Category Archives: Epistemology

FTAC: Ocasio-Cortez: Re. The “Closed” Meeting

18 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Reference: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/17/ocasio-cortez-bans-press-from-covering-campaign-event.html

Stimulus: a Facebook-based accusation to the effect that Ocasio-Cortez will come to resemble Castro and other socialist dictators.

Baloney.

The event in question appears to have been designed for partisan listening and not for open public discourse:

——
She said the journalist ban “was designed to protect + invite vulnerable populations to PUBLIC discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse, and so on.”

“We indicated previously that the event would be closed to press,” she said. “Future ones are open.”
——

I think all political organizations have the prerogative to determine their meeting doors open or closed to facilitate policy planning and research. To amplify the decision to avoid the media circus and actually listen to the underserved or, in some ways, people with problems that are nonetheless a part of our communities seems to me execrable — but if that’s the way Fox wants to operate, well that says a lot about Fox News.

BackChannels agrees with the explanation.

Dictators, not “isms”, have killed millions, and therefore having a look at the psychology of dictatorship — and the nature of disingenuous news personalities, lol, may be more helpful than the demonizing of a young American politician.

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FTAC: Old Worn Out Arguments About Nothing That Needs to Exist Purely

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, International Development, Philosophy, Politics

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As long as the terms are black v white / capitalism v communism-socialism, the conversation seems bound to be boxed in or circular as well as suffocated by events and personalities locked in the past and best left there as well. A better springboard would be to query the character and nature of potential political power as groomed today and whether “power” needs be responsible power.

I’ve tried this framing: “Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”.

It’s too much of a mouthful but fully observable in Syria, east v west “contests”, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the rifts of the Islamic Small Wars. All involve feudal personalities applying martial power to plowing forward into the more dismal regions of their own political pasts.

I’m a little lazy now and this summer believe I should be reading (on deck: Goldman’s Lord of the Flies, Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson), settling down, regathering myself for what beyond my 60+ years looks like a still daunting and frightening future for myself and tens of millions of Americans as well as the middle classes and the surviving and struggling of the nations worldwide.  Time seems to have produced too many drowning in arms and drugs, directly related insecurity against depredation, general economic dissolution and isolation, and general political miasma and upheaval.

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“This is Nigeria” | “This is America” | And for Christian Villages and Fulani Land Pirates Alike, “Carrying Capacity” Plus an Interesting Defense Industry Question

04 Monday Jun 2018

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

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Posted to YouTube May 25, 2018

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

Posted to YouTube May 5, 2018

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

“Published on May 9, 2018: Infectious in beat, jarring in violence and imagery, Donald Glover’s new music video “This Is America” touches on painful racial history and our contemporary culture of mass entertainment and murder. Jeffrey Brown talks with Rolling Stone contributor Tre Johnson about the video and the ways African-American artists are reflecting the nuanced tensions in how we depict black lives in America.”

What blogger / writer needs to write when compilations are practically ready-made?

Macaulay, Scott.  “Watch: Falz the Bad Guy’s Childish Gambino Riff, This is Nigeria.”  Filmmaker Magazine, June 3, 2018:

Nigerian rapper Falz the Bad Guy, a former lawyer, has released a riff on Childish Gambino’s This is America, in which the song and music video are copied and reworked.

It’s good to know which video arrived first, but I’m not certain that it matters: we’re a wild species often accurately reflected in the poets’ mirrors.  However, seeing ourselves so depicted, we might consider getting ahead of some basic challenges rather than acquiescing to being forever jerked around by them.

Posted to YouTube June 30, 2017

Posted to YouTube January 9, 2018: “Reacting to the incessant killing by Fulani herdsmen across the country, Comrade Mohammed Kudu Abubakar, Deputy National President of Arewa Youth Consultative Forum maintained that President Muhammadu Buhari should immediately pronounce herdsmen as a terrorist organization.”

 

Ultimate hope: expand old pasturage by reversing desertification where possible and producing ranch land with grazing crops, fenced boundaries, and appropriate agricultural cycling or rotations of cattle if, where, and as possible.  Such armchair suggestions are, of course, easier said than done — and BackChannels, as have many others, have heard the “ranching solution” mentioned elsewhere.  The same, however, needs to be done, and most complicating: cultural habits (for that, refer to Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” —Wikipedia entry; article online).

As regards Christian-Muslim enmity based in the uptick in violence and apparent disinterest of the government in responding to the barbarism — it’s really nothing else — BackChannels may note that both Boko Haram and Fulani violence may be associated with Chinese and Russian — and, most recently, American — defense sales to Nigeria.  Perhaps both faith communities should appreciate Mr. Abubakar’s interest in investigating the path backward to getting AK-47s into Fulani hands.

And if AK-47s, why not later — if a civil war can be set up — MANPADS?  RPGs?  “Technicals”?

How much “low intensity conflict” or “small war” does it take to sell to one state or another how many billions of dollars worth of aircraft or other defense equipment and supporting systems?

It’s a cynical question but possibly one of the most interesting as regards civilizational ambitions and “realpolitik”.

Addendum

http://dailypost.ng/2018/06/05/muslims-give-falz-7-days-withdraw-nigeria-video/ — 6/5/2018.

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has described ‘This is Nigeria’ song by Nigerian Singer, Folarin Falana, AKA, Falz the Bahd Guy, as a ‘hate video and an assault on the self-dignity of every Muslim.’

BackChannels has heard that the effort to intimidate the artist has been rebuked; however, this marks the seventh day out from that threat, so the story may be something to watch in relation to Nigeria’s cultural freedom of expression.

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Hamas Urges Palestinians Toward Injury and Death

14 Monday May 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology

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wpo-gaza-memory-hole

This morning, BackChannels copied and pasted to its Facebook “reading page” the following quotation:

— At a gathering point east of Gaza City, organizers urged demonstrators to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them. —

“Israelis kill more than 50 Palestinians in Gaza protests, health officials say” (May 14 at 12:14 p.m. by Loveday Morris and Hazem Balousha).

The Guardian posted about the  the same thing: “Israeli troops kill dozens of Palestinians in protests as US embassy opens in Jerusalem – live updates” (May 14, 2018).

Such statements are not untrue — who?  did what?  to whom? — but incomplete and superficial.

Hamas chose to play the joyful occasion of the inauguration of the American Embassy in Jerusalem as just right for drama — and it chose to lie in a most functional or practical way to fairly order ever hopeful, ever strung along, ever disinformed, misled, and infuriated Palestinians toward the world’s best defended border and the troops that have made that so.

Related on BackChannels:

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

Addendum: FTAC: May 15, 2018: How Palestinians Will “Defy the Odds”

Palestinians will truly “defy the odds” when they find the courage and wherewithal to stand up to those who keep them most captive, channeled, and ill-informed: Fatah and Hamas. Until that day, they will repeat what they have been told about themselves, go around in circles somewhere between a frustrated complacency and a volcanic violence, and find themselves where they began, duped by Moscow, led by thugs, and subject to a part of the world’s most corrupt and piratical leadership.

Some should be asking Abbas about his new airplane.

Some should be asking Hamas how the Israelis could have been running away when they were firing to clear their fence line.

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Yarmouk, Syria: Mutually Accomplished Destruction

23 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

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The compressed link leads to this apparently unedited or particularly grim header:

“Human Appeal: Bodies and body parts in Yarmouk camp are alive under the rubble” (Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, April 22, 2018).

BackChannels requested additional information, and this came in:

https://twitter.com/BloodyRain111/status/988320431722688512

Most important info missing, the Yarmouk camp is under ISIS. The offensive to liberate the Palestinian Yarmouk camp is led by Palestinian militias, most notably Liwa al-Quds.

4/23/2018

Liwa al-Quds is an Assad-aligned Sunni Palestinian fighting organization.

In the Soviet / post-Soviet medieval time bubble, the spectacle attending the bombing of a Palestinian hospital in the Palestinian enclave of Yarmouk in Syria appears that of a Palestinian Sunni force pitted against independent Sunni extremist forces to which, for enmity as viewed by Liwa al-Quds, the western-leaning Free Syrian Army appears appears to have been attached, although western alignment would seem also pitched against ISIS and other Sunni (and Shiite) extremists.

Among Liwa al-Quds allies, the Phantoms of the Soviet Era align: Ba’ath Brigades, Hezbollah, (Syrian) National Defence Forces, Russia, Syrian Armed Forces, Syrian Armed Forces, each defending “political absolutism”, the survival of dictatorship itself — and of dictatorships, BackChannels has long remarked, “Different talks — same walk!”

The walk seems to be that of a march toward the accumulating of wealth and power without end, without limit, and without purpose other than the experience of it (in the political psychology, the malign narcissistic process may begin with “narcissistic mortification” and end with “narcissistic supply”).

How bad can that malign narcissistic itch become: read about one man’s demons in relation to the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”.

Among Liwa al-Quds opponents: minus the Free Syrian Army, defenders of the very same thing!

Missing from the picture: family, financial, and personal relationships.  The interlocking details involving persons and personal interests would be another and more granular level down in public reporting, and such investigative work might be unwelcome where it would be gathered.

Related on BackChannels

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/ftac-middle-east-conflict-back-to-max-erwin-von-scheubner-richter-and-forward-to-the-plundering-of-palestinian-misery-by-palestinian-leadership-elites/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/16/excerpt-first-political-terrorist-organization-in-history/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/syria-the-horror-2011/

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FTAC: To a Pakistani On the Image of American Warmongering

13 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

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The Grand Game for Hearts and Minds remains in play between America and Russia.

Searching up video title “Five Decades of Lies and Wars” will take you to the prompt for the following text.

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

It was the Soviet Union that poured $1 billion itself into America’s domestic Vietnam Era anti-war movement. Its cause: totalitarian perceptual control.

The SU had also funded a host of organizations within the World Peace Council with interest in the seduction and leveraging of the same. When Soviet tanks started appearing in the SU’s satellite state, many organizations withdrew from the WPC and Soviet support. They had gotten the sweet picture — the sweet words — on their way into business with the Soviet but had gotten a clear picture of how Moscow really worked as east-west politics, essentially authoritarian “political absolutism” v democratic liberalism, really worked.

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

The phantoms of the Soviet, which dissolved in bankruptcy and much reviled in Russia some 26 years ago, remain in the character and spirit of Russia’s political administration today, while terms like “active measures” — also “information warfare”, “hybrid warfare”, “reflexive control”, etc. — remain obscure.

When will the world wake up from the control of dictatorships?

Today’s Moscow has been arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. How that center of power feels about people is on full display in Syria, where its air force has been bombing hospitals. How the RF may regard Pakistan may be seen along the daily bloodied front line where its army sits poised to invade democratic Ukraine.

Related for background on BackChannels:

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

It appears that the Phantom of the Soviet — capitalized and singular, there can be only one — wishes to replay WWII and the end of the Cold War with KGB methods in political (and perceptual) control intact.

Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat . . . .

Moscow’s direction looks a little crazy to BackChannels.

The host of self-defeating dictatorships should leave the 20th Century and move forward with liberal modernity and related responsive and responsible democratic governance.

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FTAC: The Wisdom of Holocaust Remembrance

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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We remember Pharaoh. We remember Haman. We should remember what Hitler did and with the greater wisdom that should come of traumatic experience. We have something today that earlier generations could not have imagined grasping and incorporating in their survival: we have ventured into the psychology attending evil; we have made ourselves deeply cognizant of the nuts and bolts associated with dictatorships and anti-Semitism (and we know how those two travel together — and are traveling together now). We are aware of dangers and done with denial. We should have greater foresight. If that’s not a blessing, I don’t what is.

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FTAC – A Note on Ethno-Cultural Philosophy and Islam

09 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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Are the Abayudaya Jewish?

Are the Pashtun, who are Pashtun while referring to themselves as “B’ni Israel” both a little bit Jewish and Muslim?

There are ethnic elements in the invention, uptake, and adaptation of Islam that may not be separated from “Muslim” — not “Islamic” — self-concept and volunteered description. When for tribal business, independence, security, or survival one civilization accepts the overlay of another, it becomes difficult in time to pry apart that melding. At the same time, an ethos that drives against the grain of humanity, i.e., as that possessed by the “Islamists”, needs must be ejected at least in part.

There is an argument to be had about the character of Muhammad and that of Islam with some who would put all Muslims in the al-Qaeda (or similar) box even though Muslims appears the first victims (and warriors against) that efflorescent fascism that has no place among good people.

We are born with our identities: culture and its customs and laws, our parents, and our families, our names.  God (Nature and the Universe) provide us with no choice in those earliest matters.  However, as we are not fixed as characters in books and much less in place and time, we as adults may confirm our cultural self-concept or change it.  Over time, change is what we do because “back there” in time includes ideas and practices that become for each “new world” — a generational concept — maladapted.

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