Category Archives: Middle East

FTAC – Summation – Syria and Red Brown Green

19 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Syria

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The schematics I feel I’ve observed over the years:

Post-Soviet –> neo-feudal Russia that has been quietly addressed (by sanctions; by a precipitous drop in oil prices and related revenues) as an extension of the former era.

“Putin-Assad-Khamenei” as an arc of power in the region and “Putin-Khamenei” as a hub for the greater development of political absolute power elsewhere.

“Syndicate Red Brown Green” — Putin’s Russia, KGB-to-FSB; new national socialist movements (Hungary); Islamists.

The cultivation of Daesh, self-generated but perhaps manipulated by Khamenei to serve as a Sunni foil for his regime’s Shiite expansion, serves narrative artifice that has been “Assad vs The Terrorists” — an horrific piece of political “theater of the real”.

All of that may be breaking up through the fragmenting of Syria, but nothing is near over, and, indeed, the anarchy and chaos developed in the space will have to be addressed on multiple levels, from combat and counterterrorism effort to some kind of refugee management and resettlement. Count out “Putin, Assad, Khamenei” as being of any help at all.

I had just seen a group of pictures featuring starved Syrian children, the latest in “war porn”, and it had featured an image of a starving adult man bearing a resemblance to President Obama.

Agitprop?

Not only agitprop, but propaganda from what appeared to me to be an anti-western, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist “news agency” promoting victimization on one hand while isolating itself on the other.

BackChannels has been to this evil place before: “It’s Hard Helping You When You’re Anti-Semitic, Among Other Things” (March 19, 2014).

Written about the “Obamastarvingman” and the more evidently starved youngsters:

I don’t like the top figure’s resemblance to Obama — it smacks of propaganda, an attempt at not quite subliminal suggestion.

While “Syndicate Red Brown Green” put together the political theater that may be titled, “Assad vs The Terrorists”, the children shown, and of course noncombatant adults as well, were the kind of Syrians killed or punished by, in essence, their own feudal lords.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights may have additional information on the casualties of the breathtaking disaster that has taken place in Syria in the post-Soviet and now feudal context managed by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei. Obama watched; NATO watched; we watched. However: the continuing promotion of anti-Semitism, anti-westernism — basically hateful and undemocratic rhetoric (because it’s dishonest and disingenuous speech) — leaves the Syrian victims of Assad’s grandiose play (“Assad vs The Terrorists”) disenfranchised, helpless, and isolated.

No surprise: no one has yet “Liked” the comment.

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Link – MEF – Summer – ” . . . that death is not death . . . .”

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Links, Political Psychology, Psychology, Religion

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Suicide terrorism has become so commonplace that it is easy to overlook how relatively new and suddenly popular the phenomenon is. Between the end of World War II and the Iranian revolution, there were no suicide attacks in the world. Yet only months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini solidified power and formed the Pasdaran and Basij, suicide attacks began to appear in conflicts involving Shiites (Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war) and then took root among Palestinian Sunni groups.[3] It eventually became the preferred tactic of Islamist terror organizations.

Khomeini selected specific passages from the Qur’an and hadith (canonical collections of Muhammad’s alleged sayings and actions) to craft his suicidal version of radical Islam. His two-part rhetorical plan necessitated convincing Muslims that suicide is not suicide and that death is not death.

Caschetta, A. J.  “Does Islam Have a Role in Suicide Bombings?” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2015.

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Link – Erdogan’s Turkey – Israel’s Image

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Turkey

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A large number of the citizens of Turkey, a NATO member, see Israel and the United States as enemies.

A survey conducted recently in Turkey found that nearly half the country’s citizens (42.6%) see Israel as the biggest security threat, followed by the United States (35.5%), and only then Syria (22.1%).

How do they visualize Israel, a country with which they have made several military and trade agreements, as being a security threat? Do they think Israel would ever invade Turkey? Bomb Turkey? Nuke Turkey? This view seems to be based on either religion-induced paranoia caused by Islamic anti-Semitism, or else their understanding of reality has been distorted Nazi-style by Turkish leaders and the media.

Bulut, Uzay.  “Turkish Journalist Uzay Bulut — Turkey’s View of Israel.”  IsraelSeen.com, June 10, 2015.

Turkey was the first – and for decades the only – Islamic country to recognize the Jewish state, opening diplomatic relations in 1949. While Turkey became a member of NATO in 1952, and Israel served during the Cold War as a Western ally to counter Soviet alliances in the Arab world, relations between the two states were low-key through the decades of wars fought between Israel and the Arabs. Yet Turkey never severed the relationship despite Arab pressure to do so. With the end of the Cold War, Israel and Turkey emerged as the most democratic and economically dynamic states in the region. Their foreign pro-Western orientation and their self-perception as bastions of democratic and free market values in an unruly neighbourhood placed them, as was the case during the Cold War years, in the same strategic boat.

Inbar, Efraim.  “The Resilience of Israeli-Turkish Relations”.  11:4 (591-607) Israel Affairs, October 2005; reprinted by The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 63; posted as a PDF online.

Given the neo-feudal and fascist will of Syndicate Red Brown Green, the resilience of Israeli-Turkish relations has not looked good for some years.

What may be looking forward, however, is how well humanity-adverse and anti-Semitic drives and manipulations may be overviewed on the World Wide Web.  Not only may pro-democracy true progressives in the west do the homework on the Putin-Erdogan relationship, brave and independent souls in Turkey (and elsewhere worldwide) may search up “Putin, Erdogan, Democracy”.

Other cool related searches: “Putin, palaces”; “Erdogan, white palace”.

After a while, in the same fashion as the Reuter’s piece on Khamenei, these reports that develop online — and they do add up thematically — create a certain impression and, perhaps, also leave a lasting impression.

Additional Reference

Martel, Frances.  “Erdogan’s Putin-Style Internet Trolls Blamed for Turkish AKP’s Election Losses.”  Breitbart, June 10, 2015.

Sadar, Claire.  “Dreaming of Russia in Ankara: Is Erdogan Following in Putin’s Footsteps?”  Foreign Affairs, February 12, 2015.

Tisdall, Simon.  “Erdogan plan for super-presidency puts Turkey’s democracy at stake.” The Guardian, March 25, 2015.

Relevant on BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology“

I fear to see the term “anthropolitical” take off, but it could happen: in a New Age Strange Way, we’re all going to be part of distinct and meaningful legacy (and ethnolinguistic) cultures, but any will have the option at all times to overview the same rapidly — to see their world mirrored in real time — and inquire into its intellectual arrangements.  From that may come greater discrimination in preferences in values plus an active delineation of “desirable universals” and “critical positive” cultural and intellectual assets.

The English x persons x language shall not rule the world: the worlds of the world must rule themselves differentially even if and while wrapped in a unifying global communications environment.

Addendum – June 15, 2015

Efraim Inbar, a professor of political studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), is not optimistic about AKP’s imminent political downfall and does not expect a change in Turkey’s attitude toward Western nations and Israel.

“The struggle over the soul and identity of Turkey continues,” Inbar told JNS.org, explaining that while “the election is definitely a blow to the AKP, [the party] still remains the major political force in Turkey.”

JNS.org via The Algemeiner.  “Will Erdogan’s Election Setback Mean Improved Relations With Israel?”  June 14, 2015.

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FTAC – ” . . . an inculcated hate”

12 Friday Jun 2015

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

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“We maintain that Jews and Judaism have no conflict with Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians or any other group.” True.

“It was complete obedience to the Will of the Creator.” False. We do not endorse blind obedience, and many of us believe God’s test of Abraham was a test of conscience and courage — a test to see if Abraham would speak back to God over His demand that Isaac be murdered by his father — rather than of obedience. Abraham fails. The evidence from such an interpretation can only come from careful and close reading, but that is exactly the kind of reading and thinking the Torah demands.

While they may profess a sincere identification with Judaism, they are within the Jewish community considered and treated as a cult.

In the service of Palestinian anti-Semitism: http://972mag.com/anti-zionist-jews-are-no-friend-of-the-palestinian-national-struggle/61002/

Daniel Pipes reported on NK’s taking payments from Iran back in 2004.

More recently, members have been indicted and jailed for spying.

http://www.jta.org/2014/01/28/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/israeli-neturei-karta-member-sentenced-for-spying-for-iran

What may bond you to them, despite now knowing that Khamenei uses them as token Jews, and that they are reviled by the vast majority of the Jewish community, not only in Israel but worldwide, is that they too would wish to annihilate Israel and probably all of Jewry but themselves. That bond involves an inculcated hate.

Neturai Karta. “The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism.”  Speech Presented by Rabbi Dovid Weiss of NKI at the Islamic Center of Long Island on January 14, 2001.

Anti-Zionism is an inherently anti-Semitic doctrine. In calling for the fall of the Jewish state, anti-Zionists are engaged in a racist endeavour. Jews should feel no hesitation whatsoever in calling out those who challenge Israel’s right to exist as anti-Semites, with all the attendant implications.

None of this should be controversial. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” is part of the EU’s working definition of anti-Semitism (or was, until the EU inexplicably dropped it). This article is concerned with articulating the intellectual foundations for this proposition, rather than somehow presenting a new idea.

Asian-Levy, Eylon.  “Why anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.”  The Times of Israel, December 8, 2013.

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Sadegh Zibakalam – Challenging “Death to Israel” in Tehran

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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Posted to YouTube June 10, 2015.

The event took place on February 25, 2015.

Toward the end of the clip, Dr. Zibakalam says to hecklers in the audience, “You are so tyrannical and dictatorial that you even disrupt this debate!”

An American, European, or Israeli could not have said what needed to be said any better than that.

Zibakalam asks also, “Who on earth has given this responsibility to Iran to annihilate Israel?”

First suggested answer to that rhetorical challenge: Ayatollah Khamenei, of course.

Second answer: no less than charges of heresy in medieval churches, anti-Semitism has proven across time a cheap tool for leveraging political power to deflect attention away from mediocre and piratical leaders while enriching the same by way of thieving from the children of Moses — all of them.

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Assad or Burn It? Assad Burns It.

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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The United States has accused the Syrian military loyal to President Bashar Assad of carrying out air strikes to help Islamic State fighters advance around the northern city of Aleppo, messages posted on the US Embassy in Syria’s official Twitter feed said.

Reuters via YNet News.  “US accuses Assad of backing Islamic State’s Aleppo advance.”  June 2, 2015.

Related on BackChannels: “Ali Khamenei and the Letter from Near Mosul – A Speculation.”  January 16, 2015.

Reminder with reference to how the Syrian Revolution began:

Syria is burning — scorched for nearly a year by tenacious political resistance, a merciless security crackdown and cries for democracy.

The spark that lit the flame began about a year ago in the southern city of Daraa after the arrests of at least 15 children for painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of a school.

The community’s blunt outrage over the children’s arrests and mistreatment, the government’s humiliating and violent reactions to their worries, and the people’s refusal to be cowed by security forces emboldened and helped spread the Syrian opposition.

Sterling, Joe.  “Daraa: The spark that lit the Syrian flame.”  CNN, March 1, 2012.

Related.  Human Rights Watch.  “Syria: Crimes Against Humanity in Daraa: Killings, Torture in a Locked-Down City Under Siege.”  June 1, 2011:

“For more than two months now, Syrian security forces have been killing and torturing their own people with complete impunity,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “They need to stop – and if they don’t, it is the Security Council’s responsibility to make sure that the people responsible face justice.”

Fat chance then and no better now.

Twice elsewhere today, the editor has been online noting the perversion of the 2011 Syrian protest movement against absolute power into an immensely aggrandizing narrative that one might title, “Assad vs The Terrorists.”

How did “The Terrorists” get to play such a large role in the region?

Evidently, the Assad regime — this with the cooperation of Moscow and Tehran — simply prefered to barrel bomb the living daylights out of business districts, hospitals, schools, residential housing, and the like rather than impede the development al-Nusra (early Syrian Civil War) and Daesh (late Syrian Tragedy).

In this blog’s laziest short form:

http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-its-like-to-have-the-assad-regimes-barrel-bombs-dropped-on-your-city-2015-5 – 5/5/2015.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/30/syria-children-killed.html – 4/30/2014.

http://www.businessinsider.com/barrel-bombing-in-syria-graphic-2014-3 – includes video of a bombing – 3/11/2014.

http://www.aawsat.net/2015/05/article55343292/major-hospital-in-syrias-aleppo-shuts-because-of-bombing – 5/5/2014.

Point made?

Granted, the field has been a mess from very near the Assad regime’s initial show of brutality with the arrest and torture of children.  The response to the outrage plus the deflecting of a people’s revolution drew from the population and from around the world drew a world of volunteers into a mixed bag of Islamic / Islamist warrior bands.

While Bashar al-Assad’s Syria remains in power, the damage wrought to the state has been profound.  In addition to dead, injured, and refugee and added to the insults done to business, cultural, and religious assets, the Assad regime appears to have lost control of about a third of the country.

Related: Charron, Guillaume.  “Syria: Forsaken IDPs adrift inside a fragmenting state.”  Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, October 21, 2014.

Does Bashar al-Assad even have a state?

Has Syria not been burned?

The growth of The Terrorists and their expansion in conceptual and real presence in the Syrian and Syrian-Iraq theaters has deflected attention from other failures in the regimes involved, served to redefine Assad’s challenge from 2011 children’s protest movement (in part) into a fight in 2015 as dramatic as it has been heartbreaking and absurd: “Assad vs The Terrorists” — and there remains no near end in sight.

On Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Isis was now in control of all six border crossings between Iraq and Syria – even with the constant presence of US air force jets. Nearly 1,000 miles of frontier is now out of the control of either country, with Isis enjoying complete freedom of movement, except when the warplanes are around.

Though 20 of its 43 top-tier officials have been picked off by US drones and jets, Isis leaders can still travel freely across the large tract of land, roughly the size of Jordan, that they now call an Islamic caliphate.

Chulov, Martin.  “Amid the ruins of Syria, is Bashar al-Assad now finally facing the end?”  The Guardian, May 23, 2015.

Additional Reference

AFP.  “Iraq allies vow support for plan to regain ground from ISIS.”  Al Arabiya, June 2, 2015.

BBC News.  “Syria: The story of the conflict.”  March 12, 2015.

Charron, Guillaume.  “Syria: Forsaken IDPs adrift inside a fragmenting state.”  Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, October 21, 2014

Chulov, Martin and Julian Borger.  “Syria: Isis advance on Aleppo aided by Assad regime air strikes, US says.”  June 2, 2015:

“It has become a matter of fact since 2013 that the Syrian regime has bombed us to stop us fighting Isis properly. Isis have never attacked Syrian planes. They owe their success to the regime.”

A second opposition leader from the Suqr al-Sham group said: “They have hit us with Grad rockets, artillery, air strikes and everything else since Sunday. They have not hit an Isis position.”

Coalition for a Democratic Syria via Daily Mail: map of ISIS land gains, reposted by Daily Mail, January 17, 2015.

Drury, Flora.  “Revealed – how the threat of ISIS is spreading: Extremist groups has DOUBLED the land it controls in just a few months despite more than 800 coalition airstrikes.”  Daily Mail, January 17, 2015.

Harris, Shane and Jamie Dettmer.  “Spies Warned White House: Don’t Hit Al Qaeda in Syria.”  The Daily Beast, November 6, 2014.

Reuters.  “Satellite images show 290 heritage sites in Syria damaged by war: U.N.  December 23, 2014.

Sommerville, Quentin.  “Islamic State militants ‘filmed torturing Syrian boy'”.  BBC News, June 1, 2015.

Strategic Culture Foundation.  “100,000 militants, fragmented into 1,000 bands, are fighting in Syria: Study.”  September 16, 2013.

The Economist.  “Creeping toward Damascus.”  April 11, 2015.

Update – FTAC – Latest News – June 4, 2015

The Assad regime is in bad shape in every way: it has established its reputation for being murderous and sadistic at breathtaking scale — hundreds of thousands dead; millions displaced by its own bombing and other (including chemical weapons) actions; in the passion play “Assad vs The Terrorists”, it has had to call in Hezbollah’s troops and move them to meet al-Nusra and Daesh and others; it has lost control of about a third of Syria’s former land space; and having laid siege to the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp and through fighting with Daesh worked it into a state of destruction, it has reduced itself altogether to the status of an embattled feudal kingdom. Adrift in time today, where is Bashar al-Assad’s Syria to go?

Related Reference: Ginsberg, Mitch.  “Assad regime in its ‘most grave predicament’ – 
Syrian army defunct, rebels 100 yards from Israel border, senior officer says: 
Hezbollah has lost 100 men in past two weeks, says officer; terms non-conventional threat from Iran as ‘in decline’ in short term.”  The Times of Israel, June 4, 2015.

Link – Criticism of Patrick Cockburn Also Tells About A Post-Soviet “Theater of the Real”

28 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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By contrast, Cockburn takes a generous view of the regime’s belated and brief confrontation with ISIS. He has pronounced Assad’s army its “main military opponent,” deserving of Western support. But facts tell a different story. According to a Carter Center study, the regime has spared ISIS in 90 percent of its attacks; and an IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center (JTIC) study finds that in 2014, the regime targeted ISIS in only 6 percent of its attacks. (ISIS in turn directed its fire on the regime in only 13 percent its operations.)

Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees.  “Who’s Lying About Syria’s Christian Massacre?”  The Daily Beast, May 27, 2015.

Since Aboud Dandachi laid out the shaping of the battle by Assad forces in his refreshingly honest and entertaining history and polemic, The Doctor, The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between the World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict (2014), the feudal perversion of a modest pro-democracy protest in 2011 into a brutal epic one might title “Assad vs The Terrorists” has been apparent but the statistics on how it was done never so well relayed.

BackChannels (oh the bias!) commonly invokes the term “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” in place of Bashar al-Assad alone to play up the axis, its Russo-Iranian core, and define the conflict in Syria as other and greater than “civil war”, a mere internal dispute, the greater dispute being that between medieval absolute power and modern democratic distributed or popular power.

Additional Reference

Amazon.com: The Doctor,The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between The World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict.  eBook: Aboud Dandachi: Kindle Store – Kindle Edition, 94-101, 2/17/2014.

BackChannels.  “From Syria – The Doctor, the Eye Doctor, and Me – A Damning Statement.”  February 28, 2014.

Pulse.  “Syria: Beyond the Red Line” — “An important discussion on Syria, hosted by the Frontline Club, featuring Jonathan Littell, Orwa Nyrabia, Laila Alodaat, and Nerma Jelacic.”  Video featured.  May 28, 2015.

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2012 Report – Watching the Horror Born

27 Wednesday May 2015

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

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From recent correspondence — so recent, it hasn’t even been sent!

You may wish to wonder at the goodness of your country in its domestic ideals. China and Russia work differently, and what they do has probably long “leaked” into our own analyses and options.

With Iran, “War by Proxy” is obvious everywhere the regime sows chaos, death, and sorrow. This week: Yemen.

With Russia, those criminals make war and lie about it. As much has been the story of the invasion of Crimea from the start.

The Chinese: they have built islands on the sly!

Darned Earthworkers!

🙂

This news appeared on Fox nine days ago:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/18/military-intel-predicted-rise-isis-in-2012-detailed-arms-shipments/

Who OWNS that monster Out There in Syria-Iraq (“Syriaque”?*).

That it has served Putin-Assad-Khamenei, that person that has managed to pervert a a popular people’s protest into an ineffable tragedy one might title, “Assad vs The Terrorists” (mission accomplished), points to the forbearing of barrel bombing old terrorists positions when the districts of Homs proved so much more convenient and harmless and helpless for doing so.

This month (merry one of May) has brought an example of active observation but passive response to a challenge that has morphed from a negligible horror into a military and political scourge calling to mind the possibly more gentle manners of Attila the Hun.

The story released by Fox has been picked up on the Blogosphere, and the report itself may be located and downloaded as a PDF.

Additional Reference

Always on Watch.  “The DIA: ISIS “A Strategic Asset”?  May 26, 2015.

Hoff, Brad.  “2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”.  Levant Report, May 19, 2015.

Judicial Watch.  “Pgs. 287-293 (291) JW v DOD and State 14-812”.  Download site for the report pdf file (uploaded May 18, 2015).

*“Syriac” is a language and “Syriaque” it’s French spelling.

While on the subject of the dismantling of Syria-Iraq boundary points, BackChannels has taken note of the strength of “nominal affiliation” and “sectarian teleology” in producing and sustaining brutal conflict in the region.  The gamble on the favor of God and related glory appears to overmatch the promise of social cooperation and cohesion across sectarian lines that would produce a more sound freedom, peace, and prosperity while intellectual and social habits related to the experiences of fear and security prevail: Our People vs Those People, Sunni vs Shiite, appears to remain primary across population to some extent.

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