29 Sunday Jan 2017
At 6:25 p.m. on Jan. 2, Nick Kouvalis sent out a tweet suggesting that the Canadian government was, among other things, directly funding known terrorist groups. Kouvalis, who is campaign manager of Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, has a history of posting provocative, absurd and often completely false information. He does so, he says, “to make the left go nuts.”
Source: Inside Nick Kouvalis’s fake news strategy – Macleans.ca
29 Sunday Jan 2017
BackChannels readers will find the piece in several forms around the web as it has caught the fancy of partisans of various stripe.
It might be fund to annotate each of the 45 remarks (anyone want to write the paycheck?), for each appears to resonate today with two egregious large movements in east-west politics: Putin’s politically absolute position as the leader of a now ulra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian state and, sigh, the American Far Right’s penchant for mirroring Moscow with a correspondingly stiff accusation.
On the reading of Skousen’s book — still in print and ever popular! — BackChannels feels overstocked, underfunded, and out of shelf space.
The bookends of Horseshoe Theory: strident communism and socialism on the Left | rabid libertarian fascism on the Right: may God visit the pox on both their houses.
BackChannels has reset the layout to suit the medium. Forgive any awkward typographica spacing for a while (the editor’s ageing).
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America. At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen: [From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a
demonstration of moral strength.
Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless
of whether or not items could be used for war.
Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise
in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed
to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand
that it be set up ‘as a one-world government with its own Independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
Do away with all loyalty oaths.
Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current
Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Gain control of all student newspapers.
Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy making positions.
Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness,
repulsive, meaningless art.”
Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity
in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity, as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit
the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression n the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
Discredit the America Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of
step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American
history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more
emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture-education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist
apparatus.
Eliminate the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.
Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all
behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of
gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence
of parents.
Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of
the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self government.
Internationalize the Panama Canal.
Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World
Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and Individuals alike.
Source: http://nwlibertyacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/communist_goals.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Cleon_Skousen:
After losing his police job, Skousen founded a group called the All-American Society, which Time magazine described in 1961 as an “exemplar of the far-right ultras.”[17] Throughout the 1960s, Skousen was also admired by members and leaders of the John Birch Society, although members of the more mainstream conservative movement and the American Security Council[4] snubbed him out of fear that his controversial views would hurt the credibility of the conservative movement. Skousen used Birch Society magazines as source and reference material,[7] and was pictured on the cover of its magazine, American Interest. Although he was never officially a member of the organization, he was a member of its speakers’ bureau and lectured at John Birch Society events throughout the United States for many years. A 1962 FBI memo described Skousen as affiliating with an “extreme right-wing” group which was promoting “anticommunism for obvious financial purposes”.[4] Skousen authored a pamphlet titled The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society, characterizing criticism of the Society as incipient communism.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Communist
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1561529/posts (about the same thing as here). 🙂
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25 Wednesday Jan 2017
Tags
American politics, authoritarianism, democracy, New Nationalism, red-green alliance, Trump Presidency
I’m not going to jump all over Trump’s case. We in the United States have become a deeply polarized people given to extremes.
The general layout:
“Brown” – New Nationalism – Conservative – Far Right
“Red-Green” – Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists – Far Left
Neither “Brown” nor “Red-Green” should be defining classically liberal American politics, but those color codes have made deep inroads into both of our political parties, and that’s leaving the middle and moderate ranks anemic, or at least looking so.
I’m remaining stuck in the middle!
🙂
As always, and also, I want to follow what actually happens over a little bit of time — the famous “First 100 Days” may do — before becoming strident about predictions — and I hope never to confuse “political conservatism” with “conservatism in research”, i.e., careful data collection and thoughtful analysis over time.
BackChannels does not want to practice writing the same article over and over; however, with repetition of some ideas comes increased compression for the same.
If nothing else, this post — and this blog — advocate for empiricism and high integrity in journalism matched by some breadth in knowledge and insight.
Critical reading and reasoning abilities also count in the politics we American have either dealt ourselves or allowed to overtake us. If en masse we’re subconsciously intent on becoming, keeping, or aligning ourselves in brutal, vicious, and vulgar mobs, then power may become the permanent province of an immensely wealthy business and political elite, i.e., our democracy will simply melt away into just another authoritarian, capricious, feudal, and spirit crushing nightmare.
–33–
25 Wednesday Jan 2017
Speckhard herself provided insight into the Islamic doctrine that motivates individual jihadists to sacrifice their lives on behalf of groups like the Islamic State. “The vision of hell in Islam is fiery and horrific, and there is no way – aside from relying on Allah’s compassion – to guarantee on the final day of judgment that one’s good deeds will outweigh the bad – except by dying as a ‘martyr,’” she said. Thus, “desiring to martyr oneself is a story I’ve heard many times from Islamic extremists who fear the everlasting repercussions of their sins.“
For Muslims growing up in Western culture, a strong tension exists between conservative Islam and Western freedoms,” Speckhard added, pointing out that this mindset makes jihad martyrdom particularly attractive.
Read more: New Book Fails to Convict ISIS of Islamic Heresy – Philos Project – 1/23/2017.
19 Thursday Jan 2017
Tags
alternative-fact, critical reading and reasoning, Donald Trump, empiricism, fact, integrity in journalism, political credibility, political integrity, post-fact
Old saw: “Democracies elect the governments they deserve.”
I’m with those invested in the “checks and balances” of our Democracy and hope that neither legislature nor judiciary cave to Administrative fiat in actions or policies inimical to an authentic political freedom.
Of course, I’m going to dig Moscow for the other kind of “freedom”.
🙂
The not-so-secret secret about politics anywhere / any context / any time: if or when it is discovered that it stinks, people will walk away from it.
The powerful of the Fourth Estate have proven time and again their tenacity for getting at the truth given sufficient import for motivation, so more will continue to emerge as regards the character of Trump’s Administration and the way he works it. The opposed public may have to accept his earnest goodness; his supporters may be forced to reconsider how they made their choice.
As noted elsewhere in this thread, WE have all got to tackle how we ourselves accept, evaluate, and redistribute / repackage information. Despite the hip claims, the world is not “post-fact”: the world may be bamboozled, confused, and driven toward extremes by its own continuous bombardment by or consumption of information, but we have also the opportunity to slow down, reflect, and research what ails us as we get down the road together.
One more cliche that I’ve come to call “Pogo Effect”: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
If Americans hew to traditional true ideals and values and then read and write responsibly themselves, then, indeed, the system will survive whatever gets up in the cab and tries to jam its gears.
We’re all a little nervous about who’s getting up in the cab of the big freight liner “America”.
🙂
It’s not only President Elect Trump’s detractors that have cause for worry — and they certainly know their own worries — but Trump’s fans now have an investment in Trump’s defending their own best traditional American ideals, principles, and values, and if they find their own assumptions and freedoms, much less other interests, chipped away by the new president, those in the President’s middle ranks will also start to back away from any proto-fascist display of character that comes to pass.
However, as I type, nothing has come to pass in relation to a Trump Presidency.
The President Elect is not quite there yet (be patient) and all bets are off.
Senior Justice Writer for The New York Daily News Shaun King has had the following posted to his Facebook page since January 11, 2017:
I want you to view this video from 4 years ago in 2013 in light of recent events.
In it, Trump calmly, cooly, and confidently states that he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Then, it gets very weird. Trump then confidently states that Putin is following his every move, was likely even interested in the conversation they were having, and would likely be watching it later.
How did Trump know all of that?
See, this was off of the campaign trail, long before Trump announced his intentions to run. This was before he felt the pressure to say 6 different times “I don’t know Putin” and “I don’t know anything about Putin.”
This seems to be a clearer version of the truth. What’s going on here?
Posted by Shaun King on Wednesday, January 11, 2017
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18 Wednesday Jan 2017
Posted by MEMRI, January 18, 2017.
“These leaks are obviously fake,” said President Putin, but then he was to follow with this assertion: “He was just a businessman, one of America’s wealthy men. Does anybody really think that our intelligence services chase every American billionaire?”
😀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/kompromat-trump-dossier/512891/ – 1/11/2017.
https://news.vice.com/story/we-talked-to-an-ex-kgb-colonel-and-putin-critic-about-the-trump-russia-dossier – 1/17/2017
http://www.voanews.com/a/russia-kompromat-remains-alive-and-well/3677094.html – 1/15/2017.
Who said anything about “every American billionaire”?
In this next 10-minute or so video, Samantha Power offers some useful advice:
Posted to YouTube by PBS NewsHour, January 17, 2017.
Perhaps BackChannels is not to be trusted . . . well, there’s all of this (and much, much more) for obtaining background on today’s immediate “east-west” politics: “The Russian Section” (of the BC library). For a primer on the cynicism now attaching to Putin’s Moscow enterprise, readers may shuttle over to “Moscow’s Rules“, a primer.
Senior Justice Writer for The New York Daily News has had the following posted to his Facebook page since January 11, 2017:
I want you to view this video from 4 years ago in 2013 in light of recent events.
In it, Trump calmly, cooly, and confidently states that he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Then, it gets very weird. Trump then confidently states that Putin is following his every move, was likely even interested in the conversation they were having, and would likely be watching it later.
How did Trump know all of that?
See, this was off of the campaign trail, long before Trump announced his intentions to run. This was before he felt the pressure to say 6 different times “I don’t know Putin” and “I don’t know anything about Putin.”
This seems to be a clearer version of the truth. What’s going on here?
Posted by Shaun King on Wednesday, January 11, 2017
–33–
17 Tuesday Jan 2017
Tags
counterterrorism, cultural psychology, Islam, Islamism, Jihad, jihadi talk, Jihadism, language and terrorism, political psychology, psychoanalysis, terrorism
From the introduction:
The purpose of this dictionary is to explain the confusing and terrifying behavior of the jihadis by bringing to light their unconscious motivation. What is missing in their mental development that makes an entire group enact such vicious crimes not only against humanity but even their own people? The reservoir of their rage arises from problems nested in early maternal attachment in shame–honor cultures ― the early mother/infant bonding attachment, the first relationship in life. This is the real driver of the terrorism. While there has been a voluminous amount of material written about terrorism, little hinges on how to decode the meaning of the terrorists’ aberrant behavior from the perspective of early childhood development and trauma.
One has to be cautious not to “diagnosis” an entire group of people, but given the amount of destruction, cruelty, sadism, and revenge leading to heinous crimes against humanity, in this case I make an exception. Daesh, The Islamic State, helped me uncover a borderline psychotic diagnosis for jihadis because their behavior is so out of bounds in terms of morality and ethics that it has revealed its own psychosis. Others in the Arab world are aware of this and realize that they have created a tiger whose tail they are now bound to ride. Hezbollah and Iranian extremism has also been blatant in its wanton destruction and, in fact, has been a major funder of Sunni violence even though they are Shia. Almost worse than the terrorist attacks themselves is the jihadis’ lack of empathy and concern for the pain they cause. Jihadis are incapable of walking in the shoes of others. They may appear to be empathic, but it is only what I refer to as pseudo-empathy.
Kobrin’s writing is as entertaining as its interpretations of language are educating and loaded with insight.
Here’s a portion from the first “A” — for “Acting Out”:
Acting out is a process frequently seen in play therapy, where children have the opportunity to play out their most violent behavior and repressed fantasies. Often these acts are attacks against the mother, who is seen as the source of painful dependency needs and nurturing. The breast that is needed is also the breast that needs to be destroyed — e.g., beheadings, rage against their mothers, the need to get rid of her, to violently separate from her. Jihadis manifest extreme attention-seeking behavior . . . . “watching somebody else doing an action is just like doing the action yourself.”
On a late page (271-272) — and all between appears just as well grounded and rich in perspective — comes this gem associated with “Neoteny”:
The Islamic suicide terrorists and all their accessories to the crime — the engineer bomb maker, the recruiter, the sender, the escort, the charismatic leader, their mothers and fathers, their uncles, the clan, the tribe, the umma — are terrified because they, too, have been “neotenized”. They are developmentally arrested and have never been allowed to separate, individuate, mature, or be free, independent, self-sufficient, confident, and competent human beings. They live their early lives in the throes of terrorizing and shaming child-rearing practices. If one never separates psychologically, they are left with group think, a kind of herd mentality. The family, the community, and the culture embody and accept bad behavior as normative . . . .
For all curious as how it is that Islam, the Religion of Peace seems to be somewhere always wading in blood and unimaginable cruelty, The Jihadi Dictionary delivers answers and explanations aplenty — and they would seem to work.
BackChannels has long maintained that Moscow today “plays” the Jihadists by using their own motivations, proclivities, tendencies, and weaknesses to incite, manipulate, and position the same in service to Moscow’s own medieval ends. As much fits with Soviet Russia’s long history of involvement with terrorism and certainly this blog’s observation of Assad’s engineering the incubation of ISIL.
If the jihadist were not so predictable, the same would not be so useful to the politicians, like Assad, who have figured out how to get some use out of them.
–33–
14 Saturday Jan 2017
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Christopher Steele, investigative journalism, Kompromat, political spychology, spy scandal, Trump
Fusion GPS had been hired by Republican opponents of Mr Trump in September 2015. In June 2016 Mr Steele came on the team. He was, and continues to be, highly regarded in the intelligence world. In July, Mr Trump won the Republican nomination and the Democrats became new employers of Mr Steele and Fusion GPS.
In the same month Mr Steele produced a memo, which went to the FBI, stating that Mr Trump’s campaign team had agreed to a Russian request to dilute attention on Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. Four days later Mr Trump stated that he would recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. A month later officials involved in his campaign asked the Republican party’s election platform to remove a pledge for military assistance to the Ukrainian government against separatist rebels in the east of the country.
This scandal that has come out of the shadows — by way of the findings of the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as a consultant of highest repute; by way of the associated imprimatur of the highly experienced and respected former British ambassador Sir Andrew Wood — may not be returned to them.
The story appears to be taking off, a BackChannels’ opinion based on so many options for searching up the “Trump Kompromat” story.
The political mobs, among other interests, seldom appreciate hearing how they have been snookered, but they may have to hear as much as more comes to light.
As well acknowledged by the press, American President Elect Trump has moved to dismiss Steele’s report as fiction concocted by his political enemies, first within the Republican Party, and after his nomination, then in the Democratic Party that picked up on the availability of the consulting firm Fusion GPS (URL references Daily Mail, January 13, 2017).
Be that as it may, British MI6 — in fiction and film, James Bond’s outfit — has, as may America’s CIA, the deepest imaginable investment in producing for the state’s highest and most information privileged officials, clear, accurate, and complete intelligence in service to the state’s defense and interests. The highest integrity — and loyalty — may be expected of such agents. It is against that tradition that Trump throws chafe.
Trump and others may have been better off citing Moscow’s KGB history of “Active Measures” and “Disinformation” as a potential cause for Steele’s findings, i.e, Steele had been “played” by Moscow. That would have taken the story into the parallel universe of espionage and just as well — at the some future date — into the theaters.
This day may be too late for merely dumping Steele’s outrageous claims — ah, but Steele has behind him a terrific reputation for integrity — on Moscow’s prowess at playing “Spy vs Spy”.
President Elect Trump may be counted on to play “Trust me” with his developing authority as an American president, but there’s an old guard too of Federal government employees and an American Press — the “Fourth Estate” — known for its extraordinary tenacity when challenged by an especially curious political scandal and mystery.
The response to the information from the FBI, he recalled, was “shock and horror.” After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau. These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources. But he said, “My track record as a professional is second to no one.”
After he left the spy service, Steele supplied the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with information on corruption at FIFA, international soccer’s governing body.
It was his work on corruption in international soccer that lent credence to his reporting on Trump’s entanglements in Russia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
To some, the dossier’s errors and far-out claims stand in stark contrast to Steele’s usual approach to intelligence-gathering. West noted that only one intelligence officer was listed as a direct source.
“Nobody is saying he believes in any of this,” West said. “What he was hired to do was write a series of reports based on info he could glean from his contacts. His contacts are very good but they’re more in the business community than the intel community.”
The talk comes from writer Nigel West, the nom de pen of Rupert Allason, whose Wikipedia entry notes the following:
In 2001 Allason sued Random House, the publishers of The Enigma Spy, the autobiography of the former Soviet agent John Cairncross. Allason claimed he had ghostwritten The Enigma Spy in return for the copyright and 50 per cent of the proceeds. However, Allason lost the case and was ordered to pay costs of around £200,000. In passing judgment the trial judge said that Allason was “a profoundly dishonest man” and “one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen”.[9][10][11] In September 2005, Allason was threatened with prison for contempt of court in relation to paying the damages from the 2001 case.[12][13][14]
Sigh.
In an alarming Twitter post, the Russian embassy in London suggested Steele was still working for MI6 and ‘briefing both ways’ against Mr Trump and Moscow.
A Russian embassy spokesman said the tweet – which said ‘MI6 officers are never ex’ – ‘reflected the mood in Russia’.
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BackChannels 