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 – Social Networks – Social Change

27 Monday Jul 2015

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The complaint fit the format, “people are dumb and don’t listen” — but when one approaches a “people problem” with numbers in the hundreds of million and with the heaviest percentage cash poor and illiterate, the wisdom of culture and evolution working together to contain the energies of that humanity comes to the fore.  The modern world must have long patience with the cultivation and transformation of lawless, feudal, and medieval space, which in fact may be the larger world.

The passage responds to a fellow and frustrated expatriate Pakistani moral entrepreneur.

1. Network algorithms favor more favored contacts, so our circles and readership may become smaller with the weight of interest given to select others — they 4,000 are not ignoring you but, more likely, missing you;

2. Time is the New Space. In addition to what the computers may be doing to add a layer of programming to defining or reducing our own social chaos (now we have too many friends! 🙂 ), we are all fully booked, or have that option, for computer-borne intellectual and social activity. The machinery runs 24/7/365, has no consciousness itself — or conscience — and is as large as the universe of data-containing disks that support it. We have just one mind each with limited memory and time.  No comparison.

3. The conflict I’ve noted in our world is greater than the “Islamic Small Wars”, with which all are too familiar by way of the news: instead, it is the world of the concentration of power in singular personalities — absolute, feudal, and medieval — vs the world of more broadly distributed power, which I call “modern”. That is what makes a team of Putin and Khamenei — different talks: same walk. The same has made billionaires of Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh. The same represent the rule of the lawless vs the rule of the lawful.

4. Finally, cultures may be also our containers: what would we do with time if we were not individually integrated with them? I think the “modern” a big step up from the “medieval” (as discussed above), but individually and culture-wide, we work with conditions as given. Presented with dictators and associated barbaric and piratical forces, we defend our other interests and battle back as best we may. Some struggle involves military, police, and political initiative, but most of such a struggle involves mind — “intellectual battlespace”.

The Haggadah with which I grew up contains among other fine thoughts an interesting assertion: “With every generation a little more freedom is won”. That’s a good thing for a child’s ears. As adults: what more noble a cause?

Our religions — there are about 40 major of the class (and about 7,000 living languages worldwide, each seeing the world a little differently) — are part of our own containment and also multifaceted. It’s good to have them, and all that survive also evolve (or my people would still be trembling before smokey altars).

May the earth have long patience. 🙂

good thing for a child’s ears. As adults: what more noble a cause?

Our religions — there are about 40 major of the class (and about 7,000 living languages worldwide, each seeing the world a little differently) — are part of our own containment and also multifaceted. It’s good to have them, and all that survive also evolve (or my people would still be trembling before smokey altars).

May the earth have long patience. 🙂

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FTAC – The Jews, the Monotheisms, the Future

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

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Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, a Hebrew-speaking ethnic cohort. It is also a religion lending itself to both humanist and universalist appeal, which has produced across thousands of years adoption, adaptation, and buy-in by other people.

Generally missing from the conversation: Hillel the Elder and his role in producing a more accessible, legalist, and practical screed. Hillel has been reported as passing away in 10-CE.

The cultural uptake of Judaism and the expansion of distinct retelling, reinterpretation, and additions appear to have been abetted by two generals: Constantine and Muhammad. Each appears to have wanted the final word, and a portion of their followers the annihilation of the Jews, so that history could begin with themselves.

Well: no Moses — no Muhammad.

We’re not done as explorers in time brought closer together by the possession of some metaphysical themes held in common.

That noted, the Jews, well possessed of a distinct beliefs, a calendar, customs, language, rituals, and legal ideas, have had to eject or leave themselves quite a bit of lore across more than 5,000 years of coherent and cohesive existence. No majority will ever go back to animal sacrifice and the keeping of smoking altars, for example.

Let’s go forward with time, not backward.

The inspiration: a simple Venn diagram with “Judaism” circles to the left and within a larger circle to right, separate circles denoting “Judaism”, “Christianity”, and “Muhammad’s Sharia”, and then above those three the statement, “Shalom/Islam”.

Forget supremacism, especially Islamic supremacism, which has been proving itself deadly worldwide through its blood-drenched zealots.  And leave alone the Jews, but not consideration of Jewish thought that repeatedly bears the challenges and tests brought to it by the barbaric across time.

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FTAC – of Flights and Slights

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

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

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Referencing the Back-Channels zeitgeist — on the greater web: https://conflict-backchannels.com/ — and this has been as much a journey in cultural and political navigation as it has been for others sailing together through time — both Putin and Khamenei have emphasized their devotion to feudalism and absolute power (for them, that’s the good side) and (the bad side) the validation of mafia-style governance and outright internal piracy.

Periodically, Iranian naval forces have tweaked the British Navy by capturing a patrol boat and forcing Great Britain into a predictable round of negotiations ending with, so one might say, faces saved.

Putin’s neo-feudal rig in Russia extends the privileges of the police state known in the Soviet Era (reference: Karen Dawisha’s work) and certainly harks back to the 19th Century’s Age of Empire (so I might wag “colonel, President, EMPEROR Putin” at times). With the invasion of Crimea most in evidence (western governments are the only entities acquiescing, albeit perhaps superficially, in various levels of denial), Putin similarly takes swipes at western resolve,

Much amounts to political theater (like the $52 billion Sochi Olympics show covering the butchery and degradation taking place in Syria with Putin’s military deliveries), but these feints may at any point become more pressed, more earnest, more deadly.

That Putin would call Obama to exchange Independence Day sentiment while this was taking place of course tells of the kind of mentality represented by the Russian President and how that differs from the still dominant American manner on the topside of international politics.

The thread starter: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/06/officials-us-jets-scramble-to-intercept-russian-bombers-off-california-alaska/ (July 6, 2015).

The Big Boys with The Big Toys play around the world this way —

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201506290076 – “Joint exercise in South China Sea reflects Japan’s ‘strong concern’ about Beijing” – 6/29/2015

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/cycle-north-korean-provocations (1/30/2014)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032300574.html – “Iran Seizes 15 British Seamen” (3/24/2007)

And so it goes – and probably goes on every day in ways that simply compile into military activity statistics.

What made the story played by Fox News compelling were, of course, the date, the phone call, and the required scramble.

Newsweek has got it right for this day: “Putin’s War on Ukraine is More Important Than Greek Debt” (July 6, 2015):

. . . the Kremlin opted for a third strategy, identified with Putin’s diabolic aide Vladislav Surkov: a limited but bloody war in the eastern and southern part of only two of Ukraine’s 25 regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, known as the Donbas.

The destruction has been horrendous. The territory now occupied by Russian troops or their subordinates once harbored 3.3 million people, but most have since fled—1.3 million to other parts of Ukraine, 500,000 to Russia, and 100,000 to other countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Only pensioners, the destitute and criminals remain.

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FTAC – On the Opposition of the Lawless to the Influence of Israel

29 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The world is the world as found, X., and we’re a wild species in it. The AQ-Typicals and the Hezbollahvirus may be part of a larger mix of lawless souls represented by Russia’s Emperor De Facto and his “New Nobility” and assorted New Nationalists and National Socialists, and that is what has the UN going after Israel and the inheritors in whole and part of the legacy of Moses the Lawgiver.

The more familiar the message, the more distilled and telegraphed it becomes.

In political shorthand, the “West” becomes “Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian”; the arrangement of the most significant and virulent forces opposed: “Syndicate Red Brown Green“.

Elaboration seems no longer needed.

Additional concepts and data may be helpful as regards challenges inherent in the governance of states opposed to the western democracies and their true allies worldwide: Egypt failed in its first foray as a democracy, proving itself unprepared for the aggressive fascism of the Muslim Botherhood — and it chose to advance to the rule of a military pursuing business for itself and the state while promoting for all Egyptians a moderating classical liberalism.  For sheer expanse and numbers, China too would seem imprudent were it to rapidly transfer the powers of the ruling elite now invested in the west — and proud to own some mansions in Melbourne and elsewhere — across a democratized but perhaps also disorganized sea of humanity.

For the greater part, possibly, our international competitions may be also naturally adjusting, but there are bloodied fringes too: Russian hybrid warfare in Ukraine has made a dismal space of Crimea, and one that on the Russo-nationalist track has no durable, ennobled, or happy future, so mired has Putin’s revanche neo-feudal Russia become in political crime (a visit to “The Russian Section” may help clarify that assertion).

The Green Fringe (however it may “Shimmer“) promotes its horror show in both a compelling and relentless fashion.  Call it “Black Flag Friday” — my notes remind: “Lyon – beheading“; “Kuwait – Shiite mosque“; “Tunisia – tourism, 38 dead“; “Somalia – African Union base – Leego – 30 killed“; “Thursday – Kobane – Kurdistan – massacre“.

And the Brown?

Today’s “Brown” (for “Brown Shirts”, Nazis, National Socialists, Nationalists of the want of a stripe of ethnic, racial, or religious purity — in that last aspect, everyone, Jews included, may have someone among the “the pure” bearing in common affection for the fascist’s favored color in work shirts) wears camouflage:

In a recent interview with Reuters, Mr Vona claimed: “With time, the [extremist] elements of Jobbik you may see as prevalent will fade because they no longer find their calling here.”

This attempt at detoxification, à la National Front in France, has convinced few observers, however. Political analyst Peter Kreko says: “The hardcore antisemitism, the hardcore anti-Roma sentiments, are still present in Jobbik, they simply display it less prominently.”

Fabriczki, Franciska.  “Jobbik is doing a bad makeover job.”  The JC – The Jewish Chronicle Online, June 9, 2015.

“Brown” also shimmers, but since the defeat of nationalist fascism in Europe and even with the development and morphing of similar movements in Russia like Pamyat and Russian National Unity, it has a deeply fragmented and riven aspect to it.  There is no unifying “internationalist nationalist” framework for belligerence.  Perhaps ironically, BackChannels encouragement of “ethnolinguistic cultural integrity” and responsive geospatial arrangements in troubled regions addresses exactly the kernel that anchors the idea of “The Jewish State” — or that of those who dream of an independent Balochistan or a unified Kurdistan.  Nonetheless, when Hungary’s Jobbik Party has associated itself with the regime in Iran, the “Brown-Green” portion of “Red Brown Green” would seem apt.

No Moses?

No Muhammad.

However, with Moses and Muhammad and Jesus between — and so many other personalities of historic note, including the the BC to CE-bridging Hillel the Elder — the world may boast of including about seven billion “Abrahamic” monotheists, however fractious.  Faced with the onslaughts of the Islamists and the plain thieving promoted by the Feudalists, most might prefer the “rule of law” to the bloody enslavement and exploitation of the lawless.

With the introduction of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” and Eve’s predictable transgression, the Torah introduces three aspects of humanity that are to accompany its journey through time: human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience.

Ah, to be burdened by conscience!

Says Hillel the Elder to an as yet unconvinced prospective convert: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.  That is the whole of Torah.  The rest is commentary.  Now go and study.”

Awareness of others . . . conscience . . . some justice inherent in the phrase that anchors a good portion of the law and empirical legal methods: “Because it could happen to you” — whatever it is.

Rule of law.

As opposed to the rule of men who have made themselves into unbridled, unconscionable, unredeemable monsters.

Anti-Semitic expression involves lying, sometimes grossly so as with the medieval “blood libel“, but often also with subtlety by way of obfuscations and omissions easily overlooked by lazy minds short on curiosity or time and long, perhaps, on culturally transmitted and enforced bad feeling (about someone — could be anyone — outside their own known group).

As hatreds go, one might find the signals of anti-Semitic thought inherently criminal for being plainly disingenuous.

There’s nothing more to it.

What makes anti-Semitic cant more interesting is who embraces it and exploits the same in the interest of developing or furthering their own powers of abuse.

Update – On the Web

Amier, Justin.  “I don’t like Jews because . . .”  The Blogs, The Times of Israel, August 11, 2014.

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The Big Fade – Or Not? Where Goes the Phantom of the Cold War?

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

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

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Yesterday left off with “Putin, Erdogan meet face to face, but don’t see eye to eye” (Al-Monitor, June 19, 2015).

Trouble in “Hellidise” for the world’s most fabulous feudal lords?

Hmm.

Should some friction not attend Syria’s fragmenting implosion brought about by the implied bloody script this blog has referred to as “Assad vs The Terrorists”?

Sanctions have been up for a while; oil prices have been down for a while: such broad conditions brought about by large maneuvers, like “North American energy independence“, may have effects.

As a trading partner, Erdogan may have a little more edge with Putin these days; as a Sunni Muslim looking over the border and watching Daesh and other al-Qaeda-type groups continuing to rough up and tear apart Syria’s landscape, he has cause to let the scouring continue.  The teleology on which he has campaigned pits him against Putin-Assad-Khamenei’s interests on the Hezbollahian (militant Shiite) side of the great divide most immediately applicable to the continuing Great Struggle of Evil Against Evil in Syria, the modern and moderate, whoever they may be (ye shall know them one still distant day by their pro-Semitic / pro-Zionist lingo), having been killed, dispersed, rendered irrelevant, or otherwise sidelined for some years now.

This day appears to be closing (for me) with tomorrow’s news (gotta love the International Dateline): “US to deploy heavy weapons on NATO’s eastern flank” (AFP, Yahoo, June 24, 2015).

From my portion of The Awesome Conversation:

While generally attaching Erdogan to Putin-Khamenei as another medieval-minded autocrat with strong interest in sustaining feudal models of power against the democratic west, there may be some unraveling within this drift as depressed oil revenues (for Russia), other punitive measures (like sanctions), and some military repositioning take place in response to Russia’s aggression in Crimea. For Erdogan, whether he likes it or not (I’m starting to appreciate that phrase), Turkey remains a NATO member with a significant modern constituency. While Erdogan wants his White Palace — I think he’s moved in, I’m not sure — the whole world is watching in an open and robust global information environment. For that, both leaders may have a little less operating room as despots than they may have had 25 years ago.

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The “big picture” — how the feudal world may change as the modern one moves around it — is easier (for me) to see today than was the case just a few years ago.

From an amateur’s perspective, the smaller pictures might require country specialization and language ability. It’s just easier following heads of state than the numerous personalities, agencies, and committees involved in producing the world’s political landscapes and their narratives.

The long diplomacy and now evident maneuvering have been dangerous, of course, but even portrayed as playing poker against Obama’s chess, Putin’s own programming has a predictable aspect to it.  Via the day’s e-mail feed, World Affairs promoted “Imperial Ambitions: Russia’s Military Buildup” (May/June 2015):

In September 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that he could, at will, occupy any Eastern European capital in two days. This apparently spontaneous utterance reveals, probably more than Russia’s new official defense doctrine, Moscow’s true assessment of NATO’s capabilities, cohesion, and will to resist. In an echo of Soviet tactics, it also reflects Putin’s reflexive recourse to intimidation—e.g., unwarranted boasting about Russian military capabilities and intentions—as a negotiating strategy. In 2014 alone, Moscow repeatedly threatened the Baltic and Nordic states and civilian airliners, heightened intelligence penetration, deployed unprecedented military forces against those states, intensified overflights and submarine reconnaissance, mobilized nuclear forces and threats, deployed nuclear-capable forces in Kaliningrad, menaced Moldova, and openly violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987.

Much of Putin’s tenure has been about a Russian feudal revanche complete with “New Nobility” and a $51 billion winter spectacle (Sochi, while Syria’s Assad was barrel bombing millions of Syrians out of their lives and homes to make way for The Terrorists by refraining from doing the same to them at the time).

As noted in passing, while Khamenei may be going gangbusters with wars by proxy, one may wonder today how much the same have cost him by way of the continuing faith and loyalty of those patronized.  The public talk-and-walk by Nasrallah may not change much, and, indeed, if the enemy nearby is Daesh or another of the type, the situation demands that he inspire and prepare his community for greater challenges to come, and that he keep his backers happy, but the same now take place in an atmosphere of stalemate over a wartorn landscape.

Such combat proves not a fast game but an agonizingly slow grind.

Where the finger-pointing takes place — how could it not be taking place offstage? — some portion must point back to Moscow and Tehran — Putin and Khamenei — for perverting a mild people’s revolution in Damascus to hold together the Ghosts of the Soviet and the maintenance of old and new privileged through time-honored and familiar but perfectly despicable feudal practices.

Sideways and Forward

Laub, Karin (AP).  “New think tank in Jordan watching Israel shows discreet, growing ties between countries.”  U.S. News & World Report, June 22, 2015.

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FTAC – “Trusted Others” – Online

18 Thursday Jun 2015

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

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“Trusted others” has been an issue here, and I haven’t found a way to handle it except by being circumspect, diplomatic, and in line with the run of the western opposition. The beauty of “open source intelligence (OSI)”, a very fancy way of saying one reads the news and socializes online and draws on that for commentary (it’s a hobby), is that it is open: the world that can access the Internet in English is reading off the same pages. Those of us in the “social network” here and elsewhere are pioneering together in time.

The only thing available to adverse parties in these online news and social zones is their own reflection: they are left reading about their image from multiple perspectives and sources, not that they don’t try to inform that image creation themselves.  However, for political narrative, truth and its stability are easier to work with than the anarchy that comes of clumsy, doubtful, and self-serving fictions.

So pithy, I’ve assigned it to the “A Little Wisdom” section of this blog.

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FTAC – Banu Qurayza – True or False? Congruent.

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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

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The problem with the Banu Qurayza Legend is that it doesn’t need to be technically true: it has been promulgated by both the opponents and proponents of Islam and discussed into having a global life in the intellectual reality of those interested in this region of Jihad / anti-Jihad conflict.

The story of Safiyah garners similar attention.

The citing of the assassinations of competitor poets — another layer down in the layers of anti-Jihad / anti-Islam screed online — works the same way.

Intellectual integrity should not be pitted against political or social loyalty, but as much becomes a feature of feudal life in which the rule of the strong by coercion and main force trumps the rule of law.

Compound this by-the-sword image of Islam with Baghdaddi’s studied emulation of what he apparently believes to have been both the appearance in method of the spread of Islam at its inception.

What’s Out There — or around us when polls are taken — “shimmers” and whether the reality comes to something like 12 percent (or less) “Islamist” or 80 percent (or so) sympathetic or unyielding in the rejection of culpability for any wrong done in the name of Islam, the legends, true or not, fit with the portion of a violent reality on display across the al-Qaeda-type groups and Hezbollah operations (and Khamenei’s Shiite-associated wars-by-proxy).

Source of the bounce: Fatah, Tarek.  “Face reality: Many Muslims support ISIS.” Toronto Sun, June 16, 2015:

In the last week of May, the Qatar-based Arabic news network Al-Jazeera polled its Arabic-language audience on the question: “Do you support the victories of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in your region?”

The results were shocking. Of the 56,881 Arabic-speaking respondents, a whopping 81% voted yes.

On this blog, “Shimmer” has long addressed this issue involving the definition of the challenge in its open conflict aspect, and the piece has been updated from time to time.

Additional Reference

Arlandson, James M.  “Muhammad’s Dead Poets Society: The assassinations of satirical poets in early Islam.”  n.d. — An American Thinker article associated with the piece, so the piece claims, appears absent at its URL (“not found”) online; the piece has also been addressed by Bassam Zawadi on the “answering-christianity.com” blog.  (Perhaps the best way out of the Punch-and-Judy cycle is to give it a look, at best, and not get into it in the first place).

Ladadwi, Abdullah.  “The ‘Caliphate’ of al-Baghdadi – Announcement from Syrian Scholars.”  Islam21c.com, “09/07/2014”: “These events need to be leant the full consciousness of every individual, and bring forth new responsibilities on scholars and analysts wherever they may be. Remaining silent or looking for excuses is no longer an option, but rather it is now incumbent upon everyone to speak the truth like never before. / The invalidity of this ‘Caliphate’ can be seen from a number of angles . . . .”

Regarding the Syrian and Syrian-Iraq theaters, BackChannels’ view has been that the troika Putin-Assad-Khamenei, in the interest of sustaining feudal absolute power in their respective quarters (and promoting it in the greater world as well), perverted a mild “Arab Spring” people’s challenge to the Assad regime into a grand piece of political theater (theater of the real, for sure) that might be titled, “Assad vs The Terrorists”.  The method used was to bomb deeply noncombatant targets while not bombing the assembling of al-Qaeda-type groups developing in the countryside (reference on BackChannels “The Doctor, the Eye Doctor, and Me” (February 2014); on the web and in Newsweek, “U.S. Accuses Assad of Aiding ISIS Through Airstrikes” by Lucy Westcott, June 2, 2015).

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FTAC – ” . . . an inculcated hate”

12 Friday Jun 2015

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

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“We maintain that Jews and Judaism have no conflict with Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians or any other group.” True.

“It was complete obedience to the Will of the Creator.” False. We do not endorse blind obedience, and many of us believe God’s test of Abraham was a test of conscience and courage — a test to see if Abraham would speak back to God over His demand that Isaac be murdered by his father — rather than of obedience. Abraham fails. The evidence from such an interpretation can only come from careful and close reading, but that is exactly the kind of reading and thinking the Torah demands.

While they may profess a sincere identification with Judaism, they are within the Jewish community considered and treated as a cult.

In the service of Palestinian anti-Semitism: http://972mag.com/anti-zionist-jews-are-no-friend-of-the-palestinian-national-struggle/61002/

Daniel Pipes reported on NK’s taking payments from Iran back in 2004.

More recently, members have been indicted and jailed for spying.

http://www.jta.org/2014/01/28/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/israeli-neturei-karta-member-sentenced-for-spying-for-iran

What may bond you to them, despite now knowing that Khamenei uses them as token Jews, and that they are reviled by the vast majority of the Jewish community, not only in Israel but worldwide, is that they too would wish to annihilate Israel and probably all of Jewry but themselves. That bond involves an inculcated hate.

Neturai Karta. “The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism.”  Speech Presented by Rabbi Dovid Weiss of NKI at the Islamic Center of Long Island on January 14, 2001.

Anti-Zionism is an inherently anti-Semitic doctrine. In calling for the fall of the Jewish state, anti-Zionists are engaged in a racist endeavour. Jews should feel no hesitation whatsoever in calling out those who challenge Israel’s right to exist as anti-Semites, with all the attendant implications.

None of this should be controversial. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” is part of the EU’s working definition of anti-Semitism (or was, until the EU inexplicably dropped it). This article is concerned with articulating the intellectual foundations for this proposition, rather than somehow presenting a new idea.

Asian-Levy, Eylon.  “Why anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.”  The Times of Israel, December 8, 2013.

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