Category Archives: Political Psychology

Maduro “Wishes to Visit Ecuador”

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ecuador, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, South America, Venezuela

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Waiting to pounce on me from my inbox this morning: “Please report that Nicolas Maduro wants to visit Ecuador to seek international support . . . .”

My correspondent alludes to a source within Ecuador’s government: ” . . . the visit will be in April or June . . . .”

Is this really such a good time — a good year even — for travel?

With a country, one cannot simply water the plants, check the faucets, lock the doors and leave, and this is not such a good time for Nicolas Maduro for doing even so little as that.

Reuters reported Tuesday, “A teenager was fatally shot at an anti-government protest in the western city of San Cristobal on Tuesday, state officials said, exacerbating tensions in Venezuela amid an economic crisis and crackdown on the political opposition.”

Kluiver Roa was 14 years old.  His father was reputed to be a member of opposition party Copei.  Although an arrest was made, Reuters reporters found cause to call the crime scene circumstances — what actually happened — “confusing”.

Currency devaluation, plunging oil revenues, shortages — no wonder violence has broken out on the streets.

Connection Red Brown Green

Camouflaged police smashed into the mayor’s office and carried him away . . . Mr Ledezma was on a list of people and foreign powers named by Mr Maduro last week as attempting to bring down his administration.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31545963 – 2/19/2015.

Related:

Reuters.  “Russia’s Putin, Venezuela’s Madura discuss oil markets: Interfax.”  January 15, 2015; Pitts, Pietro. “Venezuela’s Asia Tour Backfires as Crude Extends Slump.”  Bloomberg Business, January 16, 2015; Lee, Hailey. “Beijing still funds struggling Venezuela, for now.” CNBC, January 21, 2015.

Reliant on mineral wealth for wealth, the “Red Brown Green” arc of power’s extension into developing South American economies may be suffering from the same malady: the west’s intent to finish off the Soviet Empire.

It has been about 25 years since the Soviet dissolved without also dissolving the “perks” of the Party privileged and all of its direct associates, including associate leadership in distant states.

Is the Party over?

It appears the power mad — political species “Narcissus communist proto-fascist”  — were dependent on climbing oil revenues — the miraculous abundance of “black gold”, and all of it theirs for the taking — for sustaining and growing both the functional and symbolic elements of power within their spheres of control, from state’s military equipage to the payouts in patronage that created the “nomenklatura”, which along today’s neo-feudal path appears to be a “Newest Nobility”, now rapidly deflating while being urged toward productive development investment — including investment in human development — and (gasp!) rule of law.

Financially strangling, the politically dying may be expected to put their people in their own place first, i.e., the privileged may be counted on to make themselves the last to give up privilege.

End Games, New Games

In the Awesome Conversation on Facebook, I often remind that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe — another old Soviet tentacle — remains in power.  What he has done to Zimbabweans, including the reintroduction of cholera in relation to withholding from a rival funds for water sanitation chemicals, seems of no account: in the “one man, one vote, one time” democratic ways of much of Africa, Mugabe will celebrate turning 91 this Saturday.

Although no less than Vladimir Putin has called Mugabe a dictator (at least once and back in 2009), which is sayin’ somethin’, the point is the worst of national leaders, truly despots, have long demonstrated their possession of the means, wherewithal, and will for remaining in power to the natural end of their lives.

As our “malignant narcissists” appear to reject criticism, eliminate rivals, and cultivate a ceaseless “narcissistic supply“, one must expect politically geological aftershocks — or revanch birth pangs — basically kicking (whether leaving the world or coming into it) from the Fall of the Soviet Union and the latest squeeze on the oxygen supply that is cold hard cash at the wellhead.

Update – February 27, 2015

The regime’s favourite charge to level at hostile politicians is plotting to overthrow the government, often in conspiracy with the United States. But it is the president, Nicolás Maduro, who is staging a coup against the last vestiges of democracy. Venezuelans call it an autogolpe, or “self-coup”.

The Economist.  “Venezuela’s crackdown: A slow-motion coup: The authoritarian regime is becoming a naked dictatorship.  The region must react.”  February 28, 2015 (Print Edition).

Reference

BackChannels Library.  “Russian Section.”

BBC.  “Venezuela police raid arrests Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma.”  February 19, 2015.

Dawisha, Karen.  Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Donkin, Tom.  “Venezuela’s financial crisis – in 90 seconds.”  BBC Latin America & Caribbean, February 12, 2015.

Newsday.  “Big bash for Mugabe’s 91st — A feast of wild animals, he’ll get a lion too.” February 23, 2015.

Newzimbabwe.com.  “Putin rebukes ‘dictator’ Mugabe.  December 11, 2009.

Onslow, Sue.  “Robert Mugabe and Todor Zhivkov”.  Cold War International History Project, e-Dossier No. 35.

Ramirez, Carlos Eduardo.  “Venezuelan teen dies after being shot at anti-Maduro protest.”  Reuters, February 24, 2015.

Romero, Simon and Girish Gupta.  “Amid a slump, a crackdown for Venezuela.”  The New York Times, CNBC reprint, February 23, 2015.

Wikipedia.  Antonio Ledezma.

Wikipedia.  María Corina Machado.

Reference – Red Brown Green

“He is alive, as long as nations are alive and struggle for consolidating independence, justice and kindness. I have no doubt that he will come back, and along with Christ the Saviour, the heir to all saintly and perfect men, and will bring peace, justice and perfection for all.”

Dehghan, Saeed Kamali.  “Ahmadinejad’s claim that Chavez will be resurrected with Jesus ‘went too far'”.  The Guardian, March 7, 2013.

Investigative Project on Terrorism.  “Israel: Iran-Venezuela Axis Traffics in Terror, Uranium.”  May 28, 2009.

Mahjar-Barducci, Anna.  “Bolivia, Venezuela, Supply Uranium to Iran.”  Gatestone Institute, October 6, 2010.

Sofer, Roni.  “Israel: Ties to South America aiding Iran’s nuclear program.”  YNet News, May 25, 2009.

Posted to YouTube 2/11/2015.

Posted to YouTube 5/8/2014.

# # #

Link – Having Integrity About Jesus, Jew, and the Origins of Christianity

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Islamic Small Wars, Links, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

The most troubling part of the heretical substitution of Gentile lineage into foundational roles within the Jewish root of Christianity is that the Christian Palestinian leaders bring this message to so many churches – without ever being confronted by the leaders of these congregations.

http://juicyecumenism.com/2015/01/28/jesus-palestinian-false-narrative/ – 1/28/2015 – by Victor Styrsky

In the piece, Reverend Styrsky will go on to note the following:

Dr. Mitri Raheb: “Unfortunately, Palestine has been occupied for most of the time. Remember, the first people to occupy Palestine were the Assyrians -722, then we had the Babylonians – 587, then the Persian came, 538, all of this is BC – OK? Then the Greeks, then the Romans, then the Byzantines, then the Arabs, then the Crusaders, then a few others, then the Ottomans, then the British . . . and then Israel.”

TRUTH: This ridiculous historical summary reveals Raheb’s determination to use duplicity to obliterate the legitimate and historical Jewish bond to the land of Israel.

Bible believing Christians know that God first promised the land of Israel to Abraham around 2,000 – 1500-BC and history records his descendants have maintained ties to the Promised Land for more than 3,700 years.

The theme of cultural annihilation runs within and around Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Small Wars.

Reprinted from Oppenheim Arts & Letter (September 8, 2008):

Annihilation, One Cultural Artifact, One Memory, At a Time

“Not all Arabs are Muslim; not all Muslims are Arab. In fact, only 23 percent of the Arab population living in the United States of America is Muslim; 77 percent are Christian.

“Islam being the fastest growing faith in this country, as it is in the world today, the number of Muslims in American has soared in the last decade 14 fold. Only half a million in the early 70’s, the estimated number of Muslims living in America today is between 6 to 7 mmillion. 75 percent of them are non-Arabs.

“Currently, there are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world: in other words, one out of every five persons living on the fact of the earth are Muslim, a ratio that is projected to be one our of four by 2020.

“In view of such a significant number and a vast variety of races, nationalities, and cultures, in what sense if any can one speak of the typical Muslim, man or woman? Such a person has never existed–just as an Islam unified in its practices, policies, and goals has never existed.”

Source: Milani, Farzaneh and Abdulaziz Sachedina. “Imagining Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North America”. Online video. UVA Newsmakers, 2003.

With a recent note on the Taliban’s inhibition of the music trade in Mingora, Pakistan and its effects on the distribution, enjoyment, and preservation of indigenous Pashtun music, I thought I’d surf a few minutes for additional reference to the destruction of the cultural artifacts of others at the hands of militant Islam.

Such were not hard to find, starting, perhaps, with the Bamyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

However, I was surprised to find out of the Islamic theocracy of Iran the destruction of an ancient bridge and threatened or now evolving degradation of other structural artifacts of global significance (see Amil Imani’s reference).

There seem too complaints of underhanded reconstruction underwritten by the Saudi state.  To address the repair of Balkan Islamic monuments, Jolyon Naegele suggests the wholesale bulldozing of the same has been to replace that heritage with architecture more favoring the Saudi Wahhabi vision.

For Israel and the Jews, Mark Ami-El notes the erasure of evidence of Jewish habitation beneath the Temple Mount through the construction of an underground mosque:

“After September 2000, the Muslim Waqf closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then, in order to complete new underground mosques at the site, it removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.

“The intention is to turn the entire 36-acre Temple Mount compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past, including the destruction of archeological findings that are proof of this past.”

On behalf of traditional Malaysian culture, Chris Prystay tells a tale of subtle erasure of ancient folk dance and theater at the hands of Islamic influence and party politics:

“A Mak Yon performance, which runs over two or three nights, tells one of a dozen stories of mythological royalty. They are typically morality tales about the perils of lust or pride. The story of Dewa Muda, who struggles with sadness because he can’t reach his princess, is the most popular.

“The performances are also therapeutic. Villagers seeking a cure for depression or other emotional ills don the same costume as the lead dancer and shadow her as she dances around the stage. By acting out Dewa Muda’s own struggle, they purge their own. At the end of the play, the shaman leads the villager into a trance dance, chanting verses to banish the illness.

“Rituals like this are now performed in secret by a handful of retirees . . . .”

Read ’em and weep.

For hope, watch the University of Virginia video featuring Farzaneh Milani and Abdulaziz Sachedina, the latter careful, I think, to compare facets of Islamic ethnic and religious identity with “Italian-ness, and Germaness” but not, no mention, of Jewishness.

Still, four hours down the pike and 3,000 miles across the continent and off to Hawaii or up to Alaska, Muslims, like everyone else, may do things a little differently in America.  All welcome diverse and robust cultures, not one that would destroy all others.

Reference

Ami-El, Mark. “The Destruction of the Temple Mount Antiquities.” Jerusalem Letter / Viewpoints, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, August 1, 2002.

Anti-Wahhabi Blog (The). “Fanatics’ desparate effort to destroy pre-Islamic heritage.” Wednesday, September 12, 2007.

ArtsJournal.com. “Taliban Afghani Art Destruction.” Online Bibliography.

Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (The), CAIS. “Islamic Regime have Finally Destroyed 2200-year-old Parthian Bridge of Khoda-Afarid (Negin).” December 8, 2007.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY OF ISLAM.

Imani, Amil. “Culturecide of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” American Thinker, June 28, 2008.

Milani, Farzaneh and Abdulaziz Sachedina. “Imagining Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North America”. Online video. UVA Newsmakers, 2003

Prystay, Chris. “Bit of Malay Culture Is Now Vanishing Under Muslim Rules.” The Wall Street Journal, recast via YaleGlobal Online, April 21, 2006.

Sells, Michael A. “ERASING CULTURE: WAHHABISM, BUDDHISM, BALKAN MOSQUES; same location: Naegele, Jolyon. “Yugoslavia: Saudi Wahhabi Aid Workers Bulldoze Balkan Monuments”.

Wikipedia. “Buddhas of Bamyan.” Noted September 8, 2008.

# # #

Link – Hanson on Obama, Narcissism, and Appeasement

05 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in FTAC, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Links, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Members of the Obama administration have insisted that the Taliban are not terrorists. Those responsible for the recent Paris killings are not radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam.” And “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” or “man-caused disaster” better describe radical Islamic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is just as likely caused by returning U.S. combat veterans, according to one report by a federal agency.

What is the point of such linguistic appeasement?

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8188 – 5/5/2015.

My response within The Awesome Conversation:

Not to nit, but the term “narcissist” belies a range of issues, some qutie normal and positive, or we should all be without Cadillacs, golf courses, and modern health care. “Malignant narcissism” may apply to the despotic, and in political psychology, that may have some basis in “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” (and a few other views of similar behavior) known to psychology proper. On the branch opposite that may be a “reparative narcissism”, the quality of a meaningful empathy returns.

While Obama’s de facto policy of “least war possible” may divert to other levers, e.g., energy independence, which card he’s playing now; continuing DoD-IDF cooperation and deliveries; and perhaps separation of the Muslim community from “the terrorists” to shear the moderate away from the lost (while a comparatively young fleet for leader emerges to “work the issues” with large religious cohort), the same brushes against old Jewish wisdom: He who is kind to the cruel will in the end become cruel to the kind.”

The Obama Administration’s foreign policy has been deeply opaque from the start but not necessarily in the manner proposed but certainly in a way that invites speculation. Less remarked in total has been the “Red Brown Green” cooperation defined by Putin-Assad-Khamenei, Putin-Orban, and Putin-Erdogan. It’s been much easier isolating conflicts, pointing at the President, and overlooking what amounts to a broad assault on North American power, NATO, and westward-looking alliances. Quiet incursions into government and intellectual assets have not been overlooked but have perhaps been less explored and the underplayed. That’s another subject, and I will stop here.

# # #

Links – Daesh – In The Guardian on Recruitment and Religion; Elsewhere: on Programmatic Savagery

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

As part of research involving in-depth interviews with Isis members for a book about the organisation, American analyst Michael Weiss and I have identified half a dozen categories of Isis members according to the factors that drew them to the group. In at least two of those categories, religion more than anything else has been the driving force. But these two demographic components – long-standing takfiris (radicals who adhere to teachings that declare fellow Muslims as infidels) and young zealots – are more central for Isis than other members because they formulate the group’s identity and ensure its resilience. In addition, the appeal of Isis outside its conflict zones tends to be primarily ideologically driven.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/25/inside-isis-training-camps – 1/24/2015.

The seeds of today’s brutality were perhaps sown long ago in a 2006 book called “The Management of Savagery,” wrote expert Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker. The book, written by a radical Islamist thinker named Abu Bakr Naji, details patterns of “abominable savagery” witnessed in both the Islamic State and its earlier incarnations. According to this English translation, it calls for an “administration of savagery” and a merciless campaign to polarize the population, attract adherents and establish a pure Sunni caliphate. “We must make this battle very violent, such that death is a heartbeat away, so that the two groups will realize that entering this battle will frequently lead to death,” the book says.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/12/the-calculated-madness-of-the-islamic-states-horrifying-brutality/ – 8/12/2014.

Related on BackChannels:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/10/01/jisadists-an-update-on-westgate-mall-barbarity/ – 10/1/2013.

# # #

Link – Related to Malignant Narcissism and Islam

25 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Links, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

The extremists can always point directly to the texts and reiterate that they are the infallible, revealed word of God. Furthermore, the texts indicate that the entire world is ultimately destined to become a Caliphate under ­Islamic law and the actions of terrorists, while abhorrent to us, will inspire a portion of the world’s Muslims — who would otherwise have not been tempted — to become extremists.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/terrorists-not-the-cowards-its-the-fools-who-wont-confront-them/story-e6frg6zo-1227193812719 – 1/23/2015.

Would this description resemble any leader you might happen to be thinking about?

  • Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
  • Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
  • Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
  • Requires excessive admiration
  • Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
  • Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
  • Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
  • Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
  • Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Context in which the above list appeared:

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/narcissistic-personality-disorder-symptoms/ (as viewed 1/25/2015).

On BackChannels:

Malignant Narcissism

# # #

Link – Erdogan and Putin – WaPo

23 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Links, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

Yet these underlying differences have rarely turned into public disputes. As a report by the Moscow Carnegie Center put it, Russia and Turkey “have largely managed to compartmentalize their relations.” That’s down to pragmatism and realpolitik. But the similarities between the two countries’ leaders are hard to miss. Here are some reasons why Putin and Erdogan could look to each other, and find a kindred spirit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/02/how-russias-putin-and-turkeys-erdogan-were-made-for-each-other/ – 12/2/2014.

Putin-Assad-Khamenei.

Putin-Orban.

Putin-Erdogan.

It’s a club.

Affinity between dictators constitutes a revanch feudalist theme in contemporary foreign affairs.  Central to each: the rejection of classical liberal values and the embrace of unsavory methods in their political life plus the pursuit of grandiose ambitions perhaps associated with a giantism suited to immortality.

Russia, Syria, Iran, Hungary, and Turkey may not be doing gangbusters as states — from from it — but as gangsters set up in palaces or commanding immense portfolios on top of much unsung suffering, they’re at the top of their game.

# # #

Syria – False Picture – Irrelevant Praise

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Jan. 15 that the continued violence in Syria is a “disgrace” and that the Syria conflict is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.” Syrians have replaced Afghans as the world’s largest refugee population, with 7.6 million displaced and 3.3 million refugees, in addition to a death toll estimated at 200,000, and the return of typhoid, measles and polio to the country.

On Jan. 14, de Mistura got a boost from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who praised UN and Russian efforts to broker a settlement in Syria.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/01/hezbollah-syria-assad-kerry-russia-israel-turkey-yemen.html – 1/18/2015

This blog has supported the notion that yesterday’s communist elite are today’s state capitalists backed and defended by security fascists motivated by money and a new fascist nationalism.  That’s a complicated way of suggesting that “Old Red has met New Brown” — and the old Soviets are today’s New Nationalists.

Add the Old Red-Green Arrangement.

Along that line, and while scanning, collecting, posting, and commenting on news from journalism’s “second row seat to history”, one cannot help but note that certain relationships seem defined by common interest in “political absolutism”: Putin – Assad – Khamenei | Putin – Orban – Erdogan – (Khamenei).  The dry outer skin of the onion wants another story: secular vs religious power; Sunni vs Shiite teleology; Iran vs Iraq. However, lo and behold, as the Internet helps political wonks tear back the layers of the onion, Iran is in Iraq in a large evident way (and given the malignant psychology involved in men who would be as if gods — or just one — themselves, the Russo-Syrian-Iranian alliance may be what was in back of Daesh, for if one is to be as God, one would naturally manage the entire battle, not just one side of it.

As Putin was in the business of spending about $51 billion on the winter olympics in Sochi (the figure is disputed but still well into the tens of billions), he appears to have been thoroughly out of the business of tempering Assad’s response to a moderate, modern, and democratically updating revolutionary “Arab Spring” challenge or, Mr. Nice Guy, offering Russian aid to ameliorate the damage, displacement, and injury brought to millions of innocents.   After all, it really wasn’t his concern, was it, whatever happened to Syrians.

The suggestion that Assad chose to bomb the daylights out of noncombatant zones while holding off on the al-Qaeda-types who came into theater of war may be borne out in the casualty, IDP, and refugee figures created in the monstrosity that is today the deeply polarized and globally signal “Syrian Civil War”, for while NATO and the western world press for classical liberal values in governance, it appears Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together press for immense systems of abuse, coercion, enslavement, and exploitation on the mighty piers of fear and patronage.

Call Syria an “axle of power” 🙂 — if the three dictators get away with driving over the state’s constituents to an inherently fascist conclusion, they might well drive the same anywhere else — and the end of that kind of power: the power to make others suffer capriciously, with impunity, without heart, without justice, without limits.

Still, Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Wednesday that the United States welcomed both initiatives. He made no call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, a notable omission from Mr. Kerry, who has typically insisted on it in public remarks. Instead, he spoke of Mr. Assad as a leader who needed to change his policies.

“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/world/middleeast/us-support-for-syria-peace-plans-demonstrates-shift-in-priorities.html – 1/19/2015

Name the tyrants — communist, nationalist, Islamist (red-brown-green) — who have with grace backed away from or stepped down from power.

The Kremlin may be the main winner in the Lebanon war. Israel has been attacked with Soviet Kalashnikovs and Katyushas, Russian Fajr-1 and Fajr-3 rockets, Russian AT-5 Spandrel antitank missiles and Kornet antitank rockets. Russia’s outmoded weapons are now all the rage with terrorists everywhere in the world, and the bad guys know exactly where to get them. The weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/218533/russian-footprints/ion-mihai-pacepa – 8/24/2006

# # #

FTAC – On the Revanch Red, Brown, Green Alliance

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

With . . . malignant narcissists, sociopaths, autocrats, political criminals, racketeers, and assorted other of our own human trash — not that I don’t want to help them, but given what criminal and political mafia do, that’s what they are — empathy is lacking. That’s $51 billion for the winter Olympics at Sochi — and not a dime for general Syrian relief.

Anywhere you travel across the Islamic Small Wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, you will find this principle operating among the malicious, sadistic, and tyrannical running amok where they cannot be police or, similarly, can elude the officers of responsible governance.

The same may be discerned off of Putin’s hub in what he calls Russia’s “Near Abroad” — and among those he or his Administration courts, including back in November the PFLP.

Red. Brown. Green. Alliance.

Take aim at the criminality, cynicism, and inhumanity fostered beneath the revanch communist, nationalist, Islamist banners.

The stimulus was the presentation of an ancient note about empathy:

بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکرند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوى به درد آورد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار

تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی

Translation:
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Saadi

A Jew might note that with the introduction of Adam and Eve in the Torah, or as the curtain opens on humanity, imparted to Eve through the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” appear to be human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience.

JeSuisCharlie?

Empathy is the best agent for bonding.

Where it is missing is hell.

# # #