Category Archives: Politics

Nadiya Savchenko – Signal of 21st Century Neo-Feudalism

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Authorized Ukrainian TV channel «Inter» Youtube stream

Authorized Ukrainian TV channel «Inter» Youtube stream; channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/InterTVua; License: Creative Commons; Image: brightness adjusted; Web Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko#/media/File:Nadiya_Savchenko.jpg; Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko

Nadiya Savchenko – Fast Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko: “Russia’s Investigative Committee insists she crossed the border voluntarily, without documents and in the guise of a refugee.[20] Russia’s pro-Kremlin TV channel NTV, however, reported on June 20 that Savchenko had been captured by “rebels” and then handed over to the Russian authorities.[21] Ukrainian officials said she had been illegally taken to Russia by Russian intelligence services in collaboration with pro-Russian rebels.”

http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1437143184 – 7/18/2015 – “New attempt to keep Nadiya Savchenko trial secret” — “Russia is insisting on holding the trial of captured ex-pilot Nadiya Savchenko in a Russian city bordering the area of Ukraine under Kremlin-backed militant control. There are no legitimate grounds for this move which will seriously hinder access to the trial, and could, Savchenko believes, put her mother and sister in danger. Her formal appeal* to Russia’s Prosecutor General to move the trial to Moscow where all investigative activities and assessments were carried out has effectively already been rejected. One of her lawyers announced late on Friday afternoon that Savchenko has already been moved from the remand prison in Moscow and is on her way to the Rostov oblast.”

http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1435707020 – 7/2/2015 – “Savchenko material shows how Russia concocted ‘case’ and what it can’t conceal” – ” The key problem in the investigators’ case is Savchenko’s irrefutable alibi however there are also a number of other obvious flaws in their version which do not go away despite being assiduously ignored..”

Posted to YouTube 7/7/2015

This patriot, made a Hero of Ukraine by President Poroshenko on March 2, this Joan of Arc detained in spite of the diplomatic immunity to which she has been entitled since her election to the Rada and as Ukraine’s representative to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, has become simultaneously the symbol of Putin’s arbitrary exercise of power and of Ukrainian resistance.

As Russia celebrated with great pomp and ceremony the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, one might have hoped that Putin would make a gesture.

He did not.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/free-nadyia-savchenko_b_7255318.html – 5/11/2015

Here in Moscow she has been charged as an accessory to murder, linked to the death of two Russian journalists covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the rebels and government troops.

But the BBC has seen mobile phone data from the day they died, that her lawyers argue proves her innocence.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31760381 – “Nadiya Savchenko: Ukraine resistance symbol in Russia.”  – 3/6/2015.

Imprisoning a Ukrainian officer, who disappeared while on duty last month in the battleground region of Luhansk, will make it hard for Russia to maintain its claim that it is not in league with the separatist rebels. According to the Ukrainian government, the rebels captured Savchenko in June and illegally smuggled her across the border into Russia, where authorities not only arrested her but took her hundreds of miles to the city of Voronezh, a provincial capital in the heartland of western Russia. Diplomats and top officials in Ukraine, as well as their U.S. allies, have already cited the case as among the clearest pieces of evidence so far that Russian security services are working in concert with the rebel fighters. That means the case is sure to bolster the Western argument for another round of sanctions against Russia this month.

http://time.com/2976146/the-strange-case-of-vladimir-putin-and-the-ukrainian-pilot/ – 7/11/2014.

Russia agreed to immediately free all hostages and illegally held persons. Yet Russia and the separatists it backs continue to hold at least 500 hostages. They include Savchenko, as well as Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, both of whom were captured by separatists on Ukrainian soil and illegally transported against their will to Russia.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/response-we-people-petition-nadiya-savchenko – 11/21/2014.

We continue our publication of the prison writings delivered to us by Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was abducted by pro-Russian separatists on June 18, 2014, and who has been in prison ever since. La Règle du Jeu, in partnership with Kyiv Post, Ukraina Pravda, The Huffington Post/WorldPost, and other magazines and newspapers, is launching a double appeal: Do not forget Nadiya, and do everything you can–everything–to obtain her release.–Bernard-Henri Lévy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/nadiya-savchenkos-letters_b_7264172.html – 5/12/2015.

When it comes to the perception of brute force in power, the language play in the invention of the term “21st Century Neo-Feudalism” proves more convenient than earnest and popular political science on the matter, so suggests a cursory glance at related Google search results, which frequently lists this blog as the term’s proponent. Nonetheless, as witness through Internet-borne media to Nadiya Savchenko’s abduction and imprisonment in relation to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid warfare” (by proxy thugs) in Ukraine, the term would seem well applied.

Typing here from the sidelines, the lawlessness of the feudal world — in effect, the caprice of the senior mafia running the show — concentrates power in a titular head, who may actually have it, and a surrounding bulwark of favored and patronized nobility.  Against that model, the lawful of the democratic world — also argumentative, bureaucratic, responsible, responsive — tend to distribute power across a magnificent quilt of private and public and local to international interests.  Adventurous and bright, the very tough Nadiya Savchenko appears to have managed to become selected for being trapped between the two worlds.

Putin’s message: I have captured and caged the brave Ukrainian bird; come and get her.

That’s absolute power.

I have long suggested here and elsewhere that that kind of power becomes the power to make others suffer with impunity — and Putin, among others, have demonstrably got it.

What power have the democracies against “political absolutism”?

The power of international law as invested in western institutions?

Talk, talk, talk.

The ogre keeps the stolen bird caged.

Old tweet: “Putin, Assad, Khamenei — together they are defending absolute power.”

Posted to YouTube 7/15/2015

Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue slaughtering or displacing all Syrians who disagree with his ownership — absolute control — of Syria and dominion over the lives and property of all who inhabit his realm?

Nothing has diminished his power where he may still project it, and, in fact, the political theater produced by “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and to which I refer as “Assad vs The Terrorists” has positively contributed to his power.  Assad appears to have forked Obama’s policy on Syria (whatever it might have been), for the American has had to have his military fly sorties against Daesh, everyone’s enemy, but also — and mostly so — Assad’s enemy.

Assad didn’t always have “The Terrorists”, but through sufficient selective bombing and fighting, he achieved the incubation of the “Al-Qaeda Typicals”, and now he has them, and he has got Washington bombing them at Washington’s expense!

Oh, the glory.

Posted to YouTube 7/18/2015

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei too has gathered power unto himself without limit, and he too appears to have going “hybrid warfare” and “war-by-proxy” in several districts, from Yemen today to the Gaza Strip, and these too continue with just enough impedance to hold them in place.  If Tehran keeps its part of the “nuclear deal”, it will find itself with tens of billions of new or recovered dollars to earmark for throwing its weight around the region.

Why not?

Khamenei has met no lasting opposition within Iran — the world knows how that works — and within the region, whether manipulating the Al-Qaeda Typicals or the Hezbollah Virulence, sending Revolutionary Guard to battle Daesh with Iraq’s Shiite militia or cheering the Houthis as they bring wreckage and ruin to Yemen, none have yet curtailed his influence or meddling.

No “off button”; no “reset”; no brakes: that’s theocratic dictatorship — and that’s been Khamenei’s thing for a while now, and it’s working.

It would appear that “absolute power” needs no ethical, humanist, moral, or religion defense, for whether practiced by Putin, Assad, or Khamenei — different talks: same walk — all that is needed is unyielding relentless assertion.

What does Putin say?

I have got your most ambitious, darling, and high flying bird in my cage.

What does Assad say:

I have committed crimes beyond imagination and destroyed children’s educations, their homes, and their parents’ lives by the millions — but I am still here, President of Syria.

What does Khamenei say:

Khamenei doesn’t say anything, for Khamenei laughs.

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Link — A Real Corker! – National Review

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Links, North America, Politics, United States of America

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Of course, you may have been under the impression – perhaps from reading our quaint Constitution from those dark pre-Fundamental Transformation days – that We the People are sovereign, that our government must take its marching orders from us. To the contrary, President Obama is claiming in his Iran deal that he – unilaterally and without congressional advice, consent, or legislation – may huddle with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist government, some European leaders, and our Iranian enemies to devise enforceable law. We and our elected representatives are expected meekly to submit.

We must not submit.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421349/congress-must-ditch-corker-bill-and-treat-iran-deal-either-treaty-or-proposed

H.R.1191 – Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015

Charen, Mona.  “Obama: Witting or Witless?”  National Review, July 17, 2015.

Smith-Spark, Laura.  “Iran’s Supreme Leader vows no change in relations with ‘arrogant’ United States.”  CNN, July 19, 2015.

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Islam — A Note on Political Topology and Prejudice and Possibility

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions

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And here we are in 2015 choosing to believe the promises made by the leaders of Islamic Iran regarding nuclear proliferation despite the well-known Islamic policy of taqiyya-religious deception. Despite the fact that they have lied about their nuclear programme in the past. From the Qur’an – This verse tells Muslims not to take those outside the faith as friends, unless it is to “guard themselves” against danger, meaning that there are times when a Muslim may appear friendly to non-Muslims, though they should not feel that way.” (Here And here – “And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against them): and Allah is the best of schemers.” If Allah is supremely deceitful toward unbelievers, then there is little basis for denying that Muslims are allowed to do the same. (See also 8:30 and 10:21) and here. From the Hadith: Bukhari (84:64-65) – Speaking from a position of power at the time, Ali confirms that lying is permissible in order to deceive an “enemy.” In other words, the word of a Muslim leader is not his bond.

Bederman, Diane Weber.  “Western Arrogance may lead us to Armageddon.”  Canada Free Press, July 16, 2015.

The vast majority of countries on Earth with nuclear programs do not possess sensitive nuclear facilities. Rather the fuel is provided by a more advanced nuclear power, such as Russia, France, or the United States. This eliminates the need for the spread of dangerous enrichment or reprocessing programs to new countries. Countries like Iran that insist on developing their own sensitive technologies for “peaceful purposes,” therefore, are tipping their hand and revealing a likely intention to build the bomb.

Kroenig, Matthew.  “Why is Obama Abandoning 70 Years of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy?”  Tablet, June 15, 2015.

Whether nations or women deceived, Islam and several of the states most representative of it would seem to have a big credibility issue.  For Jews, perhaps others who have taken note, serious betrayal — and signal of the complete absence of compassion, conscience, and empathy — begins with the legend of the mass slaughter of the Banu Qurayza men and the barbaric enslavement of their wives and daughters.

Muslim critic and reformer Tarek Fatah has derided and rejected the authenticity of the Banu Qurayza legend for finding it execrable as any sort of example of morality while the “anti-Jihad”, in general, maintains the same as a potent symbol of the character of Islam.

Today’s skinny brings the tale of the imam who lied to betray his wife and woo another woman (K. M. Lessing) into conversion and marriage.

Same thing, isn’t it?

First, lie; then exploit the lie: to get the woman; to get power over others.

From simple mass slaughter and the abuse of women inveigled into relationships, Islam’s apparently inherent interest in the possession of absolute power — unanswerable, unconscionable (well demonstrated throughout the Syrian theater and the military and political play that has been fashioned as “Assad vs The Terrorists”), and humanly conflated with the presence in concept of God Almighty — extends logically to the possession of nuclear arms and the associated ability and evident intent to threaten the annihilation of others in exchange for their cooperation, loyalty, obedience, subjugation.

Should one take it on faith that not all imam are like K. M. Lessing’s imam?

Similarly, should on take it on faith that not all ayatollah and senior clerics are like Ali Khamenei or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?  Or the Muhammad who allegedly slaughtered 800 self-surrendered, compliant, and disarmed fathers and sons?

What do the polls say?

Where are the social science measures of attitudes toward others from within Islam?

Here we are back at “Shimmer“.

It’s different today: the question had been, as stated by Daniel Pipes, “How Many Islamists?”  Now we’re being positioned to ask among the despotic and theocratic leaders of Islamic states, who else (in addition to Pakistan) will have nuclear weapons, how soon, and how many?

While it may be understood that the Religion of Peace contains the genuinely peaceful and now an emerged leadership complement of Islamic humanists, social progressives, and reformers, its other faces retain the power and punch of military generals and political autocrats, and those in Iran it appears the west may now be rewarding with increased access to capital and the further encouragement of license exceeding all limits.

Loosely Related Reference

Afshari, Ali.  “Khamenei preaches Shiite-Sunni unity against Islamic State, US.”  Al-Monitor, October 22, 2014: “High-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic have always talked about the importance of Shiite-Sunni unity and even dedicated a week each year to the issue. Their actions, however, have served to deepen the Shiite-Sunni divide, in particular their discrimination against Iranian Sunnis, including limitations on their religious activities, as well as efforts to propagate Shiism in the Middle East.”

Al-Muslimi, Farea.  “Yemen’s Houthis proxy, not ally for Iran.”  Al-Monitor, November 19, 2014.

BackChannels.  “Ali Khamenei and the Letter from Near Mosul — A Speculation.”  January 16, 2015.

Bender, Jeremy.  “Iran’s proxy war in Yemen just got exposed.”  Business Insider, May 1, 2015.

Council on Foreign Relations.  “The Sunni-Shia Divide.”

Daoud, David.  “Iran’s Khamenei Says US is Enemy to Both Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East.”  The Algemeiner, May 18, 2015.

Frantzman, Seth J.  “20 Myths About the Iran Deal.”  Terra Incognita, July 15, 2015: “How a country that hangs people proudly and burns the flags of those it negotiates with has come to be so respected on the international stage is truly extraordinary. It is a testament to the soft racism of low expectations of the West.”

Karami, Arash.  “Iranian supreme leader doubles down on struggle against American ‘arrogance'”.  Al-Monitor, July 13, 2015

In September 2014, the U.S. began airstrikes in Syria that targeted ISIS, allowing Assad to perform an “economy of force“: Assad left the U.S. to attack ISIS in the east and focused on the moderates in the west. Assad has worked very hard to make extremists the face of the insurgency—for example between ISIS’ emergence and late 2014, Assad directed just six percent of his airstrikes against ISIS—and to present this as a binary choice between the dictator or the takfiris; this is a lie, but many believe it and it has worked to make the U.S. effectively Assad’s (Iran’s) air force in Syria.

Orton, Kyle.  “America Not Training Syria’s Rebels Isn’t “Failure”; It’s Policy.”  The Syrian Intifada, July 13, 2015.

Ross, Dennis.  “Iran Will Cheat, Then What?”  Time, July 15, 2015.

Starr, Barbara.  “Sources: Baghdadi may have been in Raqqa.”  CNN Politics, July 15, 2015.  Post includes video, story, and photo panel of “Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups.”

Former U.S. officials and Iran experts say Khamenei has a deep-rooted suspicion of the West and a streak of insecurity – he rose to power due to his loyalty to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rather than lofty religious credentials.

A sense of inferiority has dogged him over the years and it would be especially important for Khamenei to be seen as not folding under Western pressure to reach an agreement, they said.

Zakaria, Tabassum.  “For Iran talks, trying to divine supreme leader’s intent.”  Reuters, April 13, 2012.

The United States pushed forward with a sanctions-based approach largely because key administration officials believed that sanctions strengthened the credibility and leverage of those who wanted to engage Iran, while preventing more violent actions by Israel. They insisted that such an approach best addressed the myriad long-term mutual interests shared by the United States and Iran. President Obama himself reached the conclusion that there were too few negative incentives to affect Iran’s internal calculus, particularly regarding mutual interests.

Marashi, Reza.  “The Political Psychology of Obama’s Iran Policy.”  Muftah, January 6, 2012.

Khalaji, Mehdi.  “No Voice of Reconciliation: Khamenei Targets the West.”  The Washington Institute, May 21, 2015.

The Soufan Group.  “TSG IntelBrief: Khamenei’s Challenges and Unease in Iran’s Power Structure.”  November 14, 2013.

There’s not much on the web as regards “political psychology, Khamenei.”

Perhaps BackChannel’s approach with “malignant narcissism” aligned with the “Syndicate Red Brown Green” feudalism and associated anti-Semitism / anti-Zionism / anti-westernism will fill the bill: I believe Khamenei’s interests continue to reside with the possession of political “absolute power”, capricious justice, piratical leadership, militarism expressed through “war by proxy” and the cultivation of Daesh as a Sunni-aligned foil for Iraq’s Shiite militia (advised by Revolutionary Guard), and the long-term survival of Sunni vs Shiite teleological rivalry and related hot conflict as stage-managed from Tehran.

World Nuclear Association.  “Nuclear Power in Iran.”  Updated May 2015: “After two years delay due to Iran’s reluctance to agree to returning used fuel to Russia without being paid for it, two agreements were signed early in 2005 covering both supply of fresh fuel for the new Bushehr nuclear reactor and its return to Russia after use. The Russian agreement means that Iran’s nuclear fuel supply is secured for the foreseeable future, removing any justification for enrichment locally.”

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The Imam’s Deceived Woman – K. M. Lessing – On the Most Brazen of Lies

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

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

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Posted to YouTube June 3, 2015; first viewed as a “Video Greeting” on author K. M. Lessing’s web site.

Reference: Qur’an 3:54

According to the Qur’an, Allah is the “best of deceivers” (3:54; 8:30). The phrase is often translated into English as “best of planners,” “best of schemers,” or “best of plotters,” but the root word (makr) means “deception.” Hence, the following Qur’an verses should be rendered as follows:

Qur’an 3:54—And they (the unbelievers) planned to deceive, and Allah planned to deceive (the unbelievers), and Allah is the best of deceivers.

Qur’an 7:99—Are they then safe from Allah’s deception? No one feels safe from Allah’s deception except those that shall perish.

Qur’an 8:30—And (remember) when the unbelievers plotted deception against you (O Muhammad), to imprison you, or kill you, or expel you. They plotted deception, but Allah also plotted deception; and Allah is the best of deceivers.

Wood, David.  “Is Allah the Best of Deceivers?”  Answering Muslims, March 2, 2014.

With reference to Qur’an 3:54:

The historical background for the verse is that the Jews ‘planned’ evil in order to get Jesus arrested and crucified. And Allah in the verse says as they planned evil, so too Allah planned to thwart their wicked plan. Christian missionaries have an issue with the words used for both the Jews and Allah. They prefer to translate this way:

“and [they] deceived and Allah deceived and Allah is the best of deceivers”

The above translation does not exist. It is only made up by crazy deluded missionaries in order to lead people astray. Arabic word(s) makr, Makara can be used negatively and for good.  So when the Jews planned to get Jesus arrested and crucified, that was evil, whereas when Allah thwarted their evil plan by saving Jesus, this was good.

Discover the Truth.  “Response to Critics Claim ‘Allah is A Deceiver’ – Quran 3:54.”  January 24, 2015.

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

Pope Paul VI.  “Nostra Aetate: Declaration on The Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965.”  Vatican.

Verily methinks the woman was deceived, the Jews were libled — the whole lot, and the post-Holocaust Vatican compelled to clarify the truth of its position in relation to the Jewish People.

Ironically related reference on the Soviet framing of WWII’s Pope Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope”: Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J. Disinformation. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.  (BackChannels readers will find more of similar in “The Russian Section” of the resident library).

Further related and more conveniently accessed: Akin, Jimmy.  “How Pius XII Protected Jews.”  Catholic Answers, n.d.: “Hochhuth’s fictional image of a silent (though active) pope has been transformed by the anti-Catholic rumor mill into the image of a silent and inactive pope—and by some even into an actively pro-Nazi monster. If there were any truth to the charge that Pius XII was silent, the silence would not have been out of moral cowardice in the face of the Nazis, but because the Pope was waging a subversive, clandestine war against them in an attempt to save Jews.”

As people lie — engage in deception — either to hide something or to get something, we know, this according to Ms. Lessing, what the ignoble imam was after; and according to Jimmy Akin as well as the breathtaking revelations of Pacepa and Rychlak (2013), we know what the noble Pope Pius XII was hiding for good cause.

The Discover the Truth blog goes on to note the moral ambiguity involved in the term “makr” this way: “The word, makr in Arabic denotes a subtle and secret move or plan. If this is for a good purpose, it is good; and if this is for a bad purpose, it is bad.”

The argument places the determination of good deed or evil beyond the declaration of Surat 3:54: “And (the unbelievers) plotted and planned, and Allah too planned, and the best of planners is Allah” (Yusuf Ali’s translation).

Again: “The word, makr in Arabic denotes a subtle and secret move or plan. If this is for a good purpose, it is good; and if this is for a bad purpose, it is bad.”

It would appear that “being the best of planners” — being the most proficient among the makers of subtle and secret moves or plans — would be a thing separate from being either good or evil, i.e., the statement is about facility in the making of “subtle and secret moves” and neutral about ethical and moral virtue, plain dealing, and straight talk as behaviors civil, desirable, good, and lawful in and of themselves.

Given so much encouragement and license for the making of “subtle and secret moves”, who then — or what — determines the qualities of good cause?

I’ll leave that question rhetorical.

One might suppose that had Lessing’s imam been honest with her, Lessing may yet be wearing her hijab with pride.

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FTAC – Twitter Choice

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Journal, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Yemen

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Following, for a while. As with so many others incapable of rejecting a sect (in its entirety) within a religion of which one is not a part and over a conflict that is distant and — and I will assign blame to Khamenei and others of feudal mind and ambition — archaic, I don’t want to weigh on the scales. I’ve found the same divide in Shiite and other circles where claim is made about being “the Jews of islam” (and persecuted by Sunni Muslims). Nonetheless, one understands: where this kind of conflict is hot — the bullets are flying and the bombs are going off and lives are being ended, shattered, or threatened in the most direct ways — polarization is as unavoidable as it is destructive and seemingly impossible to repair.

The place where the bullets are flying: Yemen.

The drift of sympathy: against the Houthis as representative of Ayatollah Khamenei’s War by Proxy that in turn defends feudal absolutism and seeks to expand the regime’s power against Sunni interests.

In another and now increasingly distant age — even 25 or 50 years ago may now seem like centuries — the Yemeni part of the Islamic Small Wars would been played as a clipping in the back of the “A” section of the newspapers, a remote tribal war to be overlooked by western indifference.

Those days are gone.

Our Facebook friends are either there or have family and friends who are close to live fire — not only in Yemen but everywhere being razed and ruined by these forces — and we’re watching without recourse to choosing a good and bad side except against the “al-Qaeda Typicals” and the “Hezbollah Virus”, i.e., operations with military wings so awful that the good of the planet would seek to shut down regardless of other disagreements stemming from nominal affiliations and associated cultural, political, and religious self-concept.

Instead, some of us seem to be standing by friends on both sides and hoping the theme of “The Medieval vs The Modern” will catch on before the medieval world, which some are working hard to sustain, swallows the modern.  That outcome may not be possible across continents, but it seems to be proving possible in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe (with Putin-Khamenei as the hub from which so much chaos, destruction, and political confusion emanate).

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From Correspondence – On (Swedish) Nationalism and Ethnolinguistic Cultural Survival and Self-Determination

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Northern Europe, Philology, Politics, Regions, Sweden

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Posted to YouTube June 15, 2015.

While one may wish not to endorse a racist national socialism – one that seeks the destruction or subjugation of all others everywhere – I’ve always stood behind the prerogatives of ethnolinguistic cultural survival and self-determination. The possession of culture (with beliefs, calendar, customs, institutions, and rituals) suspended in and transmitted through language is a precious gift, and one that man cannot create except in the natural course of living together in some human space and in limited numbers, i.e., a social subset of the species in its totality.

American multiculturalism works partly because of the English-borne classical liberalism passed down through its constitution through time and a combination of privacy, resources, and space such that every cooperating culture may and has found some place to plant itself and struggle along or thrive on the American quilt. Most other states, if not all, including those of the British Commonwealth, have a legitimate part of old feudal interest in the survival of, indeed, both a national way of life (x beliefs, calendar, customs, institutions, and rituals) and the adjusted survival of indigenous contributing cultures within.

The correspondent had shared the video with BackChannels.  Plainly, the complaint devolves to geospatial cultural realities — Let Sweden be Swedish! — and how those interests may be handled today.

In Sweden, the Church of Sweden has been separated from the state since 2000 — the state has become secular — and political navigation has proceeded from the fundamentally changed premise.

En Arg Blatte Talar, AKA “Angry Foreigner” on YouTube, and the spokesman in the above video is himself a Bosnian immigrant to Sweden.  As much surfaces in a related video (by Sargon of Akkad, June 10, 2015, time: 1:37:23).

Among other observations, Talar notes on his Angry Foreigner page, “I don’t hate blacks, arabs and jews. No idea why some of the comments are like that. I am not against immigration as a phenomenon. Of course Im not saying that every country should close it’s borders. Im just asking that other countries take more responsibility with asylum seekers so that we in Sweden don’t have to take as much. It’s fucking killing us. Our politicians are too scared to integrate immigrants properly and it’s causing problems for both the ethnic population and us who have come here over the past years.”

Pat Condell, “Sweden – Ship of fools” (posted to YouTube October 13, 2014):

On the other side of asylum and immigration issues of serious scale are conditions in other lands.  Mexico’s ever lumbering economy and narcoterrorism literally drives its population to border-running desperation.  The same may be noted where mass lowest-level employment draws labor into foreign enslavement.  In other quarters — but I have Syria and Iraq immediately in mind (however, watch out for an increase in Ukraine’s newly dispossessed) — open conflict (poorly addressed) has produced “internally displaced” and “refugee” (homeless, either way) numbers ranging far into the million (by way of Syria alone, above nine million).

Swedish good nature and goodness may account for folly in acts of grace that would take in the immigrant (tired, poor, wretched, and culturally militant), but the challenge to the world (perhaps: get the coming numbers down; get resources up; and move internal economies and trade into strong development) dwarfs even its best potential gestures.

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FTAC – On the Opposition of the Lawless to the Influence of Israel

29 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The world is the world as found, X., and we’re a wild species in it. The AQ-Typicals and the Hezbollahvirus may be part of a larger mix of lawless souls represented by Russia’s Emperor De Facto and his “New Nobility” and assorted New Nationalists and National Socialists, and that is what has the UN going after Israel and the inheritors in whole and part of the legacy of Moses the Lawgiver.

The more familiar the message, the more distilled and telegraphed it becomes.

In political shorthand, the “West” becomes “Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian”; the arrangement of the most significant and virulent forces opposed: “Syndicate Red Brown Green“.

Elaboration seems no longer needed.

Additional concepts and data may be helpful as regards challenges inherent in the governance of states opposed to the western democracies and their true allies worldwide: Egypt failed in its first foray as a democracy, proving itself unprepared for the aggressive fascism of the Muslim Botherhood — and it chose to advance to the rule of a military pursuing business for itself and the state while promoting for all Egyptians a moderating classical liberalism.  For sheer expanse and numbers, China too would seem imprudent were it to rapidly transfer the powers of the ruling elite now invested in the west — and proud to own some mansions in Melbourne and elsewhere — across a democratized but perhaps also disorganized sea of humanity.

For the greater part, possibly, our international competitions may be also naturally adjusting, but there are bloodied fringes too: Russian hybrid warfare in Ukraine has made a dismal space of Crimea, and one that on the Russo-nationalist track has no durable, ennobled, or happy future, so mired has Putin’s revanche neo-feudal Russia become in political crime (a visit to “The Russian Section” may help clarify that assertion).

The Green Fringe (however it may “Shimmer“) promotes its horror show in both a compelling and relentless fashion.  Call it “Black Flag Friday” — my notes remind: “Lyon – beheading“; “Kuwait – Shiite mosque“; “Tunisia – tourism, 38 dead“; “Somalia – African Union base – Leego – 30 killed“; “Thursday – Kobane – Kurdistan – massacre“.

And the Brown?

Today’s “Brown” (for “Brown Shirts”, Nazis, National Socialists, Nationalists of the want of a stripe of ethnic, racial, or religious purity — in that last aspect, everyone, Jews included, may have someone among the “the pure” bearing in common affection for the fascist’s favored color in work shirts) wears camouflage:

In a recent interview with Reuters, Mr Vona claimed: “With time, the [extremist] elements of Jobbik you may see as prevalent will fade because they no longer find their calling here.”

This attempt at detoxification, à la National Front in France, has convinced few observers, however. Political analyst Peter Kreko says: “The hardcore antisemitism, the hardcore anti-Roma sentiments, are still present in Jobbik, they simply display it less prominently.”

Fabriczki, Franciska.  “Jobbik is doing a bad makeover job.”  The JC – The Jewish Chronicle Online, June 9, 2015.

“Brown” also shimmers, but since the defeat of nationalist fascism in Europe and even with the development and morphing of similar movements in Russia like Pamyat and Russian National Unity, it has a deeply fragmented and riven aspect to it.  There is no unifying “internationalist nationalist” framework for belligerence.  Perhaps ironically, BackChannels encouragement of “ethnolinguistic cultural integrity” and responsive geospatial arrangements in troubled regions addresses exactly the kernel that anchors the idea of “The Jewish State” — or that of those who dream of an independent Balochistan or a unified Kurdistan.  Nonetheless, when Hungary’s Jobbik Party has associated itself with the regime in Iran, the “Brown-Green” portion of “Red Brown Green” would seem apt.

No Moses?

No Muhammad.

However, with Moses and Muhammad and Jesus between — and so many other personalities of historic note, including the the BC to CE-bridging Hillel the Elder — the world may boast of including about seven billion “Abrahamic” monotheists, however fractious.  Faced with the onslaughts of the Islamists and the plain thieving promoted by the Feudalists, most might prefer the “rule of law” to the bloody enslavement and exploitation of the lawless.

With the introduction of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” and Eve’s predictable transgression, the Torah introduces three aspects of humanity that are to accompany its journey through time: human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience.

Ah, to be burdened by conscience!

Says Hillel the Elder to an as yet unconvinced prospective convert: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.  That is the whole of Torah.  The rest is commentary.  Now go and study.”

Awareness of others . . . conscience . . . some justice inherent in the phrase that anchors a good portion of the law and empirical legal methods: “Because it could happen to you” — whatever it is.

Rule of law.

As opposed to the rule of men who have made themselves into unbridled, unconscionable, unredeemable monsters.

Anti-Semitic expression involves lying, sometimes grossly so as with the medieval “blood libel“, but often also with subtlety by way of obfuscations and omissions easily overlooked by lazy minds short on curiosity or time and long, perhaps, on culturally transmitted and enforced bad feeling (about someone — could be anyone — outside their own known group).

As hatreds go, one might find the signals of anti-Semitic thought inherently criminal for being plainly disingenuous.

There’s nothing more to it.

What makes anti-Semitic cant more interesting is who embraces it and exploits the same in the interest of developing or furthering their own powers of abuse.

Update – On the Web

Amier, Justin.  “I don’t like Jews because . . .”  The Blogs, The Times of Israel, August 11, 2014.

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