Category Archives: Psychology

FTAC: A Possibility at the End of the Cold War — and How We Got Here from There

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Possibly: when the Soviet Union dissolved Dec. 25, 1991 and then presumably ended the Cold War, it’s possible (possibly) that American and Russian security elements thought to cooperate on issues confronting both states, Islamic Terrorism high on the list of possibilities conveniently at hand for that.

For the United States, one presumes that cooperation would have been intended to reduce the power and presence of dictatorship in the world and (in domino effect) remove the vestiges of the defunct Soviet Union in global foreign affairs.  In the way of political “optics” — how things look — the American and other EU / NATO constituencies would have perceived some great measure of peace and trade taking place between the former superpower antagonists, so when Clinton and others signed off on “Uranium One”, it may have been in that context that the deal went down.  

East and West had taken the great leap forward toward peace in 1992 and by 2010 business involving uranium, a strategic asset, appeared to have been conducted in overall calm, bureaucratic, and peaceful conditions.  

While other business and political mixers were proceeding, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya were also transformed (in 2003 and 2011, respectively), at least as regards the deposing of each dictator — and let none remember them fondly: they were both monsters in each their own demonic way.

Then in 2011: Syria.

When offered the choice, Putin refused the liberal western path and reverted to the KGB past.  At that moment, possibly(!), Team Security USA, in some part, discovered that it had been duped

(Note: intervention in Libya preceded the perceived (Wikipedia) start date of the Syrian Civil War — on BackChannels, the “Syrian Tragedy” — by five days).  

Moscow had intended to refuse the adoption of democratic liberalism all along.

What the United States and EU / NATO had done for peace between 1992 and 2011?

I don’t know.

However, one may imagine the possibilities. 

However, the old news cross my desktop a few minutes ago, and it seems to add its little bit to the BackChannels perspective on Cold War / post-Cold War / Phantom of the Soviet history.

If you haven’t hit the link, the “old news” was this:

Albawaba.  “America’s gulag: Syrian regime was a ‘common destination’ for CIA rendition.”  February 5, 2013.

Syria was a key participant in the C.I.A. rendition program at a time when President George W. Bush’s administration labelled Damascus part of the “axis of evil,” according to a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative.

 The report – titled “Globalizing Torture” – said President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects,” indicating an established security relationship between Syrian intelligence and Western agencies.

The story — and not written for conservative Americans — traces its thesis back to at least 2003.

Apparently, Moscow and Washington had been fighting terrorism together in the double-0’s of the new century.

However, that day must have been young compared to this in which the interested public knows of the false-flag operation known as the  “Moscow Apartment Bombings” (September 4-16, 1999).

Also today, thanks to Anna Politkovskaya, we know also of the Russian Army’s unofficial but observed brutalizing of Chechen villages as a means certain to fill the ranks of “Chechen rebels” through the Second Chechen War (August 26, 1999 – April 16, 2009) — for where else would Chechen boys and men go to fight back against so monstrous a force?

BackChannels stands by its argument that Assad incubated ISIS as its preferred foil in a piece of KGB-type theater one might call “Assad v The Terrorists”.

The assertion has held up over time.

A companion piece suggesting that “Islamic Terrorism –> Reflexive Feudal New Nationalism” has held up as well.

Welcome Moscow’s post-Cold War totalitarian design and the west’s apparent partial cooperation with it, possibly, up to the Syrian gambit of spring 2011 when Obama tested Putin’s navigational tendencies.

In Russia’s persistent feudal mode, states serve power, and power need see no difference between property and persons, sovereignty in the politically absolute mode implying the right — more: even the obligation and demonstration — to destroy either with impunity and without explanation.  A little foolery with political perception and CIA “rendition” programs (to fight al-Qaeda and others) would be one thing, but to travel further with Moscow and Damascus in their tyrannous journey appears to have been something Washington could not bring itself to do. 

The “KGB Playbook” — “Active Measures”; “Perceptual Control”; “Hybrid Warfare”; playing both sides for fun and profit — listen to the BBC’s interview with Admiral Gorchkov on the instigating of the Ogaden War between Somali militia and Ethiopian defenders; the loss of boundaries and limits (that dovetails so well with the “malignant narcissism” concept) that would seem to have licensed surreptitious poisonings (in Great Britain) straight out of 007 Bond fantasia; and the complete loss of compassion, conscience, and empathy for others — has turned out a still living evil, and one that even the paternally and narcissistically  authoritarian Trump Administration cannot dismiss while doing its duty to defend America’s Constitution.

Additional Assorted Fast Reference Related to Russia’s Encouragement of Conflict

http://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6

https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/understanding-the-russia-taliban-connection/

https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/15162-defector-putin-s-kgb-trained-top-al-qaeda-terrorists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/04/24/russia-is-sending-weapons-to-taliban-top-u-s-general-confirms/

Posted to YouTube November 14, 2011.

–33–

Also in Media: Speckhard on Torture

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Just as the authors identify the factors that are predictive of those individuals and situations that are most likely to give rise to torture, they also identify the psychosocial sequelae of engaging in torture. These include dissociative personality splinters, social isolation, avoidance of reminders, self-condemnation with guilt and shame, intrusive thoughts and flashbacks, nightmares and sleep disturbances, high arousal states with the inability to concentrate or sleep well, and drug and alcohol abuse to forget and painful emotional states upon remembering. Lastly, the authors identify the practices that can be put in place to protect individuals from crossing the line into perpetrating abuse, atrocities, and torture upon those placed in their custody. Torture, as noted by Article 1 of the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatments (United Nations, 1984; 1987):

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Speckhard, Anne and Charles Figley and Ardian Shajkovci.  “Psychosocial Drivers, Prevention and Sequelae of Engaging in Torture.”  International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, April 17, 2017.

. . . the thoughtful individual needs to examine some core questions—the first being—does torture in any of it’s forms, including “torture lite” work? The answer appears to be a resounding no. Torture for the most part fails as a tactic because it does not leads to credible information, is problematic later for anyone we wish to prosecute, and may actually contribute far more to terrorism recruitment rather than to curbing terrorism. When dealing with al Qaeda for instance we must understand that most hardened terrorists who have blood on their hands have committed themselves to the idea of “martyrdom” and may be adept at misleading us when we believe they have cracked under torture. And when we resort to anything that is morally bankrupt they will later use it against us to show their constituents and potential recruits our “true colors”.

By contrast, interrogation that relies on rapport building has shown itself to yield positive results . . . .

Speckhard, Anne.  “Zero Dark Thirty — And the Real World of Torture, Enhanced Interrogation, Rendition and Prolonged Detention.”  Anne Speckhard, Ph.D, March 4, 2013.

Among other topics expertly engaged, Dr. Anne Speckhard has been working the issues on the subject of torture for many years.

If the repercussions are so bad and the results so thin, why do we persist with the same in practice?

BackChannels may suggest that engagement in torture represents the power of ownership of another experienced by the malign narcissist and is in the end, always, an expression of unbridled absolute power, i.e., the power to inflict suffering on others with impunity.

In his classic Russia Under the Old Regime, scholar Richard Pipes remarks on the meaning of sovereignty in the recession of Mongol power and subsequent princely Russian attitude toward property and persons as being alike — the power to destroy either the demonstration of sovereign ownership (approximate pages 70-80).

Note: between age, interests, and sedentary lifestyle at the desktop, your BackChannels editor is tiring and has two choice regarding loose scholarship: read less and slowly with pen, foolscap, and note cards at hand; continue remembering generally; or move off to a different kind of writing.  As regards Pipes, he’s masterful with analysis, complexity, and detail, and he will take the reader into the locking mechanisms between political exigency, political evolution in language, and the projection of political power.

For the purposes of this blog, the editor believe Moscow has deeply narcissistic issues supporting “absolute power” and all of the horror rightly associated with the demonstration of the complete absence of conscience in relation to the suffering of others.

On a more near historic note, author Anna Funder relays the testimony of a former Stasi prisoner arrested first for seditious leafleting and then again — having been motivated by the former imprisonment — for having attempted a crossing into then West Germany.  The form of torture during the second stay was sleep deprivation.  Here’s how that went down:

On the eleventh night, Miriam gave them what they wanted.  ‘I thought, “You people want an underground escape organisation?”  Well, I’ll give you one then.”

Fleischer had won.

‘There,’ he said, ‘that wasn’t so bad now, was it?  Why didn’t you tell us earlier and save yourself all this trouble?’  They let her sleep for a fortnight, and gave her one book each week.  She read it in a day, then started memorising the pages, walking up and down in the cell with the book to her chest.

‘In retrospect it’s funny,’ Miriam says, ‘but at the time it was pure, unalloyed frustration.  I cooked them up a story I would not have believed myself, even then.  It was utterly absurd.”

‘Miriam’ was on the far side of sixteen at the time she “cooked them up a story” in exchange for a little sleep.

Additional Reference

Funder, Anna.  Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall.  U.S. Edition, paperback.  New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Additional Reading Online

Bukovsky, Vladimir.  “Torture’s Long Shadow.”  The Washington Post, December 18, 2005:

One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. “But, Comrade Stalin,” stammered Beria, “five suspects have already confessed to stealing it.”

This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain’s amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.

Fair for Look-Up

“Abu Ghraib”

“Evin Prison”

“Saydnaya Prison”

Through torture, it would seem the torturer learns most of all about himself, if he learns anything, and when it’s over, he may be treated to the sight of himself in media as ever deranged, infantile, sadistic, and tyrannical.

–33–

 

 

FTAC: BackChannels Comments on Video, “The Greatest Revenge of All Times”

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Posted on Facebook by “Brotality” about six months ago:

The pilot’s success in becoming a pilot should have been Gabriel Pasternak’s revenge.

All else: common murder.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/05/15/nancy-hartevelt-kobrin-listening-reflecting-comprehending-speaking/

Fair for lookup: “maternal cameo”.

Kobrin’s a little challenging for reading, but the manner of taking others into one’s own suicide in suicide terrorism has been well documented and explored.

Everyone has complaints: perhaps the pilot in the above video should have asked himself for greater insight into his own behavioral repertoire, so as not to have alienated so many others — and then blamed them for his continuing his own unhappiness.

Of course some parts of the world grind against us, but our souls battle back with constructive ends and ideals.

While the pilot had found fault with everyone on that plane, the same passengers may have missed the pilot who could just as well have gone on to tweak his “ugly duckling” music into a beautiful swan — then too, with the money he must have been making as a pilot, imagine if he had used his new wealth to attend to more children like himself, how amazing the things they may have gone on to do.

Instead, he took himself out of the picture and drew the hate and want of revenge from all of the families and friends associated with all of the passengers on board his flight.

Regarding the pilot’s “awful music” —

http://www.georgecrumb.net/about/

“Brotality” promotes itself on facebook as an entertainment organization.

BackChannels readers are welcome to look them up and drawn their own conclusions.

The Urban Dictionary offers two or three definitions today of the term “brotality“, among them this gem — “When a real hard ass bro kills someone, mortal kombat style. ‘Bro’ being the prefix and ‘tality’ being the suffix.”

–33–

 

 

Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry”

11 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Journalism, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia

≈ Comments Off on Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry”

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Dmitriev2007ByMediafond-522x

Yuri Dmitriev by Mediafond (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.

ManuPsy-1974-App-VI-524

Bukovsky, Vladimir and Semyon Gluzman.  A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters. (URL is to PDF). 1974.

The BackChannels editor has to wear “readers” too, but to spare some squinting here’s the most critical pull from the small print in the above image:

Dissenters, as a rule, have enough legal grounding so as not to make mistakes during their investigation and trial, but when confronted by a qualified psychiatrist with a directive from above to have them declared non-responsible, they have found themselves absolutely powerless.

Kafka comes to mind.

So does Milan Kundera’s famous statement: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

President Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship has chosen for Russians the erasure of their memory and gone after the culturally healing human rights organization Memorial.

While Yuri Dimitriev’s dark adventure into Putin’s Hell gains traction in the western human rights community, another Memorial notable has been apparently framed (here relayed in shortest form):

Oyub Titiev

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/01/russia-rights-defender-arbitrarily-arrested-in-chechnya/ – 1/11/2018
–
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/01/276951.htm – 1/11/2018
–
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/chechnya-under-fire-after-human-rights-activist-held-for-drugs-possession – 1/10/2018

BackChannels wishes not to dilute the singular and stunning insult to the world that is the “Dmitriev Affair”, but it’s evident the Phantom of the Soviet has in mind the planting and rooting of Old Totalitarian Poison even with the world’s entire New Intelligentsia taking notice.

A Loose Note on Related Poli-Psy

Expressed as a personal trope: “Absolute Power” becomes inevitably the power to visit suffering on others with impunity.

Expressed as a personal trope: according to Richard Pipes (and now I shall have to relocate the reference), as the power of the Mongols receded, Russian princes had nonetheless internalized the idea that property and person could be (and should be) treated as the same thing, and proof of sovereignty was to be found in the permit to destroy either at will and without consequence.

For the malignant among narcissists, it would seem the suffering of another should have no consequence other than to affirm the power of the narcissist’s own blind will.  All the techniques of theater — for controlling family, if small; for controlling nations, if large — may apply to the artifice of presenting “reality” with the intention of framing and creating popular — and a neither too bright nor curious nor politically empowered — perception.

Reference Related to Yuri Dmitriev

ABC News.  “Fears Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes may be falsely declared insane.”  January 10, 2018:

Some of Russia’s leading cultural figures say Mr Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin’s crimes — he found a mass grave with up to 9,000 bodies dating from the Soviet dictator’s Great Terror in the 1930s — conflicts with the latter-day Kremlin narrative that Russia must not be ashamed of its past.

The narrative has taken on added importance ahead of a March presidential election, with polls showing incumbent Vladimir Putin, who uses his country’s World War II victory when Stalin was in charge to bolster national pride, is on track to win.

Mr Putin asserted last year that what he called an “excessive demonisation of Stalin” was being used to undermine Russia.

Activatica.  “The Arrest of Karelian ‘Memorial” Head Yuri Dmitriev: What is Known.”  March 22, 2017:

In general, the situation in Karelia is complex. On one hand, Karelia is a region where many exiles are left, the whole region was filled with camps and exiles, and the memory of this is alive at the personal level. And the authorities of Karelia have, for a rather long time, supported the activities of “Memorial” and various structures for perpetuating memory. When Dmitriev discovered the Sandarmokh burial site, the Karelian authorities cooperated and held a contest to landscape this place. But at the same time, there were efforts to conceal and obstruct the receipt of information on the side of the secret services. They also tried to pressure Dmitriev six years ago. On one side the authorities helped, but on the other side, some power structures interfered. And in the past couple years, pressure on Dmitriev has intensified, as an independent historian.

Ayres, Sabra.  “An outspoken research of Stalin’s crimes fights for his own fate and freedom in Russia.”  Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2017:

A small clearing in a dense northwestern Russian forest marks the site where, 20 years ago, Yuri Dmitriev discovered a group of mass graves containing victims of Josef Stalin’s Great Terror.

Using detailed documents uncovered in KGB archives, Dmitriev was able to piece together the location where Stalin’s execution squads killed and buried more than 9,500 people from 1937 to 1938. The documents contained the dates and names of those killed, as well as the executioners’ names. During the next two decades, Dmitriev worked meticulously to document every victim’s story.

Bukovsky, Vladimir.  “Punitive Psychiatry (1977).”  The Bukovsky Archives.  Vladimir Bukovsky’s foreward to Russia’s political hospitals (1977) by Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway.

Luhn, Alec.  “Gulag grave hunter unearths uncomfortable truths in Russia.”  The Guardian, August 3, 2017:

“For our government to become … accountable, we need to educate the people,” Dmitriyev said of his efforts to uncover details of Soviet repression.

But not everyone wants to remember this forgotten history, especially amid Russia’s current patriotic fervour. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in June that “excessive demonisation” of Stalin has been a “means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia”, and several branches of Memorial have been declared “foreign agents” in recent years.

U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia.  “U.S. Mission to Russia Concerned with Charges Against Yury Dmitriev.”  May 31, 2017:

The U.S. Mission to Russia is concerned by what appear to be politically-motivated criminal charges against prominent human rights activist and historian Yury Dmitriev. Mr. Dmitriev is a respected historian whose work has been instrumental in uncovering mass burial sites and founding the Sandarmokh Memorial Complex in Karelia. We call on Russia to transparently uphold the rule of law and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also call on Russia to respect its international human rights obligations, including those related to the prohibition on arbitrary arrest or detention and respect for fair trial guarantees.

Osborn, Andrew.  “Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes faces enforced psychiatric testing.”  Reuters, January 9, 2018:

A previous psychiatric evaluation declared him to be of sound mind and a court-sanctioned expert group found no pornographic content in nine photographs of his daughter that are at the center of the case against him, overturning the earlier findings of other experts commissioned by prosecutors.

Yarovaya, Anna.  “The Yuri Dmitriev Affair”.  The Independent Barents Observer.  March 11, 2017:

What always struck me about Dmitriev was his enthusiasm, which materialized less in the help he gave me and more in his attitude to history, to events that had occurred many years ago. For example, in the same cemetery where I shot the film, he found the remains of a POW. None of the local authorities was in a hurry to bury the exhumed “youth,” as Dmitriev called him. So Dmitriev put the bones in his garage. A while later, he secured a spot in Peski Cemetery, found a sponsor to help him buy a gravestone, and asked the philologist Valentina Dvinskaya to translate the phrase “To the victims of war, disappeared but not forgotten” into German so that it could be engraved on the headstone. He did all this for an unknown man who had been killed over sixty years ago.

It was only later I realized that Yuri Dmitriev was the same Yuri Dmitriev who had founded the Sandarmokh Memorial Cemetery, who was involved in investigating the Krasny Bor Forest NKVD execution site in Karelia, who had catalogued over 13,000 names of victims of the Great Terror of 1937–1938 in Karelia and published them in The Book of Remembrance, which runs to thousands of pages.

Wikipedia.  “Memorial”.

The Dmitriev Affair (Website)

–33–

Pravda — Real To the Marrow

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

In the New Age of Active Measures, the countermeasure is the conveyance of truth — not “alternative truth” or multiple possibility derived from promoted fantasia — supported by great curiosity and integrity as married to equally great journalism and scholarship.

A friend promoted the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty project as focused against deceptive and disingenuous political cant designed to whip up extremist emotion and stupidity in Asia as well as in its older domains.

In regard to information and integrity in speech online, BackChannels has published a few related posts that may convey an image about Potemkinism in political speech: there are those who project through language the way they might wish their followers would see the world and themselves.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/10/23/fake-news-genuine-fake-news-the-real-fake-news-get-your-fake-news-here/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

BackChannels really hasn’t an issue with political presentation and “show business” in general but rather than with a depth in totalitarianism in which accusation (especially “reflection in the mirror“) and conflict (and related barbarism) would seem to have no point but of the completely artificial conveyance of image.

–33–

FTAC: Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Back In

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Also in Media, Asides, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Shared inspiration:

Response:

More than “eyeballs” are involved in the stimulation of our defenses and imagination: there are tens upon tens of thousands of jobs created to deal with threat as fielded by various industries, and there are governments for which the installation of fear produces political power. Putin, for example, ran a false-flag operation to gain election and then had Russian troops unofficially run amok in Chechnya to strengthen the rebel opposition. He knew how to produce and use war, and there’s great suffering for that today along the spine of Moscow’s favored relationships and colonial or chaos-inducing ambitions.  I suppose for the west, we now have a super counterterrorism industry, much needed, but one also begging the question, “How broad, how large, how institutionalized?”

That’s life.

Rob Dial offers an interesting view of the media-saturated mind.

Indeed, some of us used to do other and more pleasant things than share in the watching of the world’s great issues and tragedies for days, weeks, months, and years on end.

My own answer to that: try to get into retreat! 🙂

And narrow the scope of personal mission dimensions and project: “Tune Out; Turn Off: Drop Back In!”

That today is Counterculture!

In-Line Reference Added

Putin ran a false-flag operation to gain election and then had Russian troops unofficially run amok in Chechnya to strengthen the rebel opposition.

Back Story Reference on a Facet of the Real Counterculture of the 1960s: “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_On,Tune_In,_Drop_Out(album).

Timothy Leary speaking the message (short documentary video).

Visual interpretation of Timothy Leary’s 1967 album, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out”.

Leary, Timothy.  Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.  Via Amazon, USA.

The 18- to 21-year-olds of 1967 would today be 68 to 71 in age, and, oh my, how the once “hippy” world of “recreational drugs” has morphed into the world’s most lucrative scourge — and it’s not the “high”(ness) that makes it so, but in relation the lives thrown into associated industrial control — from manufacture to shipping to sales, related industrial-scale warfare across every continent, and that’s on one side, for on the other comes the policing, and that too would seem a rough business —  and for the end-users, often enough wrecked lives — careers, jobs, homes, ordinary relationships — habituated and racked health, and, also and still, accidental death.

Related affected and infected states and larger regions have stories too in relation to their own “monkey” — there’s another phrase signaled by that metonym — and their own yards and backyards, but BackChannels will here reserve comment on that.

–33–

FTAC: On Arrogance, Religion, and Related Political Rhetoric

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

The prompt came also from the Qur’an (“5:82-83”) as presented this way: “You will surely find those closest in friendship to the believers to be those who say, “We are Christians.”  That is because among them are priests and monks who are not arrogant.”

Response —

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people”. – https://quran.com/5/51-61

Apparently, if one is not close to a monk or priest (or perhaps a recluse with a library), one may be in danger of trusting an untrustworthy friend.

Note: one might ask whether caliphs, kings, and emperors are not inherently arrogant in their assumptions of power over all others, and therefore particularly sensitive to arrogance in those whom they would subjugate.

Compact between shaman and chief and cleric and king spans the ages but may not be a permanent feature in humanity’s intellectual and political evolution. That may be something to think about in the experience of language, both in political rhetoric and in scripture (no matter to whom the words belong), and that of power as dominion over others.

The region of the Qur’an cited, 5:82 and 5:83 presents in English through several well-remarked translations — and of a standard four — Asad, Malik, Pickthall, and Yusuf Ali — the conveyances of none would seem as sweet as the statement quoted as the prompt.

Here is the presentation of the verse as translated by Yusuf Ali:

“Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans; and nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say: “We are Christians:” because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world and they are not arrogant.”

Source: http://www.alim.org/library/quran/ayah/compare/5/82/disbelievers-among-the-children-of-israel-were-cursed-by-the-tongues-of-david-and-jesus-and-christians-are-closer-to-muslims-than-the-jews-and-pagans

One thought attending the description of “men devoted to learning” and “who have renounced the world and are not arrogant” is that such men would seem less than challenging to martial or political power and therefore dismissible by any speaker intent on monopolizing and wielding such power.

Qur’an 5:83 although cited in the prompt appears not present in the statement at the top of this post.  Here is that verse in the Yusuf Ali translation from the Alim library URL noted:

“And when they listen to the revelation received by the Apostle thou wilt see their eyes overflowing with tears for they recognize the truth: they pray: “Our Lord! we believe; write us down among the witnesses.”

If thou woulds’t be apostle, caliph, king, or emperor would though not note the sweetness of the complete and grateful surrender of thine greatest potential resistance?

Given that question and thought, one might appreciate attempts at transitional revisionism.

–33–

FTAC: Political Philosophy: An Inversion

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I would suggest that feudal mafia may or may not be honest as regards politics within their closed circles, but that the same will lie for absolute power, which power becomes always sadistic — the power to visit suffering on others with impunity — should go without saying. By contrast, the idea of the “good society”, or great one, may be predicated on empathy (one foundational thought in law: “because it could happen to you”) and integrity. In the feudal mode, our cares may be restricted — me and mine and the rest of the world can go to hell — and in the modern, we note cruelty and suffering meted to others and try to address that in law and in policy.

For a while now, my context has been “Moscow v Washington” — the system of secret police, absolute central power, aristocracy v a modern democratic open society. In which world should one care most to live — as favored in the former where loyalty to power displaces principles and values; or as neglected in the latter where one may get a fair shake, or no “shake” at all?

Your original post asked for one idea. Perhaps two need consideration: empathy matched by integrity.

The cliche goes that where one stands has much to do with where one sits.

If yours is the campaign desk in the palace, the prince might be a good man; if it is the laborer’s bench downwind from “sanitation”, the prince might be a thoughtless one.

In general, liberal democracies strive to attenuate human caprice in the experience of good and bad fortune: law and reason may be slipped between the person and The Power.

In kleptocracy, The Power maintains the monopoly on law and reason — and the possession of all else.

However — and here’s the inversion repeated — would you rather live favored in the treacherous atmosphere produced by Power or at loose ends in a more or less just system that takes no special interest in your affairs,  your politics, or your fate?

Perhaps in hard times — or merely disappointing one — it may be more natural to seek favor than to extol the virtues of too clinical a system of justice and the “rugged individual” that may or may not make out well beneath it.

–33–