Category Archives: Politics

FTAC – Good Influence

10 Monday Nov 2014

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I’ve had mixed feelings about Tom Trento — I follow him on Facebook but have not friended him — ever since he drove up to Arab festival in Dearborn as an observer-provocateur. In response, I made friends with Dearborn mover and shaker Ron Amen; however, sigh, these far left and right alignments do not work well for me. If through “ethos, logos, and pathos” defeating one’s most strident (but reasoning) critic makes for progress, Trento is a strong critic of Islam where criticism is needed and, perhaps, reform or strong directional emphasis involving literature extant may respond to it.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

We cheerlead our own. We enjoy our fans. It’s good to have a good cultural and ethnic program and to feel good about it.

“If I am not for others, what am I?”

Helping others — other cultures and ethnic enclaves — grow into their own good program may come with the territory.

In the west, “Judeo-Christian” (+ “Greco-Roman”) alignment may be where history has delivered us.

What about everyone else?

Hillel’s Question No. 2 applies.

In the first stages of Facebook uptake — desktop computing meets broadband meets the “social network” — Qanta Ahmed asked, more or less, “What now? What do we do with this?” My response: “Good influence.”

As Jews, perhaps we talk about ourselves too much; however, we don’t conquer or proselytize but through thought. Good influence.

I’m going to add here a friend from Papua New Guinea, a nation that when the Christian ethnologists and linguists arrived supported more than 850 separate language cultures, some living within miles of one another and unaware of the existence of the neighbor.

I am personally going to turn into a “people who garden” if I can ever get into a house . . . . 🙂

I am for, at least in principle, the Baloch, the Kurds, Shiite Islam, Sufi Islam, truth-telling people wherever they are, however governed and organized, and I hope we will together say goodbye to a few more political criminals and organizations (like al-Qaeda and ISIS, like Setad in Iran, like “MoscVegas” in Russia) in my lifetime.

“With every generation, a little more freedom is won.”

I hope here that’s what we’re working on.

FTAC – Totalitarian Propaganda Environment – A Note

07 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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The refugee residents are boxed in primarily by their information environments that are deeply cordoned, enforced, and sustained by a smorgasbord of powerful handlers — family and state enterprises — whose intentions and power are enforced by violence.

Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh are reported to be billionaires today (Mashaal’s wealth specifically estimated to range between $2.5 and $5 billion). Khamenei’s “Setad” conglomerate, built partially on the theft of Iranian private property belonging to persons that could be targeted by the theokleptocracy, has today an estimated valuation of about $90 billion. The KSA and Qatar elements appear also to have within their range elements resistant to regulation when it comes to “donations” to Hamas or ISIS (reference: http://www.acc-co.com/content.asp?ContentId=598).

So there’s loose money, and most likely, some of that finds its way into “solidarity” type agitprop and anti-Semitic libel.

The head of the “Neturei Karta”, often trotted out by the regime in Iran, was noted to have been paid $50,000 annually by Tehran to have his group do their thing, i.e., Tehran pays to put on an evil show, and the extent to which it maintains or pays agents, whether through Hezbollah or in other organizations, isn’t something I’ve yet found on the web.

Adding post-Soviet totalitarian flavor to this may be Putin’s reversion to a feudal governing model for Russia. The FSB today employs more staff per capita than the old KGB, and following from its KGB roots also promotes state-controlled media and state-based lying. Frankly. Iran’s VEVAK has been also off the radar of the western press, but it too may be overwhelming in scale, at minimum internally to enforce the will of the regime as it exploits the state.

As the alternative histories of Gaza and Ramallah, if not other geopolitical space, fractures against histories carefully culled with integrity, the information operations of autocratic states should become more transparent and widely known.  As lies are told to hide things and get things, things that have been hidden nonetheless surface with time and things that have been stolen — including life itself — also come to light in the responsible historian’s accounting.

Reference by Title

“Doha Bank’s branch in New York is fined $5m for AML Non-Compliance” – 4/23/2009

“Report: UK fraud office to probe Barclays, Qatar Holding dealings” – 7/23/2013.

“Neturei Karta, Paid Agent of Israel’s Enemies” – 9/25/2004

“Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures” – 11/11/2013

Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (Wikipedia)

Addendum

Also as regards beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, much in the middle east and elsewhere may be complicated by the separation of loyalty (as to a crime family) and integrity (as to mom, apple pie, and the American way). Nothing’s perfect. However, where the Islamic Small Wars are concerned, whether ‘the masses” or the element in power, many prove that they would rather embrace a loyal lie than attempt to live with an uncomfortable truth. The distillation for this predicament may be “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. The want of survival, literally, life, may make fear of a capricious power a better choice than courage before the same.

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04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Iran, Politics

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According to supporters who have not yet been arrested by the authorities and reports from the country, he has been exposed a long series of abuses while he has been incarcerated. He has been referred to the cells without heating in winter, been denied to call family members, attacked by fellow prisoners and denied proper medical care. His health should now be very bad after he has gone on a hunger strike several times, and life is in danger if he did not receive proper supervision, according to his supporters. He suffers including Parkinson’s, diabetes and hypertension.

(Machine translation).

http://www.utrop.no/Nyheter/Utenriks/27911 – 10/6/2014

According to sources, Ayatollah Boroujerdi has embarked on a hunger strike in solidarity with Iranians who have suffered at the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei’s kleptotheocracy.

Related:

Marina Nemat

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FTAC – Without Conscience

30 Thursday Oct 2014

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

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The world that needs to do something is the world itself, and there’s plenty of it to overwhelm every corner of Islamic Jihad. However, two of the superpowers are invested in despotism themselves — China, quietly; Russia, now famously — and whether in Syria or Iraq, the middle that wished to become modern either has not had the wherewithal to power itself or, as where ISIS has penetrated, remains deeply committed to a deeply medieval script and teleology. Add some Really Big Money to the formula plus bribes and intimidation — don’t leave out the most parochial interests — and no one moves.

In the lawless, also, there is of course an ethical and moral lostness. The Qur’an read as explicit instruction and untempered by the presence of a greater human conscience affords zero navigational assistance. The black flag of piracy flies where there is no conscionable law.

The inspiration for the above comment:

They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They’ve been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/30/world/meast/isis-female-slaves/index.html

Never Again?

Wake up.

Related Reference

That the Islamic State has enslaved Yazidi women and children it captured is an established fact. For example, a United Nations report found that “300 [Yazidi] women had been forced into slavery.” Now, in its slick multi-language journal Dabiq, the terrorist group offers its theological justification for this practice.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390390/isis-boasts-its-yazidi-slaves-daniel-pipes – 10/16/2014

But one ugly, deadly and recurrent reality check persists: genocide. Genocide has occurred so often and so uncontested in the last fifty years that an epithet more apt in describing recent events than the oft-chanted “Never Again” is in fact “Again and Again.” The gap between the promise and the practice of the last fifty years is dispiriting indeed. How can this be?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/genocide/neveragain.html – by Samantha Power, n.d.

“Early this morning we found those corpses and we have been told by some Islamic State militants that ‘those people are from Sahwa, who fought your brothers the Islamic State, and this is the punishment of anybody fighting Islamic State’,” an eyewitness said.

Tribal sheikhs from Albu Nimr say both sets of victims were among more than 300 men aged between 18 and 55 who were seized by Islamic State this week.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/hundreds-iraqi-tribesmen-opposed-islamic-state-found-mass-graves – 10/30/2014.

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28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Iran, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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The number of political groups that are inclined to support Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is growing, both in the ruling parties of the European countries and in the opposition; from Hungary’s Victor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party to the far-right opposition parties that are performing spectacularly well in national elections, such as Marie Le Pen and her Front National of France. Sympathy and support also comes from Hungary’s Jobbik radical nationalists, the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn, Austria’s Freedom Party, and Italy’s Lega Nord, just to name a few.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/-sp-ukraine-russia-europe-andrei-sannikov – 10/28/2014.

I would expect Russo-Iranian methods in the development of power and wealth to expand until stopped cold.  The interior mythology in both units, to be clinical about it, have zero incentive to stall or stop aggression on the basis of the political accommodations and levers owned by others.  That implacable will may be buttressed by an equally sociopathic view of humanity.  For evidence of that in addition to Ukraine (and how Yanukovych milked it): Bashar al-Assad’s behavior in Syria.

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FTAC – Take Down that Wall – Comment on Intellectual Poisoning

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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Here’s a suggested schematic for the big story behind so much indoctrination. Billionaires –> nationalist / religious state dictators –> control, enforcement, and expansion organizations that include elements that attend to intellectual development and resources, internal and external.

Out of that model and through separable national socialist and Islamist pipelines come old Fatah and Hamas and emerging Jobbik (Hungary) and obvious ISIS. At the evident top: Putin-Khamenei. Behind the scenes: extraordinarily wealth personalities much enriched by criminality in state politics.

The commandeering of intellectual resources, whether targeting the kindergarten or college campus, is a part of sustaining criminal power. Where audience is captive or deeply susceptible, indoctrination and training go deep, so much so that the poison turns the world upside down. Where less area (geopolitical space) is captive, then intellectual skirmishing takes place with perhaps discouraging results.

I think a part of the answer to kind of bigotry and conflict addressed here may be to drive highest-integrity information — most open, tested, reviewed, criticized, most probable, etc. — into otherwise closed societies and the minds that have been kept closed by them. “B” may be living in a world of lies and mirrors that she cannot see for having been deeply manipulated within it. Those who wish for peace, who want an honest future (and it may be different than immediately contemplated) may have to disassemble that intellectual wall.

A racket’s a racket.

Ali Khamenei

Mojtaba Khamenei

Putin’s Kleptocracy

Gold-flecked ice cream wasn’t part of the picture that Shiite Muslim clerics painted during the Iranian Revolution, when they promised to lift the poor by distributing the country’s vast oil income equally across society.

But more than three decades later, record oil profits have brought in billions of dollars, and some people here are enjoying that decadent dessert. The trouble is, it’s just a small group of wealthy Iranians. Despite the promises of the revolution, many here say the gap between rich and poor has never seemed wider.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/irans-rich-eat-ice-cream-covered-in-gold-as-poor-struggle-to-survive/2011/07/20/gIQAYKUmwI_story.html – 8/6/2011.

The economy bears more than a little resemblance to the crony capitalism that sprouted from the wreck of the Soviet Union. The 1979 revolution expropriated the assets of foreign investors and the nation’s wealthiest families; oil had long been nationalized, but the mullahs seized virtually everything else of value–banks, hotels, car and chemical companies, makers of drugs and consumer goods. What distinguishes Iran is that many of these assets were given to Islamic charitable foundations, controlled by the clerics. According to businessmen and former foundation executives, the charities now serve as slush funds for the mullahs and their supporters.

Iran has other lethal secrets besides its nuclear program, now the subject of prying international eyes. Dozens of interviews with businessmen, merchants, economists and former ministers and other top government officials reveal a picture of a dictatorship run by a shadow government that–the U.S. State Department suspects–finances terrorist groups abroad through a shadow foreign policy. Its economy is dominated by shadow business empires and its power is protected by a shadow army of enforcers.

http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0721/024.html – 7/21/2003.

More than political criminality and cronyism are at play here.

The intellectual subjugation of entire constituencies is thematic throughout the range of the Islamic Small Wars and now in the development of a post-Hitlerian nationalism and national socialism in relation to the Russian nationalist stance on which Putin has relied for popular legitimacy.  Axes of power Khamenie-Putin and Putin-Orban (the same as would have been Putin-Yanukovych had there not been the revolution in Ukraine) and Putin-Assad represent the development and expansion of immense piratical wealth and power far at the expense of ordinary people.

So far, neither the European Union nor the United States nor anyone or anything else has gone so far as to explicate these drifts and relationships for popular overview although with Russia, the articles and books by academics and journalists have produced a handy few volumes for anyone’s home library (more on that later).

Related:

http://news.yahoo.com/bianna-golodryga-interviews-garry-kasparov-093317385.html – 9/30/2014.

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Attacks – Ottawa, Jerusalem

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Canada, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Politics

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The “different kind of war”, the “war for detectives and poets”, the “Islamic Small Wars” — singular or plural — have not been impeded at their low-intensity simmer.

The impetus for this post came with a phone call, a heads-up on the Ottawa incident —

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/parliament-hill-attack-1-gunman-dead-after-soldier-shot-at-national-war-memorial-1.2808710 – 10/22/2014

The violence is not confined to Parliament. Police say that there could be multiple shooters and that there are three shooting incidents in the capital.

Ottawa police, whose buildings were also locked down, provided details on Twitter about multiple shootings: “Incidents occurred at National War Memorial, near the Rideau Centre and Parliament Hill.”

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

So far, according to the CNN piece, no links with Islamic violence have been made in the Ottawa shootings.

Related on Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/22/us-canada-attacks-shooting-idUSKCN0IB1PY20141022 – 10/22/2014.

Related on Fox

The shooting at the government complex came after witnesses said they saw two men jump out of a Toyota Corolla and run toward the memorial, where one opened fire on the soldier, who later died at Civic Hospital. Officials did not identify the guard pending notification of his family, but The Ottawa Sun said he was a member of Hamilton’s Argylls of Canada – 91st Canadian Highlanders who were on tour guarding the memorial.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/10/22/soldier-shot-at-war-memorial-near-canadian-parliament/ – 10/22/2014.

Now cited in comments:

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office says two scheduled events today in Toronto with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai have been cancelled.
The last-minute announcement comes amid an ongoing emergency in Ottawa, where several shootings have occurred on or near Parliament Hill.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/22/malalas_honorary_citizenship_ceremony_cancelled_pmo.html – 10/22/2014.

The latest follows an apparently attempted murder by car in Quebec:

(Reuters) – A Canadian man who was killed by police on Monday after trying to run over two soldiers in Quebec “had become radicalized,” the government said after the first such incident in Canada since the country joined the fight against Islamic State militants.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/21/us-canada-military-idUSKCN0I927020141021 – 10/20/2014

From Jerusalem:

A baby girl was killed and eight people were injured Wednesday, after a terrorist hit them with his car outside the Givat Hatachmoshet (Ammunition Hill) Light Rail stop.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186461#.VEfv0iLF98E – “Baby Murdered in Jerusalem Terror Attack” – 10/22/2014.

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