Order: reverse chronological or most recently encountered material toward the top, a flexible guide.
People protesting in St. Petersburg's Palace Square in 1917 and today, chanting "Down with the Tsar!" pic.twitter.com/hGj5EwO40S
— THEY/THEMARS 🇺🇦 #ArmUkraineNow (@Mortis_Banned) March 26, 2017
The Guardian’s latest:
Hundreds of protesters have been detained by riot police in cities across Russia, as some of the largest anti-government protests in years swept the country.
The call to protest came from the opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who was himself detained at the Moscow demonstration. A monitoring group said at least 700 people were detained in Moscow alone, while the news agency Tass gave a figure of 500.
The post may exist only to get the Sunday reader started on the “All Russia Protests Against Corruption” (the title is BackChannel’s interpretation of the Russian billing for the event).
Note: many of today’s gatherings across Russia in protest of the Putin regime’s feudal indulgence in theft and corruption (reference: Gary Kasparov’s Winter is Coming and Karen Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy) have not been permitted by state officials, so all who have responded to the call for protest risk arrest and other methods of political repression known to those who have challenged similar regimes in the past.
Add the supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny now organize such actions in dozens of Russian cities. In many places, authorities have not agreed on the meetings under various pretexts, and some are already there have been reports of detentions.
“The Italian Minister of the residence and you pay for it” (machine translated); posted to YouTube March 16, 2017. English subtitles available using the “cc” (caption) control.
Premise: my conversational partner had shared with me a video: “2016 NPS Finals – San Diego – “Islamophobia” – and it was a perfect piece suited to interpretation as old Soviet “Active Measures”.
The argument in the above video is disingenuous in many regards.
For starters, Dylan Roof has been condemned as a white supremacist nutcake whose targets also believed in Jesus.
Next: in conflict and military terms, absolutely yes, the White Supremacist movements are absolutely a threat to America’s “domestic tranquility” and the same are tracked by the FBI and followed by a number of anti-hate organizations, from the ADL to the SPLC.
Adam Lanza (I don’t wish to look up the spelling) was an autistic rule-based child whose mother had told him something that he had misconstrued in line with his disability or alternative way of formulating his social reality. The poets have in fact used a mildly afflicted child as an emblem for their political cause.
You know my theory: Moscow promotes chaos for various reasons, including that of making itself look strong against . . . Islamic Jihad. It would work if western analysts and perhaps an increasing number of journalist were not so aware of “Active Measures“, false-flag operations (“Moscow Apartment Bombings“), “Reflexive Control“, and other concepts associated with KGB and Russian State behavior.
Do you see democracy, freedom, peace, and prosperity in the above video?
I don’t.
I see vultures who have figured out how to make a lot of money for themselves by creating and exploiting conflict.
The KKK has been asked to remove their robes, and they have been deeply marginalized in America’s political culture to about this day. This day seems to be a little different as the New Nationalism appears to appeal to the white supremacist community (by the way, the KKK was no friendlier toward Jews than it was African Americans).
The three poets are lying by way of the misrepresentation of political history — and you’re helping them.
Regarding Islam and Islam in America, it really doesn’t take much energy to locate anti-American / anti-State rhetoric in the mosque and the conflation of submission to God with obedience to the guidance of the imam.
“Stop letting the fear . . . .”?
Again: Moscow, Moscow-Tehran. They have got a good thing going with Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIL, and so many others.
Political Absolutism and Totalitarianism vs Open Democracy and Checked Power
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s (AIFD) mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.
AIFD is the most prominent American Muslim organization directly confronting the ideology of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism). We stand firmly for universal human rights – including gender equality, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech and expression. Founded by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD envisions a future wherein Muslims never feel a conflict between their personal faith and their commitment to individual liberty and freedom. Rather, we work to empower Muslims to be primary advocates for liberty and freedom.
We are being called to tolerate, accommodate, and include people who believe it is compassionate to murder gay people; from Imams trained in moderate Saudi Arabia to moderate Iran. We see gays from these countries murdered before our eyes: gays hanging from cranes in the city squares or thrown off tall buildings. Think about that. Close your eyes and picture someone blindfolded, hands tied behind their back and flung over a building. Imagine the horror of that death. Yet we say nothing and invite Islam into our western countries-to preach and proselytize in the name of freedom of religion and freedom of speech-yet without question against our laws.
We tend to forget that Islam is far more than a religion. It, like democracy, is an ideology, but at odds with democracy.
Islam is inherently, innately, systemically, and endemically homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic and virulently anti-Jewish. Islam opposes the ethic that the Jewish people brought into the world 3500 years ago and brought to these shores by Christians. We know this because we hear their calls “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” “Death to the Jews.”
We think of refugees and displaced people in a spatial context.
Somebody has lost their home, their security, their purchase on the control of their own life, and so they wander in-country or beyond, and depending on their personal characteristics – the movies always say “character”, but social reality is much different – they’ll grow again where they plant themselves or suffer the indignity of loss and rootlesness.
The segment you’re interested in is wandering through time with an unhelpful toolkit, and the obedient base can’t figure out why it’s not working. They’re mired in conflicts wrought by mutual greed and jealousy, and, perhaps like Imam ______, the more clever of tongue thrive on the turmoil by offering the unreachable untrue.
I recall a Star Trek episode in which a “holodeck” (synthetic surround theater) Dr. Moriarty achieved sufficient mastery of his own artifice and cyber environment to threaten the ship. Spoiler Alert! The solution at the end, which had to be negotiated because Moriarty really had interfaced with ship’s control, was to provide him and his woman (it’s complicated) with a cyber universe of their own. The world that would seem infinite to the evil couple was in the greater reality contained (and possibly ejected into space).
One might say of Catholic and otherwise conservative or orthodox observance in religion that all of it sustains something that took place a long time ago.
The figures have been frozen in time. The particular above have been especially well preserved by Keats’s poem.
Most of the religious in the modern world who attend a service also leave it with something taken away, and that adds its part to their lives and their search for a place for themselves. The monastery exists too. Add pope and papacy, the “Christ Process” – got that one from a Jesuit supplying blankets to the Four Corners region – and the existence of a timeless space maintained in the mind with the volition of the thinker.
Muhammad and his Islam may have had issues with boundaries – related on BackChannels: “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” – just an opinion, of course, and that got into the patronizing and permits and orders produced within the Qur’an, not so complete for this world but ever so demanding in its build around injunction. The Muslims — the Islamists — that interest you may believe they are carrying out still relevant orders when they are raiding their targets – murder, theft, rape, and rapine – but in reality they are doing so much only for the aggrandizement of their chosen authority beneath the Eye of Heaven.
Ditto Putin.
What is the escape plan from the medieval worldview and its imposition – and impoliteness – today?
Universally, nature figures out how to destroy or mutate monocultures, whether in agriculture or in human existence. While we may be in a divine sense of “One cloud, one earth, one sky”, we are nonetheless highly differentiated humans x person x family x clan x tribe x nation.
For agriculture, the related science industry strives to maintain comprehensive seed banks as part of the arsenal at hand to address natural mutations adverse to production — of the simple enjoyment of something gardened — in the growing environment.
For the discussion of culture, BackChannels promotes the view that our planet’s cultural inventory” links to fewer than 7,000 living languages, each of which represents how a group of people in comparative isolation — population-in-place — used human sound and sign to aid in perceiving and addressing from their perspective their own particular environmental and social challenges and opportunities.
Often, instead of typing “The Jews (live in Israel)”, the note may be similarly but more tellingly expressed as “The Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews”.
Arab, Baloch, Kurds, Pashtun — same treatment.
As “The English” — and English — have gone everywhere in some fashion, the language today provides a modern medium for communication without the demand for the erasure of other language cultures. And with the age of English colonial expansion now past, one may expect the resurgent greater being of other language cultures in their cores (x ethnolinguistic cultural density) and at their margins and finally in the mixing bowls of heterogeneous (multi-cultural) political spaces.
The American slogan, well linked to the European invasion of or presence in — interpretation is moot — North America, well reflected the necessity of tolerance and varying degrees of separation and mixing in the New World beneath the benevolent and idealist umbrella of a secular and humanist vision of governance. The delivery thereby of great personal freedom — to be Christian, Jewish, Muslim or of any other faith community — and to speak the new language, English, while retaining the power to speak also every other language on earth, to be multilingual by choice, has been also part of the bargain. Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Pashto, Urdu, “Jamaican” — no problem, mon.
The American way has worked in America.
Other of the authentic open democracies of the world have found similar equilibrium and a key to prosperity and survival in related law and rule of law.
Other systems, much less liberal, some totalitarian, appear still invested in the feudal / medieval worldview and they “express” in nefarious methods (e.g., “Active Measures“, deception, disinformation, disingenuous speech, etc.) and vanguards their desire to impose their singular will — criminal, despotic, intolerant — far beyond their own context, and not only in space but in time as well.
For the most part for those preferring to live “back there” somewhere, the world goes on around them and evolves a both more inclusive but also widely varied cargo packed into the myriad cultures of humanity.
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Nothing like waking up to an alert from Facebook! And having no idea why this time you have been blocked-from everything! Can’t post or receive messages. Can’t like or love a post. Can’t post! Totally stifled.
I tried to find out why I was blocked. I sent a request-because I thought it was a mistake. I don’t use foul language. I don’t post pornographic photos or death threats. I don’t attack people- I do attack their facts.
I received the usual response-Nothing.I was “deleted” either because of my latest post Islam on the March:Part 1 or I may have insulted some Liberals (sadly so easy to do).
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was poised to ride this momentum into Northeast Asia last week, but instead sustained a series of self-inflicted wounds. Before even departing Washington, he broke tradition by not inviting the State Department press corps on his plane, needlessly damaging relations with the media and forgoing the opportunity to better explain the contours of his mission. (“I’m not a big media press access person,” he said later, as if the only purpose of talking to reporters would be to serve his own agenda. “I personally don’t need it.”)
“People knew that he represented various countries, but I don’t think he represented Russia, but represented various countries,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in February. “That’s what he does. People know that. That’s Mr. Manafort, by the way, a respected man, a respected man, but I think he represented the Ukraine or Ukraine government or somebody, but everybody knew that.”
BackChannels thought the comment obfuscating and vague, the verbal equivalent of a bully’s shrug (“I don’t know nothin’ about it; I didn’t do nothin'”).
Here’s the source of the quotation:
And here is a little bit more about the very respected Paul Manafort:
If you click on the link — or either of the links in this section — you may soon know more about Paul Manafort than the dissembling President of the United States a) either knows or b) cares to share with the public.
Here’s a potential positive spin: could Manafort have been urging his clients away from “political absolutism” and toward the graces of the modern democratic and rule-of-law world?
Anything’s possible — but how would the public know with the curtain drawn closed with mumbles?
Let’s move on to something thornier.
In its apprehension of geography and history, where is America’s voting public?
How ignorant a people are we?
How well informed?
Should the public know so many of the details of deals — like “Uranium One”, which took years to form during a period in which Moscow and Washington appeared to be at peace and not running headlong into a Cold War sequal — and policies that well may not be so much a part of its daily cultural (and intellectual) experience?
Or is the public sufficiently active and informed in all of the dimensions of public interest and well deserving of engagement with its Administration by way of responsible 24/7 press coverage?
If the ignorance proves vast, well then perhaps Americans deserve the development of a “privatized government” in the hands of “people who know best” and who need not be forthcoming as regards their goals, ideas, strategies, or tactics.
In fact, is there anything wrong with the idea of a paternal government packed with powerful actors — CEOs and generals — that within its own ranks chooses to operate with autonomy behind a curtain of increasing silence?
The question is trick: ask Orwell — there’s a lot wrong with the notion of government left to unchecked elites, and it’s that thought prompted the title of this post (and as generally true around here, a title a little larger than the content intended to support it). Sigh.
Back to Tillerson’s comment at the top of the post — here’s another tack and one especially appropriate to relations between Moscow and Washington, both nerve centers attached to the prospect of nuclear war: perhaps for Tillerson and others, private no-access space is of necessity for national security as well as consideration and quiet. After all, the press appears welcome to hound officials at their destinations. Getting cozy, getting the scoop, getting the inside skinny in flight — do the “journos” or public need that unknown moment so badly?
Give it break, guys and gals, and let the real “Fake News!” people, the writers of fiction, have their turn.
Journalism affords practitioners flexibility in methods of attribution. The most general options involving acquisition or interview for information are these:
On the record (for dissemination) / off the record (for background only)
For attribution (use the name) / not with attribution (use “official” or “spokesman”)
For a sophisticated businessman to complain that that a news item lacked a named source would seem not only disingenuous but contemptuous of the audience as well.
Another suggested BackChannels question: who is — who was — “they”?
And when will we know that “they” have cleaned up their respective acts?
BackChannels readers may keep in mind that the editor interprets America’s political polarization with the model “Brown v Red-Green” and with that division between Republican “New Nationalists” and Democratic “Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists”, the use of so much polemic would seem of equal opportunity.
Most likely, elements in the press would have dogged Clinton too, and she would have bit back.
It so happens, the “New Nationalist” won, and what he’s doing in the above video is not slamming lowly bloggers cutting and pasting cyberspace junk from remote shores but calling out CNN and similar others and thereby degrading confidence in the reporting and opining of the strongest part of the Fourth Estate.
Also regarding President Trump’s assertion of Obama Administration wiretapping, FBI Director Comey reports, “The Department has no information that supports those tweets.”
Open Letter of European security experts to Federica Mogherini: Please start taking the Russian disinformation threat seriously!
The aggressive actions of the Kremlin are unprecedented in the modern era.
Invasion of neighbouring countries, massive bombings and killings of civilians, and the first annexation of a foreign land by force in Europe since World War II, constant violations of other states’ borders, kidnapping foreign citizens, harassment of foreign diplomats, or massive cyber attacks are all in Russia’s current regime toolkit.
(Photo credit: copyright by World Economic Forum, Photo by Remy Steinegger, CC BY-SA 2.0).
All these offensive incidents are accompanied by a massive, persistent, ongoing, brutally aggressive disinformation campaign.* A campaign that has been active in Europe for at least three years, establishing its channels, finding the right amplifiers and multipliers for its message – which is aimed at destabilising our societies, meddling in our elections and referendums, misleading our political leaders and breaking up the EU unity by supporting those who want to destroy it. It has been building a wide range of communication structures in most of the EU Member States, platforms that have already been functioning for a long time and have reached considerable results that cannot be erased without significant long-term counter-effort.
@ naganoff_ru
BackChannels 