Category Archives: Political Psychology

FTAC: Middle East Conflict (MEC): On the Facing of Uncomfortable Truths . . . Together

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Psychology

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Affect –> Negative or Positive Emotion x Intensity

Attitude = Belief x Affect

Is a thing true or false, and if true, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

So

Belief +/- contributes to Attitude.

Beliefs have also two properties: early or late establishment (primacy) and importance – degree of relevance (to survival).

The really evil thing about a misguided belief (via disinformation or the manipulation of perception) is that if set in early (e.g., childhood indoctrination), all that follows may be made to set atop what have become basic principles.

George Orwell’s _Animal Farm_ uses “Two legs good, four legs bad” to make about the same point.

In social psychology, the term for look-up would be “Attitude-Behavior Correspondence”.

It has been a rich field for the narrowed.

Atheist Christopher Hitchens has in his decease on offer a marvelous volume about adherence to basic principles and related observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters

Kind words — actually: civil conversation — makes possible reconciliation by allowing discomfiting discoveries to be shared with one’s adversary, and later, former adversary, without fear of disaster or punishment. While its true that in much of the world, the “loyal lie” may account for one’s lifestyle and very life itself, the principle of facing an uncomfortable truth proves stronger than lies over time.

On many of these posts, the conversational partner has been Mohammed Dajani Daoudi who has been exploring a middle way in Islam beneath the banner of his Wasatia Movement.

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Also in Media: From Chechnya to Myanmar — Military Brutality and Political Control: The Creation of War

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Asia, Burma, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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False-Flag Fire Starter:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible

Brutalizing of Chechnyan noncombatant villagers:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3617244.html

Backgrounder, published yesterday, on the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/what-the-hell-is-happening-in-myanmar.html :

The monks, too?

There’s one famous Buddhist monk who was on the cover of Time magazine a couple of years ago, and he’s described as a “Buddhist Bin Laden.” His name is Ashin Wirathu. He’s a very strange character because he wears the Buddhist garb, which is worn to demonstrate your withdrawal from the world. At the same time, he has diamond-studded watches; he flies on a private jet. It’s completely contradictory. He’s one of the main instigators of the violence. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and Wirathu and followers of his Buddhist nationalist 969 movement believe that the Rohingya minority have all reincarnated from snakes and insects. So when you actually kill them, you’re not actually killing people, you’re actually just killing snakes and insects. That laid the foundation for the current situation that we’re in.

Who would know the beauty of a malignantly narcissistic kleptocracy better than Moscow?

And I will add, though it may be irrelevant, what hypocritical kleptocratic and medieval entity would know how to infiltrate and support terrorists worldwide better than Tehran?

Give the transitive formula a moment to sink in:

Chechnya : Myanmar

Ingush : Rohingya

The world has been once again drawn into global warfare, Moscow’s way.

By way of wholesale abuse and slaughter, the innocent of war have been pushed in both regions into flight and defensive conflict while being branded as “The Terrorists” — perhaps not unrelated to the process that has burned through Syria but the very facsimile of it.

Given how Moscow / Moscow-Tehran work, the world gets “The Terrorists” — and, oh, they’re real in an of themselves, they’re channeled with their ranks filled out by the efforts of manipulating “leaders” greater than themselves.

Related in the News

There is an urgent need for de-escalation in levels of violence in Rakhine State as there is a strong possibility of other displaced Rohingyas being radicalised by Sunni fundamentalist groups including the Bangladesh chapter of the Islamic State to take to arms. The Rohingya displacement is a matter of serious concern but the root cause of increased animosity among the Burmans and other ethnic groups against the minority community should also not be glossed over. The international community has questioned Myanmar for the crisis but has forgotten the bloody contribution of Pakistan-based jihadist groups to this catastrophe.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/pakistan-is-fuelling-unrest-in-myanmar-s-backyard/story-LXHqEMzdW5mE4Ut1EwtefO.html – 9/15/2017.

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FTAC: Mandela –> Zuma –> Perhaps the end of ‘Aristocommiecrats’

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, South Africa

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2103: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/12/09/zoom-zoom-zuma-hail-the-presence-of-another-african-aristocommicrat/

—

2017: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/07/will-the-party-of-nelson-mandela-die-so-that-jacob-zuma-can-live-anc-no-confidence-vote/

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His family has been looting, his friends have been looting, and in the process he has weakened the state, divided the ANC, divided the alliance. We continue to deal with the mess, and it will take a long time to clean up.” —

One dictatorship can undo many of the gains made by ethical and modern revolutionaries. A nod here to the South Africans letting Jacob Zuma know he has gone off the track.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/03/jacob-zuma-calls-confiscation-white-land-without-compensation/

Zuma, not unlike Robert Mugabe, may also represent an execrable representation of the claim to leading a “people’s liberation movement” as a means to autocratic and elitist power. This time, however, the communist alignment has turned on the leader over the matter of corruption.

http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/south-african-communists-ban-president-zuma-from-party-congress/

“We never fought the struggle to liberate the country to hand over our economy to the Guptas,” he declared, accusing the ANC leadership’s attacks on “white monopoly capital” of being “a Marxist-flavored narrative [used] as an alibi for parasitic plundering.”

Amen.

Inspiration: Mandela on the promotion of national reconciliation.

Lesson to be learned: if you should happen to develop or inherit high ethical and moral capital and standing, don’t squander it with a now old and tiresome charade.

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FTAC: “At War Every Day”

09 Saturday Sep 2017

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

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Paraphrasing the famous lecture from “Behind Enemy Lines” — “Every day we wake up, we’re at war!”

With the Russo-Sino axis engaged in sub-nuclear military activity and provocation with intent to produce imperial gains in business or area of influence, I think we’re indeed being played.

Moscow has a long acknowledged history as a polity endorsing or exploiting terrorism and practicing totalitarian theater.

Regarding al-Qaeda, any may look up “Zawahiri, Russia, 9/11” and “Afghanistan, Russia, Taliban”.

What do today’s most feudal societies defend?

Answer for yourself.

If you have been leveraged and enriched without soul or, alternatively, dispossessed by political anachronism and barbarism, consider what has been stolen by the latest editions in dictatorship.

Check pulse for signs of conscience and integrity.

For western military and politicians and assorted analysts and planners, the “war by other means” would seem now to include the spreading of intellectual confusion (“Active Measures!” “Disinformation!” “Fake News!”); intellectual infiltration (big on campus and off, Farthest Left, Farthest Right); frozen and low-intensity conflicts (like the middle east one, which has proven great for criminal businesses, corrupt politicians, and entrenched families — and not too great for the Palestinian People enthralled by power while being themselves kept from it); provocations eliding engagements (stimulates worry in the targets and thereby promotes greater allocations in broad and continuous defensive spending); “Little Green Men” charades and possible manipulation of noncombatant elements, like commercial or private boats, to produce situations that produce damage to western military assets.

Beijing, Damascus, Moscow, Pyonyang, Tehran.

Nice people up top.

The best.

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FTAC: On Arrogance, Religion, and Related Political Rhetoric

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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The prompt came also from the Qur’an (“5:82-83”) as presented this way: “You will surely find those closest in friendship to the believers to be those who say, “We are Christians.”  That is because among them are priests and monks who are not arrogant.”

Response —

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people”. – https://quran.com/5/51-61

Apparently, if one is not close to a monk or priest (or perhaps a recluse with a library), one may be in danger of trusting an untrustworthy friend.

Note: one might ask whether caliphs, kings, and emperors are not inherently arrogant in their assumptions of power over all others, and therefore particularly sensitive to arrogance in those whom they would subjugate.

Compact between shaman and chief and cleric and king spans the ages but may not be a permanent feature in humanity’s intellectual and political evolution. That may be something to think about in the experience of language, both in political rhetoric and in scripture (no matter to whom the words belong), and that of power as dominion over others.

The region of the Qur’an cited, 5:82 and 5:83 presents in English through several well-remarked translations — and of a standard four — Asad, Malik, Pickthall, and Yusuf Ali — the conveyances of none would seem as sweet as the statement quoted as the prompt.

Here is the presentation of the verse as translated by Yusuf Ali:

“Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans; and nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say: “We are Christians:” because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world and they are not arrogant.”

Source: http://www.alim.org/library/quran/ayah/compare/5/82/disbelievers-among-the-children-of-israel-were-cursed-by-the-tongues-of-david-and-jesus-and-christians-are-closer-to-muslims-than-the-jews-and-pagans

One thought attending the description of “men devoted to learning” and “who have renounced the world and are not arrogant” is that such men would seem less than challenging to martial or political power and therefore dismissible by any speaker intent on monopolizing and wielding such power.

Qur’an 5:83 although cited in the prompt appears not present in the statement at the top of this post.  Here is that verse in the Yusuf Ali translation from the Alim library URL noted:

“And when they listen to the revelation received by the Apostle thou wilt see their eyes overflowing with tears for they recognize the truth: they pray: “Our Lord! we believe; write us down among the witnesses.”

If thou woulds’t be apostle, caliph, king, or emperor would though not note the sweetness of the complete and grateful surrender of thine greatest potential resistance?

Given that question and thought, one might appreciate attempts at transitional revisionism.

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FTAC: Arafat and Potential for Revolutionary Palestinian Leadership in the Coming New Middle East – A Note

03 Sunday Sep 2017

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

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Excellent statement — let’s keep it grounded in the both the realpolitik of its day and what we know of leadership psychology today:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Russia has had a long history of virulent and institutionalized anti-Semitism. Before Arafat’s arrival, it used anti-Semitic sentiment to court its targets in the Arab world. https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/ In addition to spreading the forgery and libel that was the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, it produce a propaganda campaign accompanied by sending trained agents and workers into the middle east to facilitate its own ends.

In states burdened today by the legacy of “medieval political absolutism”, the narcissistic egomaniac only appears to represent the cultural spirituality of the state, but the same presumptuously does as much at any and every cost to The People — and that may include what has happened to the Palestinian People.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/malignant-narcissism/

The malign qualities in leadership may stem from damage done to the self-concept of the leader in childhood or youth as humiliation or similar injury finds an antidote in that person’s reinvention of personality and its appearance. In the context of militarized societies or others obsessed with honor, the observation that the people ultimately create the Great Leader — and the Great Leader becomes also their own Great Burden — would seem to have become in this era entirely predictable. 

The prompt: a discussion about why Arafat failed to set up conditions for a Palestinian democratic society.

The most basic and honest answer to that is this: Arafat’s handlers in Moscow forbid him any development of liberalism or democracy in territories to which he was assigned.  Instead, Moscow asserted its will to impose itself on the Palestinian People and produce a sustained conflict beneath which many would profit from long decades engaged in corruption, crime, and related patronage.  The would be no justice within the Palestinian community for the leadership and its cronies.

More recently, as noted in the BackChannels piece, “Palestinian KGB” (cited above), it has been revealed that Mahmoud Abbas has himself had KGB status — a fact of life that never goes away — and appears today to be as hamstrung in his political stance as his predecessor and probably for the same reason.  He may be representing modern Palestinian interests far less than the archaic medieval interests of Moscow in sustaining dictatorships and the related looting-by-leadership known to too many Soviet-style intimidated and subjugated populations worldwide.

For the greater base of the Palestinian people, the Middle East Conflict has been a good business for the Palestinian privileged by way of the favor of politically criminal Palestinian leaders.

Closely Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

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Also in Media: J. Michael Waller-“Weaponizing Ridicule” | Military Review | September-October 2017

01 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Philology, Political Psychology

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Dictators, terrorists, and totalitarian ideologues, almost by definition, cannot tolerate being laughed at. Nor can anyone with an inflated ego and thin skin. Ridicule is their Achilles’ heel. And, humor is a robust underground phenomenon in any society. The Soviet leadership was so fearful of humor that the KGB had what Russian comedian Yakov Smirnov called a “Department of Jokes.” That was not the real name of the department, which had a more anodyne designation as a subunit of the KGB’s political enforcement section, the Fifth Chief Directorate, but Smirnov’s nickname for it made the KGB look all the more weak and bizarre (although all jokes still had to be KGB approved).6

Source: Waller-Weaponizing Ridicule

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FTAC: Political Philosophy: An Inversion

24 Thursday Aug 2017

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

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I would suggest that feudal mafia may or may not be honest as regards politics within their closed circles, but that the same will lie for absolute power, which power becomes always sadistic — the power to visit suffering on others with impunity — should go without saying. By contrast, the idea of the “good society”, or great one, may be predicated on empathy (one foundational thought in law: “because it could happen to you”) and integrity. In the feudal mode, our cares may be restricted — me and mine and the rest of the world can go to hell — and in the modern, we note cruelty and suffering meted to others and try to address that in law and in policy.

For a while now, my context has been “Moscow v Washington” — the system of secret police, absolute central power, aristocracy v a modern democratic open society. In which world should one care most to live — as favored in the former where loyalty to power displaces principles and values; or as neglected in the latter where one may get a fair shake, or no “shake” at all?

Your original post asked for one idea. Perhaps two need consideration: empathy matched by integrity.

The cliche goes that where one stands has much to do with where one sits.

If yours is the campaign desk in the palace, the prince might be a good man; if it is the laborer’s bench downwind from “sanitation”, the prince might be a thoughtless one.

In general, liberal democracies strive to attenuate human caprice in the experience of good and bad fortune: law and reason may be slipped between the person and The Power.

In kleptocracy, The Power maintains the monopoly on law and reason — and the possession of all else.

However — and here’s the inversion repeated — would you rather live favored in the treacherous atmosphere produced by Power or at loose ends in a more or less just system that takes no special interest in your affairs,  your politics, or your fate?

Perhaps in hard times — or merely disappointing one — it may be more natural to seek favor than to extol the virtues of too clinical a system of justice and the “rugged individual” that may or may not make out well beneath it.

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