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.
Verbatim but for identification of the thread host.
The inspiration was one of those grievance-laden rants about the Clintons and Obama, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, the Steele Dossier, George Soros, the CIA, the FBI, and “The Deep State”.
It’s not the truth, K. It’s polemic without basis, empirical, factual or otherwise.
Posted elsewhere on this thread . . . but I wanted to reply to you specifically —
Is there the possibility of your being wrong and having been wrong about President Trump and his claims?
There is in politics related to conflict a concept widely accepted as “Accusation in a Mirror”.
On YouTube, Republicans Voting Against Trump (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC03-Q9vq-JyiStTnqasADVg) voluntarily submitted recordings of their most personal political views and the insults and violations of their sensibilities brought to them by Donald J. Trump. Listen to them. Listen to their hearts. They are your fellow Republicans and fellow Americans.
Is there in your heart even the possibility that your information may be wrong and your conclusions faulty?
Social control in our competitor’s state, Russia, often involves medieval agitation and propaganda; today’s America has been deeply divided not by examined issues but by defamation, disinformation, innuendos, and the floating of wild conspiracy theories that just don’t add up or pan out with clinical examination. The post-Soviet (World Peace Council) Far Out Left knows the methods too, but here in the United States, it really has been a kind of Far White Right that has spun up delusion and paranoia in its ranks.
I am certain that more centered and moderate Americans encounter similar rants composed or copy-and-pasted from the Trump base, and I wouldn’t know what to tell them but to battle back the disinformation.
With two critical Iranian leaders assassinated — Qasem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — and an American President determined to blunt the tip of the spear aimed against the west, the prospect for “fireworks” appears that much closer. Ever big on packing the Big Picture into a small space, I’ve done that here with ramble and signal but not chaos. Old Communist and Islamist politics persist in the latest states of affairs although the old Communists have produced breathtakingly wealthy elites and the chief among Islamists has been long known as a thief enriched by the plundering of ordinary Iranians.
From the Awesome Conversation
Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran represent an anti-western alliance committed to political absolutism by all and any means necessary. At least two of the three, Moscow and Tehran, represent also kleptocracy (see Reuters’ “Assets of the Ayatollah”) or mafia-type power (reference Ben Judah or Luke Harding), and together they keep the west bothered. Tehran, in malign narcissistic fashion, has covered its own crimes with deflections and dogma–it’s not strength that propels its fantasies of nuclear annihilation but regime weakness expressed through medieval fantasy. The clinical, dispassionate, and modern and prudent west may be building down Tehran’s capability, confidence, and coordination for aggression.
The old “Red-Green Alliance” is in the mix too with some persistent communist cant woven into the Houthi challenge in Yemen. The World Peace Council persists — as do graduates of Patrice Lamumba University — and the pack may view Tehran as an alley in thuggish political fashion. More important than political dogma: an heroic image to be created by marching forward into glorious past while holding each fantasy in place by main force.
Stated by Trita Parsi in 2017 (yes, just a quick look-see on my part): “Another emerging threat comes from Iran’s domestic politics. Presidential elections next month may put Iran’s foreign policy back into the hands of the country’s hard-liners, who, much like Mr. Trump, define their country in opposition to the world” (“The Coming Crisis With Iran”, The New York Times, April 20, 2017).
“Malignant Narcissism” begins with “Narcissistic Mortification”, i.e., the humiliation of the “Great Leader” (somewhere in childhood). Why everyone else has to be made a part of the compensation (measured by the Great One’s estimation of his own “Narcissistic Supply”), I’ve no idea but that the worst of the worst needs must have both an adoring audience and a horrified one.
Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran have bent themselves on feudal and medieval lusts for the conquest or control of their targets by any means necessary and all available, and then some, and each has demonstrated a remarkable political anomie in the handling of those affected by their strategies. Beijing has been making a name for itself as a culturally and politically predatory lender; Moscow: live fire “demonstrations” all over Syria to goose its defense industry sales; and Iran — just have a look at how it has treated the places in which it has chosen to facilitate aggression, especially in Yemen and Syria.
What to call the present Sino-Russo-Iranian cooperation against the west?
This assassination campaign began in the aftermath of 9/11 when Pakistan allowed Taliban fighters and other allied fighters who were forced to flee Afghanistan to resettle in parts of former FATA. Over the years, these groups systematically eliminated tribal leaders and politicians who raised their voices against them. To this day, the Pakistani state has not solved any of these murders, perhaps because it has been tacitly using these unlawful groups to foment instability in Afghanistan and consolidate its influence over the region.
What follows are thoughts from the lengthiest of observations having to do with the Pashtun’s natural position between state forces and processes having to do with international development and war much, much larger than themselves.
When our President Nixon (a long time ago) initiated a new relationship with China, it was with hopes to offset Soviet Russian power and bring China closer to the normative behaviors of the modern world expressive of global compassion supported by international trade. On the topside, we do things for one another. Rather on the surface, well, we do things for money — and that makes “big picture” sense of Asian labor and western raw goods and Asian finished goods sold (for good profit — good markup — in western markets).
Mercantilism has been much the way of the world.
In the modern open democratic and liberal west, the abuses and excesses of business have been tempered through the actions of elected administrations, legislatures, and courts in the interests of electorates and justice. In the west, capitalists and wealthy have not gotten free rides from popularly elected governments even if seeding political careers and wins with their own money. There are just too many with too many differing motives for playing that game broadly.
In Asia, perhaps, money — and with China, now overwhelming wealth — does its work between elites and military behind closed door (“behind the curtains” goes the phrase fit to medieval politics) — and guess who’s in the way of the greater enrichment and glory of the disinterested or remote powerful?
*
It doesn’t help the Pashtun — and whoever and for whatever reason — to attack PakDef military posts (IF that is what has actually happened recently), for that gives the military excuse to bother or maraud the Pashtun community.
With regard to some Larger Forces — here, Chinese and Pakistani trade interests representing government, military, and private entities — “anomie” (worth the looking up) may be a real issue.
*
Don’t look to Russia for help — that state has minted defense sales using Syrians as targets for demonstration of its wares. In the AfPak region, its arms, however acquired, have helped sustain what looks to me an unfathomable misery borne of endless low-intensity conflict that has no end without financial, political, and religious insight plus political will and near immediate reconciliation.
The draconian nature of the FCR lies in the concept of “collective punishment”, where a whole tribe can be punished for the crime of one member of the tribe. It is telling that even after British India got its independence in 1947, the people of ex FATA were still facing the same colonial legal injustice till the year 2018. And while things definitely have changed on paper, there still is a long way to go before there is a change in the situation on the ground.These draconian punishments have always served a purpose, whether it was British India of the 20thcentury or the Pakistan of the 21stcentury. These laws are meant to subdue a population into giving up their rights, so that they can be sacrificed on the altar of “greater good”. Goes without saying that this greater good, has never been good for us, the people of ex FATA.
Launched in 2015, CPEC is a logical partnership for China and Pakistan—two close allies keen to cooperate on much-needed infrastructure projects in Pakistan, while contributing to China’s strategic goal of facilitating access to far-flung markets and expanding its global footprint.
Chinese Banking and Development Worldwide : flexes China’s financial muscle while leveraging infrastructure building expertise into a gateway for Chinese labor — which accompanies its projects — and through that mechanism Chinese cultural influence agents. As much would update the Cold War Era Soviet practice of sending thousands of Communist agents into the Middle East as embedded in the labor contingents attached to development contracts in targeted states.
PakDef | ISI –> Taliban encouragement : goad to Kabul : encouragement of “Islamism” within : further marginalizing of the Pashtun as a coherent and cohesive political force.
The above two paragraphs represent my thinking in cryptic fashion. If the world were practical and less inclined to fear and threat — as well as deeply dependent on international arms sales that support manufacturing bases and untold wealth in related Research & Development competitions — the promotion of dogma into violence — or “extremist dogma” — would be less attractive. As it is, “The Terrorists” (wherever “who” has become both ambiguous and ubiquitous) have turned out handy for some elites in the world’s more corrupt and cynical circles of military and political power.
Posted to YouTube by Caspian Reports, January 10, 2019.
Turning Point USA’s featured meme, November 20, 2020.
From the Awesome Conversation
You are wrong, Turning Point USA.
Qualities of Living (QOL) anywhere involve complex economic, political, psychological, and social arrangements, the same that have states adjusting infrastructure and tax-related variables to attract business (see Foxconn, Wisconsin for an egregious example of bending over frontward) and put populations and jobs together with the help of appropriate transportation systems, none of which are ever without local, state, and Federal government support in one form or another.
It’s good that California is losing population while the host of America’s “activists” and economic developers wrestle with basic floor-level habitability and standards issues.
Of course, California’s compassion, generosity, and wealth have done their job in attracting both labor and predatory elements, but with regard to the latter and the impoverishment and ravaging of the seemingly marginal, the state that also glamorizes its demimonde (see, for example, the film _Barfly_ or, really, just about any modern product playing up the mix of crime and wealth) has drawn exactly what is has created and invited. — I saw Patrick Moynihan years ago at a subcommittee hearing in D.C. on growth, and he noted that the difference between Columbia, Maryland and Calcutta, India was . . . government and planning. He was right. I would add culture and the vision in total of our own humanity. — Sweep California’s social issues off the rug or under it has seemed to me the persistent conservative stance. Perhaps (as complement to other “Turning Point” businesses picking up the broken pieces), engagement with corruption and crime, distribution of population, site-locating of new financial hubs elsewhere (!), and development of small homes communities for those looking for their next California in the interior, would be the better way to go.
For America’s 328-million souls, the “report card” is not that awful but what comes of a kind of geospatial political affliction in population affects the entire nation. Those you seem to need to label as enemies are your fellow Americans, and many among them appear to be engaging issues you just don’t want to see.
The meme’s featured fellow is actually . . . rather clean cut — great teeth, clean clothes, finely photographed!
My confession: life’s a lot cozier and secure viewing the world from my desktop as opposed (for this moment at 65+ at which I need to work on my own “fitness level” before further adventure’s forth) to playing a male Dorothea Lange — and what she saw was the economic migration out to California. However, two examples among the more brave with friends and partners: Mark Horvath documenting the homeless via his work published on Invisible People TV; veteran war photographer James Nachtwey via a Time “Special Report: The Opioid Diaries” (2018). In the world far from the armed and gated bastions of wealthy Californian conservatives — at least a few, I’m sure — “Turning Point” has a different meaning. However, there’s much more than the narcotics trade at work within California producing conditions for social ills and outbound migration. Issues: affordability, crime, desperation, greed, and — out of practical necessity as well as individual personality factors — plain old cold-shouldered inhumanity.
What is to be done?
🙂
For improved Qualities of Living (QOLs) for any Area-Squared, it might help if governments try to balance population with variables associated with basic physical and psychological security. For the troubled floors of myriad urban and rural economies, the only process answer for that is to know who has come from where with what purposes at heart — know thy community — and start to encourage the development of distributed alternative resources for living reasonably, lawfully, and with hope.
I would add here the necessity of serious criminal “filtration” associated with the end-to-end channels of the Transnational Crime Industries. Suffice it to say there are currents and pools of “dark money” all over the world, and all of them scrape from off the streets of the world. With regard to that theme, BackChannels would rather write fiction.
Posted to YouTube March 10, 2019.
“This Tiny Home Community Gives Homeless Veterans A Chance – Working To End Veteran Homelessness” – Posted to YouTube November 27, 2019.
Posted to YouTube June 26, 2020.
Administrative Reality
The data provided by LAHSA showed that 31% of those leaving the shelters went back to the streets and 35% to unknown destinations. An additional 13% found other temporary housing, either with friends or family or in a program; 4% checked into a mental hospital, detox program or nursing facility; 2% went to jail; and seven — less than half a percent — died.
Fewer than half the placements in permanent housing included supportive services, such as case management and housing assistance. Most were in subsidized rentals or with family or friends.
Well, they’re not “invisible” anymore, and they’re providing impetus for innovations in basic minimum housing design, shelter placements and programs, and perhaps thinking about “client” autonomy, character, and drift.
Is America sure it did the right thing? And why has he any support left? Are his followers dumb? Are the trolls on Facebook that good? Have Americans really wanted a “mafia state” of their own?
Trump and his organization “lies up” his projects, screwing his subcontractors out of untold millions. The Taj was just one project “inspiring” countless lawsuits.
The truth about Russian-borne disinformation: it’s designed to break us apart, Far Left and Far Right. Americans who lean Left have become (with disinfo) suddenly Communist and those leaning right get salted as something like white Christian nationalist extremists . . . .
The country has had four long years with this guy, and it voted him out.
— and you know how it’s done: someone pastes up the art, slips it into the Internet Wild absent of context and any thematic evaluation, and out it goes to intellectually poison the gulls.
Agitation/Propaganda (agitprop) is never clear, accurate, or complete. It is always twisted, lacking in context, in detail, and integrity.
Excerpted from the above URL.
“Nearly 40 African American religious leaders released a statement supporting the bill, saying: “While we do not agree with every provision in the crime bill, we do believe and emphatically support the bill’s goal to save our communities, and most importantly, our children.”
Now I have to ask my fellow Americans: what kind of person, what mentality, what measure in irresponsible character grabs an attention-getting image with potent political content or suggestion and goes with it without at least a look into the claim?
That person — the person who would do that — that’s not an American.
We’re a real country full of real GOOD people working difficult issues as we go along, and if we’re not that today, let’s get back to that real fast!
The most essential difference between Moscow and Washington and between Trump’s Republicans and both Republicans and Democrats that voted for Biden is the difference between the political methods known to feudal/medieval realms accustomed to political absolutism and the liberal modern and open democracies that really do try to expand inclusion in the distribution of power.
President Trump has long signaled his character through his choice of Paul Manafort as his first campaign manager and not much has changed to this divisive point at which he has been refusing to concede America’s 2020 Presidential Election. Trump and his now delusional Far Wrong Right component well mirror Putin’s church & defense nationalism. I find it difficult as an American to see our domestic politics so degraded by division and reduced to vacuous dogma and slogans promoted by zealots.
With Trump’s election lost — a premise now accepted by all but those who lie about it and those dumbed-down, deluded, and duped by lies — the most egregious of political attitudes and beliefs to have come from this nearly Orwellian farce has been the reinvention of the threat of the Communist Party in the United States and, of course, the great bogies that have been made of so-called “Antifa” and “Globalists“. Anarchists, communists, and globalists (even “Antifa”) may be out there, but it would seem the Trumpian rallying cries and crowds appear more real — frighteningly so — than their nearly phantom targets.
My conversational partner, a Canadian, fervently believes in the latest medieval rumor “Hammer and Scorecard” — a “Deep State” plot to pervert the election via the computing machinery — launched by the now surreal President Donald J. Trump.
From the Awesome Conversation
You should hate the kind of people who lie to you in order to keep you seduced for THEIR — not YOUR OWN — political purposes.
Trump and his cronies know that YOU cannot check out his claims yourself, and by attempting to derail the most dedicated and professional workers in his own government and in the press, he can get you to believe anything HE wants while delivering not very much at all to America’s working men and women.
Remember, our small business community and voters in all of the communities of labor across the land voted for Biden too.
I would love to have you reason critically about beliefs that have become familiar to you but have no basis in reality.
Fear mongering; rumor mills; accusations in a mirror — what HE would do himself, he accuses his opposition of doing to him . . . such have become the medieval tactics now being launched through Donald J. Trump’s political machinery. The victims of President Trump’s false claims and myriad lies are not his critics or America’s journalists or his business rivals — those most exploited are his own and most devoted fans who must turn their backs on the truth and swim into the chaos and darkness he prefers to have swirling around him.
BackChannels 