Category Archives: Political Psychology

Jordan – Are We Going to End Up with “Hamasestine”?

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

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

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Posted 1/6/2014

“They want to keep the state of enemyhood with Israel, and they want the Palestinians to think ‘thank God, we’re going to go back some day'” (7:55)

Mudar Zahran may need to launch a fleet of leaflets, posters, and slogans after all:

Islamic State group militants gained a foothold on the Jordan-Iraq border Tuesday when they destroyed at least six Jordanian border control posts, according to reports from Jordanian activists and Islamic fighters associated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-destroys-least-six-border-control-stations-jordan-iraq-border-1759922 – 12/16/2014.

The jackal pack of greedheads and zealots driving the Islamic Small Wars respect no weakness and take heart with such wins.  Like it or not, by either advancing or losing, they force the hands of power to act and reach decision.  The news of raids on Jordanian border control stations follows by nine days King Abdullah’s likening the fight with ISIS to “a third world war”.

This coming Friday, January 9, will mark the tenth anniversary of his victory in the Palestinian Presidential election. Funnily enough, though, his term was supposed to end six years ago. It didn’t — mainly because he’s called off every election since. Which means that this Friday will mark not only the birth of Mahmoud Abbas’ Presidential rule, but the death of Palestinian democracy.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/01/06/the-ten-year-klepto-dictatorship-of-mahmoud-abbas/ – 1/6/2015

The multiple pun that would be “Hamasestine” may meet its match in “Fatahlism”, for the worse Fatah’s position in the middle east conflict, the more loud and pushy the rant of its old man, “Abu Mazen”, the father who has protected no one’s interests but his own and in terms of what he is: another dictator.

While the malignantly narcissistic might define Palestinian progress in terms of harm brought to Israelis — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim — a more normal psychology might wish to watch for measures of progress in human rights and qualities of living brought to the refugees of 1948 and their progeny wherever they are living today.  In that regard, Abbas and much of the Arab world beside have accomplished nothing more than bad mouthing the Jews, and next to that old and boring behavior, modern and progressive secular democrat Mudar Zahran looks pretty good: at the very least, he questions the integrity of the old guards, royal and so-called revolutionary, while he himself has room today to promote his own forthright ethics, honesty, and objectivity.

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudar_Zahran

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Mudar+Zahran

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/09/arab-political-refugee-mudar-zahran-on-temple-mount-we-arabs-and-muslims-are-harming-al-aqsa-not-israel-or-the-jews/ 12/9/2013.

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Gülen and the Gulls (the American Public)

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, North America, Political Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Turkey, United States of America

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In a normal public school district, you’d be able to tell who the vendors are, but in charter world, it’s purposely opaque. It must amount to millions of dollars of business that aren’t going out to bid, or that in all likelihood, aren’t even going out to Americans.

http://www.tbfurman.us/2014/07/a-patronage-empire-concept-and-its.html – 7/31/2014.

Related:

http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/concept-schools-favored-vendors.html – September 2013.

Also from TB Furman:

Basic research, basic due diligence, basic critical thinking skills— these are the only things required to figure out that there are multiple connections between this transnational social/political/religious movement and the three charter schools in Chicago, that these connections are purposely blurred to keep people uninformed, and that this phenomenon is consistent with the established patterns of behavior of the Gulen Movement worldwide.

http://www.tbfurman.us/2014/04/taking-good-long-look-at-concept.html – 4/9/2014. Page contains audio recording and slide show, “Gulen 101”.

Related: Herkul – This Week: The Broken Jug: Droplets of Wisdom from the Heart: “Genius Minds and Flourishing of Talents.”  12/21/2014.  The main web appears in Turkish while the English version appears to begin on the page cited.  After practically and classically describing a narcissistic personality, Gulen goes on to say:

“By even developing a certain code of rebellion of their own, they might begin to refuse even very plausible thoughts developed as a result of serious pondering and forget the fact that doing things for the sake of God is exalted above all.

Actually, what lies at the root of such wrongs is a lack of learning manners. In the past, people who were responsible for education were very good teachers of manners as well.”

Behave!

🙂

And obey Gülen — as regards aspects of the autocratic, authoritarian, unreasoning, and cult-of-personality dimensions evident in the Fathullah Gülen story, Rachel Sharon-Krespin’s Middle East Forum piece (Winter 2009) contains plenty for related reflection.

TB Furman’s latest: “The Million (Billion?) Dollar Question Charter School Oversight.”  January 3, 2015.

Related: Sharon Higgins’ Charter School Scandals blog.

Today, despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned Turkey away from Europe and toward Russia and Iran and reoriented Turkish policy in the Middle East away from sympathy toward Israel and much more toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria. Anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments have increased. Behind Turkey’s transformation has been not only the impressive AKP political machine but also a shadowy Islamist sect led by the mysterious hocaefendi (master lord) Fethullah Gülen; the sect often bills itself as a proponent of tolerance and dialogue but works toward purposes quite the opposite. Today, Gülen and his backers (Fethullahcılar, Fethullahists) not only seek to influence government but also to become the government.

“Fethullah Gülen’s Grand Ambition” – Turkey’s Islamist Danger – by Rachel Sharon-Krespin – Middle East Quarterly – Winter 2009, pp. 55-66.

Gulen, once respected by Erdogan, is now vilified and branded an “assassin” — a reference to Hassan Sabbah’s violent medieval cult. Thousands of public servants allegedly close to the Gulen community have been removed from their jobs. Some have been arrested.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/turkey-erdogan-gulen-war-benefit-lesser-known-islamic-groups.html#ixzz3NxZdUY00 – 12/30/2014.

“A Gülen organization controls the real estate companies that own their schools. They charge rent to their own schools and taxpayers foot the bill. They refuse to answer public records requests, falsify attendance records, and cheat on standardized tests. Yet, Ohio continues to grant them charters to operate.”

Scott Beauchamp quoting Matthew Blair in in article in The Atlantic, “120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric,” August 12, 2014.

No more tender a national achilles heel offers itself to America’s enemies quite like public education.

That Fethullah Gülen’s organization has run itself into trouble against Turkish autocrat Erdogan fits with the same emerging neo-feudalism that has surfaced in Russia, i.e., cabal of shady nouveau riche rise to operate organization out of the public’s view, exploit the same, any which way (and they produce sufficient tell-tale propaganda to prove it), and live lavishly promoting their favored or more convenient ideological or religious program – but then they must contend with one another.

There is a “Gulen Movement 101, Session One”.

This, however, is what I have listened to while working on this piece:

Sharon Higgins’ closing questions:

  • Have these charter schools been built on a foundation of exaggerations, half-truths, and lies?
  • Why won’t public officials publicly address this situation?
  • Americans are still in the dark because no national reporting has been done that portrays the extent of the GM’s (Gülen Movement’s) presence here?
  • Why are taxpayers — who don’t know about this group — being forced to fund these schools?

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Navalny and Putin’s Pivot

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

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

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. . . Alexei Navalny was found guilty of what activists said were trumped-up charges and given a suspended sentence of 3½ years. His younger brother was sent to prison, a move that drew comparisons to the Stalin-era practice of punishing family members of enemies of the state.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/putin-foe-arrives-at-court-to-hear-verdict/2014/12/30/c5557cde-8feb-11e4-a66f-0ca5037a597d_story.html?tid=hybrid_1.1_default_strip_2 – 12/30/2014.

“Putler” has become a popular term.

There’s even a snarky Facebook group built around it.

For two or three reasons, I would not go so far as to permanently and seriously conflate Russia’s president with the little guy with the mustache in Germany.

For one thing, Russia’s own internal saboteur works from a very different space in political time, and he’s both engaged and surrounded by the world free of dictatorship, which at the moment is shunning his best buddies and diminishing revenues from his state’s easiest money.

Moreover, the colonel president emperor may be operating also with internal controls and desires quite different from Adolph’s, the piratical motive combined with domestic aggrandizement being already well established and far out ahead of the want of the headaches attending imperial designs.

He knows too that while the plundering of Russia by its “Vertical of Power” and the approximately 110 multi-billionaire “oligarchs” who control about 35 percent of the state’s productive capacity may be stalled by a flooded oil market responding to the misadventure in Ukraine, responsibility today for the the essential criminality of the state — in Luke Harding’s words, the “Mafia State” — reverse engineers to himself, the only man at the top, and he’s the only figure capable of reversing its course.

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We need to learn to respect ourselves.

We need to look at this important notion such as reputation and that reputation of a specific hospital, school, institution, or social office is a building stone in the overall reputation of our country . . . .

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/10/goodbye-potemkin-quotation-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin/ – 12/10/2014.

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“We all understand that the sources of assets are different, that they were earned or acquired in various ways. However, I am confident that we should finally close, turn the ‘offshore page’ in the history of our economy and our country. It is very important and necessary to do this.”

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2014/12/05/Putin-Urges-Oligarchs-Criminals-Bring-Dirty-Money-Back-Russia#sthash.lV0PJItd.dpuf – 12/5/2014.

The sentiments expressed in the speech follow action taken earlier in the year:

On the 18th of March the Russian Ministry of Finance published a draft law on anti-offshore measures. Following wide public discussion, a revised draft was published on the 27th of May.

The draft introduces four key concepts, namely, controlled foreign companies (CFC) rules; Russian tax residence for foreign companies, based on tests of management and control; concepts of ‘factual right to income’ and ‘beneficial owner’ in the context of applying international tax treaties; and new rules on taxation of the indirect disposal of Russian real estate.

https://www.accountancylive.com/russian-taxman-sets-sights-offshore-wealth – 6/19/2014.

Apply: “For my friends, everything!  For my enemies, the law!”

Putin may be making some new “frenemies” about now as he at one turn coaxes the return of capital to Moscow and determines, perhaps, to build from it a new modern domestic economy — and at the other, in days to come, woe to the holdouts who may be made to face the latest in law promulgated by the Ministry of Finance.

The haunt of old Joe may spook the careers of both Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny: he’s the ghost representing a past to which no one should wish to return. In fact, Kruschev trashed it; Gorbachov nearly buried it; but the KGB and associates have revived it just enough to suit themselves grandly.

The present neo-feudal Russian security dictatorship may have a problem in just not really wanting to be what it is, i.e., politically criminal, a Russian domestic disaster, a financial Chernobyl, a billboard for the expression of malignant, unbridled, and ruthless narcissism.

While Navalny appears to threaten the power that is, he may also stand as the one first most reliable channel marker out of the kind of hell that attends the psychology in personality of the same.

Perhaps for Russians as a whole the journey contained in the homily “you can’t go home again” has of necessity involved a deep revisitation through Putin with the near histories of feudalism and communism, a two steps back toward the revival of 19th Century aristocracy and 20th Century socialist fascism that has reliably, inevitably, recalled to mind the excesses and miseries attending both.

In that light, the regime may know that Navalny needs to be a part of the Russia to come, that he’s part of the self respect to come — a sentiment mouthed into necessity by the president — and that playing with him with the familiar tools of dictatorship might be just the simplest way of telling him to wait his turn: his better day will come.

Additional Reference

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2878820/Russia-s-oligarchs-lose-5-5bn-48-HOURS-amid-economic-turmoil-Roman-Abramovich-owner-Arsenal-billionaires-losing-vast-amounts-cash.html – 12/18/2014.

http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2014/12/putin-treats-russias-oligarchs-to-a-free-supper/ – 12/19/2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_people_by_net_worth

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/super-rich-hide-21-trillion-offshore-study-says/

Credit Suisse said that there were hopes with the demise of the Soviet Union that Russia would turn into a high skilled economy with fair wealth distribution but “this is almost a parody of what happened in practice.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/russia-wealth-inequality_n_4070455.html – 10/9/2013.

Also On Facebook

#No Mistral for Putin

Also on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/10/goodbye-potemkin-quotation-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin/ – 12/10/2014.

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Link – The Crimean Incursion – How Russians Have Seen It

21 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Journalism, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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I was perplexed by how the Russian people could possibly support and not be outraged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But I live in Denver, and I read mostly U.S. and European newspapers. I wanted to see what was going on in Russia and Ukraine from the Russian perspective, so I went on a seven-day news diet: I watched only Russian TV – Channel One Russia, the state-owned broadcaster, which I hadn’t seen in more than 20 years – and read Pravda, the Russian newspaper whose name means “Truth.” Here is what I learned:

 Katsenelson, Vitaliy.  “Putin’s World: Why Russia’s Showdown with the West Will Worsen.”  Contrarian Edge, November 18, 2014.

Related on BackChannels: Russian Section.

Related Reference

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/russia-controls-internet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia#Status

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

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The Interview — Political Fallout!

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North Korea, Political Psychology, Politics

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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has invited the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to Moscow next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, the Kremlin’s spokesman said on Friday.

It would be Kim’s first foreign visit since taking the helm of the reclusive east Asian state in 2011. His personal envoy travelled to Moscow last month as part of efforts by the two Cold War-era allies to improve relations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/vladimir-putin-invites-north-korea-kim-jong-un-moscow – 12/19/2014

Hollywood didn’t even dare to kill Hitler, the most evil of all dictators, during his lifetime. When Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator at the height of World War II, he lampooned the world’s most dangerous man without even considering the possibility of offing him.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120599/interview-sony-hack-obscures-north-korea-human-rights-abuses – 12/18/2014.

We’re in it now.

The International Club of Bad Little Boys has been mightily insulted.

You don’t even have to show the movies even though the head-vaporizing clip has been making the rounds of the web for hours.

It may be enough for the malignantly narcissistic to know what they look like in America and, perhaps, how some of their people may be perceiving them via their own private adventures across the World Wide Web.

From The Awesome Conversation (FTAC) earlier today when asked where North Korea got its madly skilled IT hackers:

KGB–>VEVAK–>SSD Russian purpose or cover has been replaced by Putin’s neo-feudalism, but, possibly, probably, old relationships persist. China (–>MSS) is also not the west’s best buddy. As regards IT in general and possibly demonstrated by Assange and Snowden, the arc of despots seems quite capable of seducing western talent as well as producing prodigious security dictatorships sophisticated in every aspect of computer science concerned with the control of information.

Say it ain’t so, if you can.

It appears to me the United States — and, in general, the open democracies — is under attack in myriad ways daily, internally via foreign investment in influencing the nation’s intellectual assets, externally through means better known to James Bond movies — and now wild cinematic sendups, temporarily suppressed (one hopes) — than to foreign affairs readers.

I revise the axis “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” (“together they are defending political absolutism”) to Putin-Assad-Khamenei-Jong-Un.

Additional Reference

“North Korea: UN Commission documents wide-ranging and ongoing crimes against humanity, urges referral to ICC” – 2/17/2014.

“UN assembly votes to refer North Korea to ICC: UNGA also urges Security Council to consider sanctions against Pyongyang over alleged crimes against humanity.”  Al Jazeera – 12/19/2014.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395130/tribe-liberty-jonah-goldberg – 12/20/2014.

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FTAC – On Haron Monis – Mentality

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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He sent out plenty of “signal” by way of prior crude verbal behavior and visible crime, but the targets of his mentality and those who share it have been slow to promulgate or reinforce sedition and treason laws and to inaugurate detention / investigation without charge in some form. In legally egalitarian liberal democracy, what is done to one must be applicable to all of a class of offender (abortion clinic bombers, for example, are terrorists too), and that may be impeding reaction.

I suspect Muslim-majority states have a deeper quandary as regards identification with these aggressors on two grounds: one is fear of mafia politics in force by these gangs — the feudal seem accustomed to doing away with critics and rivals; and the other involves buy-in and getting something out of the program (and that, apparently, equals some 63,000 Facebook “Likes” for a garden variety narcissistic murderer).

Carlos Bledsoe, Little Rock
Nidal Malik Hasan, Fort Hood
Dzhokar Tsarnaev, Boston Marathon (he’s in Yahoo news today)
Michael Zihaff-Bibeau, Ottowa

At best: an incomplete list.

I hesitate to coin a term in what seems to me, online at least, an ambivalent and confused field: the study of narcissism.  However, in relation to Bledsoe, Hasan, Tsarnaev, and Zihaff-Bibeau, on might suggest the existence of internalized narcissistic scripting.  Each discovered laid out (just for them) a ready made mission in “political Islam” (Erdogan’s Islam, Baghdadi’s Islam, Qaradawi’s Islam, all Islam where either autocratic official or dependent fascist follower endorse civilizational Islamic supremacism).  Once convinced by example and much reinforced by al-Qaeda or Brotherhood-type community-wide communications composed to encourage and incite bloody murder, these “lone wolves” (it has been claimed Monis had more than 60,000 “Facebook buddies”) are primed to deploy themselves and steal from the world the lives of innocents.

Additional Reference

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/22/world/canada-shooter/index.html 10/24/2014.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/22/world/americas/canada-ottawa-shooting/ – 10/31/2014.

http://news.yahoo.com/marathon-bombing-suspect-due-court-thursday-053742889.html 12/18/2014.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/doctors-supervising-ft-hood-suspect-nidal-malik-hasan-long-concerned-strange-behavior-article-1.414605 – 11/12/2009.

http://jihadology.net/2013/12/23/guest-post-abdulhakim-mujahid-muhammad-carlos-bledsoe-a-case-study-in-lone-wolf-terrorism/ – 12/23/2013: 

‘‘Like I said’’ there’s an all out war against Islam and Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Waziristan, Chechnya, Somalia, Palestine, Phillipines, Yemen etc. And Muslims have to fight back. Like I said before in a past interview we believe in an eye for eye not turn the other cheek. Now it’s a all out war on America and I’m on the other side. The side of the Muslims Yes! The side of Al-Qāeda Yes! Taliban Yes! Al-Shabaab Yes! We are all brothers under the same banner. Fighting for the same cause which is to rid the Islamic world of Infidel and Apostate Hypocritic regimes and Crusader Invaders and re-establish the Caliphate, the Islamic Empire and Islamic Law as was ended officially in 1924 by the fall of the Ottomans.”

Update – December 23, 2014

We allowed Iranian Man Haron Monis into our country on a business visa and then welcomed him as a political refugee. Charged with fraud at home, the Iranian government asked for him back. But we said no to the Iranians. When Monis wrote inexcusable letters to the families of soldiers who died in Afghanistan, describing them as pigs and Nazis, we excused that — delivering only a slap on the wrist of 300 hours of community service. Some called for his Australian citizenship to be revoked. We said no to that, too. We allowed Monis to remain an Australian citizen, a gift sought out by millions of refugees who are keen to embrace and respect Australia as an open, generous and free country.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/sorry-history-of-tolerating-the-intolerant/story-e6frg7bo-1227165583579?nk=10cef80bb687c64406dfa1a23f22fba2 – 12/24/2014.

To the left of this tile, the reader may find the more formally correct version of the epigram that goes, “Those who would be kind to the cruel are in the end made to be cruel to the kind.”

As noted, The so-called “lone wolves” among terrorists are not quite alone nor unknown to authorities.

The one thing they are not before committing murder: stopped.

Related —

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-siege-memorial-service-for-katrina-dawson-20141223-12cnqv.html – 12/23/2014.

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Link – On Lampooning Kim Jong-Un

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Political Psychology

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What is funny to us is the way in which the North Korean government works to create a mythology about itself and to protect itself from people finding out what’s really going on in there and the distortions that they propagate. All these things you hear about their leaders being born under a double rainbow or about them not defecating or urinating—these things are pretty obvious targets for comedy, to us anyway. We watched a lot of documentaries of journalists trying to get in there and see what’s really going on and it’s always the same damn thing: They are shown all of these fake shopping malls and fake cities with fake people walking around pretending that they live there and everything is fine when you can see, just out of frame, that everything is basically weird and haunting and crumbling.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/dan-sterling-the-interview-sony-hack – 12/17/2014.

The movie’s getting buzz!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/exclusive-sony-emails-allege-u-s-govt-official-ok-d-controversial-ending-to-the-interview.html – 12/17/2014: “Emails between the Sony Entertainment CEO and a security consultant even appear to suggest the U.S. government may support the notion that The Interview would be useful propaganda against the North Korean regime.”

THIS is an act!

Not an act of war (except against the unprepared).

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Link – Along the Arc of the Malignant Narcissist’s Narrative – Erdogan vs Gulen

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Political Psychology, Politics

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Millions of dollars stashed in shoe boxes, bribes delivered to their recipients in chocolate packages, a gigantic gold smuggling scheme conducted through an Iranian “businessman,” the arrest of ministers’ sons, the resignation and dismissal of ministers and shameful corruption conversations wiretapped legally and illegally are some of the episodes of the probes now engraved in public memory.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/turkey-gulen-akp-anniversary-corruption-probes.html – 12/16/2014: “Gulenists defeated on first anniversary of corruption probes.”

Take note of the other headlines on the Al Monitor page: “Erdogan Defense Brotherhood’s Qaradawi After Arrest Warrant”; “Energy Deals May Make Turkey Irreversibly Reliant on Moscow”; “Shadow Government Set up in Erdogan’s White Palace”.

Don’t say BackChannels didn’t warn you about this politically malignant backbone: Putin-Assad-Khamenei / Putin-(Yanukovych) / Putin-Orban / Putin-Erdogan.

Bent on glory, the Club of Bad Little Boys appears to have formed a confederacy of different interests bonded in state-based kleptomania.

The Pyramid Conundrum

Considering what had to have taken place to build the Great Pyramids of Egypt, plus what we my know and what they Jews have to say about it, the public may scratch its collective international head today over the building of the Great Palaces of the Politically Criminal, which I hope have been built already well enough for move-in, for I would not want to see the compounds or palatial estates of these wealthy left unfinished for the public to absorb when they’re gone.

Leaving completed works — that’s just being polite, as such “gentlemen” should be, well affording the same on the apparent misappropriation of national wealth.

Nonetheless, local, state, and global intelligentsia and empowered or struggling policy makers may indeed weigh the benefits of despotic rogue self-aggrandizement in creating magnificence from gain miserably obtained against the implied costs in freedom, human rights, and general rule of law.

“The Pyramid Conundrum”?

The pyramid does not get built without Pharaoh’s absolute power and related sociopathy.

A government may build some sturdy buildings — or a national Interstate highway system, which in the United States may be considered another wonder of the world — but they’re generally not monstrous residences.

Or mausoleums.

Related Reference

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

Cosmaciuc, Calin.  “Ceausescu tour”. Romania plans to attract foreign visitors interested in “dictatorship tourism”.  Romanian Journalist, February 13, 2013.

Not to be too hypocritical and uppity here, a reminder of how it was in the west (with family and friends of a highly privileged sort) may be found here: http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophilia/top-11-stately-homes-in-england-best-english-manor-houses/ (11/9/2010).

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