Reflect ye on the work of Rome — aqueducts, castles, fortifications, ports, roads | estates, villages, towns, metropolises | centers of agriculture, education, industry | a magnificence unrivaled in expression of the constructive channeling of human energy | eagerly adapted or reluctantly accepted . . . .
Whatever one may think of “Western Civilization”, the fruits of the labor of it have been coveted and enjoyed worldwide, and the twinned ideas of “Jerusalem” and the “Kingdom of Heaven” may be where we live and anywhere on earth.
Inspiration: the briefest tirade against systemic corruption with other parts of the conversation previously referencing the agony of Mexico between the slave wages of the “maquiladora” and the brutality of the narcotics and other trafficking business.
I’ve just spent an hour struggling to deliver the answer, the prescription, that magic elixir in thought that would derail the wicked and cleanse the land with decency in law and the power to maintain the best conditions for economic, physical, political, psychological, and spiritual well being for all The People.
Naturally, I thought of the Communists of South Africa.
— Jacob Zuma had taken millions in British development support to build for himself a compound fit for a king, and in the way of similar autocrats / malignant narcissists, he had developed renown for favors to family and friends. His latest turn was toward the Black Nationalism made so clearly successful (I kid about that) by Robert Mugabe next door in Zimbabwe.
For reasons I cannot explain, but perhaps today’s SA Communist Party will, Zuma’s corruption was found, alas, unappealing by those who were supposed to love him most of all.
My best hope for Mexico will be that the possession of conscience and empathy prove evolutionary even in the worst of gangsters, and that some forms of evil diminish because the criminals in the boardrooms and out on the streets may lose the respect of their children while also finding societies, somewhere, that for all their money and power won’t have them.
If I could time travel back in history, I would have liked to have spent an afternoon fly fishing with Andrew Carnegie and then a couple of hours over scotch AFTER he had given up his position and turned to philanthropy.
I would not have liked to have spent any time with Mr. Frick.
In what must be the weirdest way of the web and Facebook, this wonderfully supportive piece for evolutionary improvement in “self-awareness, social awareness” and moral sense arrived on my desktop:
Spindle neurons are also called von Economo neurons (VENs), because Constantin von Economo provided the first comprehensive description of these neurons in 1925 (Seeley et al. 2012). It was not until the end of the 20th century, however, that comparative neurologists began to study VENs as special neurons that might be part of what explains the evolutionary uniqueness of the human mind.
VENs appear in the brains of only a few species. They are present in gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans, although in numbers smaller than for humans. They are also found in the brains of whales, dolphins, and elephants. Thus, VENs are associated with species that have large brains, which suggests the possibility that VENs facilitate speedy communication of neural signals over neural networks scattered over large brains. VENs are also associated with species that have complex social lives and that show mirror self-awareness (recognizing themselves in mirrors).
BackChannels natural interest: the cultivation of empathy in our species and concomitant possession of conscience and related good will and good spirit.
Two days ago on the web, BackChannels listened to the pleas of a young man in Morocco for relief from lowest-wage labor and daily uncertain employment ($7 per day if it could be found) and exposure to illness and injury and related distress without access to local basic health services. The acquaintance told the story of friends, two among five who for sleep shared a room in a house. One had been stricken with severe stomach pain and the other with a leg injured in a fall, and there followed the story of getting to a hospital, being initially refused emergency care, and persisting in insisting on being seen.
Being seen — eventually the two were, the one with the leg injury being sent home, and the other with severe stomach pain remained in the hospital.
Being made visible – that’s why this post is here.
With online research, it doesn’t take long to connect the absence of simple human decency in the distribution of Moroccan health care in its public facet to the social cancer of pervasive corruption. In fact, corruption appears to BackChannels the chief impediment to the firm establishment and distribution of basic medical services in the state.
There appears in numerous reports the petite corruption of patients bribing the doctors to rush the que.
How rude!
However, of greater concern may be the business to privileged business way of doing business, i.e., what is referred to as institutional or “grand corruption”, and that appears suppressed: nonetheless, one picks up from the literature notes associated with bribery, nepotism, profiteering, skimming, and stealing — all the many possibilities available to the feudal and ruthless.
Who diverted money budgeted for facilities maintenance and how was it really spent?
Who took the medicine or failed to protect it in storage?
Equipment or medicine damaged or stolen would seem the same thing — i.e., useless — to doctors and their patients.
Where is the money going?
Who is getting it?
What are they doing with it?
BackChannels has no idea although reading Gulain P. Denoeux’s 1999 or 2000 report may raise awareness of the tension between a feudal systems of absolute power — and lenience and patronage — and a modern rule-of-law system engaged in independent investigation, administrative and judicial oversight, and associated regulation with corrective measures and penalties specified.
This blogger’s impression, which could change with the next reference piece, is that both external forces and internal pressures have made corruption a major theme in Moroccan governance, and while related policies and laws have been developed to address issues, they have yet to be vigorously implemented by King Mohammed VI who needs must balance the legacy relationships of powerful families and institutions in situ with the state and its quest for a political modernity that cares for, enfranchises, and empowers a broadening swath of the less visible Moroccan population.
In the manner of kings, Mohammed VI this past summer shifted culpability for the death of a fishmonger trying to recover a swordfish — caught out of season — from the garbage truck (in which police had by implication thrown it) to local political authority while pressuring the same to do their work:
“If the King of Morocco is not convinced by the way political activity is conducted and if he does not trust a number of politicians, what are the citizens left with?” Mohammed VI said during a televised speech commemorating the 18th anniversary of his ascension to the throne.
“To all those concerned I say: ‘Enough is enough!’ Fear God in what you are perpetrating against your homeland. Either carry out your duties fully or withdraw from public life.”
Often in the feudal mode, appearance may be made to suffice for performance.
In the modern world, that’s not enough: the conditions of things, the states of affairs come out in open observation and statistics, and today that observation is global.
To get public health distributed as needed — as deserved and as befits the humanity and image of the state — Morocco needs greater economic development supported by rule of law and capable of sustaining revenues within the state and seeing a greater part of that confidently distributed in the public interest.
One may paint the hospital’s new oncology wing to avoid a king’s ire while also making him look good, but one may not paint over the misery of suffering alone in pain and uncertainty without recourse to accessible basic clinic services staffed by personnel educated and trained for the purpose.
It was a makeover fit for a king, Mohammed VI, whose visit, to inaugurate a new oncology wing, was later broadcast on national television. But it did not do much to mask the reality of health care in Morocco, where even Health Minister Houssaine Louardi has conceded that standards of care for the country’s 33 million people are far from adequate.
Public hospitals are decrepit and lack doctors, equipment and medicine, and fewer than 30 percent of Moroccans have health insurance coverage.
The Rif, a predominantly Berber region where al-Hoceima is located, has been gripped by months of unrest.
Protests erupted last October after a fishmonger was crushed to death in a rubbish truck as he tried to retrieve a swordfish confiscated for being caught out of season.
Demands for justice later snowballed into a wider social movement named Al-Hirak al-Shaabi, calling for jobs, development and an end to corruption.
A broadly worded article in the Moroccan penal code criminalizes receiving support from foreign organizations with the purpose of “harming the integrity, sovereignty or independence of the Kingdom, or shaking the loyalty that citizens owe to the state.” This article can be used to penalize a wide range of legitimate forms of expression and association and to curtail the right of Moroccan civil society to seek funding freely as guaranteed by the international human rights conventions to which Morocco is party
Blocked pipes, mouldy walls, wet blankets and a shortage of supplies: this is what users of Morocco’s public health system have to deal with. Dozens of photos published on Facebook have shed light on the grime reality of the country’s public hospitals. According to our Observer, it reveals a disastrous state of affairs that the government’s privatisation plan won’t be able to fix.
The Suharto regime allows no space for a democratic opposition to emerge. So what the pro-democracy, pro-clean-government forces are relying on is not a revolution from below, not a revolution from above, but a revolution from beyond.
Their strategy is to do everything they can to integrate Indonesia into the global economy on the conviction that the more Indonesia is tied into the global system, the more its government will be exposed to the rules, standards, laws, pressures, scrutiny and regulations of global institutions, and the less arbitrary, corrupt and autocratic it will be able to be.
Corruption represents a problem for businesses in Morocco. Almost all sectors suffer from rampant corruption. Cultures of patronage, nepotism and wasta (the use of connections) exist, and inefficient government bureaucracy and excessive red tape deter investors. The legal framework concerning corruption, transparency and integrity is in place, and the regulatory system is becoming increasingly transparent. Under the Moroccan Criminal Code, active and passive bribery, extortion, influence peddling and abuse of office are illegal. Anti-corruption laws are reportedly not enforced effectively by the government. Prosecutions of corruption cases have been accused of targeting only petty corruption, and, allegedly, companies owned by highly influential persons are rarely disciplined. Facilitation payments and giving and receiving gifts are criminalized under Moroccan law, but businesses indicate the likelihood of encountering these practices is high.
The report goes on to comment on Morocco’s judicial system, police, public services, land administration, tax administration, customs administration, public procurement, natural resources, legislation, and civil society.
What are Morocco’s expectations for the 6th session of the UNCAC Conference of States Parties (COSP)?
It’s a UN process. All UN processes are slow because you need consensus and you cannot force governments to agree to anything. Still it’s worth noting that more and more countries accept evaluation, country visits, publication of full review reports. It’s less and less comfortable for the countries that oppose transparency. Morocco will work to help to make progress in the review process at the next COSP session, although I remain sceptical about reaching quick achievements
What is Morocco’s position on holding a discussion of grand corruption at the UNCAC Conference of States Parties (COSP)?
I think the UNCAC COSP can discuss grand corruption. Transparency International should elaborate instruments for this. The Corruption Perceptions Index is biased towards petty corruption—it does not point out grand corruption or institutionalised corruption.
Kurds look to Washington for military, economic and political support, rightly so and often without a choice. However, Kurds must also realize that Washington throughout history has assisted Kurds only incrementally. No US administration has helped the Kurdish nation wholly, which crosses four nations, one of which is a NATO ally, Turkey.The political discourse in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is the making of Kurds themselves, not the lack of international support. Both US and Russian heads of states are watching the situation in the KRG closely to see if Kurds are capable of responsible governing. If the KRG fails to immediately resume parliament and hold transparent elections, it will surely force the US to ignore calls for independence.
“Rojava” – “The West” – boasts “bottom-up democracy” in which the people have their voice, gender equality, cooperative economy, and respect for ecology.
Inspiration: the common conservative American claim that the United Nations has proven consistently anti-Semitic and anti-Western: why fund it?
Think of the UN as having organized an institutionalized tug-of-war, i.e., a war between the medieval world and the modern one. It is the medieval world that culturally preserves and leverages anti-Semitism. It does so to deflect attention from power while it mightily exploits its deeply subjugated constituents. The situation is no different for the Arabs of the Kingdom who support the absolute power of the royals; the poor of Russia, a class once again growing by the day, whose wealth in the patrimony of the land has been swept into the hands of the patronized by the “Vertical of Power” (Putin) who are spending it elsewhere; the whites of South Africa, all of a sudden, but who have been the target of communist-aligned Jacob Zuma’s ire; and, though you may not believe me, the Palestinians whose KGB-trained Arafat and KGB-affiliated Mahmoud Abbas have kept most right where they are because for political leadership and powerful clans, the middle east conflict has turned out a spectacularly good business!
The modern world fights the medieval world at the UN.
It’s a long process, or one best approached a little bit at a time, for “the world left behind” may well swallow the one that has advanced with increments of violence from everywhere. It’s better to have one place where the truth can be dragged out into the light whether or not the representatives of so many nations wish to accept it.
Medieval Political Absolutism v Modern Democratic and Checked Distribution of Power
♠
Medieval Dissimulation v Modern Integrity
♠
President Putin’s feudal Moscow has set the new low standard for the obliteration of human conscience, empathy, and reason. His state has defied the open democracies of the west by perverting their politics into a polarized circus with the help of “Allahu Akbar Terrorism”, and to the extent that the open democracies have turned reflexively toward Right / Far Right Nationalism, that may be the measure of Putin’s success with the installing of a new feudalism in the once free and secure states of the post-WWII political order.
President Trump’s Drift Toward Feudalism
Posted by YNN February 16, 2017.
To be asked of President Trump: Still campaigning? Still defensive? Still bending the questions to yourself? Still missing policy?
Glaringly clear in the above video clip (now making rounds the in the “fake” — major, established, institutional, high-integrity — media, e.g., CNN’s take as alluded to in the above video) is President Trump’s refusal to offer assurance to Americans regarding the Jewish Community and with it the general security of America’s minority communities (that’s how equality works) or to offer insight into related domestic security policy.
To be asked of you: how far back toward feudalism — the rule of the strong, not the rule of law; the law of the absolute, not the law of the compassionate and reasoning; the way of the criminal in the death of conscience and consideration for others, not the way of the righteous in the embrace of human consciousness and conscience and related promotion of care for the dignity, freedom, and security of others — do you now wish to travel on your journey into the future?
What part of the civilizational past — absolutism, barbarism, caprice in the possession and application of political power — should we wish today to have looming before us?
Islam
Those who believe they have been fighting Islam have been fighting the medieval signatures of the religion, e.g., the tirades against the infidel; the differentiation between believers and unbelievers; the subjugating of Christians and Jews to Muslim political will; and a reprehensible raft of barbaric punishments (like “contralateral amputation” for thievery) and repugnant misogynist and rigged legal precepts.
Should you happen to be Muslim bent on the destruction of Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian post-Enlightenment western civilization and its now representative democracies, for how long should you wish to wallow in the dismal blood-soaked pools of the feudal past?
And is feudalism the best you can do?
In BackChannels opinion, it is no accident that Moscow, Hezbollah, and Hamas (and Moscow and the New Nationalists — for a start: Erdogan, Le Pen, Orban, perhaps Trump — appear to have a relationship plus stakes in shared authoritarian narcissistic psychology.
To only the simple minded should it appear that the Ummah of Islam presents a unique destructive challenge to the modern world when in fact it is the entire feudal assembly of autocratic regimes — never forget what applies to dictatorships worldwide: “Different Talks — Same Walk!” — that serve to undermine the naturally progressive (and progressing) modern democracies of the world.
Various of the world’s Muslim-majority states have suffered mightily themselves from Islamist attacks. Pakistan especially has had to weather mass murdering attacks against its Frontier Corp and other military targets, including an elementary school, also against numerous mosques, countless businesses, and tribal organizations. These days, one may find at least one article 🙂 like this one in Pakistan’s premier defense publication:
Call it a start or look for more article like it (for the sake of focus on this post, BackChannels will demur on the topic of Muslim states in or entering a transition toward a more globally cooperative peace and prosperity).
Medieval Signal: Anti-Semitism
On the left sidebar of this blog, BackChannels maintains a statement about anti-Semitism:
Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner’s own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
There are many tropes today but here favored among them and in relation to the tension between the feudal world and the modern one, this one applies well: “What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews”.
Here’s another example, which BackChannels may have to retract but will dare the reprinting because the message is so applicable to understanding the barbarism of the feudal mode and the role played by “authoritarian” leaders — dictators in fact or resemblance, essentially — in bringing that excess of egotism and idolatry to full and cruel realization.
In the feudal mode, one may like and defend the Jews — see BackChannels on Putin’s “anti- anti-Semitism” — or excoriate the Jews (revisit Moscow’s relationships with Hamas, Hezbollah, Tehran), but the main thing is that the Jews be separated from others and deemed useful (usually because they’re perceived as being good with money for the realm of interest, or because they’re easy — and considered lucrative — targets for plunder and murder).
Feudalism and Rebellion
What soul not directly profiting from feudal (and unconscionable) behavior in any given institution would fail to rebel — or, worse, fail in spirit — against the iron fist of a modern fascism?
For that, installing conflicts around the world for the benefit of one’s own Big Defense Economy might turn out a great business!
Russia is growing its military budget by roughly $10 billion next year, even as tumbling oil prices and sanctions from Europe and the United States will see Moscow slash its welfare spending by $6 billion in 2017, the Gazeta.ru news website reported Tuesday, citing a government source.
The Kremlin announced Monday it would decrease its welfare spending from $210 billion to $203 billion dollars. Alexandra Suslina, an economic analyst, said Russia has made defense and social spending its priorities, while all other spending would receive “whatever is leftover,” the Moscow Times reported.
Defense aside, feudalism dampens the spirit for creating, purchasing, living. The state, or the corrupt and powerful of the state, may take all of whatever one has created.
As much related to mafia, then state mafia, and related skimming or “take” has damped capital investment in Russia while for many years also adding to the encouragement of capital flight. The too centralized a state and its power plus the “kleptocrat” at the controls ruins the exuberance produced by freedom and the concomitant dreaming and effort that produces cool and desirable new everything.
For souls who may come to believe — or worse, know — the “fix is in”, how great may be their effort to swing into the marketplaces confident in their own powers and the promise of rewards?
For the nominally Communist Soviet Union, methods had to be produced to keep people watched and inside the state (talk about an “open air prison”!) and in today’s uncertain ultra-nationalist imperial Russian Federation, something similar may be noted in the immense poverty spreading through a region with ample natural resources for producing basic industries and an affluent middle class throughout.
All that has gone wrong?
Idolatry of another “Great Leader” bent on looking good — more: heroic! — in state-controlled / state-inhibited press.
Additional Reference
What follows: excerpts or remarks related to the “charms” of feudal authoritarian control (of “the masses”).
At present, the authoritarianism business is booming. According to the Human Rights Foundation’s research, the citizens of 94 countries suffer under non-democratic regimes, meaning that 3.97 billion people are currently controlled by tyrants, absolute monarchs, military juntas or competitive authoritarians. That’s 53 percent of the world’s population. Statistically, then, authoritarianism is one of the largest — if not the largest — challenges facing humanity.
POPULIST parties of both right and left, many pro-Russian, did well in last May’s European elections, taking between them a quarter of the seats. This has raised fears of a coherent pro-Russian block forming in Strasbourg.
In Greece, the now-ruling radical-left Syriza party leans towards Russia. On February 11th Nikos Kotzias, the new foreign minister, went to Moscow—his first visit to a foreign capital outside the European Union. Syriza is cool on sanctions against Russia, and opposed to expanding them. Another left-wing, broadly pro-Russian upstart is Podemos in Spain, which leads in the polls. Its leader has accused the West of double standards in dealing with Russia.
… As the Kremlin has spearheaded anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation, and as Putin has made moves to formalize the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia, so, too, have myriad members of far-right social conservative movements in the United States praised Putinist policy. Thankfully, such linkages have seen further coverage than the relations between the “alt-right” and secessionists — see, for instance, research from the University of South Florida’s Christopher Stroop — but it remains worth noting a few highlights of this relationship. For instance, according to Bryan Fischer, one of the most well-known faces of American Christian fundamentalism, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Paleoconservative politician Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, has alluded that God may be on Putin’s side. And Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and perhaps America’s foremost remaining televangelist, recently visited Russia to praise Putin for remaining “steadfastly against the rising homosexual agenda” in Russia.
This tripartite blend, of white nationalists, of secessionists, of social conservatives, have all formed some of the primary bulwarks of the Trump campaign over the past few months, and there is little reason to believe they’ll refrain from supporting Trumpian policies moving forward. Moreover, all three have seen their leading proponents — those within the “alt-right,” most especially — construct rhetorical, organizational, and financial links with the Kremlin and Kremlin-financed groups over the past two years.
Widely referred to as Putin’s Rasputin, Dugin has also elaborated a Russian version of Manifest Destiny known as Eurasianism. Eurasianism is a totalitarian political ideology that “rejects the view that Russia is on the periphery of Europe, and on the contrary interprets the country’s geographic location as grounds for a kind of messianic ‘third way’,” according to a report released by the Wilson Center.
Aleksandr Dugin is a radical, Trump supporting, self-proclaimed philosopher from Russia. Traditionalism and cultural purity are two of his most valued philosophical tenets. And while his influence may be overstated in Russia, his ideology has infiltrated white nationalist circles in the United States and parts of Europe.
At a security conference in Munich on Friday, Mr. Poroshenko warned the West against “appeasement” of Russia, and some American experts say offering Russia any alternative to a two-year-old international agreement on Ukraine would be a mistake. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals about the conflict in Ukraine.
But given Mr. Trump’s praise for Mr. Putin, John Herbst, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, said he feared the new president might be too eager to mend relations with Russia at Ukraine’s expense — potentially with a plan like Mr. Artemenko’s.
On Tuesday the Anne Frank Center released a statement denouncing Trump’s response to the anti-Semitic string of attacks as inadequate.
“The President’s sudden acknowledgment of Anti-Semitism is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Anti-Semitism that has infected his own administration,” the statement said. “His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record. Make no mistake: The Anti-Semitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have seen from any Administration. The White House repeatedly refused to mention Jews in its Holocaust remembrance, and had the audacity to take offense when the world pointed out the ramifications of Holocaust denial. And it was only yesterday, President’s Day, that Jewish Community Centers across the nation received bomb threats, and the President said absolutely nothing. When President Trump responds to Anti-Semitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this president has turned a corner. This is not that moment.”
Russia manages to compete with even the most war-ravaged countries.In 2013, for instance, 39,800 Russian citizens applied to the governments of 44 developed countries (37,000 of them to EU countries). This put Russia in second place after Syria among countries with the greatest number of applicants for political asylum (the last time this happened was in 2007).
“I do not have any choice. I cannot go back to Russia right now. I need to stay till … well … as long as Putin is President of Russia, nothing will change in Chechnya” . . . Now he is taking part in a year-long integration programme that gives refugees time to learn Polish, find a place to live, a job, and to integrate themselves into Polish society.
A former employee of the Kadyrov government, Abdullah says he was beaten twice by the authorities in Grozny for refusing to join Chechen volunteers fighting alongside Moscow-backed rebels in Ukraine’s breakaway regions and for giving information to human rights groups. He is convinced that remaining in Brest presents an increasing danger to his life.
Before parliamentary elections in Russia this month, Human Rights Watch accused Kadyrov of attempting to build a “tyranny” within Chechnya. A 70-page report entitled Like Walking a Minefield says that the Chechen strongman has used his nearly decade-long tenure to eradicate all forms of criticism and political dissent.
BackChannels 