Category Archives: Politics

Bashar “Barrel Bomb” Assad . . . .

15 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syria

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

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian military helicopters dropped barrels packed with explosives in the government’s latest air raids on rebel-held areas of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday, killing at least 23 people, including a family trapped in a burning car, activists said.

In neighboring Lebanon, a car bomb blew up near a gas station in a Shiite town, killing at least three people, in the latest attack linked to the war in Syria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/world/middleeast/syrian-helicopters-drop-barrel-bombs-on-aleppo.html – 2/1/2014.

Ahmad al-Hamoud, Vice Commander of Ahfad Hamza Battalion for Special Missions, al-Sultan al-Fatih Brigade, told VDC that many kinds of the barrel bombs used by the regime forces had been recognizable. These included:

1- Regular Russian-made Barrels. These are believed to have been used by the Russian Army in the middle of the previous century. They were brought from Russia ‘ready to use’. The regime has owned them for decades. Their weight ranges between 300 to 500 kg and they’re filled with TNT and metallic scraps. There’re extremely destructive, yet their range is more limited than that of the other kinds.

2- Medium Destruction Barrels. These are believed to be made by the regime in ‘Defense Factories’ in al-Safira, in the Valley of al-Waha. Most of the helicopters taking off from this valley dropped these barrels on the districts of Aleppo. The weight of these barrels ranges from 400 to 500 kg.

3- Highly Destructive Barrels. These are the most dangerous and destructive of all. Weighing more than 600 kg, they take many shapes like containers, cisterns and, in some cases, green rubbish containers.

“A Special Report on the Recent Air Attacks on Aleppo: Potential Death Falling from the Sky…: Violation Documentation Center in Syria, March 2014.  Note: graphic forensic photographs included in the report.

Posted to YouTube 2/24/2015.

Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/24/syria-new-spate-barrel-bomb-attacks – 2/24/2015.

Barrel bombs are improvised weapons: oil drums or similar canisters filled with explosives and metal fragments. They are dropped without guidance from helicopters hovering just above antiaircraft range, typically hitting the ground with huge explosions and the widespread diffusion of deadly shrapnel. They pulverize neighborhoods, destroy entire buildings and leave broad strips of death and destruction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/opinion/barrel-bombs-not-isis-are-the-greatest-threat-to-syrians.html – 8/5/2015

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/bombs-kill-dozens-syria-aleppo-150713131000494.html – 7/13/2015

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2015/03/150325072934200.html – 3/25/2015 – “Death of Aleppo”.

Footage has emerged showing the Syrian regime using explosive “barrel bombs” on civilian neighbourhoods, killing hundreds, while its representatives attended peace talks at Geneva.

Filmed by activists in the southern Damascus suburb of Daraya, the ten minute video is a compilation of footage showing barrels, loaded with TNT, being dropped on the neighbourhood during the week the Geneva II conference was convened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10618670/Syrian-military-drop-devastating-barrel-bombs-on-city.html – 2/5/2014.

Nongovernmental organizations researching and working in Syria, including Human Rights Watch and the Syrian Civil Defense, testified during the meeting. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy on Syria, said in a video message that the Syrian government is responsible for the use of barrel bombs and that at the rate the weapons are being used, there won’t be any civilians left in Syria.

http://www.newsweek.com/united-nations-assads-barrel-bombs-continue-kill-syrian-civilians-347782 – 6/27/2015.

Government forces and pro-government militia continue to conduct widespread attacks on civilians, systematically committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity. Government forces have committed gross violations of human rights and the war crimes of murder, hostage-taking, torture, rape and sexual violence, recruiting and using children in hostilities and targeting civilians in sniper attacks. Government forces disregarded the special protection accorded to hospitals, medical and humanitarian personnel and cultural property. Aleppo was subjected to a campaign of barrel bombing that targeted entire areas and spread terror among civilians. Government forces used incendiary weapons, causing superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering, in violation of international humanitarian law. Indiscriminate and disproportionate aerial bombardment and shelling caused large-scale arbitrary displacement. Government forces and pro-government militia perpetrated massacres.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  “Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.”  Human Rights Council, 25th Session, Agenda Item 4, February 12, 2014.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/barrel-bomb-attacks-syria-aleppo-reported-150622175005995.html – 6/22/2015

While the Assad opposition masks off its own excesses, and, as always in the Islamic Small Wars, it’s hard “seeing” who is fighting exactly for what and how they’re doing it, warrior band by band, and sometimes person by person, there are no doubts as regards the smashing of large business, education, religious, and residential areas packed with noncombatant Syrians.

As Syrian Muslim and Jewish relationships develop — a perhaps “unheard of” now heard of — and Syrian anti-Semitism and anti-westernism comes more into focus as one impediment among several to western intercession, the scales may tip in the direction of the cosmopolitan and modern and therefore away from the medieval worldview that forms the basis for the despotism displayed by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei on the Shiite axis and al-Nusra and ISIS and others on the Sunni complement that serves the former as foils for the cooked up theatrical “Assad vs The Terrorists”.

In Syria, the center could not hold and the rough beast rose to savage the land.

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Link – Orton – Russian Manipulation – Islamic Terrorism

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Iraq, Links, Politics, Russia, Syria

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Moscow’s action were in line with the strategy it had used to defeat the separatist movement in Chechnya, infiltrating the insurgency, driving it into extremism, and facilitating the arrival of al-Qaeda jihadists who displaced the Chechen nationalists. In Syria, Russia’s actions accord with the strategy adopted by the regime and its Iranian masters to present Assad as the last line of defence against a terrorist takeover of Syria and a genocide against the minorities. New evidence has emerged to underline these points.

https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/#more-1722 – 9/8/2015.

Published to YouTube 11/24/2012

Related: Russian Politics Timeline 1999-2011.  Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 2011 (PDF).

Posted to YouTube 8/8/2012.

Additional reference on BackChannels: The Russian Section.

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Chicago Rules – Syria for Nuclear Deal?

08 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

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Washington (CNN) Democrats on Tuesday gave President Barack Obama the votes he needs to prevent the Senate from passing a measure disapproving of the Iran nuclear deal.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/08/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-richard-blumenthal-ron-wyden-gary-peters-obama-democrats/ – 9/8/2015.

MOSCOW — Signs of an ongoing Russian military buildup in Syria have drawn U.S. concerns and raised questions of whether Moscow plans to enter the conflict. President Vladimir Putin has been coy on the subject, saying Russia is weighing various options, a statement that has fueled suspicions about the Kremlin’s intentions.

Observers in Moscow say the Russian manoeuvring could be part of a plan to send troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State group in the hope of fixing fractured ties with the West.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/russian-military-buildup-in-syria-suggests-putin-toying-with-troop-deployment-to-fight-the-islamic-state – 9/8/2015.

Iran’s president has said his country is ready to hold talks with the United States and Saudi Arabia on ways to resolve the Syrian civil war.

Shia powerhouse Iran is a leading patron of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and accuses Sunni rival Saudi Arabia and the US of siding with anti-Assad rebels and fighters.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/iran-ready-talk-saudi-arabia-syria-150908092549115.html – 9/8/2015.

US and regional reports that Moscow’s diplomatic and logistical support for Assad is shifting into major military backing has raised the prospect of Israel and Russia accidentally coming to blows.

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israel-wary-of-Russian-military-build-up-in-Syria-415586 – 9/8/2015.

How quickly things come together!

Too quickly?

Could the Obama Administration have “offered” Syria — no resistance — as part of negotiations in exchange for the nuclear deal?

BackChannels cannot peek behind those curtains, but the shift from 2011 in which ordinary Syrians challenged the Assad regime’s absolute control of the state to this day in which the major media cannot help but promote the the theatrical  “Assad vs The Terrorists” (as if every loose fighting brigade was born of al-Qaeda) appears to have invited increased Russian military support and presence benefiting the despots — Putin, Assad, Khamenei — all around.

Moscow is not planning to transform its logistics center in Syria’s Tartus into a full-format military base, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and special presidential representative for the Middle East and African countries Mikhail Bogdanov told Interfax.

http://rbth.com/news/2015/09/08/russia_not_planning_to_transform_logistics_center_in_syrias_tartus_into__49078.html – 9/8/2015.

BackChannels close readers might recall that mention was made last December of Mikhail Bogdanov meeting in November 2014 with PFLP representatives and discussing the S-300 missile program.

According to the New York Times, “Russia has sent a military advance team to Syria and has transported prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to an airfield near Latakia, according to American intelligence analysts.” The Times adds that “Russia has also delivered a portable air traffic station to the airfield and has filed military overflight requests through September.” The reports follow closely on the heels of similar allegations in recent weeks, including reports of new arms, and even combat troops.

U.S. military officials said Tuesday that Russia has moved new personnel, planes and equipment into Syria in recent days.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/09/08/expanded-syria-presence-would-carry-big-risks-for-russia/ – 9/8/2015.

http://triblive.com/usworld/world/9051310-74/syria-military-russian#axzz3lB2GsYnO – 9/7/2015.

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/20140520/streets-of-tartus-lined-with-pictures-of-martyrs-for-assad – 5/20/2014.

Assad said: “The Russian presence in different parts of the world, including the Eastern Mediterranean and the Syrian port of Tartus, is very necessary, in order to create a sort of balance, which the world has lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2015/03/syria-russia-tartus-base-intervention-expansion.html#ixzz3lB1JneyN – 3/31/2015.

A report published on 27 June by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says: “Russia’s greatest strategic and geopolitical interest in Syria is the use of a deep-water port at Tartus”.

That report goes on to say that Tartus can dock nuclear submarines, it is the receiving point for Russian weapons shipments to Syria and it is linked to a well-developed network of roads and railways.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-18616191 – 6/27/2012.

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Links – Russia in Syria – Medieval and Absolute Dictatorship

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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Despite strong denials from Moscow, Russian airborne troops are preparing to land in Syria to fight Islamic State forces. The surprise attack on Monday, Aug. 31, by ISIS forces on the Qadam district of southern Damascus, in which they took over parts of the district – and brought ISIS forces the closest that any Syrian anti-Assad group has ever been to the center of the Syrian capital – is expected to accelerate the Russian military intervention.

http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/09/02/debkafile-russia-gearing-up-to-be-first-world-power-to-insert-ground-forces-into-syria/ – 9/2/2015.

Location: Syria’s Theater of the Real.

Producers: Putin, Assad, Khamenei.

Title of the Show: “Assad vs The Terrorists”.

Cast of extras, dead and alive: 250,000 dead; 9 million displaced or refugee.

Most Memorable Set Design: Homs, fashioned by barrel bombing to look like Hiroshima the day after.

Casting Dilemma: Getting Baghdadi’s fighters and other al-Qaeda-type elements to play their parts without knowing it.

Method: Bomb the al-Qaeda units less than ordinary Syrians.

Why: For Putin, post-Soviet Russia becomes neo-feudal Russia, and he’s the boss; for Assad, in the age of the “War on Terror” no spectacle could be more glorious than playing the lead in “Assad vs The Terrorists”; for Khamenei, a grand and sustained Shiite vs Sunni Battle perpetuates the medieval justification for his authority, however much he may care to abuse it.

CAUTION: From the Second Row Seat to History

Journalists in-country have an observation deck limited to their eyes and ears, but they may with accuracy report what they see and what they hear; journalists scouting the web for opinion and news in any area of interest necessarily receive all information one step removed from Being There and may be vulnerable to disinformation, in this instance information intended to change the character of the Syrian Tragedy — AKA either “Assad vs The Terrorists” or “Assad vs A Good Portion of the Syrian People” — and draw opposed powers into the field.

That noted, the world has seen also its share of barrel bombing videos and stills, read multiple reports involving at least one period of chemical warhead deployment — and seen Russia agree to neutralize and remove those munitions — and followed either the development of large Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon or Turkey, or, this week, witnessed the aftermath of drownings of ordinary people and their children, real people, Syrian refugees.

The world may also recall watching another production — the $52 billion Winter Olympics at Sochi during February 2014.  However, probably overlooked by the public at large that month (February 10, to be exact) was the headline and lede in The New York Times: “Russia and China Skip Security Council Meeting on Humanitarian Aid to Syria”:

UNITED NATIONS — The morning after an aid convoy came under fire when it tried to reach a besieged Syrian city, a meeting here on a draft resolution that would force all parties in the bloody conflict to allow access for humanitarian organizations fell apart when representatives from Russia and China failed to show up, United Nations Security Council diplomats said.

Perhaps Syrians would do well to borrow some mid-20th Century Jewish wisdom: Never Forget.

New evidence proves Russian military directly engaging in Syrian Civil War

The regime’s offensive in the Lattakia Governorate continues to reveal previously unknown details about Russia’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Apart from the sighting of recently delivered Russian BTR-82A infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), new evidence now confirmes Russian military personnel has a key role in leading the offensive on the ground.

http://spioenkop.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-evidence-proves-russian-military.html – 8/29/2015.

“We are aware of reports that Russia may have deployed military personnel and aircraft to Syria, and we are monitoring those reports quite closely,” said spokesman Josh Earnest.

“Any military support to the Assad regime for any purpose, whether it’s in the form of military personnel, aircraft supplies, weapons, or funding, is both destabilizing and counterproductive.”

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-monitoring-reports-russian-military-syria-213836626.html – 9/3/2015.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131573 – “Syria conflict: How far is Russia prepared to bolster Assad?”  — 9/2/2015.

On August 22, the Bosphorus Naval News website showed the Alligator-class Russian ship Nikolai Filchenkov, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, two days earlier passing through Istanbul’s famed waterway en route to an unknown location in the Mediterranean (hint, hint).

But what was remarkable about the Filchenkov was that military equipment was visible on deck . . . .

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/russia-puts-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria.html – 9/1/2015.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696268,00.html “Russian jets in Syrian skies” – 8/31/2015.

http://www.newsweek.com/why-putin-sending-troops-syria-368436 – 9/3/2015 – (by Elliott Abrams).

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c417e912-5479-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html#axzz3kz4QStb1 – “US voices concern to Russia over military moves in Syria” – 9/6/2015.

Sideways Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/02/quote-manipulation-about-the-plo-leader-pacepa-and-rychlak-2013/ – 12/2/2014.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/05/20/link-yarmouk-played/ – 5/20/2015.

Update: September 29, 2015 – From the Daily Beast, Aug. 23, 2015

Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions. In other words, Russian officials are adding to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/23/russia-s-playing-a-double-game-with-islamic-terror0.html – 8/23/2015.

Update: October 19, 2015: From The New York Review of books, July 11, 2012 – By Michael Ignatius

The Syrian conflict has triggered something more fundamental than a difference of opinion over intervention, something more than an argument about whether the Security Council should authorize the use of force. Syria is the moment in which the West should see that the world has truly broken into two. A loose alliance of struggling capitalist democracies now finds itself face to face with two authoritarian despotisms—Russia and China—something new in the annals of political science: kleptocracies that mix the market economy and the police state. These regimes will support tyrannies like Syria wherever it is in their interest to do so.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jul/11/syria-proxy-war-russia-china/

Update: October 20, 2015: From The Guardian, October 3, 2015

Another FSA officer, Colonel Abdulsalam Almerei, commander of Talbeissa operations in northern Homs, told me two days ago after his brigade was attacked by Russian aeroplanes: “We have no Isis here, we are fighting for our freedom and dignity. We want a united Syria for all Syrians. We do not want to oppress any sect or change one tyranny with another.”

Assad and his backers have jeopardised the national and territorial integrity of Syria. Many Syrians have lost faith in the UN; they feel that the international community has abandoned them to the barbaric killing machines of Assad and Isis. The international law states that the principle of responsibility to protect civilians overrides the principle of sovereignty of states when a government kills its own people.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/04/syria-russia-assad-isis-conflict

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Tough, Scrappy, Independent! _The Golden Veil_ – An Interview and Trailer

03 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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Posted to YouTube 9/2/2015

Posted to YouTube 8/3/2015

Related: http://www.thegoldenveil.com/

If it’s promotion, it’s unrequested and unpaid.

Disclosure: the editor of BackChannels has been a social networking acquaintance (a better word is needed for many remote personalities with whom we feel affinity if not complete agreement, and with whom share interests even if from different and often changing stances or circumstances), with producer, actor, and director Bahman Nassiri for some years and has watched him refuse to give up on his project, his vision, and his opinion of the regime Tehranasaurus medievalistas.

A Nassiri video has appeared once before on BackChannels: “Khomeini on Islam as ready by Film Producer Bahman Nassiri” (July 27, 2015).

The 41-minute indie film may be launched for $1.99 from this location: https://youtu.be/oCur-yTqc94 (proceeds go to benefit California’s mountain lions).

For all intents, Iran has quietly divided into two states, albeit perhaps not of equal proportion: a fanatical and piratical regime and a constituency that bears its burden to the side of it.  While as much may be said of democracies for the period of any incumbent president’s stay (because the other voters didn’t like him), noting the same where the leader installed is supreme and permanent until God flips the lever makes the situation quite different.

In this blog’s analysis, post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia, Syria, and Iran have produced a piece of theater that could be titled “Assad vs The Terrorists” and a look at the horrifying dimensions of that, from the incubation of ISIS (by bombing the al-Qaeda types less frequently than more politically moderate units and noncombatant targets early in the shaping of the war) to images of drowned children washing ashore, may be accessed for free in media worldwide.

The Oryx Blog and its article “New evidence proves Russian military directly engaging in Syrian Civil War” (August 29, 2015) and others on that site may help frame the Syrian Tragedy as a post-Soviet but still KGB-like piece of work.

Related in the News

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/refugee-crisis-syrian-boy-washed-up-on-beach-turkey-trying-to-reach-canada – 9/3/2015.

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FTAC – Iran’s Political Evolution – Wider Angle, Please

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

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I relay some conservative thought, as in the above video, with hesitation as it doesn’t represent my thoughts, but my thoughts . . . egads! smile emoticon

I think issues associated with any aspect of the “Islamic Small Wars” (my term) are by nature intergenerational and likely to be longer-lived than any single American presidential term. Therefore, the prism through which these events and processes are viewed must be wider than the instance in which they occur.

While it’s true that the Obama Administration appears to have done as much as possible to accommodate a tyrannical regime that has refused all compromise on its barbaric, lethal, and piratical agendas — outside Iran and within — it’s also true that there will be another American Administration in about a year, that other and alternative games (political and military), ideas, and plans developed and out of sight are going to be “forwarded” into that administration. While the future has yet to be written, Iran will have a new generation of professional, about 50 percent or more of it female, graduating from its colleges in the same period; it will have within whatever influence has been brought to its elites and “masses” (I hate the term, but it suits) by Internet, relationships, and by new trade; if the regime gets its money back (from sanctions), it may have issues with avarice and greed at the highest levels.

I believe Time is with the west, not the medievalists, but it takes some tolerance of threat and related patience to get through time, and, granted, the Obama Administration has embarked on a long-term but still perilous course.

The question for the medievalists — Putin, Assad, Khamenei: how well have you done, really? Extended in Yemen, stalled in Ukraine, one-third of Syria beyond state control — and each situation appears stalemated at best?

This is a long video, but it may help some readers align with the observations and thoughts of more specialized intelligentsia.

Posted to YouTube 11/26/2013.

Related: Abbas Milani.

Near horizon: uncomfortable.

The Iranian regime is known for its aggressiveness, anti-Semitism, duplicity, egoism, and piratical character.

It is also known to be ageing.

Persians know too their greater history — and none among the educated have forgotten Cyrus.

A little offstage: the effects of the history of state police forces, from the czars to the Soviet and KGB to today’s FSB in Russia and VEVAK in Iran.  At about 25:15 in the above video, Professor Milani invokes the modern update term on feudalism: “state capitalism”.  Oligarchy.  (The URL trope to insert here: Reuters “Assets of the Ayatollah” — and so done).

Whatever one might wish to call such dictatorships operated by state mafia or theocracy, I believe the form still feudal and formed around the concentration of political power and access to wealth in one human demagogue.

In any case, the demagogue in Tehran has at hand a latent nuclear weapons making capability, in state or beyond (who knows?), and the worth of any agreement with the same has no basis in experience or earlier history (save that scandal with the illicit arms trade and even perhaps rougher politics).

Still, time is time, and the more time floats around and past the dictator, the more cultural evolution may temper the excesses of the malignant personality.  Where The Great Leader will not, or cannot, change, the Greater Society may.

Related Reference

Alliance of Iranian Women: Until Victory

“In September 2012, women made up more than 60 percent of all universities’ student body in Iran.”

Norman, Natasha.  “5 Badass Iranian Women Who Are Shattering Stereotypes of What Feminism Looks Like.”  World.Mic, July 23, 2015.

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FTAC – Troika – One Last Time

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Politics

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It hasn’t occurred to the world that Gaza and Syria both suffer deeply beneath the boots of those sharing the same feudal mentality. Putin, Assad, and Khamenei may be blamed for Syria, which for the Obama Administration may represent the final chapter on the dissolving of the Soviet Union about 25 years ago. Khamenei’s interest in feudal absolute power has its mirrors in Sunni Islam, not uniformly or officially, but nonetheless those with a medieval mentality sponsor Hamas to continue the brutalization and exploitation of the residents of Gaza.

While what is represented by the above image was taking place, Putin mustered up about $51 billion for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and he paid some to transfer Russian nationals living in Syria back to Moscow.

How’s that for humanism?

We all suffer with Syrians whose lives have been swiped like knocked over chessboard pawns, but we may keep in mind too that the origins of the tragedy reach back to the Cold War and, in fact, have been sustained by threat on the post-Soviet neo-feudal side. Today, I believe that side is hurting, or has been hurt, by Saudi-aided reduced oil pricing, sanctions, in-state piracy by both Moscow and Tehran, and by “hybrid warfare” and “war by proxy” aggression and the financial and political costs attending each. Those old friends, official Russia, Syria, and Iran have been playing losing hands, but they’re taking their constituents down with them while “living large and in charge” of their small but special space.

If the repetition of themes times me, I know the same will tire readers.

The prompt for the post: an image of suffering from Syria — a boy in pain on a gurney located close to the latest fighting — and the wish the people would genuinely care as much about Syria as the “fake Palestinian cause”.

Fair enough.

While the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left may embrace the old KGB-PLO relationship and other might come to appreciate what the Hamas billionaires (Haniyeh and Mashaal both qualify) really represent in the brutal occupation and repression of the people of Gaza — well, most of the resident because some have made some pretty good money off the sustained conflict and related local exploitation and repression — most in the anti-Semitic bunches simply don’t know the history well enough to avoid their own seduction by feudal — also absolute, fascist, and ruthless — powers.

Related Reference

Dandachi, Aboud.  “Three lessons learned from the Syrian conflict.”  Daily Sabah, December 4, 2014.

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FTAC – On Feudalism and the Middle East Conflict

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics

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The wealth tied into the feudalism that drives the middle east dispute may be difficult to imagine for most. On the Shiite side, Ali Khamenei and his brother control in private portfolio about $57 billion. Reuter’s “Assets of the Ayatollah” (easy lookup) tells how that came about. At least two of the Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, have developed reputations as billionaires also. Basically, “the terrorists” (the leaders) are not being spoiled: they are living the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed.

Israel’s medical ethic, which stems from the Hippocratic Oath, has been always to leave the politics at the door and attend to the needs of the injured and sick. I think that ability to separate issues and focus on challenges in separate dimensions may be expressive of the modern mind as the medieval appears less able to set abstract and just boundaries.

The feudal mode in thought and governance may also dominate Sunni politics, which is complex. Erdogan, the Turkish leader, has moved into his immense “White Palace” and proven reluctant to destroy ISIS at this time. He appears to prefer beating back Kurdish hopes for independence to stalling the ISIS project. He would (I believe) align with “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” if not for his Sunni identification. Still, overarching Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Erdogan, and some others is the devotion to “political absolutism” or the concentration of “absolute power” in a single leader. As much works against the democratic and humanist distribution of power throughout populations.

Stimulus: Israeli doctors have been treating an Hamas terrorist recently, and the poster had asked whether the modern workspace was luxurious enough to spoil him.

🙂

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