Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

FTAC – Syrian Wrap

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Russia, Syria

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The “Syrian Knot” binds to itself two kinds of power in the world:

Political Absolutism (Moscow) v Democratic Distribution of Power (Washington)

Behind that contest:

–Syria’s drought and declining agriculture (leading to protests in 2011), which in a good world would be less important, but for a dictatorship, getting rid of people one doesn’t really care about or care for in the first place seems pretty convenient.

–Dissolving of the Soviet 25 years ago (December 26, 1991), for which the Soviet had prepared in the 1980s, and which Putin has effectively dropped the communist ideology but sustained the architecture of the earlier organization of the state, i.e., secret police (FSB), central leader (himself), and a privileged class (the “Oligarchs”). Possibly (probably), Russian barbarism predates the czars, and the combination of very dirty deeds (like bombing refugee camps) and high culture (like the concert in Palmyra) have centuries of historical precedent (that assertion is something I want to research and better anchor).

In 2011, and in a quick exchange about positions, Obama and Putin played what in chess would be an opening gambit. Obama had offered the potentially democratic Russian state a “reset” and Putin handily declined in favor of producing a neo-imperial update on the Soviet model. The KGB became the FSB. The invention of the PLO became the continuation of relationships with Hamas, Hezbollah, PFLP, and others.

***

The cultivating and promoting of anti-Semitism in the world is a feudal-medieval ruse to deflect fault on the part of leadership toward the Jews.

Why the Jews?

The Jews have been doing battle with “political absolutism” since the humbling of Pharaoh — thanks to God — and their turning their backs on the same with a “mixed multitude”, i.e., others who shared the Jewish abhorrence of the tyrant. What follows about 4,000 years later is “uptake” by others, i.e., the Romans who turn to Judaism and later differentiation and expansion of subscription (which brings wealth) as Christians. Several hundreds years after that, Muhammad borrows from the Jews, makes himself central in access to God or the Idea of God, and we arrive about here with a long sorry history of medieval warring over “political absolutism” and the basis for it (e.g., “divine right”; “dictatorship of the proletariat”; etc.)

With dictators, you know my rule: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”

Now the “digest” version of the Jews and Russia —

Once Rome had burned, raped, and sacked Jerusalem, the Jews became everybody’s “guests” . . . so come forward a thousand-plus years and find the Jews, a People laden with laws from the time of Moses, a “problem” (more of an opportunity) — an alien enterprise, strangers in a strange land — to Russian Christians who could and would leverage anti-Semitism into the customary theft and murder.

Look into the history of the Cossacks and the Pale of Settlement.

Then go forward again into the Soviet enterprise and its repression of religion (“the opiate of the people,” said Karl Marx). Russian Jews found themselves trapped for decades in Russia by the forces of Soviet exploitation and possession. When it became possible to leave that atmosphere en masse, they did.

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

Along comes Putin, and Putin makes it his mission to “defend” the speakers of Russian — “Russophones” — wherever they may be found. The ploy excuses aggression (as in Ukraine). With hundreds of thousands of the Jews of Russia repaired to Israel, he knows also to become modern in this fashion and stand against anti-Semitism!

Post-Holocaust, post-Hitler, what Russian leader would not do the same?

Let’s add back ISIS — Assad’s incubated horror — and “Islamic Terrorism” in general and its effects: when a mosquito pricks the skin, the skin swells. The body responds to in the insult. Of course, the hand slaps or slaps away the mosquito (or the bee or wasp), and it starts repairs against infection and against any poisons delivered.

So it is that each terrorist act encourages resurgent nationalism where it takes place.
Migration has similar effects: people want to close their doors seal their boundaries, and fend off those most in need.

It could be said that nature is cruel — or here with political nature that Putin, Assad, and Khamenei are cruel, but like the cowardly fireman who sets the fire and later offers to put it out (!), these have created a condition and perception in many of the west that they can handle ISIS — and they may, having incubated that enterprise to glorify themselves in battle against the same.

Oh brother oh sister — Israel is a precious jewel of a small state representing the character of a people who turned their backs on the idea that any man, including Moses, could represent God on earth. For the Jews, God is indeed greater, and while Moses gets recognition, prayer is always to God, not to Moses. That separation changes the politics, and when Titus of Rome destroys Jerusalem, the priests take the hit (because they failed!) and the scholars and teachers rise in the esteem of the community and the great conversation about ethics and morality comes to represent the Jews. Old Jewish wisdom . . . that’s just my opinion and not very good scholarship but something that might hold up to scrutiny.

Putin has melded many modern ideas into his own medieval atmosphere and the surface of related political theater — “Assad vs The Terrorists” — works for most who simply haven’t the time to examine (as I have) the complexity of the conflicts displayed or experienced.

Israelis don’t like being murdered by incited teenagers creeping into their children’s bedrooms — and there is Putin the Strong fending off Chechnya rebels and applying Russia’s most advanced weapons to the same once they have been channeled to ISIS in Syria.

The “west” has moved around Syria in its responding to post-Soviet neo-Imperial Russia in Syria and Crimea and elsewhere, but, give the devil his due, Putin has worked to weaken the European Union (the British vote on BREXIT seems to me an example of success with that) and NATO (Erdogan’s own embrace of despotism in Turkey accompanied by a go-ahead from Russia on the the “Turkish Stream” pipeline project seems also to affirm Putin’s influence and power) — and he has succeeded in partially renewing — or affirming — our world hosts immensely powerful financial and political elites — medievalism in the modern world.

Post-Soviet Russia saw two old clients — Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi — swept away into history, but with Assad in Syria and the way to Iran potentially laid bare, the dictators have taken their stands.

Would nature have forced mass (economic) migration from Syria?

Possibly.

But nature would not have incubated ISIS (by selecting other targets for bombing and combat earlier in the war) to later aggrandize and glorify the “abilities” of the “strong men”.

The conversation continued, always a few more words, a little more distillation of old observations and new ideas.

In the Garden of Eden story in the Torah, God introduces to Adam and Eve human awareness, self-awareness, and conscience.

It’s all right there at the beginning, i.e., a statement about our own nature — and it’s a good statement.

It’s not the Christian statement; it’s not Muhammad’s statement.

It’s a mysterious statement about the two that God will send off into human life and they will have to work to eat and wrestle with some thorny realities in the way of their own survival.

The dictators — caliphs, emperors, kings, sultans down through the ages — often bend the Divine to their own will, and then they use that power that comes from similar words and technologies in the worst imaginable ways.

The good seem either not powerful enough, proactive enough, or smart enough, frankly, to unmake the tyrant before he has got his hands on a serous treasury and a willing military.

Some could argue that the evil is as much our nature too.

I don’t know the answer to that.

I know that Syria represents perhaps the darkest tragedy of our time, as I believe it has been fashioned by Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran as a complete theater of politics and war.

______

BackChannels had a Muslim conversational partner for this post and one who advocated for Israel against anti-Semitic anti-Zionist smears launched in an advocacy site for the Syrian Revolution.  Questions were raised about Israel’s nationalist politics, links with Russia, and associated anti-Islamism.  Over the years, BackChannels has come to see Moscow promoting the amplification of political sentiment into internal conflicts beyond its borders.  Color codes “Red”, “Red-Green”, “Red-Black” apply to the reinvigorating of “old comrade networks” and the Islamic and Black Power politics that feed Black Lives Matter, Palestinian Solidarity, International Solidarity, Code Pink, and so many others nourished by the still moving inertia of old Soviet disinformation and related inspiration.

As Putin and Russo-Iranian politics have also promoted Far Right politics (Marie Le Pen in France, Jobbik in Hungary), the political color code “Brown” for nationalists and national socialists also applies.  It’s perfectly sensible that any space attacked by an alien force, conveniently “Islamist” these days, including “Islamist” against Muslims worldwide, will rally around its flag, and that whether it be in London or Islamabad.

A third force — i.e., a Moscow — helping to make that attack happen (by incubating ISIS; by using war to create conditions for mass migration irksome to one’s more true target regions and states) is something else: call it “diplomacy by other means” — and means generally beyond the public ken, for the public rarely has time and space for doing more than adjusting its perceptions according to major headlines.

Fast Link Reference

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/15/cold-war-cold-struggle/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/02/09/ftac-on-why-the-jews/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/06/ftac-russias-not-so-appealing-turn-in-syria/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_Post-Soviet_aliyah

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-in-syria-russia-s-rustbucket-military-delivers-a-hi-tech-shock-to-west-and-israel-a6842711.html – 1/29/2016

https://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/en/news/erdogan-turkey-russia-agree-jointly-implement-turkish-stream – 8/15/2016

http://vladimirets.org/pale_of_settlement.htm

http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

https://yannayspitzer.net/2012/07/22/a-new-map-of-jewish-communities-in-the-russian-empire/

 

–33–

Turkey’s Sick Republic – Philos Project

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Turkey

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The recent “ides of July” coup attempt was the fifth since the 1923 founding of the Turkish republic, an indication of Turkey’s recurring instability. While “Turkey is, at least in name, a constitutional democracy … Turkey’s government is quite literally in a state of emergency,” Rough said, and Kennedy added that the foiled coup quickly became overshadowed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies’ “incredible seizure of power.

”Erdoğan has publicly called the coup a “gift from heaven,” and Hillel Fradkin commented that “it has already given him a great deal, and he means to make it a gift that keeps on giving.” The three-month state-of-emergency that Erdoğan declared may end up being renewed. In the name of restoring order and suppressing coup supporters, Erdoğan had received an opportunity to complete his “transformation of the Turkish political system such that all power resides with him.” He is purging opponents from institutions like the military, judiciary, police and universities, while intimidatingly calling for ongoing demonstrations of supporters and reporting of opponents.

Source: Turkey’s Sick Republic – Philos Project – 8/9/2016.

FTAC – Dictatorships – They Devour Themselves

12 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, International Development, Political Spychology, Russia

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“Different Talks – Same Walk” is the conclusion I’ve come to with “malignant narcissists”.

The Hamas leaders don’t care about the Palestinians at whose expense — and the expense of lives — they have aggrandized themselves. We’re numb to the labels: “autocrats”, “dictators”, “kleptocrats”. Each — Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Orban, Erdogan, Haniyeh, Mashaal, et al. — starts from a different positions, but using criminal means, each winds up a tyrant.

Hamas may be sold as a Utopian movement, but . . . it’s a criminal enterprise, and its idea of power is the power to impose suffering on others with impunity.

Our democracies are fragile by comparison to feudal kingdoms, but as they have their differences between them, we — North America, Europe, for the most part, and others — have been able to navigate between them as peace pays off with prosperity. What the dictatorships do please the privileged, but they don’t really pay for themselves. They don’t shift for themselves. They, in fact, devour themselves.

There’s no need to defend this post.

The privileged of Russia know how much they depend on Putin for favor — and the “outer rings” (“rings” referring to driving belts around Moscow) know that no matter what they do if they’re out of favor — complete unknowns — there isn’t much new for them.  The economy simply hasn’t fare well under kleptocracy — golly gee — and the distribution of capital and gains from capital remains deeply skewed.

Read all about it in today’s Moscow Times:

Investment continues to decline, both industrial and in residential construction. Private consumption declines as well, while Russian people say they are cutting their purchases of goods and services to survive. Then again, industrial production is stable, agriculture continues to grow, export is growing slightly in physical terms, despite the drop in commodities prices.

This economic dialogue will continue for a long time, but the main conclusion we can make is already visible.

From the Kennan Institute this month — same thing: “An Economy That Did Not Want to Grow“:

The difference between the two strategies is fundamental. Kudrin’s formula is “business environment first, private investment later,” while his opponents want “public investment first, business environment later or never.” The two visions cancel each other out and this is exactly what Vladimir Putin seems to like about it. Both projects emphasize domestic growth based on either private initiative (Kudrin) or public spending (Titov). The first path means backpedaling on aggressive foreign-policy projects and depends on reviving and empowering the urban middle class. This poses a problem however, since the Kremlin is convinced that professionals who are paid more than 1500 U.S. dollars a month are a potential threat as proved by the protest movement of 2011-2012. The second path, exemplified by large public-works projects, will inevitably lead to even more corruption than currently exists in Russia.

Was “Vegas” better in its wild mafia days?

I don’t know.

I was too young for all that.

I didn’t exist.

🙂

“Moscow” — used here as a metonym — has suffered years of capital flight and frankly fearful foreign investment.

The state appears to leverage other states amenable to a medieval worldview of competition and political absolutism; it certainly has projects like “Turkish Stream” and a few hefty nuclear programs going with Turkey’s Erdogan and Hungary’s Orban, but get right down to it, the “good” despise “the criminal” and wear out on coughing up payola.

Ukrainians tired of Yanukovych — and Yanukovych, so guilty or suspicious with guilt, threw his black book and other records into a pond before fleeing his position.

Web pages and sites like these two were in the news four years ago, and I doubt much has changed since then:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/explosive-video-documents-depth-putins-mafia-state – n.d., circa four years ago judging by comments.

Posted to YouTube 6/26/2012.

Bill Browder on Putin, posted to YouTube May 22, 2014:

Here’s a related lively quote from an article by Masha Gessen in The New York Review of Books (March 14, 2016):

“This is not a hybrid regime!” shouted Andrei Illarionov as the conference wrapped up. Illarionov is an economist who was an economic advisor to Putin in 2000–2005—though he was never fully integrated into the regime—and now lives in Washington. “Thinking about it that way is a mistake, and analytical mistakes like that can have long-term tragic consequences.”

Capital flight from Russia looks dramatically reduced this year from where it was last year, but the prior years of losses may anchor the greater “longitudinal” picture in time.

These words appeared last fall in Business Insider (October 27, 2015):

In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.

And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren’t rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin’s regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

–33–

 

Exploiting Palestinians – Hamas, World Vision

12 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Posted to YouTube – 8/11/2016.

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Hamas-infiltrated-international-Gazan-aid-group-stole-tens-of-millions-of-dollars-463211#article=6017QzVBNDlDRTc4RjQwOEY2NzU2NENDQTZEOEMxMjRBM0Y=

Lede:

Hamas infiltrated a large international aid organization operating in Gaza and redirected tens of millions of dollars – 60 percent – of the organization’s budget to its “military” wing, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced on Thursday, following an investigation that lasted almost two months.

The World Vision organization, which operates in 100 countries and employs 46,000 people, fell victim to a complex Hamas takeover scheme, a senior Shin Bet source said, adding that Hamas’s armed wing stole $7.2 million a year from the budget, which was supposed to pay for food, humanitarian assistance, and aid programs for disabled children, and channeled the funds to buy weapons, build attack tunnels, and to other preparations for war with Israel.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2016/08/04/hamas-yeah-we-stole-a-bunch-of-humanitarian-aid-and-used-it-to-attack-israel-n2201645 – 8/4/2016

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos-humanitarian-aid-and-hamas-connections/ – 8/11/2016

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/afp/2016/08/israel-palestinians-aid-conflict-hamas.html – 8/9/2016:

“World Vision’s cumulative operating budget in Gaza for the past ten years was approximately $22.5 million, which makes the alleged amount of up to $50 million being diverted hard to reconcile,” the statement read.

The NGO has suspended its operations in Gaza.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/world-vision-charity-long-accused-anti-israel-bias-caught-hamas – 8/5/2016

https://unitedwithisrael.org/russia-invites-hamas-terror-leader-to-moscow/ – 8/4/2016.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russias-foreign-minister-meets-with-hamas/ – 8/4/2016.

https://article.wn.com/view/2016/04/04/Press_release_on_Deputy_Foreign_Minister_Mikhail_Bogdanov_s_/ – 4/4/2016.

Older News Involving Hamas and Its Exploitation of Children

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5230/hamas-army-children – 2/18/2015.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels – 7/25/2014.

Posted to YouTube 5/25/2016.

Hamas, Human Shields, Children

http://nypost.com/2015/05/02/un-report-outlines-how-hamas-used-kids-as-human-shields/ – 5/2/2015.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/07/conclusive-proof-that-hamas-uses-palestinians-as-human-shields/ – 8/7/2014:

On August 5, the Israeli Army released copies of an official Hamas manual that it discovered in the Shuja’iya neighborhood of Gaza, where one of the fiercest battles of the war was fought.

It’s titled “Urban Warfare,” and it was produced by Hamas’s Shuja’iya Brigade.The manual includes detailed instructions on how to use the civilians of Gaza against Israel. It explains how because of Israel’s concern about civilian casualties, Hamas can use the “presence of civilians” to its military advantage. Having civilians nearby causes the Israelis “(1) Problems with opening fire; (2) Problems in controlling the civilian population during operations and afterward; (3) Assurance of supplying medical care to civilians who need it.”

The “Urban Warfare” manual also emphasizes the benefits of damage to civilian property: “The destruction of civilian homes: This increases the hatred of the citizens towards the attackers [the IDF] and increases their gathering [support] around the city defenders (resistance forces[i.e. Hamas]).”

Gaza’s Billionaires

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/28/gazas-millionaires-and-billionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/ – 7/28/2016.

–33–

FTAC – Adjusting Normative Global Values – Religious v Secular Societies

12 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The promotion of conflict seem to me inseparable from the invention and promotion of cultural, political, religious, and social discriminators, and those who stand to gain in prestige or wealth by leveraging such differences will certainly do so in the cause of their own aggrandizement, messianic delusion, and glorification. Note, please, the Putin promotes both Far Left and Far Right political organizations and personalities aligned roughly “Red-Black-Green (old “comrade networks”, Black Power movements, and Islamists) AND Brown, i.e., “New Nationalists” like Donald Trump and Viktor Orban, although Trump may not wish to nor be able to pervert constitutional basics as Orban has done (for himself) in Hungary.

Writing here as “an American of Jewish descent” and somewhere along the spectrum of “secular humanists”, the recognition of the world’s 7,000 living languages, each representing beliefs and spirituality — or none — in the process of using sound and signal to address in some place the challenges of living with the earth and with one another — I should think the retreat from too zealous a passion for one belief a part of “live and let live”.

I wouldn’t incline as the Soviets toward doing away with religion but rather promote tolerance for beliefs embraced privately and confined to behaviors and practices within each faith community. In essence, it’s that outlook that produces the modern multi-cultural, multi-religious open and secular democratic societies.

The sustained presence of anti-Semitism in the world and the possible emergence of either latent or new anti-Semitic movements involves the presence of the medieval world in the 21st Century.

Putin’s post-Soviet neo-imperial revanche in Russia has reemphasized medieval values certain to produce “wars of all against all” that then may contribute to his appearance as a strong force for stability — he’s the fireman who sets the fire and then shows the world how to put it out.

It’s very difficult for the general public to perceive that story, but I believe, with cause, that the projection of a Total Political Theater is and has been what Moscow has been about for generations to, perhaps, centuries. Today, it remains hampered by its own medieval urges — and to put a cap on that, one may note the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is not a bad thing but part of a larger package in the Kremlin’s worldview.

The modern soul would rather religion persisted and thrived with both a sense of prudent social constraint and volunteered boundaries. Most modern people recognize there are many things between the person, family, and community and God — or the possession of a compassionate and ethical happiness — but the same want for a socially healthy sense of community and personal boundaries.

Must couples, for example, hetero or homo, display affection in public? How intensely? How much “signal” is needed or wanted? To what end?

There are a lot of questions like that, and because we really can’t solve them species-wide, it’s better to go about our business privately but with awareness also of the impact our behavior may have on the earth and on others.

______

Hitchens only found out he was Jewish by birth when his mother died. It didn’t change how he felt about the improbable existence of God, but I believe it made his writer friend Martin Amis a little jealous.

Posted to YouTube 4/17/2013.

The above post was prompted by a Muslim’s complaint about having atheism and secularism foisted on the same by such luminaries as Dawkins, Geller, Hitchens, and others.

BackChannels simply hews to its observation of Putin’s re-medievalization project in Russia and attached to former Soviet client states, political enterprises (like the PLO), contested spaced and, as with Turkey, old enemies.  In essence, Russia’s president wants to keep playing old movies in realpolitik in realspace.  It behooves the open democracies of the west — or their constituencies, from the least informed on the streets to the ivory tower set — to reconsider what it took to produce (and shame on Brexit) peace and prosperity x political integrity, rule of law, and functioning and reliable courts across Europe and North America.

Moscow and its partners have raced backwards — of course, in their heads forward — into the worst of medieval absolutism.

Syria should today serve as an example of how that world works and what it looks like.

–33–

Notes on Erdogan’s Emerging Regime

11 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Turkey

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“This makes us sad. What more do Americans need? Their strategic ally is facing a coup and it takes them 45 days before sending anyone over? This is shocking.”

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/698387/Barack-Obama-world-President-Turkey-Erdogan-back-off-military-coup-US-accusations – 8/10/2016.

Former Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has entered prison to serve his four-month prison sentence. A convoy of 2,000 vehicles accompanied Erdogan to the prison HAKAN ASLANELI Istanbul – Turkish Daily News Istanbul’s former Islamist Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone to prison to serve a conviction for “inciting hatred based on religious differences” in a speech he made in Siirt nearly a year and a half ago.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-goes-to-prison.aspx?pageID=438&n=erdogan-goes-to-prison-1999-03-27 – 3/27/1999.

The now famous declaration from the 1997 speech delivered in Siirt:

Our minarets are our bayonets
Our domes are our helmets
Our mosques are our barracks

We will put a final end to ethnic segregation.  No one can ever intimidate us.

If the skies and the ground were to open against us
If floods and volcanoes were to burst
We will not turn from our mission.

My reference is Islam.

If I am not able to speak of this
What is the use of living?

(BackChannels has interpreted “, Cap” as a line break from the 1999 Hurriyet Daily News report).

As may be typical of the malignant, Erdogan, in his latest statement (at the top of this page), takes the spotlight to chide the United States for not shoring up his rapidly developing Islamist dictatorship.

States of affairs may be complicated, what with the “Kurdish Question” — Syria’s Kurds have been the best “boots on the ground” fighters against ISIS, but Erdogan has preferred to see and bomb them as Turkish rebels — numerous corruption scandals, from a massive AKP imbroglio that broke in 2013 to smuggling oil from ISIS, a claim generated by Moscow that may or may not be true — but not to worry: Assad, who incubated ISIS, has also received oil from his baby (the links section of this piece has a New Yorker piece on the matter as well), and Erdogan’s early patterns, with the persecution of journalists, for example, and latest actions in political repression, but viewed through the filter of political psychology, all becomes simple: Erdogan has transformed his NATO member state into a nascent Sunni dictatorship in business with like-minded personalities.

Different Talks – Same Walk

“He came into office with a promise of democracy and Turkey has historically been a country in which deep Islamic faith has lived side-by-side with modernity and an increasing openness, and that’s the legacy he should pursue,” Obama said. He warned Erdogan against the “repression of information and shutting down democratic debate.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-01/crackdowns-by-turkey-s-erdogan-are-troubling-obama-says – 4/1/2016.

Obama made the above observation a little more than five months ago.

Published last month in Politico:

“We basically have turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s drive towards an authoritarian, one-man system of rule in Turkey,” said Eric Edelman, a U.S. ambassador to Ankara from 2003 to 2005 and a deputy secretary of defense under George W. Bush. “The president has acknowledged it, but we haven’t really done much about it, if anything.”

That needs to change, Edelman said. “If there’s anything we’ve learned from the last six years in that part of the world, it’s that one-man rule isn’t very stable.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-turkey-225659 – 7/16/2016.

Published in Medium this month, and the writer Blaise Misztal the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Program.

Erdoğan wasted little time arresting those suspected of plotting against him. His purge, however, goes beyond the requirements of justice, removing thousands of military personnel not directly involved in the coup. Such “coup-proofing,” designed to instill fear and dissuade future putsches, is common in authoritarian states.

Misztal, Blaise.  “Erdoğan’s Purge in Turkey Leaves U.S. With Tough Choice.”  Medium, August 1, 2016.

While Bloomberg crows, “NATO Says Turkey is ‘Valued Ally’ After Erdogan Visit to Russia” (August 10, 2016), the interest in preventing the rise of “nationalist militarism” would seem now compromised by Turkey’s reversion toward authoritarian rule, the ousting of suspect top military leaders, and the greater allocation of authority to administrative officials and police in matters of state security.

Fast Links

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13746679 – “Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey’s Ruthless president.”  – 7/21/2016 – Article summarizes Erdogan’s rise to power and covers the signs and signals of his dictatorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/trouble-turkey-erdogan-isis-and-kurds – Fall 2015

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060 “Turkey v Syria’s Kurds v Islamic State – 2/19/2016.

http://observer.com/2016/02/deal-with-the-devil-turkey-props-up-isis-by-buying-its-stolen-oil/ – 2/4/2016.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/10/isis-is-the-con-ed-of-syria.html – 12/10/2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/free-speech-isnt-the-onlycasualty-of-erdogans-repression.html – 4/13/2016 – on repression of the Kurds.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/turkeys-failed-coup-hands-erdo-pretext-further-repression – 7/16/2016.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-coup-attempt-news-latest-number-of-people-detained-26000-gulen-hizmet-erdogan-crackdown-a7180256.html – 8/9/2016.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3715856/Erdogan-cancels-50-000-passports-latest-post-coup-crackdown-Turkey-tells-Western-leaders-criticise-Mind-business.html – 7/30/2016.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-isis-oil-trade-from-the-ground-up – 12/4/2015.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-andreasen-nuclear-weapons-turkey-20160811-snap-story.html – “Let’s get our nuclear weapons out of Turkey – 8/11/2016.”

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/turkey-security-package-threatens-security.html – 2/20/2015 – articles covers Turkey’s “Internal Security Package”, a raft of laws designed to circumvent due process by allocating greaterauthority to state administrators and police and minimizing judicial review.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN0ZX07S – “Erdogan announces army overhaul in latest post-coup shakeup” – 7/23/2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkeys-president-reforms-military-after-failed-coup/2016/07/31/766e3f26-56fe-11e6-8b48-0cb344221131_story.html

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FTAC – Fast Wrap on the Ahmed Mohamed Story

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Ahmed Mohamed brought an “invention” to school, showed it off several times, and finally made it beep in a classroom. In America’s “See something? Say something” culture, the teacher felt obligated to confiscate and report the box. The rest is history.

Ahmed’s father is now trying to prove that the city and school district have made, as a racial and religious class, black Muslims fair game for state-based discrimination.

No one knows WHY Ahmed chose to build a clock — or “timing device” — but all recognize that if the same thing had been armed with plastic explosive (very small, very potent material), we’d be chatyping about some other kind of story. As the state’s writ demands the same protect its citizens, sending / bringing a box jammed with electronics into the classroom raises questions and compels the making of some choices.

Hoax bomb?

Maybe it was.

Maybe it wasn’t.

Where should the public set its sensitivity to threat?

When Ahmed set off the clock’s alarm, it interrupted – or disrupted — the classroom. The teacher took the box and alerted the next official.

This small Texas incident took off with the help of the local NAACP leader Anthony Bond and in a matter of days became both a cause celebre and reviled part of the history of terrorism and related threat in the U.S. and around the world.

My partner in conversation didn’t know whether to laugh or cry over news of the lawsuit brought by Ahmed Mohamed and his father, Mohamed Elhassan, against the “Irving Independent School District; Daniel Cummings, In His Individual Capacity; and the City of Irving” (August 8, 2016 – URL links to PDF of the filing).

Not to summarize the suit here, readers may nonetheless note the charge of institutional racism against “black Muslims” as inseparable from the suit.

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FTAC – Putin and Erdogan

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Turkey

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Putin has proven genius in leveraging at least two NATO states his way using both his state cards — energy and technology — and affinity-based appeal to the egotism — malignant narcissism — of his targets in political “bromance”. Both Viktor Orban and Recip Tayyip Erdogan appear to have the Ceausescu strain of self-concept: one-of-a-kind brilliance, each God’s gift to mankind, to be nested in mighty impressive mansions as among the world’s Presidents-for-Life.

“Different Talks — Same Walk.”

Competition and warfare for each has become a state technology that can be governed to good effect and made a part of totalitarian political theater, the same as on display today in Syria.

Putin knows “the masses” are not going to see what he has created in its totality, and those that may will be in no position to challenge his authority and worldview. The same applies to Erdogan, who has been making certain that there will be no opposition to his will as he turns history’s clock backward in Turkey.

Is renewed medievalism our future?

Considering the forces of corruption in modern governments and the amplification of political passions along the Red-Black-Green (Marxist) and Brown (Nationalist) axis, it’s very likely that a state of violent conflict has been cultivated (I would blame Russo-Iranian agitation and influence for that) and we will exist in states of wars of all against all.

I think I’m on the right track — and I could turn this into another Awesome Conversation post on Back-Channels — but the public may not take it up and rediscover and reaffirm their own investment in a modern worldview.

Another thought expressed in the awesome conversation online and now entombed on this blog.

The worlds that keep dictators in business are those of fear and greed as projected by the dictator himself.  “Putin’s World” may be “Russian Nationalist” today and Khamenei’s representative of “Shiite Islam”, and the Christian should be at war with the Muslim, but, lo, at the top: kleptocracy.

The possession of absolute power defines each “autocrat”, and what they must have of interstate fighting are the wars that change nothing, wars that generate income and heat and good headlines — glory for themselves! — but have the effect of keeping each in business to the natural end of their days.

Related in the News

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37018562?SThisFB – “Putin mends broken relations with Turkey’s Erdogan” – 8/9/2016.

Related Online

Kabbani, Shaykh Muhammad Hisham.  “The Globalization of Jihad: From Islamist Resistance to War Against the West.”  The Islamic Supreme Council of America, 2006:

(2006) During the Cold War, the world was divided into two camps: one aligned with the United States, the other aligned with the Soviet Union. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America emerged as the sole superpower. But another camp is again emerging to challenge the United States and its allies. It is not a great superpower like the Soviet Union, but a loose coalition of forces united by a common opposition to the United States and its policies.

Islamist groups like al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are part of this movement against the United States, but it is neither a religious movement, nor one comprised of Muslims alone. Today, these groups are increasingly making common cause with anti-U.S. forces in Latin America and elsewhere. They are rethinking their rhetoric to appeal to a broader audience at home and their new allies abroad.

Readers will find eight virtual pages to the end of the piece, and they appear to agree with what this blog has been saying about “Red-Black-Green (Marxist) and Brown (Nationalist)” impulses and related Russo-Iranian influence.

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