Category Archives: Islamic Small Wars

FTAC – Moscow-Tehran – Far Left Connection – Distilled

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

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One might agree with the sentiment in “BDS is mainly the invention of self-hating Israelis and Jews” but the truth is it’s mainly the invention of historic Russian anti-Semitism ported through the Soviet Union to the “comrade networks” that today have morphed into the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left.

Here’s one of their portals, and I think a glance at the names still on the marquis, as it were, tells of the “longer game” being played on the world stage.

http://www.blackforpalestine.com/

In the wings, imho, but not without cause: the Russo-Syrian effort to sustain their systems of feudal absolute power far into the 21st Century. As KSA realigns westward, or follows its massive investments in the west, Moscow and Tehran may remain committed to installing in the west greater chaos, dissension, and threat.

It’s a big picture view, but the connections between so-called “liberation movements” (add the Far Right New Nationalists like Viktor Orban to the mix) seem to me unmistakable. Possibly, Obama and his subaltern Shapiro are giving signal, whether lip service or sincere, back to Moscow, as the Palestinians remain incapable of challenging the PLO / PA (set up by the KGB way back when) and Hamas (whom Moscow today refuses to designate a terrorist organization).

Does the suggested political architecture work?

Test it.

Directly related on BackChannels, which is now well woven: Syndicate Red Brown Green.

Addendum – 7/6/2016

Golding, Shenequa.  “Ray Lewis Blasts Black Lives Matter Over Silence On Black-On-Black Crime.”  Vibe, April 7, 2016.

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FTAC – Counterterrorism and Intercession

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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There would seem to me multiple components involved in intercession, starting with bag searches and metal detectors in proximity to potential targets. However, we have been asking law enforcement to produce a response to _anticipated_ crimes. To do that, we need to do some new things:

1. Acknowledge that a limited “opposition” — “Islamists”, not Islam — believes that it is at war with us, including most Muslims, and that it is — in this order — talking, walking, planning, operationalizing, and acting.

2. Broaden — by reducing strictures on — detention periods and surveillance of persons of interest, so that the talker and walker who pings the FBI radar, as has happened many times now, may enjoy some surreptitious follow-up as needed (say as when acquiring new weapons from the local gun shop).

3. In the region of freedom of speech, we need law recognizing “jihadi-talk” as involving conspiracy and incitement, and then we need permit to act against those who mix the poison that gets in through the ears and eyes and those who deliver that poison by publishing it. There have long been traditional limits to freedom of speech — conspiracy, incitement, libel, and slander. In the area of conspiracy and incitement, we have expected direct contact or cooperation between parties, but today we well know that mediated contact perhaps bolstered by related presentations in the mosque are sufficient to contribute to the motivation of an attack.

4. In the region of freedom of religion, we have to recognize that a religion that has in several aspects the motivation of subduing the world by force in fact represents an alien and invasive political program. As regards those aspects, challenge, confrontation, and reformation involve time, short or long, and the kind of time required is long as regards determining what options are forward and then very short, i.e., the time it takes a person to make a small decision in a good direction.

On those “options forward”, there are today many channels, some congruent with leaving scripture alone but interpreting it more deeply — or tortuously depending on one’s perspective; some unabashedly reformist and determined to eliminate “Political Islam” — and then rejection of the the faith through the abandonment of religion altogether, conversions to other faiths or traditions, and any number of adjustments as seem fit to those who flatly reject extremist programs.

FTAC – On Moscow and Tehran’s Interest in the Manipulation of Terrorist Organizations

13 Monday Jun 2016

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

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Moscow and Tehran have two interests served by facilitating and manipulating terrorists organizations: 1) sustaining the feudal worldview — including in the writing of political theater that is history itself — that in turn sustains each their own medieval leadership and systems of patronage; 2) weakening their enemies by infiltrating them with divisive political subcultures.

Notably, Moscow has refused to designate Hamas and Hezbollah and others as terrorist organizations. The probably reason for that is that the same are subject to “handling” in the interests of the now neo-feudal, neo-imperial Russian state.

Moscow has so far refused to designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

Tehran, of course, has a complicated but nonetheless a sponsoring relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah (the URL links to a 2014 U.S. State Department report: BackChannels believes the underlying politics have not changed radically in the two years that have passed).

BackChannels persists in believing that the Moscow-Damascus-Tehran axis of power deliberately incubated ISIS by preferentially bombing less eventually useful targets.

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Omar Mir Seddique Mateen – Known to the FBI

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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Carlos Bledsoe

The suspect arrested in the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting booth today was under investigation by the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force since his return from Yemen, ABC News has learned.

The investigation was in its preliminary stages, authorities said, and was based on the suspect’s travel to Yemen and his arrest there for using a Somali passport.

Esposito, Richard, Pierre Thomas and Jack Date.  “Recruit Shooting Suspect Under FBI Investigation.”  ABC News, June 1, 2009.

Alton Nolen

“This do we find the clear precedent that explains the particular penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims, it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet,” reads the caption, which adds a citation from the Quran, “I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers; smite ye about their necks.”

With this heinous act, Nolen may have been seeking to convince himself, if nobody else, that he was not just an ex-con who was once again out of work.

Daly, Michael.  “The Muslim Convert Behind America’s First Workplace Beheading.”  The Daily Beast, September 27, 2014.

Here is a little bit of the word on “Prison Islam”:

Oliver testified that allowing the Muslim prisoners to pray in a group led the prisoners to setting up an inmate-led Muslim gang. The gang “shunned” other prisoners, forbidding them from joining the group prayer as well as controlling access to food and laying stake to the “meditation room” being used by leaving their prayer rugs and other religious items to the point of intimidating other faith groups from using the room.

Oliver testified that a group of Catholic prisoners gave up trying to use the room. “They said it was the Muslim room,” Oliver stated.

The Clarion Project.  “Prison Officials: Muslim Group Prayer Led to Gangs.”  July 2, 2013.

It may be noted that conversions to Islam in prison bring criminals into the Ummah, and of that lot, some well may well represent the kind of person who would step on to the manufacturing floor and behead an unsuspecting (what’s to suspect?) coworker just doing her job.

Bipolar Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder have been noted on BackChannels in the context of the construction of concepts perhaps useful to the field of Political Psychology, which concept list includes, of course, the “malignant narcissism” so often associated with dictators, who, if they were not so large, might just as well have turned out machete-wielding monsters at work.

Loose citations (lazy ones) for “Prison Islam”:

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/05/muslim-terrorists-running-whole-prison-blocks-sharia-law/ – 4/5/2016. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/how-belgian-prisons-became-a-breeding-ground-for-islamic-extremism/2016/03/27/ac437fd8-f39b-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_story.html – 3/27/2016. | http://www.meforum.org/blog/2015/08/islam-prison. – 8/30/2015.

Nidal M. Hasan

A Senate investigation of the Fort Hood shootings faults the Army and FBI with missing warning signs and not exchanging information that could have prevented the massacre.

Wan, William and Felicia Sonmez.  “Senate probe faults Army, FBI for missing warning signs before Fort Hood Attack.”  The Washington Post, February 3, 2011.

Causes for that fumble: aversion to “bureaucratic confrontation”; “political correctness”; and, possibly, military civility, politeness, and avoidance of opening the proverbial can of worms.  Basically, before the fact, no one knew how to field what was coming out of Nidal Hasan’s heart through his mouth.

Also at the time, great official political correctness, an adamant refusal to invoked the term “violent islamist extremism” produced the absurdity of labeling the “Alahu Akbar” laced mass murder as violence in the workplace.

Talk, behavioral change, and, inevitably, “arming up” become part of the terrorist’s narrative on the way to mayhem — but how are officials to select who to “gumshoe” or, were the laws to allow greater flexibility in examinations without charges, who to detain?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

The FSB first contacted the FBI about Tsarnaev in March 2011. At the time, he was a resident of Boston who seemed too interested in making contact with or joining a militant group in the Caucasus. The U.S. intelligence official said the FBI made three separate requests to Russian authorities for more information about Tsarnaev without an adequate response. The FBI concluded that the Russians considered Tsarnaev a threat to themselves, not the United States.

Finn, Peter.  “Decades of distrust restrain cooperation between FBI and Russia’s FSB.”  The Washington Post, May 8, 2013.

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez

He was not on any U.S. terror list and the FBI was not aware of his having any terrorist leanings. Abdulazeez had been stopped by local police in April when he was booked for a DUI..

Pugeus, Jeff.  “What we know about the gunman in Chattanooga attack.”  CBS News, July 16, 2015.

The Abdulazeez “lone wolf” attack appears not to have produced significant “signal” out ahead of itself.  The gunman sent up no caution flags before his attack.

Mohamed Barry

A machete-wielding man who stormed an Ohio restaurant and slashed diners at their tables had previously been investigated by the FBI over his radical Islamist views.
Mohamed Barry, 30, from the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, was shot dead by police during the rampage at Nazareth Restaurant and Deli, a Mediterranean restaurant owned by an Israeli man in Columbus, on Thursday.

Graham, Regina F., Hannah Parry, and Khaleda Rahman.  “FBI investigated Barry four years ago for expressing radical Islamic views.”  Daily Mail, February 15, 2016.

One cannot (yet) cry “Lone wolf!” before the crime, which is today everyone’s problem.

Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik

Officials said that not only had he never been a criminal suspect, but that he was also never mentioned by anyone interviewed by the F.B.I.

Schmidt, Michael S. and Richard Perez-Pena.  “F.B.I. Treating San Bernardino Attack as Terrorism Case.”  The New York Times, December 4, 2015.

Malik belonged to an educated, politically influential family from Karor Lal Esan in the Layyah district of Pakistan. Malik Ahmad Ali Aulakh, a cousin of Malik’s father, was once a provincial minister. Residents said the Aulakh family is known to have connections to militant Islam.

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Investigators have learned that Farook had made contact — in some cases by phone and in others via social media — with people who came up tangentially in previous federal terrorism investigations. But he had not drawn any scrutiny.

Sahi, Aoun, David S. Cloud, and Brian Bennett.  “Tashfeen Malik was ‘modern girl’ who began posting extremist messages on Facebook.”  Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2015.

We all have people in our lives, some equipped with dangerous ideas and personalities to match, and in light of “Social Grammar”, which always applies on this blog, some to many personalities give way before cult, family, in-group, and tribal messages and related pressures either intimidating other thought or promoting deeply malign speech and action paths — and just as many prove more independent and strongly resist the intellectual poisoning associated with one or more social environments or relationships.

As the west does not do guilt or suspicion by mere association — something an outsized paranoid like Stalin would do — the FBI’s call on the matter fits with world’s broadest bandwidth in freedom of religion and of speech.

Still, in 20/20 hindsight, one might add up the dimensions involved: some extremist associates in the family, foreign association with radical centers like Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, and then . . . Islamist expression on Facebook or elsewhere.

When and how should a government step in?

What methods of detention might work?

What laws involving conspiracy or sedition might be needed to get to this kind of person before they arrive at what will become the scene of their crime?

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen

The father of Omar Mateen, identified by police as the man behind the carnage at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning, is an Afghan man who holds strong political views, including support for the Afghan Taliban. In a video he posted on Saturday, he appears to be portraying himself as the president of Afghanistan.

Bearak, Max.  “Orlando suspect’s father hosted a TV show and now pretends to be Afghanistan’s president.”  The Washington Post, June 12, 2016.

In the article cited, it’s the killer’s daddy that sounds a wee bit off the hook.

Be that as it may, the son, Omar, had not been completely off law enforcement’s radar.

“The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties,” Hopper said.
The investigation was closed, Hopper said, after investigators “were unable to verify the substance of his comments.”

Perez, Evan, Shimon Prokupecz, and Catherine E. Shoichet.  “Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, official says.”  CNN, June 12, 2016.

The story is continuing to break as I type, and it’s expected that more details will come out in the course of the investigation.

As regards “persons of interest”, and a few noted here were certainly either that or potentially that, the same issues — who to watch, what to watch for, and when and how to intervene before the fact — will be topics for debate in law involving sedition and detention for some time to come.

Addendum – 6/14/2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/14/fbi-director-orlando-shooting-probe-also-looks-backward-into-agency-files-on-shooter/

Addendum – 7/6/2016

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh

According to court documents and court proceedings, in March 2016, a now-deceased member of ISIL brokered an introduction between Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, Virginia, and an individual in the United States who actually was an FBI confidential human source (CHS). The ISIL member was actively plotting an attack in the United States and believed the attack would be carried out with the assistance of Jalloh and the CHS.

U. S. Department of Justice.  “Former Army National Guard Member Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISISL.”  July 5, 2016.

Additional Reference

The Last English Prince.  “Omar Mir Seddique Mateen: Understanding the Meaning of this Name.”  June 12, 2016.

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FATC – Comments on Gaza Between the Medieval and Modern Worlds

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Palestinia, Politics

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The Palestinians have been at the mercy of powerful Palestinian families and politicians for decades, and the same have kept refugee generations captive or enthralled or leveraged by brutality , disinformation, and outrageous promises.

Part of the story starts here — https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/quote-manipulation…/ — with the foreign policy practices of the Soviet Union and its promotion of anti-Semitic message and conflict. While Putin has worked on “anti- anti-Semitism”, his government has nonetheless met with PFLP in recent years (2014) and has refused to designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, which is how they’re officially viewed in the United States.

Districts in poverty are vulnerable to many kinds of exploitation, criminal and political — and sometimes both — through recruitment into programs that are not in their interest.

http://www.tabletmag.com/…/hamas-killed-160-palestinian…

http://www.padico.com/public/English.aspx?Lang=2…

Feudal methods from patronage to brutalization, intimidation, and murder help keep conditions in Yatta exactly as they are. The talk, whether of nationalism or Islam, enrage or mollify the dispossessed to the advantage of those who purport to represent their interests.

I’ve included PADICO, a Gaza-based development corporation, because its board of directors is listed elsewhere on the site, and each name may be researched as regards education and experience. In outline, many are modern — cosmopolitan, well educated — but perhaps no less than Hamas’s tunnel digging children, they too have been hamstrung between the medieval and modern worlds, or that is where they have maintained themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Agatha

One should refuse contextless gambits like the KDH (King David Hotel) bombing but might suggest that in 1946, the greater armies had barely stopped moving, the mess in destroyed and disrupted lives moving on the landscape must have been immense if not easily seen, and military and paramilitary action on the part of the British, whom I am sure wanted to be done with World War II and its aftermath, were still undertaken in the near shadows of other combat theaters.

The simplifications disservice multiple rich histories.

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FTAC – A Comment on Obama, The Islamic Small Wars, and the Syrian Tragedy

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

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Let’s try this model . . . .

We, including Muslims, have before us the archaic manifestation of a legacy in religion owned by about 1.6 billion souls. Some, and for reasons ranging from how they were raised to the possession of the adolescent messianic narcissism known to dictators, would place themselves somewhere beneath the Muslim Botherhood (intentional) umbrella.

Wouldn’t the moderate and peaceful, truly peaceful, want the hotheads and the improvident to get up and go where they might be seen and subjected to the horrors of their own dreams?

As I have argued elsewhere (any may feel welcome to ask), the incubating of the al-Qaeda types, including ISIS, in Syria appears to have been designed as political theater — a theater of the very real — to both blackmail and goad the west into concessions before the Assad regime. It was a good KGB-style plan, and, please note, Russia got to channel the worst of its own Chechnya rebels to the fighting (and it slipped in a few spies as well); however, update: NATO may sting post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia and its alignments (Damascus, Tehran) with its own wasps.

While ISIS has been growing or distilling out of other populations those most prone to join the fight as 7th Century barbarians in Syria, the greater world has been witness to the we’re-not-those-Muslims Muslim repudiation of the al-Qaeda types, the common use of the terms “Islamist” and “jihadist” and such to separate the same from the greater Ummah going forward, and, of late, the appearance reform-minded discussions (e.g., New Age Islam) and organizations (e.g., Muslim Reform Movement). Expect traction to take some time.

There are other facets . . . like that of getting the Iraqi military to hold itself together against not only ISIS, from whom it has been wresting territory this past month, but also from Khamenei’s aggression through Iraq’s more “fiery” Shiite militia, long infested with Revolutionary Guard officers.

Archaic | Feudal-Toward-Modern Main Body | Cultural Avant Garde –>

Quite possibly for the public accustomed to ironic simplifications, what Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran have developed in Syria looks a little like the mirror image of CIA’s support for the Taliban in association with Zia Haq’s own conservative Islamism pitched against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  In today’s Syrian Tragedy, it’s Moscow, essentially, that appears to manipulate the Sunni-aligned jihadists munching away on the landscape (and enriching itself with oil sales by way of whoever hands over the cash for it).

Be that as it may, it’s looking like the west has been neither blackmailed nor goaded by “Assad vs The Terrorists” has instead absorbed the fallout in finger-wagging (for not intervening) and refugee migration, and may well stick Moscow (Damascus and Tehran) with “The Terrorists”.  It may be toward that purpose that the Russian military has strengthened it presence in Syria.

The inspiration for the response: claim that ISIS had been strengthened under the Obama Administration in relation to the Administration weak response to terrorism.

BackChannels counterpoint: the strategy to move the medieval world (and the representatives of political absolute power) toward the modern one (and distributed, checked, and representative power) has a slow track, and in relation to the Islamic Small Wars involves making the feudal world sufficiently visible for fighting.  IF that idea works, THEN the post-Soviet axis (Moscow-Damascus-Tehran) has done a right thing for the wrong reasons: intending to get at the west, it has helped produce an enemy in space that can be addressed with conventional forces from every side opposed to it.

Reference

BackChannels.  “Syria — ‘Assad vs The Terrorists’ — How ISIS Defends Assad.”  October 2, 2015.

BCC.  “Syria conflict: IS ‘destroyed helicopters’ at Russian base.”  May 24, 2016 —  (breaking story today, May 25, and still frequently updated).

Bender, Jeremy.  “Russia’s war against terrorism isn’t what it seems.”  Business Insider, August 24, 2015.

Berlinger, Joshua.  “Did ISIS attack Russian military equipment at key Syrian base?”  CNN World, May 25, 2016.

Fox News.  “ISIS claims female Russian spy infiltrated terror network.”  May 9, 2016.

Martinez, Michael.  “ISIS video claims to show boy executing two men accused of being Russian spies.”  CNN, January 15, 2015.

McInnis, J. Matthew.  “Is Iran’s Iraq policy coming apart?”  American Enterprise Institute, May 17, 2016.

Osborn, Andrew.  “Putin ally says Chechen spies infiltrate Islamic State in Syria.” Reuters, February 8, 2016.

Pleitgen, Frederik.  “Russia’s military in Syria: Bigger than you think and not going anywhere.”  CNN World, May 9, 2016.

Sanchez, Raf.  “Iran-backed Shia militia says it will fight US Marines deployed to Iraq.”  The Telegraph, March 21, 2016.

Vice News and Reuters.  “Notorious Iranian General Makes Cameo as Iraqis Push to Retake Fallujah From the Islamic State.”  May 24, 2016.

Weiss, Caleb.  “Iranian Qods Force leader reportedly in Fallujah.”  Threat Matrix, The Long War Journal, May 23, 2016.

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FTAC – Ejection of the Archaic Past

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The clip dates from 2013. I take note of the time because we’re in changing times where we may not be able to observe change — by what we’re able to see, we’re too limited — but if it’s taking place, there should be fewer of these clips available this year than there may have been in 2013.

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Archaic-Past | Restive Middle | Modern Muslim Reform Movements

That “archaic past” can no longer do any real thing for anyone except enrich its handful of malignant and piratical leaders. It’s going to go away, visible if by way of combat with the al-Qaeda Typicals, invisible if by way of unspoken individual and popular rejection. Out with the old. The new has many channels forward, including a conservative aspect, which I find convoluted but . . . what works might work.

Regarding Corbyn and the Far Out Left — http://www.the-american-interest.com/…/the-derangement…/

This is the 25th Anniversary Year of the Dissolving of the Soviet, and The Phantom of the Soviet wanders around in such persons as Corbyn, who should be also part of the “archaic past”.

Relevant on my blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

Those “al-Qaeda Typicals”, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the organizations and persons that support them are today readily visible to the public.  Perhaps still tender and less visible are organizations like the Muslim Reform Movement and publications like New Age Islam.

BackChannels’ question: has the modern world with its “math, science, and technology” mania passed the age of miracles?

The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. - Albert Einstein

Is new scripture possible?

Are new exegeses based on old scripture possible and useful?

Over the years on this blog, and with such off-hand gems as “anthropolitical psychology”, one may look into the future with clinical observation and certainty, which may or may not be spiritually satisfying.

What does it mean to observe and say our global inventory of languages stands at fewer than 7,000 living languages, we are losing several every year, and each represents through sound and other signal a distinct way of living with others in proximity and with the land on which The People have been cultured?

Is that all there is?

Could be.

It could be magnificent as well if we continue to find God, Nature, and The Universe awesome beyond our comprehension.

Related: http://thomasberry.org/

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