

The survival of a democratic state depends on the confidence of its constituents. Toward that end, the Senate delayed its vote in favor of a one week extension for supplemental FBI investigation.

Finger pointing serves no democratic ends.

Most tyrannies know well “reflection in the mirror”, i.e., accusing targets of harboring the aggressive plans that are the speaker’s own.

Considering the term Supreme Court justices enjoy . . . what’s another week?

I think it’s good to see “checks and balances” in action.

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ALW: Tacks: Google and China

27 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Google is in a business similar to China’s: social observation. One compiles and exploits user data to facilitate the commerce that builds its own advertising and research revenues; the other may use the same data to identify and channel Internet end users in service to the regime’s planning, revenue development, and security.

Inspiration

Lee, Dave. “Ex-Google employee warns of ‘disturbing’ China plans.” BBC, September 26, 2018.

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FTAC: Mahmoud Abbas: The Last of the Soviet Era Fixtures in the Middle East Conflict

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

In the Soviet Era, the KGB groomed Arafat and installed the PLO as a block and goad holding the then communist and Russian line against the expansion of western liberalism. Mahmoud Abbas has also his KGB record, and he too has sustained the Palestinian “People’s Liberation” mythology in service to an Orwellian model of political power, and combination of feudal power as guided by “secret” police (to get back to the promotion of Russian anti-Semitic political mechanics, go back to the Okhrana at the end of the Russian Imperial period).

Abbas essentially serves Moscow while trying to sustain a patronage system funded by obligations diplomatic and practice met by the west. Neither Abbas nor the Soviet / post-Soviet political “vision” he represents have any place to go. He’s an old man; the old Soviet bloc has been largely ruined in the middle east. However, Putin has chosen to support the older politics and related alignment to either the point of war, which I feel is near, or some bitter end afterward. I suspect Israel, the United States, and NATO and others would have preferred a diplomatic transition to archaic medieval destruction (as witnessed in Syria), but here we are with another Soviet-type dinosaur in power in the opposition and we’re dealing with primitive but effective fire-bearing kites and balloons from Gaza, which seems a sight both ridiculous and surreal.

Related in the News

Zieve, Tamara. “Incendiary Balloons Cause More Than A Dozen Fires Over Sukkot.” The Jerusalem Post, September 24, 2018.

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