Category Archives: Politics

FTAC – Obama – Ambivalence, Feudalism, Obscurantism, and Political Jiu Jitsu – A Comment

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

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He’s done more than screw up the region — or address larger political tectonics like the post-Soviet collapse of Soviet arrangements and behaviors. Boasting transparency, he has removed from popular observation the underlying policies of his Administration, transforming America’s democracy into its own neo-feudal world, a mirror perhaps of the feudal world he has engaged.

I remain both ambivalent and clinical cold in my “reading” of Obama’s domestic and foreign political policy involving his avoidance of confrontation and a kind of almost (!) but not quite complete rollover to the infiltration and possible perversion of intellectual assets (from advisors to campuses to think tanks). The U.S., perhaps others as well, has absorbed the agents of malicious movements, but it has also weakened the legs of the post-KGB Putin-Khamenei programs. The end of the Cold War and suspension of the Soviet failed to permanently transform Russia into a rule-of-law state. Colonel President Emperor Putin has extended the old program under cover of a neo-feudal nationalism and Obama has been either stuck with its disassembly or made part of its longevity.

Credit Obama with destabilizing the Soviet holdovers in international business and criminal relationships.  The “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” arrangement has been looking a bit rough lately (I understand the preferred enemy — as opposed to a moderate popular revolutionary one — the “Islamist Front”  — because it makes a better self-glorifying story for our malignant narcissists — has drawn close to the gates defending whatever remains of Assad’s governing power [he has really destroyed his own crib]).

Also looking unmasked and pale: Venezuela’s Maduro may handily deal with the direct opposition using the tools familiar to dictators, but with the economic woes derived from his own disastrous national policies, he appears bound to deal with enemies within his own circles as well.

Related Reading and Additions

Leopoldo López has been imprisoned in a military prison for one year and a month. Leopoldo is innocent, he shouldn’t remain as a prisoner for another day. He is imprisoned because of his words, because of what he thinks, for daring to say what the majority of Venezuelans wanted to hear.

He denounced Maduro’s regime as undemocratic, corrupt, inefficient, and repressive. Those words are now more alive than ever.

Marty, Belen.  “Lilian Tintori: “Leopoldo Surrendered to Unmask Maduro.”  Pan Am Post, March 31, 2015.

It was a sign of how bad things are in the Americas. Authoritarian governments now rule in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia. All employ, to varying degrees, at least some elements of the Cuban model in which the executive consolidates power, civil society is suppressed, and due process is passe.

Elections are rigged. Rulers expropriate at will. Media outlets that dare to differ from the party line face legal burdens that can wipe them out.

O’Grady, Mary Anastasia.  “Obama Rehabilitates the Castro Brothers: The Organization of American States is now open to dictatorships.”  The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2015.

Hiding dictatorship — how it works its ugliness, what it really looks like — from the young appears increasingly difficult given American Presidential attention.  While American conservatives frame Obama’s about-to-happen meet-and-greet with Raoul Castro as a gross compromise of the American democratic spirit, as much also highlights how really awful — “state capitalist” (actually), criminal, manipulative, and repressive Cuba’s governing elite have been all along:

But a second activist, from Argentina, reported on social media suffering similar treatment.

Micaela Hierro Dori said “the same happened to me”, and that she was threatened with being deported to Argentina.

“They are looking to silence the young,” she said.

Alexander, Harriet.  “Cuban dissident arrested on arrival at Panama’s Summit of the Americas.”  The Telegraph, April 6, 2015.

Perhaps the young will wish not to be silenced this year.

Be that as it may, Obama’s friendly reach-out-and-touch-someone-awful tour appears to have a way of uncloaking or uncovering ageing despots: it appears some are getting the attention — the global spotlight — they themselves have long craved.

More From the Awesome Conversation:

Old southern joke about an drunk accused of arson: “Your honor,” he says, “the bed was already on fire when I got into it!”

For Obama, the middle east, so delicately balanced in power, was well screwed up when he got into office, and given both the clout and ruthlessness of the enemies of democracy and modernity, the direct “Arab Spring” may have been due to fail if too much associated with Washington. Instead, the demonic — those “malignant narcissists” — have been given their wish: highest visibility and plenty of room for showing the world how they do business and what the world — and its latest generations — really thinks of them.

We often let attitude and predisposition establish our beliefs when what is wanted may be a lot of observation and a little bit of “wait just a minute”.

While fretting over Khamenei getting The Bomb, have we given much thought to the impact on Iranians of various revelations about the Khamenei brothers wealth? What is that information doing to both colleagues and constituents within each despotic state?

Out of necessity, American presidents find themselves hitched to the momentum of American programs. They might fiddle with some things — get in some licks on behalf of their own inclinations and sentiments — but the machinery is larger than they are and, so far, it has survived every one of them.

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A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: Obama

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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

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Winston Churchill’s 1939 observation about the Kremlin, then the brainworks of the Soviet through a particularly pernicious period, might well apply to the Obama Administration today: image-creating and image-projecting; opaque in its machinations behind closed doors; and deliberately manipulative and misdirecting.

Subject for investigation: the reversion of America’s 20th Century democracy into a 21st Century fief beneath the cover of a wartime presidency shielded by the president’s own abundant charisma and charm.

For BackChannels, the theme developed out of correspondence involving statements by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former chief of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Screen capture, April 1, 2015.

Screen capture, April 1, 2015.

Of interest, was Iran’s obsessive march toward ownership of The Bomb and the Obama Administration’s dippy whack diplomacy on that point and in the middle east in general.

Of greater interest to BackChannels has been how the Iranian nuclear debacle or putsch fits with an emerging image of a “Newest Nobility” engaged in global feudal-medieval politics — call it the “Politics of Criminals” for how whole constituencies have been endangered, murdered, or plundered outright beneath its various banners (among the despotic: different talks — same walks).

Is Obama the “Manchurian Candidate” as the Far Right often suggests?

Or is he a master of disguise — and we’re not going to crash into the mountain after all?

We’re a long way today from Wag The Dog (1997).

Today’s “political theater” is real but may be equally produced, for we know that “false flag operations” appear now routine in political manipulation (reference Karen Dawisha’s fine analysis of the Moscow Apartment Bombings in her book, Putin’s Kleptocracy) and both avoiding or dissembling over tough questions (first troops in Ukraine – no marked uniforms; the shoot-down of MH 17 over Ukraine; the confusion of official explanations involving the Albert Nisman murder mystery in Argentina) have become part — or simply a more evident and clearly seen part — of global politics.

Of material related to Ali Khamenei’s plundering of Iran, BackChannels would consider the stand-down order from the mayor near Mosul, Iraq as the most deeply disturbing of documents as regards Syndicate Red Brown Green’s cynical manipulation of apparent battlespace: “ISIS” may not have routed Iraq’s western-equipped and trained army: the gates appear to have been at least partially officially opened — but only on to the north of Baghdad: today, Khamenei’s forces have been handily (conveniently) fighting Daesh while Iranian influence in Iraq has itself amassed a healthy virtual pile of news clippings.

Reminder: “Syndicate Red Brown Green”

Red = Post Soviet, neo-feudal Russia

Brown = New National Socialists

Green = Islamists (leaders and rogue movements)

21st Century Feudal Arcs of Power

Putin, Kadyrov

Putin, Assad, Khamenei

Putin, Khamenei

Putin, Orban

Putin, Erdogan

Khamenei, Hezbollah, (Kirchner?)

(Putin), Castro, Maduro

Foreign affairs wonks may summon to mind energy resource competitions and deals plus the murder of Alberto Nisman in order to scratch the chaff on the top of their heads as I do.

The American questions: is Obama humoring the despots or being handled by them?

Or is he faking them out?

There is a problem with behind-the-curtain cabal and deceit: political criminals — political bullies, cowards, and liars (always blend those three into one) — inspire and promote mistrust, transforming cultures of freedom into cults of personality and fear.

Reference

AP.  “Leader of Iranian force fighting ISIS is complicating US efforts, says CIA chief.” The Guardian, March 22, 2015.

BackChannels.  “Russia-NATO Kumbaya Sayonara.”  April 2, 2014.

Behn, Sharon.  “Iran’s influence in Iraq Deeper than Assumed.”  Voice of America, March 19, 2015.

Hannity, Sean. “Is the administration giving Iran the nuclear bomb?”  Fox News, March 31, 2015.

Harrington, Elizabeth.  “Obama Admin’s New Spending Website Rolls Back Transparency.”  Free Beacon.  April 1, 2015.

Hicks, Josh.  “Former intelligence official: Obama’s Middle East policy is ‘willful ignorance’.  The Washington Post, March 29, 2015.

Lipkes, Jeff.  “Republicans see Obama as a more imminent threat than Putin.”  American Thinker, March 31, 2015.

Navalny, Alexey.  Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Translator.  “Alexey Navalny On the Murder of Boris Nemtsov.”  Interpret Magazine, March 3, 2015.

Peek, Liz.  “A Naive Deal with Iran Tops Obama’s Bungled Mideast Policy.”  The Fiscal Times, April 1, 2015.

Tucker, Maxim.  “Russia Launches Next Deadly Phase of Hybrid War on Ukraine.”  Newsweek, March 31, 2015.

Van Buren, Peter.  “Americans see Putin as only slightly more imminent threat than Obama, poll says.” Reuters, March 30, 2015.

Walker, Shaun.  “How Nemtsov’s murder could force Putin into a big decision.”  The Guardian, March 29, 2015.

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Link – Iranian Journalist – Clear, Accurate, and Complete Defection

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Israel, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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Montaghi told an Iranian opposition channel broadcasting from London that he did not see any sense in his profession as a journalist since he could only write what he was told to write.

According to the British Telegraph newspaper, Motaghi also harshly criticized the American role in the talks, saying the White House was attempting to persuade the other members of the P5+1 group of nations (US, England, France, Russia, China and Germany) to accept Iran’s point of view.

“The US negotiating team is mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” Montaghi said.

“Iranian journalist covering nuke talks defects to West”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-journalist-covering-nuke-talks-defects-to-west/ – 3/29/2015.

Primary:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11500145/Pro-Hassan-Rouhani-Iranian-editor-defects-while-covering-nuclear-talks-in-Lausanne.html – 3/27/2015.

“RIP Dear Yesteryear” – Guest Post by Naima Nas

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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We start by lightening the load on our children’s minds, allowing them objectivity rather than indoctrination, and hopefully guiding them to think and plan for a future instead of programming them to perpetually whine over a past long gone.

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Much ado about a little something again, as the Egyptian education authorities pokes a hornet nest.

Buzzzzzzzzzzz!

It goes with the usual hysteria! But is it merited? Well, if “the preservation of history” is the only focus and every other detail is blocked out, then yes, there is potentially room for a debate. Otherwise, this is possibly the best news I have heard all week in a sea of bad news, each piece of news a wave sweeping over the last so fast, I barely had time to pop my head up for air.

The latest news?

Restricting the tide of “hero worship” in the language curriculum in Egyptian schools.

The assortment of headlines may have included more sentational wording but that really is the total sum of it! It is not an attempt to obliterate the memory of Salah El Din or Uqba Ibn Nafi. Just restrict their stories to where they belong, in the history class with lessons to learn from their errors as well as triumphs, not the Arabic language/Religious education one usually delivered by the same teacher.

“Bravo!”  is what many of us think and I will tell you why.

I personally love languages, all of them, especially my native one Arabic!

Nothing touches my very soul like Arabic.

As a young student, my Arabic teacher, who I am not going to name as I do not wish to be associated with his name now or ever was also my religious education teacher. When the teacher began to adopt very fundamental views on religion, none of us in that class questioned them. Cut a long story short, eventually I announced to my horrified parents that I would be wearing a Burka from then on!

Shorter story still, my father said NO, absolutely NOT.

That really was the total sum of my teenage rebellion quashed by my tyrant father- or so I thought at the time. Oh, I protested and complained for weeks, but that was that, as I never dreamt of disobeying my father at 14/15 I just settled for resenting him for a very long time. It is ok — I’ve grown up since realizing over time how we get so excited at times over our freedom of this, that, or the other, and we should, sometimes! But at times, depending on what is at stake, we should pause and look further, wider, and deeper into what we are about to launch into wars, be it an actual war or just one of words.

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I very much doubt an introduction to Salah El Din is necessary for anyone reading this. Every one knows who he was. And this is too short an article to discuss a man who is possibly the most revered after religious figures. I ll let you do that research into the volumes and volumes of studies at your own leisure. What is relevant to this very short piece is what I believe is the impact of the myth on the whole region, especially during the past 100 years or so.  Allow me to quote a few lines from Switching Souls – a book online- that sum this impact: “….. the father of every Arab nation, fancied himself the reincarnation of Salah El Din, the great Muslim warrior who unified the Islamic nation against the undeniable danger of the Crusades. Imperialism became the bastard offspring of the Crusades and Zionism was cast as the devil child of both: who could can resist that?”

I can just picture the shock and horror generated by an Arab, which i proudly am, disputing the greatness of this incomparable Warrior.

Relax I am not disputing anything!

Salah El Din was great and inspirational in every way.

Salah El Din is also dead now and the circumstances that dictated any or all of his actions were never identical to the circumstances throughout the past 100 years, and that is the point: the only common denomination in this operation is in fact Jerusalem. If we are brutally honest, had Jerusalem not been the focal point, he might have remained where he belonged, in the history books relating to the Crusades. By linking the crusades to Western imperialism, religion was dragged into a dispute that had nothing to do with religion to start with.

Yes, I know anti-semitism started that whole chain reaction with the persecution of the Jews, an ethnic group recognised for their religion most of the time, I know!

Still, leaping from that to making the Jewish/Arab conflict a religious one and asserting that the fight for Jerusalem was a religious holy war was, is, and will be the doom of the whole region.

The formula is all wrong and too deadly, and it works only with the mythical figure of the warrior at its centre. So it makes a certain kind of sense to lay that to rest, especially in language classes that by habit often spill into religious education.

It is a tall order compressing all this in a few lines, but I sincerely believe that if we are serious about finding peace for us all in the region, not to mention pulling the plug and the black magic rug from under the feet of every abomination that has sprung from it as a result, then we have absolutely no choice but to start the divorce procedures now: divorce from myths, from forced similarities, from delusions of recapturing a glorious past by dressing up in the heroes costumes. Instead, today, we start by concentrating on freeing young and impressionable minds from the cobwebs left hanging within them, and by founding a stronger basis to their identities than “I used to be great, so great my great, great, grand father used to whoop your great, great grandfather’s butt, you non-Arab, non-Muslim thing ya!”.

We start by lightening the load on our children’s minds, allowing them objectivity rather than indoctrination, and hopefully guiding them to think and plan for a future instead of programming them to perpetually whine over a past long gone.

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FTAC – Fast Note on Journalism in the Feudal Mode

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, North America, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The problem is the plan — public business — appears to have been worked out in private and the results misrepresented, obscured, or staged (recall: I think Daesh influenced, possibly unknowingly, by Khamenei — bribery and disinformation would do that), and that [implied activity] partially transitions a democratic nation into a feudal (and infantilized) state.

Alternatively, the Administration has set out to please and play all by refusing “hot wars” (as with Syria) and letting “Red Brown Green” cook, corrupt, and infiltrate while obtaining greater North American energy independence, breaking “RBG” at the wellheads, rebuilding an economy to meet the expenses of direct intercession in violent conflict.

What I have found repeated in the Islamic Small Wars and in western politics is the tendency for attitudes (accumulated beliefs plus feelings about them) to lead the development and perception of factual data (so we see what we have been prepared or programmed to see). That noted, the “keys” — conversations, deals, decisions, moments — to many issues appear out of the reach of journalists. As headlines relay news about the news — there’s some back-and-forth today on Israel spying on U.S. negotiations with Iran (Israel admits more to spying on the Iranian side of those negotiations and denies spying on an allie). The allegation by the U.S. demonizes Israel (!), and journalists appear to have little way, if any, of getting to the truth. The pack appears reduced to passing along press releases.

Q: The plan?

A: Give Iran everything it wants — i.e., a nuclear deal favorable to the continuing development of nuclear material, weapons, and delivery systems; the delivery of Iraq to an expanded Iranian Shiite enterprise (and the promotion of Iran’s match with Daesh as genuine history (as opposed to Khamenei-arranged political theater); the delivery of Yemen into the Khamenei sphere of influence.

Are there journalists Out There (or in Washington or Tehran) who can prove these perception true or false?

Whatever it is, Big Government — Big Brother, Big Daddy, The Experts — will take care of it while the general constituency (or readership) gets on with the more serious business — the great distraction — of making money and investing or spending it.

The removal of serious public business and concerns into private domains may suffice for the insertion of the feudal mode (Authority –> Newest Nobility –> Treasury : Military –> Subjugated Populace) into democratic and open processes.

Putin-Khamenei-(Obama)?

Considering the gains obtained by the despotic against western interests (in Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, Yemen, for a start) and accompanying inroads into government and intellectual assets (on-campus anti-Semitism would seem to signal agitation by fascistic forces via specific academic placements — just check the BDS lists), the question begs that “transparency” bragged by the Obama Administration in fact be met with investigation and examinable disclosure.

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Correa Refuses Maduro Meeting, Source Says

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ecuador, International Development, Politics, South America, Venezuela

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Ecuador’s president Raphael Correa will not meet with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month, says a BackChannels source.

The decision, if true, follows on a rapid economic decline in Venezuela involving increasingly visible dictatorship and political repression and a kind of stink that devoted socialist leaders, either in heart or speech, may apparently wish to avoid.

Only three months ago, Maduro visited with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in Tehran and then in Saudi Arabia with then Crown Prince Salman (twelve days later, the same would become King Salman) to navigate some way between opposition to the west and cooperation with Iran’s opponents in exchange for loans:

“We’re finalizing a financial alliance with important banks from Qatar that will give us sufficient oxygen to help cover the fall in oil prices and give us the resources we need for the national foreign currency budget,” Maduro said, adding that the two nations had also “strengthened the ties of cooperation to open paths for cultural and touristic exchange.”

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11157 – 1/12/2015.

Recent related faux socialist grandstanding by President Correa:

. . . the US “Has ‘double standards’ and sustains good relations with absolute monarchies, without democracy” while Venezuela has to face the usual elites causing interference to see if they can destabilize the government. “When will they understand that Latin America has changed. Here you will find sovereignty, dignity, unity,” he said.

He called Washington’s position “a disgrace” and stressed that “Latin America must speak out in opposition to such arrogance, unilateralism and imperialism.”

http://www.pressenza.com/2015/03/president-of-ecuador-highlights-meeting-of-unsaur-in-quito-to-discuss-the-position-of-venezuela/ – 3/16/2015.

Bloomberg Business comments:

Correa, who has long allied himself with Chavez’s socialist ambitions and declared three days of mourning to mark his death, is now deviating from policies that saw him use Ecuador’s oil wealth to finance record spending. Maduro’s refusal to break with the currency controls and gasoline subsidies embraced by Chavez is deepening concern that Venezuela, which gets about 95 percent of its export revenue from oil, will run out of money as soon as this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/bondholders-spurning-chavezs-venezuela-disciple-andes-credit – 1/14/2015.

Since late February, Maduro’s course in political repression has been making headlines: Washington Post – “Venezuela and Cuba: Partners in repression”; Yahoo! Maktoob News – “Venezuelan teen dies after being shot at anti-Maduro protest”; Wall Street Journal – “Venezuela Cracks Down on Dissent”; NPR – “Venezuela’s President Sees Only Plots as His Economy Crumbles”, etc.

From the NPR piece:

. . . in blaming the U.S. for nearly all his problems, Maduro is crying wolf, says Xabier Coscojuela, editor of the Caracas newspaper Tal Cual.

“I’ve lost count of the number of alleged plots to overthrow or kill the president,” Coscojuela says. “It’s something like ten over the past two years. But there is no credible evidence in any of these cases.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/03/08/391549844/venezuelas-maduro-sees-only-plots-as-his-economy-crumbles – 3/8/2015.

Several terms coined or simply put to use on this blog might apply: “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”; “Malignant Narcissism”; “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.

The politician as feudal lord, “state capitalist”, or incredibly privileged socialist (or nationalist) has to enjoy the psychological fruit of his own excesses — none of these presidents (for life) live in shacks (or pass time at spinning wheels) — and the results in real politics of a state-enforced magical economics that turns out entirely piratical.

This too comes from NPR:

Simon Nobile, 72, runs the Capri pasta factory in the capital Caracas, which was founded by his Italian-born father in 1940. Capri’s two plants crank out 11 million pounds of pasta per month.

They could produce nearly twice that much. However, Nobile says a government policy designed to help the poor forces him to sell half of his inventory for just five cents a pound.

“There is no incentive because price controls mean that you lose money. So the more you produce, the more money you lose,” he says.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/02/07/384331225/rich-in-oil-venezuela-is-now-poor-in-most-everything-else – 2/7/2015.

While “inclusion” numbers among the six primary global virtues promoted by this blog, it takes some careful planning to channel much needed cash to the floor of an economy and sustain that traffic across time.

It doesn’t happen by magic.

The process need not dehumanize, humiliate, or subjugate, but it may need to be responsive and responsible to labor involved and the many productive capacities and cultural and environmental boundaries of place.

The drop in oil prices was the deep voice of international capital speaking, which irrupted as if from nowhere and in counterpoint to the rhythms of local and visible Venezuelan politics. When international capital spoke, it dashed all the local plans, because the slow time-frame of the Bolivarian government’s plans for economic diversification and the turtle steps of the Venezuelan opposition’s march towards the upcoming elections suddenly were no longer viable.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11264 – 3/11/2015

Chris Gilbert’s mention of “economic diversification” plays up that will-o’-the-wisp — there is always talk of it, but when one goes to find it, it’s less there than it should be — facing at least several autocratic governments reliant on mineral proceeds for fueling their economies.

In 2012 it looked like the politician’s spectacular career was winding down. Suddenly, he was back on top. People With Money reports on Tuesday (March 17) that Maduro is the highest-paid politician in the world, pulling in an astonishing $96 million between February 2014 and February 2015, a nearly $60 million lead over his closest competition.

http://en.mediamass.net/people/nicolas-maduro/highest-paid.html – 3/18/2015.

Chavez’s family now reportedly owns 17 country estates totaling more than 100,000 acres in the western state of Barinas, as well as assets of $550 million stored in various international bank accounts. Residents in the same region wait as long as three hours for basic provisions at grocery stores.

National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello, a close confidant of Chavez and member of Maduro’s United Socialist Party, has allegedly amassed “a private fortune” through corruption and ties to regional drug traffickers. The Miami Herald reported accusations last week that Cabello received at least $50 million in bribes to overlook lucrative public contracts that were overpriced, according to a recent lawsuit.

Maduro said those who distort events in Venezuela are “on the side of the 1 percent.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nicolas-maduro-fact-check/ – 4/2/2014.

The politics of foreign despots at a glance . . . the reason I find what I do (with simple search terms like “Maduro, wealth”, and a click of the mouse) is because I know the anchors of the image — the image of post-socialist now neo-feudal dictators AKA “malignant narcissists” — have their record in yesterday’s news and the factual data conveyed through it.

A joint new study by three leading Venezuelan universities — Andres Bello Catholic University, Central University of Venezuela, and Simon Bolivar University — shows that 48.4 percent of Venezuelan households were below the poverty line in 2014, up from 45 percent of households in 1998, before late radical leftist President Hugo Chávez took office and benefited from nearly a decade of soaring world oil prices.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article9311450.html – 2/4/2015.

Venezuela has some of the world’s largest proven oil deposits as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, bauxite and gold.

Yet most Venezuelans live in poverty, many of them in shanty towns, some of which sprawl over the hillsides around the capital, Caracas.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19649648 – 3/11/2015

Poverty is no joke: no dignity; no freedom; no growth; no future.

Whether the “unit of analysis” is individual, family, or community makes no difference. The restraints and punishments (for political dissent) suffocate soul and spirit.

To redress grievance and repair requires some accurate — not paranoid — comprehension of involved economic, political, and psychological forces and variables, starting with the character of the leadership in place: as it stands today, the feudal-medieval principle continues to invite to its portals conflict and revolution, the differences between a 12th Century despot, a 19th Century czar, and a 21st Century dictator yielding the same result in economic and social modeling across geopolitical space and time.

However, social — and perhaps liberal, humanist, and socialist — expectations have changed markedly since medieval days, and people become simply more rapidly aware of their own potential — and the potential of where they live as a base for living and producing for themselves and others (at fair rates) — and equally apprised of real cultural, political, and social impediments to achievement, and those same may include a piratical nobility.

“We used to produce rice and we had excellent coffee; now we produce nothing. With the situation here people abandoned the fields,” says Jesús López, in reference to government-seized land that sits idle. “Empty shelves and no one to explain why a rich country has no food. It’s unacceptable,” adds the 90-year-old farmer from San Cristóbal, on the western state of Táchira, bordering Colombia.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/sep/26/venezuela-food-shortages-rich-country-cia – 9/26/2013.

The so-called “socialist” scapegoating of the west, the Jews, the capitalists, and so on simply runs into its own true common feudal Orwellian political reality: dens of thieves, after all.

According to this measure, the number of Venezuelans classified as poor shot up in the last year by 1.8 million people. Roughly 6 percent of all Venezuela’s 30 million people became poor in the last year alone. The situation is even direr when one looks at extreme poverty, i.e., the number of people whose income cannot even buy a representative basket of food and drink. In the last year alone, the number of extremely poor Venezuelans rose by 730,000. They now reach close to three million people, or roughly 10 percent of the population.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/04/poverty-shoots-up-in-venezuela – 6/4/2015 –i.e., published almost a year ago, and, for sure, things cannot have gotten better.

Related Reference

http://lainfo.es/en/2015/03/17/presidents-arrive-in-venezuela-for-alba-meeting/ – 3/17/2015

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/venezuelas-president-nicolas-maduro-center-addresses-leaders-during-photo-001757098.html – 3/17/2015.

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Janus Feudal

16 Monday Mar 2015

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

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With the assembly of “Syndicate Red Brown Green” — post-Soviet neo-Feudal Russia under Putin, the “new nationalist” signalled by Orban and Erdogan, and the Islamofascism expressed through any number of organizations, whether Sunni or Shiite or Hezbollah or ISIS doesn’t amount to much of a difference — one has one side of a coin forged in blood, corruption, and terror.

Opposite: Blue-Green — the Democratic Open Societies and perhaps latent progressive Islamic forces, the two signified by cooperation between Washington, D.C., and Riyadh (Obama-Salman).

What is the substance of this newly minted coin?

How feudal is it — how feudal will it be — throughout?

Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Orban, Erdogan, Kirchner, Castro, and Maduro may be quite different as leaders and their talk dissimilar, but in walk they are each autocratic, powerful, wealthy, and cloaked by opaque political arrangements.  The mass of their constituencies cannot comb through their business alliances or political decisions with accuracy as each controls state “information space” (for unilingual speakers) through state-controlled press, Internet filtering, and political repression.

Of course, the west may be okay with “Red Brown Green” for its being ho-hum familiar and just so . . . 20th Century, so far.

More worrisome may be alterations in the character of the west itself: to what extent has the Obama Administration, possibly the most authoritarian and opaque in American history, shepherded the United States into a proto-feudal stance?

Up to this point, I have sensed variance between the Administration’s image and surface, especially as regards Islam and Israel, and actual programmatic budget and decision elements.  The hand extended in peace to Islam from the first inauguration forward has not wiped away Department of Defense and Israel Defense Force cooperation in the field, associated contract deliveries, or weapons programs, not that I’ve looked (some years ago and from far outside the Beltway) beyond “bunker busting bombs”, “Iron Dome”, and the “F-35 radar-evading fighter” programs.

Still, it would seem the White House has become as much the “enigma wrapped in a riddle” — what has it been doing abetting the Khamenei regime’s acquisition of weapons-grade nuclear fuel accompanied by programs — in missile technology, for sure — that would make it useful for the annihilation of the “Zionist entity”?

Issues involving cooperation and disclosure with the the whole of the government itself have become so apparent that even Senate Democrats have weighed in opposite the Administration as regards anything-goes privilege in the fashioning of the nation’s foreign policy:

Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House have been sharply critical of a letter freshman Senate Armed Services Committee member Tom Cotton of Arkansas and 46 other upper chamber Republicans sent Iranian leaders last Monday. In it, the GOP signatories warned Congress would not support the reported terms a possible deal currently under negotiation.

But even in the wake of the letter fracas, many Senate Democrats still agree with Republicans that lawmakers should have a role in determining whether sanctions against Iran that Congress approved should be eased or lifted.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/congress/2015/03/16/iran-nuclear-democrats-obama/24842049/ – 3/16/2015.

While Trita Parsi, who looks and sounds like Khamenei’s man in Washington, argues that what hurts the regime helps ISIS, BackChannels has maintained that ISIS has been in essence an Iran-manipulated project, helped along to establishment by way of a stand-down letter from a mayor near Mosul and stopped short of the concentration of Shiite communities south of Baghdad.

How convenient!

Of course.

But that is what “political theater” is — i.e., a malignant narcissist’s show put on for the world by way of false flags, behind-the-curtain deals (helped along by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, patronage, theft), and all.

Where would despots be without smoke-and-mirrors showbiz?

In KSA-USA relations, one expects a feudal atmosphere regardless of the pace of cultural adaptation and change in the Kingdom.  Because private wealth is feudal in character, one cannot expect the family-as-government to do its business in plain public view: with KSA, the modern democratic open societies may have had to reach back through time while “actors” external and interior have gone to work shaping a new society in “observable, measurable” ways (as moderate social progressives exist everywhere).

What about Obama’s USA all by itself?

I will just come out and say it: I agree with many who say that our current president has an un-American perspective. But I say, even further, that his perspective is, in fact, quintessentially ‘old world.’

Deddens, Kate.  “Falling into Feudalism.”  The Imaginative Conservative, September 4, 2012.

Then there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police officers to avoid prosecution when they strip search non-violent criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper spray peaceful protestors. These are the laws of the new age we are entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which can result in a person being jailed for possessing marijuana while bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free.

Unfortunately, this two-tiered system of justice has been a long time coming. The march toward an imperial presidency, to congressional intransigence and impotence, to a corporate takeover of the mechanisms of government, and the division of America into haves and have nots has been building for years.

Whitehead, John W.  “The Age of Neo-feudalism: A Government of the Rich, By the Rich and for the Corporations.”  Huffington Post, January 28, 2013.

The ambivalence and ambiguity of the above juxtaposition speaks for itself.

How well do we know — how well CAN we know — about what is going on in the surrounding world when government initiatives and the news itself seems freighted with “done deals” — arrangements made out of public sight and then rolled out by ye high and mighty, albeit elected, for public perception?

The freshman senator from Arkansas and 46 of his Republican colleagues sought to bigfoot Obama on a deal not yet done whose details are not yet known.

Capehart, Jonathan.  “Tom Cotton picked apart by Army general over ‘mutinous’ Iran letter.”  The Washington Post, March 13, 2015.

How is it the “details are not yet known”?

How is it that Congress, including a Democratic Party portion — so this goes beyond partisan politics — feel slighted and rendered impotent in their influence on American foreign affairs policy, enough so to speak some truth to the power of the presidency — and sign on to an end-run around it?

Has American collectively become so complex a place as to have become Byzantine and separated from direct and meaningful access to power and its influence?

What today is the Commander and Chief’s relationship with his generals, neither in theory or homily but in the “realpolitik” between White House, Pentagon, and the Big Defense contracting community?

Dive in anywhere.

And drown.

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

Cotton, Tom.  “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”  March 9, 2015.

Among the marks of the feudal systems may be their untrustworthiness, dependent as they are on ruling personalities, frequently malignant, given to betrayals and deceits involving their people, their rivals, and, alas, their own partners.

Related reference

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy-defense/62699-150228-israel-appeals-to-us-for-317-million-in-additional-defense-funding-report – 2/28/2015.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_between_Kirchnerism_and_the_media

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116731/how-nicolas-maduro-controls-venezuelan-media – 2/24/2014.

Eisenberg, Roei.  “The four-billion dollar question of Israel’s elections.”  YNet News, March 16, 2015.

Haq, Husna.  “Pentagon backlash: Why are top military leaders attacking Obama’s foreign policy?”  Article and video.  The Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 2014.

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Venezuela – Maduro Obtains Absolute Power

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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

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Waiting for me on Facebook: a rumor of war (grammar removed, ellipses added):

Venezuela  . . . soldiers from Russia and Vietnam . . . training population . . . civil war . . . Ukraine . . . urban combat . . . confrontation in the jungle like . . . Vietnam . . . .

While Reuters reported yesterday on amped up Venezuelan military activity involving the mobilization of 80.000 soldiers and 20,000 civilians as part of a drill, and Dissident Voice has has issued a denial about anything being unusual, certainly nothing that would pose a threat to U.S. “national security and foreign policy” — that may be true, but it’s not so good for the people of Venezuela who have been impoverished by the privileged of the socialist class — Maduro has picked up the right to “legislate by decree” for the next nine months.

Related:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/15/us-venezuela-maduro-idUSKBN0MB0XI20150315 – 3/15/2015

While Putin and Maduro met and moaned about oil prices back in January, I haven’t yet seen mainstream media mention of foreign military advisors or troops engaged with Maduro’s now undeniably obvious dictatorship, for rule by the leader’s decree is what dictatorships do.  The news, however, turns up recent trade agreements between Venezuela and Vietnam involving “oil deals”, asphalt, and textile plants.

WASHINGTON – The Venezuelan government’s close ties to Cuba and Iran pose a real threat to its sovereignty, and to the security of the hemisphere, retired Brig. Gen. Antonio Rivero, a former insider in the government of Hugo Chávez, told Fox News Latino during a visit to Washington, D.C., this week.

Rivero held high-profile positions under Chávez – from 2003 to 2008, he was the director of the Civil Protection and Disaster Relief agency – until he refused to chant “Socialism, Fatherland or Death,” a pledge emblematic of the Cuban Revolution that was imposed unexpectedly as part of the official military salute.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/03/13/iran-had-military-presence-in-uranium-rich-area-venezuela-former-general-says/ – 3/13/2015.

Put together with Karen Dawisha’s work on Putin’s management of Russia, the reversion to “state capitalism” in both Russia and Venezuela — and for Iran, the Khamenei brothers appear to be a $60 billion duo — seems to line up with this blog’s emerging thesis that in the battle between the medieval and modern, neo-feudalism appears to be making its dismal autocratic and disingenuous (about empowerment of the people, human rights, and modification of the distribution of wealth toward social ends) mark.

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