Category Archives: Middle East

FTAC: Short Opinions Related to the Middle East Conflict

17 Monday May 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Free Palestine from Fatah and Hamas!

Inspiration: the conversational partner’s quoting of Thomas Jefferson and Nelson Mandela on Freedom on behalf of Palestinian aspirations related to the same.

***

Yes!

The authorities in the West Bank and Gaza repressed dissent by arbitrarily arresting tens of peaceful demonstrators, opponents, critics, journalists and human rights activists.1 In some cases, authorities used emergency COVID-19 regulations to stifle freedom of expression and assembly.

The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), the Palestinian national human rights institution, recorded 37 incidents of violations of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press: 21 in the West Bank and 16 in Gaza. The ICHR also recorded 158 cases in the West Bank and 118 in Gaza of the arbitrary arrests of opponents and critics. The Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms recorded 97 incidents of attacks against journalists, including arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment during interrogation, confiscation of equipment, physical assaults and bans on reporting: 36 in the West Bank and 61 in Gaza.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/palestine-state-of/report-palestine-state-of/

The experience of freedom begins where we sit.

Related concepts: locus of control; empathy, ethical sense; integrity; moral compass,; personal agency, revulsion.

Of course, Freedom is not without boundaries and limits, and it comes with a catch: Responsibility.

Inspiration: an assertion that police action at Al Aqsa Mosque had been politically motivated by Israel’s partisan political machinery.

***

Israel v Hamas – Whipping Dumb Mobs

https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-palestinians-stocked-rocks-for-temple-mount-riots-police-caught-unawares/

I don’t want to work up a timeline, but given the report cited, police action would appear perfectly reasonable, responsive, and responsible.

Other issues (excuses) have also their depth in legal detail and reasoning. On better than balance, Palestinian leadership incitements and Palestinians too dumb for tackling online independent research in their own interest will bear responsibility for this latest war.

The more fair and profound question worth asking is whether the greater powers wish themselves to sustain the “Middle East Conflict” as a necessary buffer between the regions of “political absolutism” and related fascist or totalitarian control and those whose political evolution has found greater freedom and latitude in personal behavior in the world’s democratic and open societies.

Inspiration: the assertion that Israel wanted Hamas to take over Gaza in 2005 (in the wake of the Jewish retreat from the region) in order to clean out its rivals (Fatah, PLO) –>

Against Wild Conspiracy-Think

Playing “The Jews did it!” with Hamas is surreal given the realities attending Israel’s ceding Gaza. You (as metonym for “The Palestinians”) were to have protected roadways and synagogues for access by members; you were to have produced peace regardless of the factional warring for control of Gaza; you were to have established peace and a peaceful relationship with Israel. You failed to achieve other than a genocidal war against Jewry as re-framed as a war with Israel.

There is has been no Jewish Power in Gaza since 2005, and yet Palestinians in Gaza remain subject to brute force and political repression.

How is that possible without the Palestinian failure to defend even themselves from internal forces claiming to represent their interests?

So far as I can tell, Israel’s defense and policing policies respond directly to states of affairs generated by Palestinian behavior.

My day actually began here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-palestinians-stocked-rocks-for-temple-mount-riots-police-caught-unawares/

I was addressing another conspiracy theorist, one on the Israeli side of observation.

Either way, eventually, the peaceful will overwhelm the violent.

Inspiration: an assertion that Israelis don’t want peace but a unified Jewish state free of Palestinians –>

For Palestinian Responsibility

Most want a near immediate two-state solution and, with time, a unified regional economic bloc.

https://www.businessinsider.com/west-bank-palestine-rawabi-city-israel-news-2018-10

https://institute.global/advisory/israeli-palestinian-trade-depth-analysis

The post-Soviet arc of power — define it for yourself and have a look any time — is riddled with cancerous, dying, or dead and failed states!

The world has plenty of other evil in it, but what “malignant narcissists” do to their own geopolitical spaces in the cause of their own aggrandizement (and centralization of power) always ends badly.

As far as I’m concerned, Americans are superior!

Lol.

We’re all on this one “Blue Marble” and many of our real issues — not issues rooted primarily in our own minds but a part of our shared global experience — are issues to be acknowledged and worked on together across our many cultural and political boundaries.

In any case, Big Pictures and more parochial ones — both at hand at the same time — Palestinian Liberation begins with you and your vision.

You should defy Palestinian corruption and political repression at every chance, not overlook or shrug it away as both attach to your own character if accepted.

***

Too often in modern conflict, “Accusation in a Mirror” applies to easily to the accuser. There’s older Chinese wisdom for that: “He points the finger has four more pointing back at himself.”

***

I believe Israel wants an authentic peace in a modern world characterized by democratic processes, rule of law, and wide latitude for individual choices in the election of personal beliefs and behaviors. The enemies of Israel, on the other hand, wish to live by way of the force of will and punitive power to control and channel their people as faceless and nameless masses. The same would be the enemies of evolution, humanity, modernity, and all of the open societies of the world.

Also Related Online

Ha’ivri, David. “West Bank of what?” Opinion. Ynet News, March 23, 2012.

Lazaroff, Tovah and Lahav Harkov. “Greenblatt: Peace plan asks Israel to pledge land for Palestinian state.” The Jerusalem Post, July 23, 2020.

Posted to YouTube by France24 English, May 17, 2021.

–33–

A Note on the Middle East Conflict and Russia’s Self-Importance

14 Friday May 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The Soviet failed state cum Putin’s kleptocracy has found a role in its attachment to rogue political movements and states, thus, it might seem, it has been always. Here’s the latest on feudal and post-Soviet Era puffery with NATO’s Turkish wild child buddying up with Putin to shill for the Islamist angle —

Erdogan told Putin the international community needed to “teach a deterrent lesson” to Israel, adding that Ankara was working to mobilize this reaction, according to a statement from his office.

Erdogan also called for work to be done on sending international peacekeepers to the region to help safeguard Palestinians, a proposal Turkey has made since 2018.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2021/05/12/Erdogan-Putin-discuss-Israel-clashes-in-call-as-Ankara-seeks-intervention

Here’s Orwellian as spoken by Adnan Abu Amer, head of the Political Science Department, University of the Ummah, Gaza —

Russia is a major power with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. It is also part of the Middle East Quartet working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, Russia maintains close relations with the three actors that matter most to Hamas – Israel, the PA and Egypt. Russia could, therefore, help Hamas to not only stand up to Trump and his “deal of the century” in the international arena, but also resolve its issues with the PA and Egypt.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/11/27/what-is-behind-the-russia-hamas-rapprochement – 11/27/2019

Peace-loving Russia has an extraordinary track record going in the region of “frozen conflicts” worldwide, and if the Israel v Palestinian Representatives struggle has not been a once Soviet-backed frozen Palestinian nightmare for more than 73 years, then the category — “frozen conflict” — might as well not exist.

Far from promoting Palestinian peace with Israel, Russia has through breathtaking lies long offered the Refugees of 1948 encouragements for anger, disillusion, and hate as its shield against the western advance lethally packed with democracy, human rights, integrity and every other general facet of health and freedom-loving liberalism. In fact, God forbid the “eastern interests” along with Far Out Left radicals and Islam’s religious zealots should cede the least little bit of absolute control over their politically repressed and inhumanly exploited and plundered Palestinian population.

The last Palestinian with whom I chatyped declared his people peaceful and religious. Which religion, I asked him: Christianity or Islam?

Well, he answered, we’re more Nationalist.

I didn’t follow up with what Hamas represents, but nonetheless thematic across the arc of intra-Palestinian relations has been the Fatah v Hamas rivalry.

The last time Hamas won power in that argument, this is how Palestinian Unity went down —

AP – Posted to YouTube July 13, 2015.

Fast forward to the near latest in Palestinian elections —

Polls will be scheduled within six months under a deal reached between Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, officials from both sides told AFP.

“We have agreed to first hold legislative elections, then presidential elections of the Palestinian Authority, and finally the central council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” said Jibril Rajub, a senior Fatah official, on Thursday.

https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/fatah-and-hamas-agree-to-hold-first-palestinian-elections-since-2006-40033 – 9/24/2020.

Good!

Here’s what happened —

RAMALLAH, West Bank – It was meant to be a historic and long-overdue vote aimed at ending 15 years of paralyzed and divided leadership. Instead, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called off next month’s parliamentary elections after challengers from his own party threatened to weaken his hold on power.

Abbas’ decision, which came just two days before campaigning was supposed to begin, indefinitely postponed the May 22 vote and apparently a July presidential election as well. The postponement angered Palestinians eager to replace a president who has not held a vote in a decade-and-a-half and failed to deliver on his main goal of achieving independence from Israel. Street protests broke out in several cities in the West Bank and Gaza.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/29/992065009/palestinian-authority-postpones-parliamentary-elections – 4/29/2021.

Through it all — the terrorism, the street fighting, the demagoguery, and failed election promises, not to mention decade after decade of defeat in the Palestinian effort to eliminate the Zionist Entity — Russia has stood by Palestinian leaders in the cause of Palestinian Liberation (Enslavement), Dignity (Humiliation), Freedom (Political Repression), and Prosperity (Corruption and Kleptocracy), and Peace Most of All (Perpetual War).

Related online —

“Palestine: Islamic Jihad meets with Russian officials in Moscow.” Middle East Monitor, February 2, 2021.

“Senior Hamas leaders meet Russia official in Moscow.” February 6, 2021.

With Moscow’s acceptance, blessing, and encouragement, Palestinian leaders defy democratic processes, hold on to power, pervert political language or rhetoric, and drive their constituents to exactly the kind of violence that Israel needs must respond to with order-restoring force.

Moscow, were it modern beneath Putin’s egotism rather than feudal-medieval, could encourage throughout the Palestinian community an appreciation for reliable contemporary and historical information, civil order, practical problem solving to address basic education, infrastructure, public services and other community-wide issues, and tried and true humanist reasoning — helpful and impartial in the improvement of Qualities of Living — but that might have Russia taking its place among the advanced and higher integrity open democratic societies of the west in improving the lot of the residents of the Palestinian Territories.

For Moscow, it’s plainly better that Gaza and West Bank Palestinians remain suspended in chaos, disillusion, disinformation, and political deadlock and impotence. That apparently, keeps Palestinian leaders coming to Moscow for guidance, and Moscow now plainly appreciates its own international importance and their ever faithful, ever hopeful esteem.

Related in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_conflict | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts .

–33–

FTAC Verbatim: Palestinian War? Palestinian Culpability (With a Little Help)

12 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

No introduction needed this day for this quick opinion —

“Look how the authorities made sure to plunge the country into war and civil conflict. Is it a coincidence? Is it?”
Palestinian agitation, manipulation, and propaganda account for the experiential and intellectual poisoning of the Palestinians en masse. The “Palestinian Narrative” — more or less, “The Jews stole your land and God wants you to win it back” — has never held water, but for a black-and-white thinking rabble born to capitalize on tales of its own abuse, the myth serves for truth and sustained war for peace.

No Israeli politician invited this latest boiling over, and even though all will stump about it differently, the truth is the Palestinians have been lied to and exploited for decades by their own leaders and other powers intent on enriching themselves at Palestinian expense or proving (while getting some loot for doing so) some Islamic, nationalist, or racist point that might be attributed to their theater-of-the-real “heroism”.

From 2019: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20191128-hamas-and-russia-the-benefits-of-growing-relations/
The duped Palestinians haven’t yet figured out who is really getting them killed.


Perhaps this time, Israel will make the truth a little more clear for all to examine.

Related on BackChannels — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/ |

Posted May 12, 2021.

–33–

Broadened Scope and Future Vision: A Note on Sheikh Jarrah, Whipped Mobs, and Middle East Peace

04 Tuesday May 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Start here —

Posted to YouTube May 2, 2021.

For background from the modern Arab press —

The 28 Palestinian families arrived at the Karm al-Jaouni area of Sheikh Jarrah as refugees in 1956. Under an agreement with the Jordanian government and the UN refugee agency UNRWA, the homes were built in exchange for a revocation of their refugee status and the promise that these families would own the homes after three years.

The promise was never fulfilled, and in 1967 Jordan lost its mandate over the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the territories were occupied by Israel.

Al Jazeera, “Video shows Israeli settler trying to take over Palestinian house; Video captures Palestinian woman confronting Jewish settler in her family home in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah.” May 4, 2021.

Title issues in Sheikh Jarrah appear to go back to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (“Six Day War”) and the redistricting that ensued. So next:

Posted to YouTube May 31, 2018.

The video makes it look like Israel just popped up on the map one day in 1948, and the Arab states were enraged by the sudden intrusion.

Well, neither Israel nor Pakistan arrived from out of nowhere in 1948. For one, a militant Islam had found itself unhappy in India, so one might suggest, and an horrific two-way mass migration formed the new state and its “frozen conflict” in Kashmir and shifting East-West alignments and related politics. As for Israel, cultural memory engraved in religion and ancient tradition, urged a return far predating 1948. A part of that history may be found here:

Rosenthal, Herman. “Agricultural Colonies in Palestine.” Jewish Encyclopedia. n.d.

Should your devotion to peace (even from your desktop, laptop, or phone — no less than mine if that) have you at least look or recall the history of Jewish habitation and investment in Palestine far predating Hitler’s atrocious crime, then consider the passage that follows.

From the Awesome Conversation

I appreciate the avarice, egotism, greed, and vulgarity involved in most wars in relation to taking property by force.

Fortunately, the tides move in both directions, making everyone miserable (if not vulgar).

WHAT IF Israeli and Palestinian officials designed together final boundaries and funded resettlement — no homeless; no “kick-outs”; no further coercion, fraud, or force — and no allowance for contempt or hate — for equal or better qualities of living where placed?

Take the emotion out of arrangements, domestic and other, and just focus on the basic human right to live in peace and free of intimidation and persecution. It doesn’t matter who you are, how you got there, what you believe or don’t believe, or even where loyalties may reside, but only that families may be settled and left to live (and work) — by mutual assent — fairly and without harassment.

Kumbaya?

Not necessarily. It’s out of necessity now that emphasis shift from immediate personal alliances, ambitions, concerns, egotism, and hurt (even) to broadened responsible modern Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. It should take only one rightly handled instance to change . . . everything.

“Masking” is what takes place when events are reported with critical missing information. In this instance, the Arab and Muslim press, the modern-looking Al Jazeera perhaps especially, overlooked the 1967 Arab challenge to Jewish survival in Israel, a war that is now an historical matter, and in standard operating procedure demonized the Jews while maintaining the innocence of Arab residents who knew their homes by having taken the same for themselves when political conditions permitted. In effect, the family had done nothing wrong with the exception of taking up residence in a geopolitical space that would again be contested, and whose outcome would be their loss by way of the restoration of previous boundaries.

Who are the thieves?

The Arab family settled in 1956?

The Jewish family pressing its case for title from before that date and after another horrendous eleven years later?

Let the finger pointing end.

Drawing to a close the instability of boundaries and related animus matters as much as the carefully and legally researched answers to legal title. To get that accommodation wants for asking those with interest to open their eyes and to think further into the future than themselves, their appreciation of themselves, and their immediate perceptions.

–33–

FTAC: On Israeli Nationalist and Palestinian Violence in Jerusalem

23 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Reference —

Syndicated Content. “Police arrest dozens in Jerusalem clashes; Israeli nationalists chant ‘Death to Arabs'”. WHTC, April 23, 2021.

From the Awesome Conversation

Related to previous post: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

Medieval v Modern.

Absolute Power x Close Associates & Family v Democracy, Open Competition, and Merit.

Would that real life were that simple, but for the Palestinians, most of them, real life remains too medieval and beset with corruption and greed. Credit the KGB for blocking the advance of western liberalism — and democracy and rule of law — over their captive or dead bodies, courtesy of a now Ageing Arab World and the habits and machinations of an equally ageing Old Kremlin.

I’ve been dulled by the sheer stupidity of repeated political cant and conversation, but this time with the Middle East Conflict (MEC) have at least both background (“Palestinian KGB”) and perhaps insight to offer in the cause not only of quelling medieval and tribal misery but also for cheerleading the arrival of a different and modern New World. Take as signal — and convenient juxtaposition — Russian KGB/FSB President Vladimir Putin’s apparent decision to draw back Russian forces brought to Ukraine’s border after having turned military “exercise” into an ambiguous and deadly enough threat not only to Ukraine but to an ordered world that has been working in the region of history after WWII. Putin’s will and ample leverage well demonstrated the power of the medieval outlook, but it may have run into a kind of thug’s “so what?” had invasion and war ensued (and quite cautious here, I’m following the retreat as observed in the Open Source).

Symbolically, Russia’s election to retrieve its forces following its “demonstration” may and should be it — the beginning of the end of the end 🙂 — for the more obvious play of the once barbaric, brutal, and feudal world, at least as regards the leadership and trajectory of states.

One hopes that with Israel’s most recent separation of deluded and violent parties — the “eternally” fist-shaking Israeli (“Nationalist”) and Palestinian (“Revolutionary”) forces will have reached their nadir in shared stupidity as the Palestinians prove captive to and exploited by their own leaders. As for those Israeli Nationalists, not only God but State Planners as well have set their boundaries, and all that is wanted should be just a little bit of insight by both into the causes of “East-West Conflict” where both have been made to stand in place while going nowhere in time.

v

Note: Khashoggi, Spy, The Kingdom, 9/11, and the Taliban

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Political Spychology, Saudi Arabia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

What I believed –>

Jamal Khashoggi, almost royal family given his access, provided as a journalist intelligence for Mohammed Bin Salman. When he departed from the royal line by being positive about the Muslim Brotherhood and progressive about human right in the The Kingdom, the King chose to retrieve him a manner probably impressive even to Putin who forgives no KGB turncoat.

Witnessed: “Political Absolutism”. Unquestionable authority. Capricious, unyielding, sadistic, tyrannical. Add for some: black and white in judgment; inflexible in execution.

More True?

At the time of my brief discussions with him, Khashoggi happened to work for a man at the heart of some of the issues I had been investigating: he was a media aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi ambassador to London, and later Washington, and previously Saudi intelligence chief for 25 years before he abruptly left the post just prior to the 9/11 attacks.

It was Prince Turki as former head of intelligence who brokered the Saudis’ fateful deal with al-Qaida, according to documents and testimony from Taliban insiders cited by Vanity Fair journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. In their book Eleventh Day (2012), they report that under al-Faisal’s deal, as early as 1995 the Saudi royal family paid ‘protection money’ to Osama bin Laden on condition that he avoided targeting the kingdom.

The NSA was closely monitoring the operation, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars channelled to bin Laden through philanthropic activity.

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.

Regarding 9/11, one may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s enshadowed role with Ayman al-Zawahiri — reference: Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014:

That Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s right-hand man and the leader of the global jihad movement since bin Laden’s death in May 2011, spent almost a half-year in the mid-1990s in the custody of Russian intelligence is admitted by both sides and is a matter of public record.[3] 

Just as significant, Zawahiri’s Russian sojourn occurred at a pivotal point in the development of al-Qaeda; the shift in strategy, resulting in attacks on the “far enemy” (i.e. the United States), the road leading to 9/11, occurred after Zawahiri’s imprisonment by the Russians.

Spies, of course, both uncover and keep secrets, and there seems no question regarding Khashoggi’s service to the Kingdom as a journalist with extraordinary access to power as well as, apparently (as suggested by Nafeez Ahmed’s coverage) admiration for it. As “dead men tell no tales”, the public may never know the full extent of motivations for Khashoggi’s torture, death, and dismemberment.

In the shadows: every intelligence agency on the planet with eyes keenly fixed on the course of international affairs and hands on levers responding to immense political power in the figures of dictators, kings, and presidents. So The Kingdom may have paid protection for al-Qaeda’s promotion of Islamic inflexibility and viciously anomic inhumanity elsewhere in the world — and Russia may have “handled” Zawahiri as an anti-western force with which to be reckoned as so well demonstrated on 9/11.

So ensues the west’s global war on Islamic terrorism.

Has it been “The West’s” war only?

Talibanicide

For the Ancestors
For the Martyrs
Keep Fighting!

With poppy
With Russian arms and materiel
Keep fighting!

For war crippled children
For war-killed dead
Keep fighting!

For Allah
For Prophet Muhammad
For dogma
For whatever authority says
Keep fighting!

For Russia
For America
For God’s sake
Keep fighting!

Reference

I didn’t know how to treat “Le Monde diplomatique” whose typeset name featured a reversed italic for “diplomatique”, so I bolded the publication’s name — and then what papa does for one . . . . 🙂 No more games. I won’t do it again. I believe italics just fine for book and other whole publication titles.

Ahmed, Nafeez. “Saudi’s new king of terror.” Middle East Eye, June 6, 2016.

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.

Al Arabiya English. “Washington Post reveals how Qatar Foundation shaped their pieces by Khashoggi.” December 23, 2018; updated May 20, 2020.

Hearst, David. “Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi criticised the regime — and paid with his life.” Op-ed. The Guardian, October 8, 2018.

Mekhennet, Souad and Greg Miller. “Jamal Khashoggi’s final months as an exile in the long shadow of Saudi Arabia.” The Washington Post, December 22, 2018.

Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014

Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.

Wikipedia. “Mohammed bin Salman”.

Wikipedia. “Nafeez Ahmed”.

As the world has waited for further answers about Khashoggi’s death, more details about his background are coming to light. They paint an interesting picture of a man known today in the U.S. as a Washington Post columnist but whose family has deep ties to the Saudi monarchy that go back generations.

“They were a rich family, educated,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C. He knew Jamal Khashoggi for many years and saw him until recently as more a loyalist than a critic of the royal family.

Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.

–33–

Bolton on Biden and Renewal of the JCPOA

19 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Iran, Philosophy, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Bolton, John. “Boris Johnson holds the future of the fatally flawed Iran deal in his hands.” The Telegraph, February 18, 2021.

Political deja vu — The United States has been here before with its “arch conservatives” and cowardly isolationist and possibly related anti-Semitic and paranoid tendencies. For reference without much ado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L._K._Smith | https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/16/archives/gerald-lk-smith-dead-anticommunist-crusader.html |

Among the slashed and burnt of The Great Liar’s One-Term Presidency, John Bolton stands out for greater backbone, discretion, experience, and integrity.

I believe Bolton when he suggests he leveraged his experience in national security to participate in the Trump Administration in order to produce his — not Trump’s — brand of guidance. As Trump required greater sycophancy, Bolton would also leave the malignant narcissist’s den.

The Republican Party, once the Party of the visionary Abraham Lincoln, has in the 20th Century seen equally embarrassing and shamefully self-centered days. That has become something for critically reasoning and independent Americans to take into consideration as the West with its ideas about compassion, freedom, goodness, and real human productivity faces an anachronistic, feudal, and implacable enemy in Moscow and, in post-Cold War association with it, Beijing and Tehran as well.

Tehran, worn by its own conflict-promoting behaviors over time and by sanctions, has shown no signs of retreat in relation to its nuclear missile and warhead programs nor its will, repeated with dulling frequency, to see Israel and the west destroyed for its own marauding and politically absolute ends. Where has the Republican Party (with its increasingly familiar white supremacist attachments) really stood on the Moscow-Tehran relationship? Where has it stood with regard to the rise of the proto-fascist New Nationalism in the United States as well as within NATO (have a look into authoritarian and feudal urges in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey)?

Here is a junction in time in which the United States, once leader of the free world — the modern open democratic world, either stands firm against politically retrograde but technologically sophisticated states or slips backward itself into some system of immense power and wealth lording over a hapless constituency whose political voice becomes so much noise to those working the levers for their own enrichment according to class and degrees of ruthlessness.

–33–

FTAC: Palestinian KGB: Another Remark

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

From the Awesome Conversation

I harp on this point with the hope that it will lead to insight into the Palestinian role in more general and profound “east-west relations” — https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html As Moscow has remained “politically absolute” in relation to power, so it has supported corrupt dictatorships around the world and blocked the spread of western liberalism and democratic self-determination and inclusion. The Middle East Conflict remains but one of many now post-Soviet frozen conflicts energized by its defunct Soviet Era framing and covered by the “liberation movement” banner.

From Arafat to Abbas to whoever comes next, Palestinian leaders have been puppets with their string attached to the Russia’s political police services.

–33–