FTAC – Syria – A Terrible Puzzle

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

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

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, political philosophy, Red Brown Green, religion

The world has been dealt a terrible puzzle: Syndicate Red Brown Green (Shiite) has through “Red” (post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia) a nuclear armed block to its ability to impose its better nature; “Brown Green” — national socialist, Islamist (Sunni side) promotes a program unpalatable most to those whose humanity, sense of justice, and sentiment could motivate intercession despite a nuclear armed Russia and an Iran positioned to acquire a similar capability if given about a year’s lead surreptitiously. Change those politics. I think Putin-Assad-Khamenei cannot get off their track by way of their investment in a medieval world view intended to keep themselves in power to the end of time. Baghdadi is about in the same place, but others might not be.

The God (concept) intended by the Jews was thrown out beyond the universe, made greater than even the universe, and with finality separated from humans, even Moses — and not even Moses parts the waters — and this is why. Somewhere between Assad and ISIS, the middle must pioneer its way, cast off the medieval, reach for something more human, more kind, more modern, more present, more survivable, more evolving, more progressing.

Perhaps when Syrians involved in fighting perceive their jihad as one involving the middle against the extremes, they will be on their way to peace.

For this day, dependence on the medieval concentration of power in one dictator, dynasty, junta, or nobility masks off the potential for a greater future. “Syndicate Red Brown Green” appears to be playing — by having other people die for its privileges –for the feudal mode and the perpetual war needed to keep the criminally powerful and wealthy in business for generations.

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Link – Orton on Saddam’s Fedayeen

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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Fedayeen, Islamic Small Wars, Saddam Hussein, terrorism

Saddam had begun Islamizing his foreign policy as early as 1982-83, making alliances with all manner of Islamist terrorists, thousands of whom came to Iraq for training in the 1990s, where they attended camps run by the Fedayeen. In the Fedayeen—connected to the global Islamist terrorist movement, combining elements of Ba’athism with an increasingly-stern Salafism—is a microcosm of the Saddam regime’s mutation into the Islamic State (ISIS).

Orton, Kyle. “A Case Study of the Islamic State as the Saddam Regime’s Afterlife: The Fedayeen Saddam.” Baghdad Invest, August 30, 2015.

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FTAC – On Conflict and “Nominal Affiliation”

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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

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bigotry, conflict, the name of the other

“Humanity” is between or in the middle in tragically real ways and should not be divided “nominal affiliation” and core moderate belief, Shiite or Sunni (eastern or western; Christian, Jewish, or Muslim; northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere). The malignantly narcissistic, whatever other adjectives and labels might apply, believe themselves born to rule — to lord over others — by birth, and in their quest to do that or sustain their positions, they refer to birth or affiliation as exclusive and privileged: and then they relentlessly manipulate their friends (flattery, pandering, patronage will do it) and subjugate and plunder their critics and rivals. In that regard, all dictators are the same. Their labels and causes matter much less than key aspects of their lost personalities. Those listed above: no compassion; no empathy; no generosity with others if not in the name of their own glory. A question naturally follows: who else?

The prompt appeared in a forum on Syria in which, as BackChannels itself might have it, Putin, Assad, and Khamenei (also Nasrallah and an illustrated figure I didn’t recognize) were presented as a Shiite axis of evil. That realpolitik model holds. The producers and actors have put on the play, “Assad vs The Terrorists” — but what about the opposition: does it too wish to sustain its feudal and medieval perception of others?

Let the question stand.

Bigots, bullies, cowards, and liars take note: there may be more and less in a name when it comes to carrying around contempt for others on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, or, at times, the coast, desert, mountain, plain, or valley of origin, or the name of clan, family, or tribe.

Where is the enmity located?

No one minds a little competition, but conflict on the basis of “the other” — actually, the name of the other — appears to BackChannels to become self-destructive and self-defeating.

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The “Iran Deal” – Two Videos

28 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Regions

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Iran, Israel, nuclear deal, videos

Posted to YouTube 8/26/2015

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Syrian Refugee Camp From the Air

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Journalism, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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blogging, Jordan, online journalism, Syria, Zaatari Refugee Camp

Note: Examination of the downloaded clip showed no EXIF (camera) or IPTC (author or editorial) data. Although Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has been noted as visiting the Zaatari Refugee Camp in northern Jordan on April 22, 2014, whether or not he’s the passenger on the above flight — a pretty good look at the establishment of a new town, at least for a while — could not be ascertained.

Many of the refugees were from middle-income families and communities in Syria.

Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are now selling fruit and vegetables at illegal stands in Zaatari or in communities around northern Jordan. Around five percent of Zaatari’s residents were university students in Syria before coming to the camp.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/26/a-lost-generation-where-have-4-million-syrians-fled/ – 8/26/2015 – In the lede, journalist Charlotte Florance reports, “According to United Nations figures, more than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland, with another 7 million displaced internally within Syria.”

http://observer.com/2015/07/is-saudi-prince-talal-going-to-israel/ – 7/14/2015

https://www.alwaleedphilanthropies.org/alwaleed-philanthropies-supported-300-syrian-refugees-bekaa –

Posted to YouTube 9/7/2013

Posted to YouTube 1/2/2014

Posted to YouTube 2/2/2014

Posted to YouTube 1/8/2015

Posted to YouTube 7/30/2015

I have found this blog a paste-up board for snapshots of time. Visitors here see a part of a day that I have experienced online, and then longitudinally, over time, the series in events, places, and themes begins to tell the story of a desktop journey through time.

http://blog.worldvisionyouth.org/2014/03/12/syria-6-stories/ – 3/12/2014.

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Syria – Assad – “We trust the Russians . . . .”

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, dehumanization, feudalism, foreign affairs, political psychology, politics, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Syrian Tragedy, tyranny

Injured girl, field hospital, Douma, Syria. The downloaded image itself contained no EXIF or IPTC data.

Related: http://www.citizenside.com/en/photos/politics/2015-07-27/118223/syria-field-hospital-in-douma.html#f=0/1299528 – 7/27/2015.

“. . . we trust the Russians. They proved throughout the crisis, the last four years, they proved they are honest, transparent, and have principles . . . .”

BBC. “Syria’s Assad ‘confident’ of Iranian and Russian support.” Video and news report. August 26, 2015

Without Putin, Bashar al-Assad as a dynastic leader would have been finished in 2011. However, instead of appropriately responding to Syrian complaints at the time and the yearning for a voice in their own governance, Assad chose to arrest and torture children. All that has changed in the past four years has been the scope in breadth and cruelty of the punishment meted to noncombatant Syrians.

At the outset, President Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia presented a block to the start of the erosion of the Assad family’s absolute ruling power; next: Assad cultivated ISIS by selectively not bombing the al-Qaeda Typicals in their infancy, which then dealt to himself a glorious piece — in his warped eyes — of political theater, “Assad vs The Terrorist”. Putin, Assad, and Khamenei each knew “The Terrorists”, which have largely turned out to be ISIS, although many other and similar organizations exist in the field, would present an even more difficult challenge to the west.

For Khamenei, nothing could sustain an Islamic theocratic tyranny in Iran quite like the prospect and reality of a continuous Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle, for which ISIS would conveniently serve as foil to the further expression and regional projection of Iranian Shiite power.

For the west, perhaps, there is less of “reset” in what has taken place in Syria and more of pressing the collapse of Soviet-style “state capitalism” in the form of an oligarchy — a “new nobility” — brought into existence and managed by Putin. From that perspective, Russia has stalled in Syria and Crimea — and given the price of oil at the well these days — or the evident callousness of the Russian leadership — it may not want the burden of settling either conflict or reconstructing that which it has helped destroy, both “hot spots” being more effective at bleeding the west of financial resources and focus. With U.S. President Obama shrugging away much of that form of challenge — or seeming to do that — that tack may not be going so well.

Similar observations may be made in regard to Iran’s position.

Even though it will see immense cash flow for the “nuclear deal”, the regime will have to deal with greater greed around itself as well as its unpopular extension through wars by proxy in the region.

Who knows but that Hezbollah will tire of its men dying for the ambitions of the Ayatollah.

Still, nothing will change all that fast.

While Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together defend “absolute power”, the suffering accompanying that psychology — and what ISIS means to bring to Syrians, i.e., greater tyranny in the name of God, will be even worse — will grow worse: the “Eye Doctor” has lost himself in his own inverted fantasia, a world in which Putin’s Russia has proven “honest, transparent, and principled” (tell that to Ukrainians) and Syrians suffer primarily at the hands of “The Terrorists” and not beneath the barrel bombs dropped on the most helpless of them by Assad’s own air force.

The “additional reference” section may be at this point outmoded by a very good and quick Google search engine. We can find what we may want to read in flash; whether we can find the conversation we need to have as quickly remains to be seen.

Search string: “Syria, barrel bombs” / news:

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/22/433735915/activists-un-denounce-deadly-syrian-barrell-bombs – 8/22/2015

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/20570-barrel-bombs-fall-on-syrias-douma-killing-50-source – 8/23/2015

http://www.ibtimes.com/syrian-regimes-barrel-bombs-kill-more-civilians-isis-al-qaeda-combined-2057392 – 8/18/2015

http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/08/25/assads-barrel-bombs-cost-syrian-boy-his-family-and-hearing – 8/24/2015

Search string: “Syria, water, war” / news

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/world/middleeast/water-is-called-casualty-of-syrian-war.html – 8/25/2015 Related: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_82980.html

Search string: “Syria, moderate forces” / news

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11817208/US-failed-to-protect-us-says-commander-of-Pentagon-trained-rebels-in-Syria.html – 8/21/2015

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/19/us-trained-syrian-rebels-we-need-training-be-faste/ – 8/19/2015

Search string: “Syria, New Syria Force”

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/18/middleeast/new-syria-force-fighter-abu-iskander/ – 8/18/2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/world/middleeast/ahrar-al-sham-rebel-force-in-syrias-gray-zone-poses-challenge-to-us.html – 8/25/2015.

Misc.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/08/246155.htm – 8/17/2015.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/25/video-syrian-toddler-rescued-from-under-the-rubble-of-bombed-building/ – 8/25/2015

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/africa/20625-are-we-human-beings – 8/24/2015

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FTAC – On the The Repudiation of Feudal Barbarism

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology

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intellectual corruption, Islam, scholarship

Part of the difficult in addressing ISIS and others becoming defined as “Islamists” by the worlds to which they have brought harm involves accessing the greater body of literature stemming from the Qur’an and the legends and speech of Muhammad plus a body of commentary plus a developed and divided legal history. The miscreant groups, and clearly Qanta Ahmed repudiates them in her article, draw on verbal lore, however selected, however selfishly believed, to validate their barbarism.

My acquaintance who have delved into, let’s call it “dangerous text”, have done so with some blanketing “Islamophobic” intent, in essence justifying ISIS behavior on the basis that ISIS claims, and with which Dr. Ahmed claims to be unfamiliar.

Scholarship developed in isolation or within a circumscribed intellectual and geopolitical space may be given to corruption by the scholar’s own self-interest. In any religion, a cleric or priest or other “holy man” may be expected to install in others what benefits his own position. Today, asking a modern person — again: any religion — to delve into the arcane bodies of work promulgated by the experts, i.e., asking me to read the Talmud, for example, or Dr. Ahmed to plow through volumes (and ages) of related intellectual history to support further argument, merely leads the mind back into the closed universe of the feudal world. What ISIS has put on display by displaying itself needs no extraordinary scholarly knowledge for universal condemnation, including condemnation by the greater Islamic Ummah.

Those whose obsessions lead them back into lost worlds may also drown themselves in the same. For some, myself, at least, time is the only ocean, and one wants to navigate the crossing of it into the future, not into the past.

The prompt: the posting of Dr. Qanta Ahmed’s condemnation of ISIS (CNN, August 18, 2015) on a forum page and, in the background, a conversation with a friend who has collected and come to know a fair portion of the material on which the Daesh project permits itself its excesses.

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Three Links – Two Thoughts by “The Last English Prince” +

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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anti-Jihad, Islam, Islamism, religion, religiosity

I have discussed this issue with two Islamic lawyers. One man is part of an Islamic Tribunal. The second, received his law degree from Damascus. These rulings are applicable in a modern age. There was no backing down, when I pressed hard for a logical explanation. The age of nine years was also given as a legal age for men to have intercourse with little girls.

Swofford, Tammy. “The Rape of American Hostage Kayla Mueller by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” The Last English Prince, August 15, 2015.

Two schools of thought exist regarding apostasy. One school of thought is that an apostate Muslim must be killed immediately with the sword. The second school of thought allows the apostate to be secured alone for three days and given a chance to repent. If unrepentant, the individual can be clubbed to death. This clubbing, just might make the person repent before being beaten to a pulp. This ruling comes from a companion of one of the four great Islamic jurists, ash-Shafi’i.

Swofford, Tammy. “Islam: Death for Apostasy.” The Last English Prince, August 17, 2015

That the religion of Islam lends itself TODAY to such criticism bodes ill yet for Muslims and others. As loud as outrage has become toward Daesh, which purports to represent the Islam presented by Muhammad, not one Muslim army has risen to crush it and crush away its barbarism (this despite some Big Talk from Jordan). Instead, the Kurdish community, which has to defend its own ethnolinguistic culture against Islamic aggressors (Turkey is the other), has proven the most effective army in the field; granted, Iraq’s Shiite militia infused with Iranian Revolutionary Guard have also gone up against their old familiar but transformed Baathist foes (become Daesh generals for the money dispersed by Baghdadi), but that is to sustain Shiite vs Sunni animus to the benefit of the career and legitimacy of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Contemporary Islamic humanists, reformers, rethinkers, revisionists, secularists have certainly emerged on the world’s sociopolitical radar (M. Zuhdi Jasser, Qanta Ahmed, Irshad Manji, Tarek Fatah, Sultan Shahin [New Age Islam]), but their names are yet young in history, and they too are in a kind of intellectual cradle within a universe of exegetical counterpoint to the al-Qaeda Typicals and the Hezbollah Viruses.

Abstract or dimensional variables associated with argument around “Islamism” or “Political Islam” may include conservatism, fascism, inflexibility, liberalism, narcissism, and religiosity, each term begging its own build-out in meaning. High intensity emotion, narcissism, obsessive focus, and rigidity — in one word: “intolerance” — begs disaster every time out as nature appear to prefer across flora, fauna, and human culture and thought abundance, adjustment, and variety.

(CNN)I am an observant Muslim. And because I am a Muslim, I believe in pluralism. I believe in tolerance. These are the beliefs that Islamist totalitarians are determined to extinguish in the world as they oppress and brutalize those they deem to be “the other.”

Guided by a false, supposedly Islamic doctrine, ISIS has enslaved and systematically raped Yazidi women and young girls. These crimes, described last week by The New York Times, are the latest example of how Islamism defiles Islam. This travesty crosses new thresholds of human depravity: holding pens for humans, busy slave markets, the bureaucratic herding, bidding and buying of Yazidi women and girls. ISIS demands that we confront these new horrors.

Ahmed, Qanta. “When bigots use ISIS atrocities to smear all Muslims.” CNN, August 18, 2015.