13 Tuesday Jan 2015
Posted in Turkey
Tags
The presence of water cannon notwithstanding, protesters march to the French Consulate in Izmir, January 11, 2015. Photo credit: Tolga Yildiz.
11 Sunday Jan 2015
It’s one of the greatest war crimes of modern times – and the truth still hasn’t been told. On July 17th 2014 at about 16:20 local time, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. All 298 passengers died, including many children. Who fired the missile? Over several months the Berlin-based investigative newsroom CORRECT!V has gathered facts, investigated in eastern Ukraine and Russia, and found witnesses to the missile launch. The investigation unveiled a clear chain of evidence. MH17 was downed by a ground-launched BUK missile – launched by a unit of the 53rd Russian Air Defense Brigade from Kursk. The brigade unit, tasked with protecting Russian tank units, was operating in mid July on Ukrainian territory without displaying national emblems.
https://mh17.correctiv.org/english/ – 1/9/2015.
09 Friday Jan 2015
Posted 11/30/2014.
On YouTube, it is an i24 video.
On BackChannels — if this post works — it has a context an adventure in political psychology and the interplay between personality — “malignant narcissism” — and controlled information space (language, linguistics, propaganda, gaslighting, political theater, manipulation, etc.) and political power that drives despotism, fascism, sadism.
Our global Internet with English as lingua franca has become the largest “mirror, mirror on the wall” in political history, and it reflects through and back to a political elite, from pundits worldwide to leaders worldwide. Its reach is limited, of course, by language barriers and Internet filtering. That leaves the despotic putting on a show for still captive constituents, but they know the barriers remain nonetheless permeable. Bilingual national speakers, extended diaspora — including Palestinian diaspora — encounter these pages and videos as much and as well as anyone else.
There is always a “next new world”, and we’re heading for it even while some turn back and revel in a long ago darkness; for others, the dawn spreads out before them and everyone.
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08 Thursday Jan 2015
“In an unseen control room, to the producers’ signal, as I responded with words like ‘coexistence’, ‘integration’ or ‘pluralism’, a technician pulled the trigger and rolled the stock ‘Israel as a terrorist state’ footage; detonating my truthful and universal message. I had been reduced to an instrument of rank media opportunism.”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/australia-features/9411652/a-muslims-ambush-weekend-sunrise-bares-its-anti-israel-bias/ – 1/8 (10)/2015.
Related:
I’ve been appearing a lot on Iran’s Press TV Show the Debate. Anyone who watches the show can see it’s not really a true debate, but a propaganda show put on by the Velat-y-Faqih regime in Iran.
http://kaplanwatch.blogspot.com/2014/06/im-back-will-try-to-post-more-often.html – 6/17/2014.
“Disingenuous speech” is just a fancy way of saying “dishonest talk” or, let’s get right down to it: “lying” — and as far as BackChannels is concerned, lies are told either to hide something (often the liar’s own thieving from his marks) or to get something (through deceit).
Test the thought on the oligarchs of post-KGB Soviet Russia now FSB-controlled neo-feudal Russia; or Ayatollah Khamenei and his brother (by the grace of the Setad conglomerate); on Victor Orban’s developing “regime” in Hungary; on the guy with the “White Palace” in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
There’s more to the politics played, I will grant you, but the destruction of integrity before a malignant narcissism and controlling (and frequently sadistic) will would seem a common denominator.
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06 Tuesday Jan 2015
Tags
Posted 1/6/2014
“They want to keep the state of enemyhood with Israel, and they want the Palestinians to think ‘thank God, we’re going to go back some day'” (7:55)
Mudar Zahran may need to launch a fleet of leaflets, posters, and slogans after all:
Islamic State group militants gained a foothold on the Jordan-Iraq border Tuesday when they destroyed at least six Jordanian border control posts, according to reports from Jordanian activists and Islamic fighters associated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-destroys-least-six-border-control-stations-jordan-iraq-border-1759922 – 12/16/2014.
The jackal pack of greedheads and zealots driving the Islamic Small Wars respect no weakness and take heart with such wins. Like it or not, by either advancing or losing, they force the hands of power to act and reach decision. The news of raids on Jordanian border control stations follows by nine days King Abdullah’s likening the fight with ISIS to “a third world war”.
This coming Friday, January 9, will mark the tenth anniversary of his victory in the Palestinian Presidential election. Funnily enough, though, his term was supposed to end six years ago. It didn’t — mainly because he’s called off every election since. Which means that this Friday will mark not only the birth of Mahmoud Abbas’ Presidential rule, but the death of Palestinian democracy.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/01/06/the-ten-year-klepto-dictatorship-of-mahmoud-abbas/ – 1/6/2015
The multiple pun that would be “Hamasestine” may meet its match in “Fatahlism”, for the worse Fatah’s position in the middle east conflict, the more loud and pushy the rant of its old man, “Abu Mazen”, the father who has protected no one’s interests but his own and in terms of what he is: another dictator.
While the malignantly narcissistic might define Palestinian progress in terms of harm brought to Israelis — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim — a more normal psychology might wish to watch for measures of progress in human rights and qualities of living brought to the refugees of 1948 and their progeny wherever they are living today. In that regard, Abbas and much of the Arab world beside have accomplished nothing more than bad mouthing the Jews, and next to that old and boring behavior, modern and progressive secular democrat Mudar Zahran looks pretty good: at the very least, he questions the integrity of the old guards, royal and so-called revolutionary, while he himself has room today to promote his own forthright ethics, honesty, and objectivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudar_Zahran
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Mudar+Zahran
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05 Monday Jan 2015
Tags
Post 9/15/2014.
NO
Freedom of the Press
Open Courts
Self-Determination
Indonesian State Impunity Promotes
Cultural Genocide
Murder
Rape
Theft
Torture
Until the hour someone sends me the “who, what, where, when, how, and why” on a breaking event, I, perhaps others as well, may not be able to do much more than add to the advocacy and compile whatever’s on the web in news and organizational support for this buffer that has been politically birthed between west and east, between democracy and narcissistic authoritarianism.
This Anzac Day weekend, we opened the first ever Free West Papua campaign office in Australia.
For more than 50 years, my people have suffered what I considered to be a slow-moving genocide under the repressive military occupation of Indonesia. During the second world war, the “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” of West Papua came to the aid of Australian soldiers. Now it is the West Papuans that need Australia’s help in order to end human rights abuses so that my people can be free to live in peace.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/28/west-papua-my-people-need-australias-help-before-it-is-too-late – 4/27/2014.
Five West Papuans were killed when Indonesian military and police personnel shot into a protesting crowd on Monday, local media reported. Reports say the protesters were not separatist rebels, but community members angered by the alleged assault on a group of adolescents who had clashed with soldiers the previous night.
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/12/10/West-Papuan-killings-cast-doubt-on-Jokowis-promises.aspx?COLLCC=2682691678& – 12/10/2014.
The protesters, some carrying ceremonial Papuan hunting bows that have a purely ritual function, expressed their grievance through a traditional Papuan waita dance, which involves shouting, running in circles and mimicking birdsong.
The police ordered the protesters to disperse and then struck them with batons and sticks when they refused to comply. Police and military personnel then fired live ammunition into the crowd.
http://www.ucanews.com/news/sydney-papua-incidents-offer-stark-contrast-in-media-access/72686 – 12/23/2014.
For years I worked as a tour guide, sharing my knowledge of the region with those few individuals who desired a glimpse of what the National Geographic calls “one of the wildest, most isolated frontiers on earth.” But on this visit I wanted to verify a village burning in the Lanny Jaya area and continue filming the West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea.
http://www.independent.com/news/2015/jan/01/spoiling-paradise/ – 1/1/2015.
Jakarta: Two French journalists have been sentenced to two months and 15 days imprisonment in an Indonesian jail for reporting in the West Papua province while on a tourist visa.
http://www.humanrightspapua.org/
http://paper.li/Black_WPapuan/1371945233
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/22/west-papua-mediablackout.html – 9/22/2014.
http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/west-papua-forgotten-war-unwanted-people – n.d.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/01/the-human-tragedy-of-west-papua/ – 1/15/2015.
http://etan.org/issues/wpapua/2014/1409wpap.htm – September 2014.
http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9173 – 4/22/2013: “The military presence in West Papua is almost always accompanied by human rights violations such as killings, arbitrary arrests, rape and torture.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Star_flag
The Indians’ decision to make contact was not driven by a desire for material goods, however, but by fear. With the help of translators who spoke a closely related indigenous Panoan language, the Acre Indians explained that “violent attacks” by outsiders had driven them from the forest. Later, details emerged that their elder relatives were massacred, and their houses set on fire. Illegal loggers and cocaine traffickers in Peru, where the Indians are thought to come from, are likely to blame, according to the Brazilian government. Indeed, Funai’s own nearby monitoring post was shut down in 2011 due to increasing escalations with drug traffickers.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes – 8/4/2014.
So what do anthropologists who specialize in first contact say? Are there ‘uncontacted tribes’? The short answer is ‘no’, and while I appreciate SI’s work on behalf of ‘tribal’ people, I find it disappointing to find that they still use this sort of language. Any one who reads the material on their web page will see that by ‘uncontacted’ they actually man ‘frequently in contact with, and victimized by, outsiders’. Let’s take a look at the evidence from SI’s website.
http://savageminds.org/2008/07/01/are-there-uncontacted-tribes-the-short-answer-no/ – 7/1/2008
Posted 1/8/2014.
Caption statement by the Free West Papua Campaign: “West Papua, Melanesia. Rally organised by the KNPB. These are the images the Indonesian government is trying to stop the world seeing. The Indonesian government always lies to the world and says that West Papuans who want freedom are just small groups in the jungle. In fact the vast majority of peaceful civil society want freedom.
This is why Indonesia dosen’t want foreign journalists in West Papua. Because every West Papuan who they meet tells them they want freedom.
This is the truth in West Papua. That almost everyone wants to be free. This is the truth that Indonesia is trying to hide. West Papuans want to be free and Indonesia believes it has the right to torture and murder those who want to be free.”
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05 Monday Jan 2015
Tags
autocracy, conspiracy, Gulen, Islam, malignant narcissism, narcissism, neo-feudalism, neo-medievalism, political psychology, political science, politics
In a normal public school district, you’d be able to tell who the vendors are, but in charter world, it’s purposely opaque. It must amount to millions of dollars of business that aren’t going out to bid, or that in all likelihood, aren’t even going out to Americans.
http://www.tbfurman.us/2014/07/a-patronage-empire-concept-and-its.html – 7/31/2014.
Related:
http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/concept-schools-favored-vendors.html – September 2013.
Also from TB Furman:
Basic research, basic due diligence, basic critical thinking skills— these are the only things required to figure out that there are multiple connections between this transnational social/political/religious movement and the three charter schools in Chicago, that these connections are purposely blurred to keep people uninformed, and that this phenomenon is consistent with the established patterns of behavior of the Gulen Movement worldwide.
http://www.tbfurman.us/2014/04/taking-good-long-look-at-concept.html – 4/9/2014. Page contains audio recording and slide show, “Gulen 101”.
Related: Herkul – This Week: The Broken Jug: Droplets of Wisdom from the Heart: “Genius Minds and Flourishing of Talents.” 12/21/2014. The main web appears in Turkish while the English version appears to begin on the page cited. After practically and classically describing a narcissistic personality, Gulen goes on to say:
“By even developing a certain code of rebellion of their own, they might begin to refuse even very plausible thoughts developed as a result of serious pondering and forget the fact that doing things for the sake of God is exalted above all.
Actually, what lies at the root of such wrongs is a lack of learning manners. In the past, people who were responsible for education were very good teachers of manners as well.”
Behave!
🙂
And obey Gülen — as regards aspects of the autocratic, authoritarian, unreasoning, and cult-of-personality dimensions evident in the Fathullah Gülen story, Rachel Sharon-Krespin’s Middle East Forum piece (Winter 2009) contains plenty for related reflection.
TB Furman’s latest: “The Million (Billion?) Dollar Question Charter School Oversight.” January 3, 2015.
Related: Sharon Higgins’ Charter School Scandals blog.
Today, despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned Turkey away from Europe and toward Russia and Iran and reoriented Turkish policy in the Middle East away from sympathy toward Israel and much more toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria. Anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments have increased. Behind Turkey’s transformation has been not only the impressive AKP political machine but also a shadowy Islamist sect led by the mysterious hocaefendi (master lord) Fethullah Gülen; the sect often bills itself as a proponent of tolerance and dialogue but works toward purposes quite the opposite. Today, Gülen and his backers (Fethullahcılar, Fethullahists) not only seek to influence government but also to become the government.
Gulen, once respected by Erdogan, is now vilified and branded an “assassin” — a reference to Hassan Sabbah’s violent medieval cult. Thousands of public servants allegedly close to the Gulen community have been removed from their jobs. Some have been arrested.
“A Gülen organization controls the real estate companies that own their schools. They charge rent to their own schools and taxpayers foot the bill. They refuse to answer public records requests, falsify attendance records, and cheat on standardized tests. Yet, Ohio continues to grant them charters to operate.”
Scott Beauchamp quoting Matthew Blair in in article in The Atlantic, “120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric,” August 12, 2014.
No more tender a national achilles heel offers itself to America’s enemies quite like public education.
That Fethullah Gülen’s organization has run itself into trouble against Turkish autocrat Erdogan fits with the same emerging neo-feudalism that has surfaced in Russia, i.e., cabal of shady nouveau riche rise to operate organization out of the public’s view, exploit the same, any which way (and they produce sufficient tell-tale propaganda to prove it), and live lavishly promoting their favored or more convenient ideological or religious program – but then they must contend with one another.
There is a “Gulen Movement 101, Session One”.
This, however, is what I have listened to while working on this piece:
Sharon Higgins’ closing questions:
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31 Wednesday Dec 2014
Tags
. . . Alexei Navalny was found guilty of what activists said were trumped-up charges and given a suspended sentence of 3½ years. His younger brother was sent to prison, a move that drew comparisons to the Stalin-era practice of punishing family members of enemies of the state.
“Putler” has become a popular term.
There’s even a snarky Facebook group built around it.
For two or three reasons, I would not go so far as to permanently and seriously conflate Russia’s president with the little guy with the mustache in Germany.
For one thing, Russia’s own internal saboteur works from a very different space in political time, and he’s both engaged and surrounded by the world free of dictatorship, which at the moment is shunning his best buddies and diminishing revenues from his state’s easiest money.
Moreover, the colonel president emperor may be operating also with internal controls and desires quite different from Adolph’s, the piratical motive combined with domestic aggrandizement being already well established and far out ahead of the want of the headaches attending imperial designs.
He knows too that while the plundering of Russia by its “Vertical of Power” and the approximately 110 multi-billionaire “oligarchs” who control about 35 percent of the state’s productive capacity may be stalled by a flooded oil market responding to the misadventure in Ukraine, responsibility today for the the essential criminality of the state — in Luke Harding’s words, the “Mafia State” — reverse engineers to himself, the only man at the top, and he’s the only figure capable of reversing its course.
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We need to learn to respect ourselves.
We need to look at this important notion such as reputation and that reputation of a specific hospital, school, institution, or social office is a building stone in the overall reputation of our country . . . .
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/10/goodbye-potemkin-quotation-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin/ – 12/10/2014.
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“We all understand that the sources of assets are different, that they were earned or acquired in various ways. However, I am confident that we should finally close, turn the ‘offshore page’ in the history of our economy and our country. It is very important and necessary to do this.”
The sentiments expressed in the speech follow action taken earlier in the year:
On the 18th of March the Russian Ministry of Finance published a draft law on anti-offshore measures. Following wide public discussion, a revised draft was published on the 27th of May.
The draft introduces four key concepts, namely, controlled foreign companies (CFC) rules; Russian tax residence for foreign companies, based on tests of management and control; concepts of ‘factual right to income’ and ‘beneficial owner’ in the context of applying international tax treaties; and new rules on taxation of the indirect disposal of Russian real estate.
https://www.accountancylive.com/russian-taxman-sets-sights-offshore-wealth – 6/19/2014.
Apply: “For my friends, everything! For my enemies, the law!”
Putin may be making some new “frenemies” about now as he at one turn coaxes the return of capital to Moscow and determines, perhaps, to build from it a new modern domestic economy — and at the other, in days to come, woe to the holdouts who may be made to face the latest in law promulgated by the Ministry of Finance.
The haunt of old Joe may spook the careers of both Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny: he’s the ghost representing a past to which no one should wish to return. In fact, Kruschev trashed it; Gorbachov nearly buried it; but the KGB and associates have revived it just enough to suit themselves grandly.
The present neo-feudal Russian security dictatorship may have a problem in just not really wanting to be what it is, i.e., politically criminal, a Russian domestic disaster, a financial Chernobyl, a billboard for the expression of malignant, unbridled, and ruthless narcissism.
While Navalny appears to threaten the power that is, he may also stand as the one first most reliable channel marker out of the kind of hell that attends the psychology in personality of the same.
Perhaps for Russians as a whole the journey contained in the homily “you can’t go home again” has of necessity involved a deep revisitation through Putin with the near histories of feudalism and communism, a two steps back toward the revival of 19th Century aristocracy and 20th Century socialist fascism that has reliably, inevitably, recalled to mind the excesses and miseries attending both.
In that light, the regime may know that Navalny needs to be a part of the Russia to come, that he’s part of the self respect to come — a sentiment mouthed into necessity by the president — and that playing with him with the familiar tools of dictatorship might be just the simplest way of telling him to wait his turn: his better day will come.
http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2014/12/putin-treats-russias-oligarchs-to-a-free-supper/ – 12/19/2014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_people_by_net_worth
Credit Suisse said that there were hopes with the demise of the Soviet Union that Russia would turn into a high skilled economy with fair wealth distribution but “this is almost a parody of what happened in practice.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/russia-wealth-inequality_n_4070455.html – 10/9/2013.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/10/goodbye-potemkin-quotation-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin/ – 12/10/2014.
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BackChannels 