Category Archives: FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation

If — in my own head — I hit a universal note just about right in Facebook or other conversation, I may simply wrench it from context and publish it here in this category as a mix of observation and, I hope, a writer’s wisdom.

FTAC: A Personal Note on America’s Democracy and its Defense

17 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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We may think that “style” doesn’t matter, but for the purposes of shepherding a nation into a new future, the civility and common interest taken in defining and resolving issues matters greatly.

I suppose we were (I was) having a discussion about Republican manners of late.

From the Awesome Conversation

For “New Rhetoric”, I’ve been using, as perhaps you have seen, “Left / Far Left” and “Right / Far (White) Right” to express displeasure with the contempt voiced by each clump, more or less, characterizing the news-creating behavior (“Sarsour” | “Charlottesville”) from beneath each “Big Tent”.

For Animal Farm qualities, “Horseshoe Theory” fits.

Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers alienated me from his Party; Trump’s style isn’t his issue — his excessive narcissism, related lying, apparent fascination or, alternatively, moral insensitivity to absolute power — or approval of it — are real problems. Republican loyalists are wrong to brush aside those issues or minimize their portent.

Americans may differ in their appraisal of their Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian civilizational inheritance that through the Founding Fathers delivered an ingenious construction for a prudent balancing of interests and powers that would effectively guaranty the greatest experience of freedom in business, faith, and speech known to history. Democrat or Republican, the basics are all right here:

United States of America – Basic Training

Simple.

The President has borrowed ferociously (possibly against losses our farmers took on negotiations with China — and now he’s walking back on his tariff policy); while the border has been of great concern, he has perhaps been less than candid about the flow of narcotics into North America; his highness and the Party have been consistently bullying, callous, disingenuous, vicious, and vindictive with their targets, and while they might feel big about that, I’d be embarrassed having someone like (“Badgering”) Jim Jordan representing me.

We may think that “style” doesn’t matter, but for the purposes of shepherding a nation into a new future, the civility and common interest taken in defining and resolving issues matters greatly.

Also to be noted, the President’s foils (like Jim Comey) and investigators have themselves been, often enough, Republicans (e.g., Mueller, at least) — just better ones than so many with so much hubris on display.

More to be known but in the works for some time: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and one powerful Palestinian businessman have launched highly ambitious projects in the middle east that have the future designed into them, and both are game changers — or should be and profoundly so. Neom is one; Rawabi is the other.

Thank you for the comment on photography — I am still busy with that art and technology and still setting up for business with it. Broadband Internet has taken me into what I call “People’s Diplomacy” — or what we have all been doing on Facebook for a while — and feel I’ve made some progress as an accidental tourist in Conflict Studies, International Affairs, and Political Science — but then everyone here has gotten that start, but not all with some earlier interest in Russia and the Cold War.

Norfolk Southern Railway Bridge as viewed from James Rumsey Memorial Park, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, October 19, 2010. (c) J. S. Oppenheim 2010.

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FTAC: Economics for the Future: Qualities of Living

13 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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We’re going to approach a point (here on earth — Mars seems still on some distant horizon for me) of diminishing returns for both technology and conventional “economic development”.

Someone is going to have to be visionary about a future in which the “Return on Investment” will be measured by Improved Qualities of Living (biological, financial, psychological, spiritual) x Area-Squared (or, if you prefer, Cubed). 🙂

For the present, we are all stuck between greed and human needs — and we’re being overtaken by criminality and greed.

Rome is failing.

I hope we are all tired of medieval politics.

it’s time to create something better, healthier, new.

Play with engines, life support systems, navigation, and time long enough, and for some, the future may well be on Mars.

We Earthlings, however, should we avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, expect to remain here on Earth in comparatively comfortable and secure conditions better than the baselines known to the present. More comfort, not less, please, and less conflict, God willing, as the “payment” for that nonsense continues to rise.

In the future, if we have to move people from untenable geophysical space — perhaps in relation to desertification — to more plentiful space we might be able to do that. Or we may be able to transport more of plenty to more challenged space. Why not? Perhaps some of this day’s conflict-driving cultural issues will have become archaic.

What might be the best basic “Qualities of Living”?

I’d rank “Personal Security” — or freedom from insecurity — highest on any list but leave much else to readers who have already chosen their personal areas of public battle, e.g., clean air and water, open space; durable and reliable built space; affordable, fair, and open transportation systems; affordable and reliable energy for all we humans do and need to do; political and social inclusion in stable enterprise and responsible governments; etc.

Qualities of Living x Area-Squared.

One block of urban space; a square mile of rural space; whole regions; whole states: how attractive, good, livable, survivable may the same be made on a public basis? How about a private basis, and that whether apartment, beach shack, mountain hut, or mansion?

At the moment, the “progressive” or “progressing” future seems a damaged idea as barbarism lifts off in the “New (and Fascist) Nationalism”.

However, where one sees a problem and may accurately define it, one may address the same.

Related Online

Home

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FTAC: Arab Thinkers Confront Self-Defeating Boycotts of Israel – Some Related Advice

02 Monday Dec 2019

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

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Inspiration for the response — the headline, “Arab Thinkers Call to Abandon Boycotts and Engage With Israel” —

Halbfinger, David M. “Arab Thinkers Call to Abandon Boycotts and Engage With Israel.” The New York Times, November 20, 2019.

The group has brought together Arab journalists, artists, politicians, diplomats, Quranic scholars and others who share a view that isolating and demonizing Israel has cost Arab nations billions in trade. They say it has also undercut Palestinian efforts to build institutions for a future state, and torn at the Arab social fabric, as rival ethnic, religious and national leaders increasingly apply tactics that were first tested against Israel.

Halbfinger, David M. “Arab Thinkers Call to Abandon Boycotts and Engage With Israel.” The New York Times, November 20, 2019.

From the Awesome Conversation

The wisdom that comes to mind: “The enemies of Israel defeat themselves.”

In modern thought, however, I believe in humanist ethics and principles that over time defeat family, feudal, and tribal pressure and torque while at the same time degrading the motivations for war itself. We have only one planet; we are all of the Earth herself; and whether we like it or not, we are going to have to arrange and contain ourselves for our sense of efficacy, freedom, and survival.

Too often, those who drive conflict — who incite others to violence — have for themselves aggrandizement and greed in mind foremost. Only to a certain extent may they define “the way of the world”. The way of the world is everyone else, and the truth is “everyone else” gets tired of being victimized by other people’s made-up battles — or psychoses.

All who want more death, more injury, more jealousy, more resentment, more fear, more authority, more force for suffocation of the human spirit . . . keep fighting. Everyone one else — take care of everyone else.

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FTAC: Encouragement for Palestinian Democracy

22 Friday Nov 2019

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

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Inspiration: the claim that Palestinians are struggling to end the occupation and establish peace and democracy.

From the (Still) Awesome Conversation

Fatah and Hamas should then establish peace and democracy where they live and govern by holding fair and free elections with regularity; by eliminating political repression for ordinary Palestinians who question policy; by addressing widespread corruption and related thuggery; by policing and neutralizing invasive terrorist organizations with agendas of their own; by working as hard for Christian and other faith communities as has been done for Muslim ones; by investing in Palestinian entrepreneurship — I, of all people, have been approached for that (Rx. given: international “crowd funding”, and it worked); and perhaps by encouraging an open public discussion about image, power, and wealth and what it means to look powerful while leveraging others and what it means to be powerful by being authentically good, noble, and virtuous; and, finally, by keeping earmarked Palestinian funding at home in the Palestinian Territories, Principalities, or Unified State rather than parked abroad.

The litany of keyword searches seems seldom good: “Palestinian Corruption”; “Palestinian Human Rights”; Palestinian Political Repression”; etc. Is it so strange to think that all of that might be reversed by Palestinian popular insistence on democratic governance, free and fair elections, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, Palestinian internal investment and development?

Further on in the conversation, and from BC’s side of it:

Israel in no way bars Palestinians in the Preoccupied Territories from enjoying the benefits of democracy, rule of law, and responsible and responsive governance. Palestinian “leaders” — or related personalities and organizations — do.

The conversation moves along, and I am fully standing on my boards in this part of the world’s virtual open mall —

Then let US address the “Eastern” side of the “East-West Conflict” to which any nascent Palestinian polity has to refuse further power to be itself authentically liberated — and from what? A) the Palestinian role in serving as a block and goad to the West, its faith in mankind, and its consequent and related civilizational liberalism; B) some propensity in Arab and other feudal realms to dominate and plunder the politically weak by evading law (all but one’s own) and aggrandizing one’s self — the leader’s self – at the expense of all.

I’ve been able to visit a certain surface in history — the Roman anchorage and expansion far into Europe from the south of the continent x the Norse — the Viking — push from the north bearing south and raiding and trading east at least to Baghdad. It’s a helluva story even in outline — but fast-forward to this day, and it turns out the Palestinians that have borne the weight and press of the same / similar civilizational tectonics.

The truth is the “Middle East Conflict” has been engineered and milked for all it has been worth, and the base of the Palestinian Community has paid the price for being on the border between the FOUR distinctly different worlds — the Medieval and the Modern; the Arab and the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian West — but with the exception of some who have gotten a good deal of money (plus ersatz political family and cachet) out of it.

Note: I hit enter inadvertently, but it’s about right. The Big Picture bears down on the small one. 😦 IMHO, the Palestinians should pursue a course independent of the concerns of so many powerful global players. Eject old polemic and everyone might ask, what would be cautious, prudent, and good today for peace, for work with dignity, for trade, and most of all a modern, responsive, and responsible governing culture?

We should have a new conversation.

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FTAC: American Civil Service Patriots and President Trump’s Impeachment Hearing

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, United States of America

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They’re the civil servants of our Federal government sworn to uphold the Constitution. They recognize the Presidency and its powers as a position in constitutional terms as well as their obligations in relation to that. As such, their loyalty may be to the position but not the occupant who dares to challenge the boundaries and contours of power as set by the Framers.

James S. Oppenheim, editor of this blog, via sub-thread comment during PBS live coverage of the impeachment hearings on November 19, 2019.

They — Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman; Jennifer Williams.

Posted by PBS NewsHour to YouTube November 19, 2019.
Posted by C-Span to YouTube November 19, 2019.

Badgered to give up the name of the “whistle blower” during the open hearing, Lt. Col. Vindman refused to deliver the name or discuss any of the intelligence personnel charged with the keeping of each their portion of the nation’s secrets, which certainly seems sensible to this editor if not his Republican interrogator.

Related on BackChannels

United States of America – Basic Training

Posted by PBS NewsHour to YouTube on November 19, 2019.

Related Online

Fonzone, Christopher. “What the Law of Military Obedience Can (and Can’t) Do — What Happens if a President’s Orders are Unlawful?” Just Security, May 4, 2018.

Hakim, Danny. “Army Officer Who Heard Trump’s Ukraine Call Reported Concerns.” The New York Times, October 28, 2019.

Jacobs, Jennifer and Justin Sink. “Trump Orders Substantial Cut to National Security Council Staff After Whistle-Blower Complaint.” Time, October 5, 2019.

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FTAC: A Bid for the Lost and Missing of America

13 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Canada, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green, transnational crime, United States of America

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Inspiration for the post: a tirade against the specter of Democratic Socialist America in the fashion of the Soviet Communist sphere of influence and the detritus of the irresponsible authoritarian mafia states left behind for western conscience and vision to address.

” . . . who despite enjoying the benefits and protections of a free society . . . ” (would vote the Democratic ticket).

What happened to these, especially our approximately 490,000 missing Americans under age 21?

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/04/an-american-report-card/ — the page provides a glance at the numbers associated with America’s most troublesome social pathologies–cocaine use, homelessness, missing persons, opioid addiction, prostitution.

Life has its hooks, ladders, and chutes, of course, and will never be perfect for everyone, but the numbers represent some systematic decimation of a modern — not 1950s white bread — culture. Are those of the middle class and of the privileged supposed to completely turn away from the social epidemiology swirling around the apparently Lost of America?

We should know who is in the mix — and why — and get that unholy street stew separated and channeled in some helpful way.

If Americans hadn’t “social conscience”, there would be no laws involving environment, health, labor, housing, or much else that has brought and held the nation together as a unified polity. Politicians on the Left / Far Left have walked down their own streets and asked about the same questions for the same reasons. Now it would seem up to radically responsible moderates to steal that flame to produce an overall healthier state, not an environment fit to elite, rapacious, and ruthless personalities.

Some Red-Green elements that have flowed down from the Soviet Era machinery have infected America’s Democratic Party with the familiar Far Left cocktail of anti-capitalist, radical, and anti-Semitic (anti-Zionist) cant that in effect poisons their own projects before they can progress. The social conscience of the Democratic Party as stamped by Presidents Roosevelt in the 1930s and Johnson in the 1960s appears well under attack by the vanguard of a bullying old White Right political culture that really doesn’t care to address the misery it has learned to overlook.

Far be it, however, for BackChannels to overlook Hollywood’s role in the glamorizing and promoting of the very scourges that have both enriched the world’s mafia and — with dollars cleaned and spiffy — spilled back into working communities — here: read about Vancouver’s pleasant (not really) influx of wealth — as to make economic retreat and the decoupling from evil virtually impossible.

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Malcolm Nance on Trump

08 Friday Nov 2019

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

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Malcolm Nance interviewed by Touré at Politicon 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee, October 26, 2019.

Soviet / post-Soviet Russia continues to gas light the world with political theater. To get to how it does that, BackChannels cannot too highly recommend the following reading:

Politkovskaya, Anna. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches From Chechnya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Press Books, 2003.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

As with much else in the wild, the Islamist program has a weedy persistence in relation to its 7th Century roots, but to really load it up, i.e., get manpower into it, takes the kind of brutalization that gives the victims no choice about fighting back. Anna Politkovskaya has detailed how artificial a process Russia’s “war” with Islam has been.

Related for thought:

Posted to YouTube by RT September 23, 2015.

John Schindler’s 2014 investigative report goes over the opportunity Russia’s secret political police organization had to encourage or manipulate Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri to perhaps get the ball rolling on America’s big black 9/11 day. As the world has more recently seen how Phantom of the Soviet Putin’s Moscow does business (not only in Syria and Ukraine), the connection’s worth consideration. Review the timeline: 1989 – Russian Army’s retreat from Afghanistan; 1991 – Soviet Union collapses in bankruptcy to leave Russian national culture to a newly defined and transitional Russian Federation; and ten years on, Al Qaeda hijacks and launches American civilian jets against America’s most iconic symbols of power.

Hmm.

Here’s a third reference suggestive of the persisting totalitarian character of Putin’s regime and political theater —

Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016.

The late Karen Dawisha has also investigated the “Moscow Apartment Building Bombings” and come to similar conclusions as reported in her book, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?

Loosely Related on BackChannels

Syria – Assad – ISIL – Background

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

Throughout the coming election season — or is it here already? — Americans will have to ask themselves whether they want to live in an authentic democracy or a Potemkin fake that merely resembles one. One version listens to the public’s voice with integrity; the other listens for advantage and herds people for service to other ambitions not in their interests.

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FTAC: Riff on the Sensitivity of the Malign Narcissist to Cartoons – Basics

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

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

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Inspiration for the Post

The other party’s recollection of the assassination of political cartoonists.

From the Awesome Conversation

Despots — malignant narcissists — live for “unlimited narcissistic supply”, i.e., the adoration of the public as if a god.

Here’s a portal from my blog:

Anthropolitical Psychology

Generally speaking, I believe that excessive and malignant narcissistic process takes off with damage early in life, and there’s a term for that: “Narcissistic Mortification”. The humiliation of the child, negative response to what is good, etc., will do it, and if it’s really bad, the personality will cover the damage (hiding the shame) and split an heroic image for self-concept that may be built with boasts, brags, lies, and the deep and tireless manipulation of others around himself.

Pause: narcissism is natural — most of us take pride in our internal motivations, our appearance, the things we do, and some of the things we acquire. Narcissism is not a bad thing but part of a healthy life. Moreover, not all narcissists are evil; many are reparative — we’re natural do-gooders, lovers, husbands, wives, shepherds, and stewards of what comes into our separate domains. We care, and goodness, integrity, and truth matter.

The malignant — the despotic — put on a show.

The fireman sets the fire, so he may show up to put it out and obtain admiration for his heroism.

Related look-up: “Moscow Apartment Bombings”.

“Gas lighting” goes with a malign narcissism as may “messianic delusions of grandeur” — also loss of those boundaries and limits that account for respectful privacy and natural and normal legal and social tendencies. The malignant lose a good part of their humanity on their way to “greatness” — and their greatness is in their heroic image.

After all these years, I don’t know who else has been mining this seam in relation to political psychology.

I had started with a book by a former CIA profiler — Post, Jerrold M. Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behavior. Forward by Alexander L. George. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

We may today know more about dictators — how they tick — than we do their followers, but some of the mechanics are known too, and much of the existence of each distills to force, leverage, and money that provides for measures of bribery, induction of dependency, intimidation, and patronage. The inner circles and close followers of dictators would seem generally in on the game with the greater public bought off, fooled, impressed, mollified, and patronized.

Most hated by the dictator: a free press that more accurately conveys his reflection and does so broadly, publicly, universally.

Related Online

Burke, Jason. “The murder that shattered Holland’s liberal dream.” The Guardian, November 7, 2004.

Gathara, Patrick. “The death of the political cartoon: A pillar of journalism is being destroyed by oppressive government, online mobs and profit-oriented media moguls.” Al Jazeera, July 2, 2019.

Hart, Benjamin. “4 Cartoonists Killed in Attack on Charlie Hebdo Newspaper.” HuffPost, December 6, 2017.

Rowson, Martin. “The New York Times political cartoon ban is a sinister and dangerous over-reaction.” The Guardian, June 12, 2019.

Stack, Liam. “London Police Reopen Investigation Into 1987 Killing of Palestinian Cartoonist.” The New York Times, August 29, 2017.

Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” H.C. Anderson Centret.

Wikipedia. “Naji al-Ali”.

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