Category Archives: International Development

Also in Media: “The danger in nations perceiving a destiny” – StarTribune.com – April 18, 2014

22 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The Russian leader has drawn open the curtain on a new era of global competition among a handful of nations that presume to act as heaven’s surrogates on Earth.America’s sense of its own exceptionalism — its “City Upon a Hill” complex — is disdained even by some Americans, who think it leads the nation into trouble. But America isn’t the only society with a mystical sense of mission. In fact, the rest of the 21st century may be the story of America’s confrontation with three rival powers that directly challenge our claim to moral superiority.

Source: The danger in nations perceiving a destiny – StarTribune.com (author: Stephen B. Young, Caux Round Table)- 4/18/2014.

BackChannels is not certain that nations, no less than persons, have much choice about the development or embrace of a national self-concept and its promises for the future.  Whether accepted as legacy or reinvented in revolution, a “nation” would seem a concept deriving meaning from shared ethnolinguistic or political experiences, principles, and values.

Here is a video by the author of the above noted essay, and its concern appears to be American domestic cohesion.

Posted to YouTube by CauxRoundtable1 on December 20, 2016.

–33–

NATO to President Elect Donald J. Trump

09 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, International Development, North America, Northern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Posted to YouTube by NATO on November 9, 2016.

Related in Media

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-celebrated-russia-vladimir-putin-nato-europe-allies-anxious/ – 11/9/2016.

http://time.com/4563998/national-security-president-donald-trump/ – 11/9/2016

–33–

FTAC – A Comment on ‘Uranium One’ and ‘Trump-Manafort’

06 Sunday Nov 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Were we at war with Russia through the years that “Uranium One” was in development? What was the tone of the American-Russian relationship at that time?

Perhaps December, 26, 1991 — the day the Russian tricolor was once again flown above the Kremlin — was both too good to be true and too good to last.

As regards “tribute” and so many other forms of corruption now associated with governance (and perhaps business) in the United States, I, you, and we are no longer happy campers.

Are the worlds of international business and international affairs so inherently criminal that our executives and politicians have had to “play ball” themselves to get things done?

Perhaps so, and our acclimatizing to the World Wide Web where so much may be finally seen is part of a great national and global “coming of age”.

Or not.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/06/american-election-2016-him-or-her-two-tales-for-two-scoundrels/

We’re not through the elections yet, but when we are, we’ll have been treated to possibly the slimiest mud fest in American election history. As much cannot be what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they set out the lofty ideals on which we have thrived. With that said, a look back at the Civil War, which reminders are all around my neighborhood, tells that we’re a rough people and we make deals behind closed doors — or perhaps over drinks — for both private and public purpose.

In retrospect, how should one feel about the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the “black budgeted” “Charlie Wilson’s War” developed to enable the indigenous of the region to halt and eject Russia’s military advance?

Mission accomplished.

Rather than take a strong partisan position — especially with this election! — I’ve chosen observation from the sidelines. Clearly, Moscow has renewed Russia’s identification as a “mafia state” or centralized “security state” — a state run by secret police. And then one looks at Moscow’s shaping of the Syrian Conflict and what it has done to that state and, possibly, how it has used terrorism to create unstable conditions in our own politics (Brown vs Red-Green x large portions of the Republican and Democratic Parties’ makeup respectively).

Is today’s Moscow the same as that with which we encouraged cooperation 25 years ago?

I don’t think it is.

The more recent “Trump-Manafort-Yanukovych-Putin” arc in relationship has bothered me more than the much earlier “Uranium One” deal, but with both, too much in the way of mixed personal and business and political behaviors seems indeed disheartening.

My fellow Americans — and those just visiting from elsewhere — the system may be broken and corrupt, and we can’t fix it right away.  However, we know the difference between bunkum and plain good responsible and responsive government — so God help us should we ever have another election season like the one that will be over (and God willing on that too) in two days.

–33–

Sixteen Women – The Kingdom’s Most Powerful

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Middle East, Saudi Arabia

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Arab Leader.  Banker. Chair.  CEO.  Economist.  Editor in Chief. Educator. Engineer.  Entrepreneur.  Executive.  ‘First To’ in Multiple Fields.   Journalist.  Inventor.  Media Personality.  Member of the Board.  Novelist.  Philanthropist.  Physician.  Scholar.  Scientist.  Women’s Rights Activist.

BackChannels will let the browser figure out which title belongs to which personality.

Or simply graze the list.

Haifaa al Mansour

Lubna Olayan

Bayan Mahmoud al Zahran

Mona Al Munajjed

Hayat Sindi

Khaula Al Khuraya

Somayya Jabarti

Manal al-Sharif

Nahed Taher

Samira Islam

Samia Al-Amoudi

Nermin Saad

Badreya El-Bishr

Thoraya Ahmeud Obaid

Munea AbuSulayman

Lama al-Sulaiman

An article in Arabian Business provided for the extraction of names from a greater listing of “100 Most Powerful Arab Women”; Wikipedia has served both as first reference and first authority for transliterated nouns.

BackChannels, sigh, may have reached the point where passing along articles (as with the content of the “Also in Media” category) and looking things up for regurgitation may not suffice for noble or worthy effort.  Political analysis — or for the editor, verbal art — may be more the thing.  On this note for social progressives, the women listed are each their own persons who carry within themselves broad and cosmopolitan educations as well as their respective talents, and they have done so in relation to a national culture slow to welcome them but today invested in their support and the support of others like them.

The Kingdom has changed.

Reference

Arabian Business.  “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women.” March 3, 2014.

Arabian Business.  “Sheikha Lubna tops female power list for fourth year running.”  March 3, 2014.

–33–

FTAC – Fighting Over Time

26 Friday Aug 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Adopting the overarching humanism expressed in Back-Channels may be part of addressing and attenuating the distress — I know: it’s too mild a word but the clinical approach may help in politics — promoted by our acceptance, approval, or fear of political criminals.

I believe my nation-state has engaged appropriately with pirates, raiders, thieves, and despots over centuries and consistently for the better. However, it too has had to compromise with or work with a “realpolitik” in the world, whether as with “detente” in the Cold War days or with dictators conveniently found in the region between American secular humanist pluralist values and the machinery of a large entity that and attempts cultural transformation with gunships and tanks.

Over time, and perhaps because the dictators can be so bad, a more loving and moderate human soul persists and prevails in a little more of the world’s space.

Because we are so bound together today by virtual wires and immense production and shipping systems plus international investment, a form of buy-in, our wars should be smaller despite “advances” in the lethality of the world’s arsenals, and they should become more about how we live with ethnolinguistic cultural survival and co-evolution far beyond ourselves. The fascist nationalist supremacist urge in thought that then develops and drives armies against one another despite the weaving in global communications, economics, and industry seems to me archaic, and it’s on that front, a front in time more than place, that we’re having this conversation.

The enterprise of enterprise and freedom finds its boundaries in the personalities of the despotic and ruthless who command their states through brutality and fear.  Crime and corruption complicate matters, but over time, and perhaps a great expanse of it, early Las Vegas, the wild frontier, gives way to law and its enforcement.  Still, the conditions that may produce a healthy society anywhere may be fragile x population x area x economy (internal and external trade variables) x education x endemic cultural worldview, and so on.  It takes immense courage and fortitude to produce a predominantly civil — lawful — state.

Here I may depart from “Putin bashing” and the constant juxtaposing of Moscow with the horror taking place in Syria and the scare tactics employed by the Ayatollah in Iran.  What does it take to turn a multi-tiered “mafia state” that starts out with a big resources grab by free-ranging business guys with rough ways but must become reliable and trustworthy, more or less, partners in the development of capital enterprise and through it the raising of regional economic development?

In that light, strong re-centralization of power and the creating of law that encourages (to say the least) the reinvestment of reserves in Russia’s internal economy makes sense — and as much has come to pass albeit too slowly for the “capital flight” that has already taken place in earlier years.

Still — the future’s the thing.

BackChannels works with everyday news, not a crystal ball.  It gets to the intersections in conflict, politics, and psychology and rightly questions the mentality of medieval leadership in an increasingly cross-communicating and trading world.  It has also promoted a Maslowian possibility in the region of ethnolinguistic cultural co-evolution as each of the world’s approximately 7,000 living languages represents the invention of a way of life and of seeing others and dealing with environmental challenges in some once more insulated space, i.e., separate enough to keep people together and involved in the creating and using of language as a functioning cultural tool.  In essence, but especially with the contents of the sidebar to the left, it has suggested a different vision of a modern future, one that would gently move others in the world away from extremist and supremacist ambitions and into ambitious but distinctive greater cooperation in mutual survival.

–33–

Also in Media – “Russia-Iran-Turkey Alliance Could Change Energy Dynamics For Good” | OilPrice.com

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, International Development, Politics, Russia, Turkey

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Turkey’s resentment towards the European Union is nothing new. Erdogan has been vocal about his negative reactions to some requirements in Turkey’s EU accession process. He is also in a position to pull the strings on much of Europe’s migrant policy, and is making good use of this position. What Turkey’s President has made even better use of is the anti-Western rhetoric and the visions of a “great-again” Turkey. The former has been instrumental in diverting public attention away from a lawsuit in Italy against his son for money laundering.

Apparently, the Greater Turkey vision cannot be realized with the EU constantly demanding things from Ankara that Ankara does not want to do, such as synchronizing its anti-terrorism policies with the EU, for example. It can, however, be realized if Turkey gets on the anti-West bandwagon driven by Russia and Iran, both survivors from Western sanctions, and both having their own regional ambitions.

Source: Russia-Iran-Turkey Alliance Could Change Energy Dynamics For Good | OilPrice.com – 8/22/2016

Remark – New Global Intelligentsia – New Emerging Global Business and Political Elite

19 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Always a little differently than expected: perhaps our New Global Intelligentsia has now to deal with a more visible and powerful Global Business and Political Elite.

The epigrammatic thought springs from yesterday’s wrestling with a draft about the “Black Led Movement Fund” and foundations flowing down from Henry Ford’s enterprise and George Soros’s success.

It also stems from about ten years of personal growth in the region of international affairs abetted by the uptake of broadband, social networking (Facebook), and blogging ability (a new artform) and the development by affinity of a pretty good and English chatyping “international club” online.  With that growth has come the recognition, at least on BackChannels’ part, that our “Awesome Conversation” has obscure nodes (like this one) and virtual public stars (too many to name) that comprises a still new and virtual thin band of global intelligentsia.

We’re thinking.  We’re talking.  We’re having a great conversation.  And perhaps by doing so, we’re changing our world.

Beside (and above, I’m sure) the thinker-talkers exists another connected community, altogether more institutional, more private in its outlooks and its workings, but at the head of so many enterprises and institutions are real people, and one may well wonder about their cultural and political ambitions and visions.

Now back to the Black Lives Matter movement and its chief financial enablers and enthusiasts . . . .

In his day, Henry Ford had developed the strongest reputation as an anti-Semite, and in this day George Soros appears to have developed an atheist’s contempt for the Jews and Israel as part of an anti-nationalist atheist-socialist globalization program.  Today, both Ford and Soros foundations have stepped in to fund the nostalgically Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and related Black Led Movement Fund with upwards (or beyond) a newsworthy $100 million.

While Americans and others in the world have been busy considering their election season options in the empowering of a next set of public of representative public leaders, the uber-wealthy have been applying money to political issues in their own way.

BackChannels wonders how much cultural and political “clout” the world’s wealthiest individuals exert and what kind of world are they fashioning (for the rest of us) as powers in their own right?

Note that George Soros with his portfolio valued at about $8 billion (but Forbes says “$24.9 billion”) has been estimated as being merely the 80th wealthiest person in the world: who are the 79 wealthier individuals ahead of him, and how are they involved with the world’s cultures and political themes?

On this post, BackChannels has certainly more questions than answers.

For an overview of the world’s top billionaires as perceived by Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/.

At least we know who’s got the money.

What each wants — these are not beauty pageant youngsters — is a big other and open question.

Reference

Regarding Henry Ford, Anti-Semite

Hitler was very aware of Henry Ford, of Henry Ford’s writings, and praised them. He turned to the same documents. There’s a common thread. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a cherished text for both. And there were certainly business connections between Ford Motors and the Nazi regime.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/interview/henryford-antisemitism/

In the period from 1910 to 1918, Ford became increasingly anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor and anti-Semitic. In 1919, he purchased a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He installed Charles Pipp as editor and hired a journalist, William J. Cameron, to listen to his ideas and write a weekly column, “Mr. Ford’s Page,” to expound his views.

Ford wanted to assert that there was a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. He blamed Jewish financiers for fomenting World War I so that they could profit from supplying both sides. He accused Jewish automobile dealers of conspiring to undermine Ford Company sales policies. Ford wanted to make his bizarre beliefs public in the pages of the Dearborn Independent. For a year, editor Pipp resisted running anti-Jewish articles, and resigned rather than publish them. Cameron took over the editorship and, in May 1920, printed the first of a series of articles titled “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ford1.html

Regarding George Soros, “Anti-Semite”?  Or “Atheist Social Democrat”?

According to Connie Bruck of The New Yorker, George Soros told her that “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence — but I don’t want to be part of it.” According to Joshua Muravchik, Soros has publicly likened Israel to the Nazis. According to the Jerusalem Post, “Soros and his wealthy Jewish American friends have now decided to aim their fire directly at Israel . . . to form a political lobby that will weaken the influence of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.”

http://www.conservapedia.com/George_Soros

Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office essentially banned two branches of Soros’ charity network in November, placing the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) on a “stop list” of foreign non-governmental organizations whose activities were deemed “undesirable” by the Russian state.

OSF first came into trouble with the Russian government in July 2015, when it hinted it might ban the foundation along with a number of other pro-democracy organizations accused of launching “soft aggression” in the country.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/14/soros-charity-targeted-in-russia-book-burning.html – 1/14/2016.

Sussing George Soros as “narcissist / malignant narcissist” may take much greater time.  However, the early impression formed by BackChannels is that he’s trying to hybridize Red-tinted socialism away from Putin’s imperial and nationalist revanche while buying into the Green (Political Islamic) mythology driven by the Soviet KGB early in the middle east conflict (related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/02/quote-manipulation-about-the-plo-leader-pacepa-and-rychlak-2013/).

Black Lives Matter – Funding

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-lives-matter-cashes-100-million-liberal-foun/

http://fortune.com/2016/08/08/funding-black-lives-matter-ford/

http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/behind-lefts-secret-multi-million-dollar-deal-fund-black-lives-matter/

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/here-are-all-the-companies-giving-big-bucks-to-blm

Regarding Borealis Philanthropy’s Magui Rubalcava Shulman

Magui Rubalcava Shulman, Director, Immigration — served as program director for Hispanics in Philanthropy; worked on an evaluation of the Grants for Schools program of the Mongolian Foundation for Open Society Institute.

http://sorosfiles.com/soros/2011/10/public-interest-projects.html

–33–

FTAC – Dictatorships – They Devour Themselves

12 Friday Aug 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

“Different Talks – Same Walk” is the conclusion I’ve come to with “malignant narcissists”.

The Hamas leaders don’t care about the Palestinians at whose expense — and the expense of lives — they have aggrandized themselves. We’re numb to the labels: “autocrats”, “dictators”, “kleptocrats”. Each — Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Orban, Erdogan, Haniyeh, Mashaal, et al. — starts from a different positions, but using criminal means, each winds up a tyrant.

Hamas may be sold as a Utopian movement, but . . . it’s a criminal enterprise, and its idea of power is the power to impose suffering on others with impunity.

Our democracies are fragile by comparison to feudal kingdoms, but as they have their differences between them, we — North America, Europe, for the most part, and others — have been able to navigate between them as peace pays off with prosperity. What the dictatorships do please the privileged, but they don’t really pay for themselves. They don’t shift for themselves. They, in fact, devour themselves.

There’s no need to defend this post.

The privileged of Russia know how much they depend on Putin for favor — and the “outer rings” (“rings” referring to driving belts around Moscow) know that no matter what they do if they’re out of favor — complete unknowns — there isn’t much new for them.  The economy simply hasn’t fare well under kleptocracy — golly gee — and the distribution of capital and gains from capital remains deeply skewed.

Read all about it in today’s Moscow Times:

Investment continues to decline, both industrial and in residential construction. Private consumption declines as well, while Russian people say they are cutting their purchases of goods and services to survive. Then again, industrial production is stable, agriculture continues to grow, export is growing slightly in physical terms, despite the drop in commodities prices.

This economic dialogue will continue for a long time, but the main conclusion we can make is already visible.

From the Kennan Institute this month — same thing: “An Economy That Did Not Want to Grow“:

The difference between the two strategies is fundamental. Kudrin’s formula is “business environment first, private investment later,” while his opponents want “public investment first, business environment later or never.” The two visions cancel each other out and this is exactly what Vladimir Putin seems to like about it. Both projects emphasize domestic growth based on either private initiative (Kudrin) or public spending (Titov). The first path means backpedaling on aggressive foreign-policy projects and depends on reviving and empowering the urban middle class. This poses a problem however, since the Kremlin is convinced that professionals who are paid more than 1500 U.S. dollars a month are a potential threat as proved by the protest movement of 2011-2012. The second path, exemplified by large public-works projects, will inevitably lead to even more corruption than currently exists in Russia.

Was “Vegas” better in its wild mafia days?

I don’t know.

I was too young for all that.

I didn’t exist.

🙂

“Moscow” — used here as a metonym — has suffered years of capital flight and frankly fearful foreign investment.

The state appears to leverage other states amenable to a medieval worldview of competition and political absolutism; it certainly has projects like “Turkish Stream” and a few hefty nuclear programs going with Turkey’s Erdogan and Hungary’s Orban, but get right down to it, the “good” despise “the criminal” and wear out on coughing up payola.

Ukrainians tired of Yanukovych — and Yanukovych, so guilty or suspicious with guilt, threw his black book and other records into a pond before fleeing his position.

Web pages and sites like these two were in the news four years ago, and I doubt much has changed since then:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/explosive-video-documents-depth-putins-mafia-state – n.d., circa four years ago judging by comments.

Posted to YouTube 6/26/2012.

Bill Browder on Putin, posted to YouTube May 22, 2014:

Here’s a related lively quote from an article by Masha Gessen in The New York Review of Books (March 14, 2016):

“This is not a hybrid regime!” shouted Andrei Illarionov as the conference wrapped up. Illarionov is an economist who was an economic advisor to Putin in 2000–2005—though he was never fully integrated into the regime—and now lives in Washington. “Thinking about it that way is a mistake, and analytical mistakes like that can have long-term tragic consequences.”

Capital flight from Russia looks dramatically reduced this year from where it was last year, but the prior years of losses may anchor the greater “longitudinal” picture in time.

These words appeared last fall in Business Insider (October 27, 2015):

In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.

And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren’t rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin’s regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

–33–