Category Archives: Philosophy

Hey, NATO! Happy Anniversary.

01 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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NATO stepped up its game in Russia’s “Near Abroad” in response to the post-Soviet (and cynical) near destruction and depopulating of Syria; Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimea (and installation of another Moscow-sustained “Frozen Conflict”), and the dictatorship’s continued support for terrorism (for Afghanistan’s Taliban challengers to state authority; for Hezbollah, the global transnational crime operation); and for its “Active Measures” meddling in EU/NATO territory.

Generally speaking, The Bear has been a bullying, cowardly, and disingenuous force on the world’s stage, persistently authoritarian, underhanded, and totalitarian, and NATO has made itself popular to states wishing to be not so broadly . . . played.

Welcome to Cyprus

Fifteen years ago, NATO welcomed seven new members into the Alliance, expanding its borders eastward from the Baltic to Black Seas. As NATO reaches its seventieth birthday, it could now be time to look toward adding a new member: this time in the Eastern Mediterranean.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/nato-membership-for-cyprus – 3/31/2019

The end of the Cold War (Dec. 25, 1991) failed to sustain western-leaning government in Moscow. Yes, the Cold War was over; the habits of Russian paternal authoritarianism were not. With the ascent of Vladimir Putin to power, Moscow continued to act as a beacon of hope to dictatorships intent on remaining unfettered in their brutality, corruption, and criminality in relation to the ginning of their wealth.

NATO has stood fast against Putin’s rush to sink the world in a renewed feudal morass informed by vanity and absent of conscience, such being the nature of his own malignant narcissism.

Cyprus, of course, lists among the world’s frozen conflicts.

In Damon Wilson’s analysis for the Atlantic Council, the time seems ripe for unification: “Cyprus remains the only European Union member who is not even a member of the Alliance’s Partnership for Peace program, due entirely to the outstanding reunification problem. Immediate NATO membership for a reunified island, however, would automatically embed, and therefore replace, a joint Greek-Turkish-British security guarantee within an Alliance commitment to the entire island without any need for alternative mechanisms.”

Yes, but . . . .

Feudal Absolutism v Modern Democracy: Turkey’s Islamist Leader

Our minarets are our bayonets
Our domes are our helmets
Our mosques are our barracks

We will put a final end to ethnic segregation.  No one can ever intimidate us.

If the skies and the ground were to open against us
If floods and volcanoes were to burst
We will not turn from our mission.

My reference is Islam.

If I am not able to speak of this
What is the use of living?

Secondary source for the above quoted portion of Erdogan’s 1997 speech delivered in Siirt: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/11/notes-on-erdogans-emerging-regime/ (the primary source seems at the moment inconveniently lost somewhere in the web and beyond the editor’s patience for hunting).

Cyprus would be more easily unified if the Turkish President were an authentic NATO leader. However, in BackChannel’s humble opinion, by apologizing for the downing of two Russian jets overflying Turkish airspace, Erdogan made himself part of Putin’s new feudal estate — the estate of post-Soviet dictatorships responding to Moscow.

Not so noble that New Nobility.

While pressure has been applied — okay, infant terrible, Russian S-400 Surface-to-Air missile defense or American F-35s — from whose jets do you intend defense of, say, your Islamic principles. . . or of Turkish Stream? — results, so far, appear indefinite.

Ah well, every family has a conflicted, selfish, and troubled member.

In lieu of kicking Turkey out of the house, so to speak, this has been the kind of headline NATO has had to tolerate in relation to Erdogan’s family business: “Erdogan: NATO gives arms to ‘terrorists’ but not to Turkey: President accuses NATO allies of supporting ‘terrorism’ with thousands of truckloads of weapons, but none for Turkey” (Al Jazeera, February 18, 2019).

Perhaps the baggage is only getting in the way of the journey, for the Turkish government speaks in glowing terms of the state’s relationship with NATO: “Ever since our NATO membership in 1952, the North Atlantic Alliance has played a central role in Turkey’s security and contributed to its integration with the Euro-Atlantic community. Turkey, in return, has successfully assumed its responsibilities in defending the common values of the Alliance.”

Has it?

Is it?

There would seem to be some discrepancy between Turkish idealpolitik and its president’s realpolitik.

Another Neo-NATO President: Hungary’s Viktor Orban

Written into existence by James Kirchik:

Most of the international criticism directed at Hungary over the past nine years has focused on domestic indicators such as the rule of law, separation of powers and press freedom. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been remarkably blunt about his designs for Hungary, citing China, Russia and Turkey as models. After an election in April widely deemed free but not fair, he sounded a triumphal note, declaring that “the era of liberal democracy is over.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/03/is-hungary-becoming-rogue-state-center-europe/ – 1/3/2019

Is Hungary becoming rogue?

Read Hungarian Spectrum and mouse back a few years.

The indicators of reversion to the feudal mode and its medieval blood-and-soil worldviews, including the idolatry associated with the “Great Leader” may be the same across afflicted states: the boast of a gloriously romantic history; contempt for and manipulation of the press, previously free and independent; renewal of anti-Semitic tropes accompanied by tolerance for Far White Right extremism (in Hungary, that would be Jobbik); transfer of powers to family and with it the growth of associated business alliances (open nepotism and cronyism); xenophobia; fear of George Soros 🙂 : the democratic state succumbs to the will of the President (for Life!) who then treats the assets of the same as if they were of his very own feudal estate — and so they become exactly that.

In every way, Orban’s illiberal Hungary — or the illiberal Orban’s captive state — fits with the renewal of — or renewed drowning in — feudalism in more than one or two NATO states..

BREXIT, Poland, others . . . BackChannels blames Moscow (and the obscure method of manipulation knows as “Reflexive Control” (on this blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/ ) for a part of what has happened. In Turkey and Hungary, resurgent old habits have had their effects.

NATO: Next

Russia may not have need for plowing tanks into EU/NATO targets where “Active Measures” and the leveraging and seduction of deeply narcissistic state leaders may suffice for the perversion of NATO values — those supporting the democratic and liberal humanism that have been the hard fought and won treasures of western civilization — in targeted space. No sane child of the post-WWII west would think continuous conflict, political absolutism, and the wars of all against all the natural fate of western states, but that’s what has drawn near.

While NATO may be militarily on its game and strong, the system has shown its weakness in the egotism — the malignant narcissism — of several of its leaders (add another but lesser figure in Jeremy Corbyn, a perhaps unwitting son of Soviet Era cant and today’s piper of Far Out Left — and anti-Semitic — attitudes and beliefs — and then note his xenophobic complements occupying the British Far White Right).

May God smile on them all 😉 — but it is NATO that defends them, and if the same or similar come into power, then what would it be that NATO found itself actually defending?

From the deposing of old generals to the defeat of a pro-democracy coup, Erdogan’s story has unfolded and been met by the west even more slowly — but at least, finally, met.

What of others?

Posted to YouTube by Vox, July 18, 2016

Nonetheless: Happy Birthday, NATO. May you and the full suite of pro-democracy institutions and moral entrepreneurs worldwide advocate for and defend authentic democracies, related responsive and responsible governance, and forever human dignity and freedom and the many good dream and rights given to mankind.

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FTAC: Three Simple Questions About Freedom in the Age of Mass Observation and Measurement

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

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Inspiration: Ma, Alexandra. “Thousands of people in Sweden are embedding microchips under their skin to replace ID cards.” Business Insider, May 14, 2018 – and one question asked of the editor: “Are you celebrating technology or taking a peek at Big Brother?”

Both.

What is Conscience? What is Freedom? What is Moral Agency?

What’s possible may be what’s coming:

https://www.thenation.com/article/china-social-credit-system/ (January 2019)

Keywords: China, Technology, Social Credit System

“The Chinese government already knows everything about me. If I’m not committing a crime, I don’t give a shit”

@9:40 of below-posted video.
Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2018, YouTube.

While this post may be based on year-old data, it’s still cogent. Like “Socialism”, it would appear that “Technological Totalitarianism” will be a work in progress for some time to come, but perhaps not as much as most would like even if we don’t yet know it.

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Judaism and Jewishness – A Light Response to the Pure

10 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Philosophy, Religion

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Perhaps it’s time that grinds away at religious cohorts and their unity in thought, both dividing communities while also distilling and isolating what will come to consider itself the authentic, core, real, traditional, true community in spirit and behavior.

Here time might beg old questions, lawful, spiritual, practical: who is a Jew?

Who among Jews would the righteous pure evict?

What proportion — as Jews are a small community by numbers, how many Jews would the traditional, the Orthodox, consider . . . Jewish?

The secular principle may encourage religion at each his own expense: we are free to sustain belief and practices as we see fit privately and on our own dime. That’s not going to work in any neo-theocratic or theocratic environment in which the majority-something (all states have a “majority-something” – or a powerful minority) needs must defend a religiously codified image of organizing ethical and moral principles.

Are “true believers” (everywhere) medieval and reformers modern?

Are the believers (everywhere) the good and the reformers irreversibly decadent?

In the end and whatever the ramifications, all of our decisions — taking place in each separated mind — are private and privately reasoned and motivated — and time x God, Nature, and the Universe + Social Surrounds have their influence.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/332555/jewish/Maimonides-13-Principles-of-Faith.ht

https://www.aish.com/jl/h/cc/48955721.htm

Nature over long time encourages diversity / experimentation; we humans, especially with philosophy and religion, have made a competition out of differentiation (and “experimentation”, God only knows).

Earth’s Living Language Inventory: fewer than 7,000.
N Religions Extant: 4,200 estimated.

Our geopolitical boundaries, which may be as small as a community around a single church, mosque, or temple, really do help us be what we consider ourselves as community tradition, experience, God, intuition, learning, practical survival, and reason have made us. In the realm of embraced and enthused believe, the social set may be as small as a band (truly, music), a band (tribal warrior subset), or cult or as large, of course, as a transnational ethnic, political, or religious enterprise.

Inspiration for the post: a defense of traditional male-privileged access to Israel’s holy Western and the intrusion — and degradation of tradition — symbolized by the modern feminist Women of the Wall who intend as Jewish women to do everything that Jewish men have done traditionally by way of the express permit of God, so believed or others given for themselves to do. The patriarchal culture than has it’s “little lady” insult built into it, so from the modern perspective looking backward through time, the closest encounter with God through prayer must be for men (who are clean: free of menstruation) — and, “little lady, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

😦

As evolutionary as the cultivation and transforming of conscience, empathy, and language may be, tribal identities worldwide and their ways have persistence through time even though time — like water — has always its carving, eroding, shaping work busy at changing the face of humanity.

Partial of “Western Wall Before Sunset” by Antonina Reshef, 2012 and licensed under Creative Commons rules.

The conversation progressed in the direction of the real-social-politik involved in sustaining Israel’s Jewish-majority state in atmosphere and character. Although not all Jews are perfect (or pure) anywhere — all humanity is imperfect) all in Israel understand the mission of the state as the proverbial “light unto nations”, which it has been, and as THE Jewish Homeland. Herewith a little more comment on the Western Wall; ancient tribal, medieval, and modern cultures; and the latest brought up by the impertinent behavior of the Women of the Wall movement.

Social influence and pressure move in both directions, but each place has its near starting points — the day we’re born (and surrounded in the cradle of family and community) and they day we become aware (psychologically autonomous and decision making).

Is tendency Reactionary –> Baseline Tradition?

Or Revolutionary –> Corrosive Reformation –> supersessionary liberating / tepid Secular Humanism?

I’ve give higher value to political equilibrium x place then to absolute (black-or-white) thinking and zealotry that becomes labeled “extreme” even though the “extreme” might be a right extreme. The reason is that the strong humanist umbrella would defend the faith of the faithful in place. Israel’s existence as ancient, medieval, and modern — and “hypermodern” as a progressive democratic open society — creates what is essentially a modern challenge

?
|Men Only —————————– | Women’s section |
–>
|Men Only —- | All Allowed ——————————– |
?

I am going to demur, I hope wisely, from launching arrows for either the sustained ancient world brought forward through identity, belief, and tradition or this new modern portal to a next civilization — that’s what the future leads toward always — that finds its common base as one against harm and threat in the defense of greater equality, inclusion, and respect across a broad cloud of humanity.

The Western Wall is public and the woman want to do as men do as equals with respect, but the same may indeed degrade and diminish the ancient systems that have both informed and sustained Hebrew existence.

Do the women (of the Wall) in their zeal think about that endowment?

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FTAC: Turn Around – Globally ReStanced Time

25 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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Inspiration for this little bit of wisdom: another set-to about the God of Judaism and the God of Islam — or depictions, expressions, instructions, etc. seemingly attached to the construction or perception (in mind, of course) of each.

Basically: “Your God is not my God — and my rightness must be therefore more right than your rightness.”

And God must have put us here to prove how right we are about God.

Something like all of that plus the bloody historical baggage that has been dragged through time with that kind of thinking.

About Joseph Campbell

Home

Ethnolinguistic cultures on earth: about 7,000 (fewer, actually).
There are many ways of looking up at the stars and experiencing or interpreting the divine.

In the Torah, God hears Ishmael’s cries too.

The more true challenge of the present lies in handling the habits attending medieval politics and worldviews that better account for turning something we cannot know — God, as we think of God, is greater than our observational capabilities — into something we think we know.
Judaism represents the Tribal Way of the Hebrews, an old People with a calendar to prove it and a distinct trail through time planted on or in the earth in built space or artifacts. Rather than mosey on to other civilizational uptake, adaptation, and competition, it might prove healthier to visit the present, take a deep breath, and have both a broad and long view backward, the better perhaps for considering and taking the next step forward.

Having given up the burning of witches and largely ejected “contra-lateral amputation” as inhumane (although there are some barbaric, malignant, primitive, and sadistic holdouts), we might do better than eternally trying to erase one another.

Call it a plea for peacefulness momentarily enshrined in a blog post . . . also a plea to perhaps stand together for a broad and great gaze backward from this extraordinary plateau in human communicating and social interaction — and then: think fresh; think forward; think next.

Commence.

The “New Nationalists” — there’s a term that’s getting around — are old feudal reactionaries. Each — start with Erdogan in his White Palace — means to live as if in a castle socially surrounded by nobility and attended by peons and slaves.

BackChannels hopes they will one day find themselves left floating in their own blood-dimmed and greed-soaked clouds and the better world, broadly inclusive, culturally self-sustaining (we should be concerned with keeping and growing our 7,000 or so living language cultures), earth conscious, still in awe of the universe, and beautifully interwoven will look back on them with a shudder.

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Where Isn’t the Front?

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

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

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Inspiration for the post: a conversation about women in combat roles and the relative physical advantage men have as regards the demands and energy required by related combat training programs and evaluations.

Problem: there may be more required across the “combat” or war fighting spectrum than the agility and strength so tested in training — and at times demonstrated in the field — as well as admired for entertainment and, perhaps, general cultural inspiration.

Variable not mentioned in this lopsided patch of talk: the span of combat mission roles. Regarding the “grunt” – okay, that’s the old industrial steel-driving guy at war and in the mess in big numbers.

From the Awesome Conversation (FTAC)

This is for fun:

But this has been perhaps the changing face of war:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/one-of-the-first-female-uae-fighter-pilots-leads-attacks-against-isis-in-syria-9755869.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45295212 (On Japan’s first female combat pilot).

The real question for the west . . . perhaps for western men and women . . . is how fast does everyone want to skidaddle back into the medieval world and its competitive frames?

Assignment / mission definition may be more the controlling variable for who goes where, not for who has ability, agility, ambition, courage, determination, discipline, etc. under stress of battle.

At the moment, the modern enemies are medieval scourges, i.e., feudal absolute powers (like Assad) and their manipulated hornets (like ISIS).

I hesitate on posting because I know (confession: from the armchair) that “field operations” have been complex as well as irrevocably changed by technologies, assets, and strategies (and politics) throughout. Is the drone’s remote jockey in front line combat? With relation to terrorist “actions”, where isn’t the front? For that matter, what isn’t combat in the age of “Hybrid Warfare” and “Information Warfare”?

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FTAC: ALW: Earth Consciousness; Human-Universal Inter-Consiousness

18 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Asides, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journal, Philology, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion

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When I started my journey around the world Online (In English), I had never even heard of “Partition”.

While I forget much or what I read, I’ve had the wisdom to keep my reading — my books — close by and may rapidly access what I’ve read.

I have 2,000+ close by reading options and could do my own in-house “Great Books” education, languages included, but I have to match age and mission sense with available resources. ??

As a species, our issues on Earth are profound, and that includes not only our search of political reconciliation and the diminishing of war, God willing, but the greater taking up of the stewardship of our planet, so that we may enjoy the image of our survival much farther into the future than the end of, say, Epoch of Oil.

We can and should open our eyes more widely than we do today:

http://thomasberry.org/

From another conversation this day:

Do you believe in the existence of conscience? Empathy?

God also may be described as an “inter-consciousness” between man and nature across the universe.

Thomas Berry has promoted “earth consciousness” with our species as stewards.

I’d go the extra light year and may — or not as Internet publishing appears to promoted promote abbreviation and compression of thought.

Many years ago, I played with Heinrich Böll’s “Murk’s Collected Silences“, a short story about revisionism involving a radio host and his indecision about the invocation of that singular and most Proper Noun, “God”. At the end of his career and interested in shaping the memory of himself, he decided to hedge, and instead of the recorded invocations of “God”, he had his technician cut out the world and replace it with “thou higher being whom we revere”. Murk, the technician, then cut even the resulting moments of silence for splicing together.

Here on BackChannels, this editor has been using as a trope, similarly hedging but advancing a concept at the same time, “God, Nature, and the Universe”.

It may be that we humans merely process chemicals faster than rocks, and that is all that differentiates our species and all else that lives from stardust.

Indeed, one may see pools of blood where spilled become flakes the color of rust (for the same reason) and drops of it diminish to powder dissolving in air.

That is all we are.

When dead.

When living . . . what a piece of work!

As a species, we needs must be or become the stewards of all that lives and all that in addition supports the beautiful and thriving mission of life.

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ALW: Historical Necessities – Humor and Soul

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philosophy

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Recommended to this editor: David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace (Anniversary Edition, 2009).

Now wish-listed in my Amazon account, it would be a good book to own; however, the bookcases have been filled, and there’s even now a box full of books with bookmarks in them, the desktop having become more my platform than the sofa.

Darn.

The forum for the comment was one of Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi‘s pages on Facebook.  Daoudi, who once took a class of Palestinian students to Auschwitz and had his car torched for the effort, has been a strong advocate for a moderate Islam (Wasatia Movement (Facebook page]) and Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.  As suggested by the lost getabout, such efforts would seem tempered by the politics of the East Jerusalem space from which he prefers to work.

Fromkin’s book would be a good thing to own and read.  However —

I’m overstocked here with books, but if I had house and space, I’d go ahead and expand my library to 4,000 volumes, maybe more.

One thing about the truth in history: when something is true, all the small parts really do fit together.

In that fitting together, however, one may wish to have two essential elements for company: 1) a great sense of humor and 2) a lot of soul.

Previously recommended by yours truly to forum readers: Efraim Karsh’s 2011 volume, Palestine Betrayed.

Purpose: replace strident untrue (Soviet Era malarkey) narratives 🙂 with a broad, common, empathetic, high-integrity telling of history — because history may not be “written by the victors” but in the greater course of time by the decent and earnest among the world’s scholars — that might then provide a firm base of knowledge for all.

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FTAC: Middle East Conflict: Harmonizing on One Page

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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The issue: the symmetrical treatment of history such that Israelis and Palestinians should teach both “The Holocaust” and “The Nakba”.

Rubbish.

Israelis and Palestinians would do well to research and teach history in the direction of nonpartisan and well substantiated truth.

The idea that “history is written by the victors” should be today an artifact of the medieval world, i.e., the world of “absolute power” and thuggish personalities.

In the modern world — and should it wish to be a good one — scholarly integrity should matter most of all (and Muhammad himself is reputed to have said, “One scholar is worth more against the devil than one thousands worshippers”).

The barbarism known to history — medieval rape and rapine, ethnic cleansing, genocide — need not be known to the future, but as much becomes the province of those alive today. If Muslim Fulani gangs and war parties wish to continue their program of razing Christian farming villages — and kidnapping, raping, and slaughtering the residents — that is really up to them, there being no sufficient power (yet) to stop them where they roam, plan, and execute foul deeds.

Integrity, rightness, and righteousness should have qualities that transcend small interests. As often as we may find that not true, we may hope that one day as much will be true.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172348/palestine-betrayed

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