Category Archives: Regions

FTAC: A Note on Totalitarianism and America’s Fractious Left v Right Politics

06 Tuesday Apr 2021

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

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Inspiration for this post —

Billingsley, Lloyd. “Lessons From a Journalist’s First Encounter with Totalitarianism.” Frontpage, April 6, 2021.

From the Awesome Conversation

As Facebook responses — this one appeared on the Bukovsky Center page — and blog presentations differ, I have opted to let the blogging system work by adding URLs to the original text and allowing importation as commercial interests (Amazon’s) have made possible.

While Lloyd Billingsley has got right the description of Communist Totalitarianism, it just does not follow that the American Left and main portion of the Liberal Community has some Stalinist bent. Even the fashionable “far left” — short of the armed-up separatists who do fit Billingsley’s description from the “Far Out Left” and “Far White Right” (my terms) — places some premium on frank discussion and reporting with integrity. Some, unfortunately, have made alliance with the Soviet / post-Soviet remains of Communist Group Think and will swallow old Kool-Aid like the Boycott Divestitures and Sanctions (BDS) malarkey, but on the whole will report with integrity.

Cullors, Patrisse and Asha Bandele; forward by Angela Davis. St. Martin’s Press, 2018.

I have found enough in Patrice Cullors (“Marxist Trained” is part of her self-promotion) to both validate a number of race-related and systemic American issues.

The truths may be uncomfortable, but raising points in an open society undermines efforts to install a more deeply pernicious totalitarianism in America’s own open society — and by extension the still open (or remaining) democratic societies of EU/NATO. IF we in the West should wish to live in authentic (as opposed to Potemkin) democracies, we bear the burden of listening to earnest complaint and testimony and finding appropriate and best ways of responding to it and associated public and private realpolitik.

“Accusation in a Mirror”, a term derived from Kenneth L. Marcus’s eponymous essay (PDF) befits the hothouse atmospheres of both strident conservatives and edgy liberals as each accuses the other of attempting to established a communist or fascism totalitarian state in their areas of influence and operations.

Aside: I have long ago picked up on the idea that both communism and capitalism over-emphasize material well-being in their otherwise opposite philosophies, and if it’s true that such bipolar conflicts comes down to “owning the pie v sharing the pie”, the nation has other spiritual challenges. Personally, I would endorse the development of carefully constructed public-private compact with basic environmental and human interests and related principles and values foremost.

I would suggest to Lloyd Billingsley that he take in a less divisive and more magnanimous and realistic approach to an adjusted 21st Century politics; to Patrisse Cullors and others, black or white or other: let’s hear stories told with integrity while querying systemic shortcomings. Color — brown eyes or blue? — may be a “discriminator”, but what is one to do with hazel or flecked or green — or with skin cafe au lait, caramel, ochre, bronzed, freckled, eggplant, milky, peachy or with body types and facial features innumerable?

In my experience, nature more appreciates or favors variety than it does mono-cultures too isolated and too rigid to respond to the natural proliferation of antagonists (for the political portal associated with related science, see the Convention on Biological Diversity and its List of Parties).

One more opinion from off this desktop where with information I “collect, select, and opine”: to what extent do we as Americans really need our “hyphenates” and elaborated and ironically suffocating color, culture, and gender oriented taxonomies?

For the time being, we’re having issues with perceived political power and empowerment and related injuries, injustices, jealousies, and resentments. While not everything may be repaired, we might choose to look ahead toward what needs may be diminished (starting with our own rancor) and what may be improved, better integrated, more loved, more appreciated.

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Russia v Ukraine – Fast Note

05 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ukraine

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6 hours ago – 48°0′N 37°48′E
Head of occupation authorities in parts of Donetsk region threatens there is little chance to stop military conflict at Donbas

https://liveuamap.com/en/2021/5-april-head-of-occupation-authorities-in-parts-of-donetsk – Noticed about 9:30 a.m. EDT.

Russia’s earlier mobilization, the production (fake, false flag, etc.) or reporting of a casus belli (scroll down), and this day’s direct signal may spell other than heightened activity in this frozen conflict zone in which Russia has every day violated ceasefire agreements.

While Ukraine has reluctantly shouldered The Bear through two Administrations in Washington, this following on the heels of the Easter Holiday will challenge the Biden Administration to step up and forward instead of stepping back and sitting down to watch a sapping low-intensity conflict that appears to have transformed.

Related Online

At home, Putin faces parliamentary elections in September with his approval ratings in a slump and support for his United Russia political party collapsing. A military adventure in nearby Ukraine could act as a convenient distraction and serve to revitalize Putin’s personal popularity. In a worrying indication of Moscow’s intentions, the Kremlin-controlled Russian media has recently stepped up its propaganda attacks on Ukraine and begun accusing the Ukrainian authorities of plotting an offensive of their own.

Hopes of achieving a favorable peace agreement with Zelenskyy have also now largely evaporated.

Dickinson, Peter. “Is Putin about to launch a new offensive in Ukraine?” Atlantic Council, April 4, 2021.

Mikovic, Nikola. “The Donbass conflict: Waiting for escalation.” The Interpreter, February 4, 2021.

Roth, Andrew. “EU pledges backing to Ukraine after Russian military buildup.” The Guardian, April 5, 2021.

Stewart, Will. “The Kremlin accuses ‘Ukrainian beasts’ of executing a boy, 5, with a drone as tensions rise between the two countries and Russia moves troops and tanks to the border.” Daily Mail, April 5, 2021.

StopFake. “Fake: A child died in Donbas as a result of a Ukrainian drone attack.” April 5, 2021.

StopFake. “Ukraine is Barbaric: StopFakeNews with Marko Suprun (No. 3018).” April 2, 2021.

UNIAN. “Russian deploying air assault division to occupied Crimea — OSINT group.” April 5, 2021.

Wikipedia. “Russo-Ukrainian War”.

Related to Russia’s Projection of Greater Threat to EU/NATO (Examples)

RFERL. “Putin Warns of Risk of Nuclear War, Talks Up Russian Economy in Annual Press Conference.” December 20, 2018.

RFERL. “Russian Fighter Jets Moved to Annexed Ukrainian Region.” December 22, 2018.

Posted by StopFake English, April 2, 2021.

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2021 & 1960s Redux — It’s Always About Hair

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, United States of America

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The bill builds off existing state laws, which generally prohibit workplace or school discrimination based on religion, gender, sexual orientation and race. But the CROWN Act expands the definition of “race” to include “traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles,” like braids, locs and twists. These and other styles known as “natural” looks do not involve processing to straighten the hair.

Norwood, Candice. “A yearslong push to ban hair discrimination is gaining momentum.” PBS New Hours, March 31, 2021.

The Crown Act (Home Page)

The greater part of the forces of conformity and order would seem to come from the control freaks of the private sector, who, well, foot the bill for their corporate look — and so they would seem entitled regiment employee appearances — but that regimentation may no longer fit the look of America, which has become naturally . . . natural, color filled, and creative and wild in personal expression and representation.

Thus has it been since at least the tumult of the 1960s and the race in commerce and finance to capitalize on the greater institutionalization of broadest inclusion (e.g., see United Colors of Benetton).

Of course, there’s more to contemporary racial discomfort than fashion.

And there’s more to it than this day’s hideous Far White Right angst-inspired hatred, the impersonal qualities of national course correcting quotas and programs (so that – and so I heard one academic leader proclaim long ago in relation to his institution – “our numbers look right”), Russian Active Measures (designed to disinform and enrage us in every way possible), and, sadly, incarceration rates.

There’s The Money — who has it, who produces more of it, who gets it, and how — and America’s future in its cultural, economic, spiritual development, evolution, and realpolitik.

Do we really believe in our ideals?

Have we the insight, will, and vision to construct what needs must become a Greater American Dream and Reality?

The latest to-do about hair, that most intimate and universal signal about how we roll, as it were, whether young peacocks or tigresses or balding old men, black as well as white, and haloed older ladies, may be more affirming in relation to America’s meta- and political cultures than challenging except near the separatist fringes where the most malign of narcissists insist that their own image and legacy define the world around themselves.

Posted to YouTube by Slave Play, March 1, 2021.

Of the few things a person may control in life, the body — and, as part of it, the haircut — would seem the most primary.

Add cloth.

Make an appearance.

If good, if lawful, if broad in outlook and of generous spirit, well then — welcome aboard America.

Welcome home.

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I Am An American

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, United States of America

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I am an American.

I am not a Jewish American but for anti-Semites, tribal wranglers, and the boundaries of my own concessions.

I am not a German American, and not a word of it.

I am not a Polish American although I may appreciate the Polish tradition in tea cup and pot design.

*

I am an American who admires and appreciates the world, its myriad cultures, races, and religions but returns always to a pale-to-black nation separated from alliance with any one acknowledged church, life way, or god even though I may acknowledged the presence of an All that becomes the idea of God.

*

I am an American free to watch baseball or porn, to catch the world’s news or none at all, to reflect on my nation’s Constitution — or not worry over it, for it’s a strong thing by itself, and I am free and secure to fall asleep beneath clouds or stars, to read or write as spirit moves, to seek company or seclusion as my self sees fit.

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I am an American aware of the effects of American Natives, the currents of European history, and the presence of ruthless and sadistic Puritans on the cultural outlines within the spacious boundaries and potentials of the now modern state.

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I am an American easily, simply, spiritually.

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I am an American.

My People are Americans.

For Divided America, a Kernel in a Tweet

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Philosophy, Politics, United States of America

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FTAC: A Note on America’s Far White Right – The Sons (of the Sons of the Sons of the Sons) of the Pioneers

20 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Psychology, United States of America

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I don’t know if the groups and leaderships attending what the SPLC might refer to as “Neo-Confederate” and “Neo-Nazi” are authentically homegrown perennials or stylish annuals that keep seeding themselves from year to year, but it has occurred to me that world always moves on around its hotheads, especially the archaic and romantic who may wish to hold on to what they believe they once had. So from the awesome conversation with the world at my desktop, here’s a note on all of that.

From the Awesome Conversation

I would think the Southern Far White Right in part the great-great grandchildren of settlers and the last of the pioneers, invariably white and looking for their place in the developing New World and who bore with them from one generation to the next the legends of the settling of the west. Farms, ranches, railroads, trading posts, towns, cities, dirt tracks, and highways. Where are they now? Ill-educated, some; overrun, for sure, and no longer the law and the outlaw with a few Mexicans around for decoration. They’re working for their hires; the children of slaves are bosses (some, I’m sure); John Wayne’s a foggy memory; Denzel’s more the memory for America’s middle aged; Bond’s partner is a black woman . . . .

The cities may be cool or mildly restive with all while the rural lanes, whether real or just winding through the heart, may be still what they were and now surrounded by an alien colorful all-inclusive all-tolerated multi-gendered multicultural powerful hypermodern New American political and lifestyle culture.

Bureaucracy, law, and technology may support American domestic security, but it sure can’t solve cultural issues involving birthrights and expectations about how the world should work. It’s understandable that we would have some disappointed-struggling sons of old white sons for whom official favor might seem (by themselves) deserved.

Addendum

Who would stop history?

The processes attending conquest and the establishment of sovereignty across geopolitical space and time give way, inevitably, to periods of Administration either, Genghis style, for sustained plunder or, alas, for The Good, i.e., for renewed husbandry, shepherding, and stewardship of all that may be valued in peace. These days, bloody expansions needs must give way to community care, development, and trade, mere avarice proving insufficient for the defense of sustained new wealth.

My correspondent accused me of holding hackneyed views in relation to what I’ve labeled the “Far White Right”, a term invented for Donald John Trump’s not-so-colorful base. Members of the FWR, I was told, were also highly educated and wealthy and enamored of the American Dream, so I was told. My response –>

If “They both believe in and live the American dream”, wherefore the racial angst and want of (renewed) privilege?

Wherefore the want of racially-based political ascendance and dominance?

I’m inclined to publish my own words, but, as always would be interested in seeing what a true political topology looks like for those now deeply resenting the darker hues along with Jews.

I had also inserted a link to Far Out Lefty Noel Ignatiev’s book, How the Irish Became White.

Here’s the thing about race and white boys and black boys and girls and all the shades and stances between –>

As a species . . . .

Hitchhikers thumbs, cars, old shoes, planes, ships, and trains and legions of defenders, traders, and raiders — we sure do “get around” and have gotten around, and there’s nothing to undo it.

The mentalities of criminals and extremists seems always archaic, self-adoring, and self-aggrandizing as if humiliation and mortification somewhere near has compelled repair and some former perceived noble state of affairs may be found forward with an heroic defiance of the future.

Related Online

Hyman, Frank. “The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.” McClatchy, DC Bureau, March 11, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: The American Quilt, the Confederate Flag and Southern Pride, and the Soviet-Style Erasing of History.” BackChannels, June 13, 2020.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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