How about the future political face of Palestine? In Gaza, Hamas just elected their replacement to Ismael Haniyeh. If you thought that the old face of Hamas was bad, the new face is even worse. Haniyeh was a disciple of the Muslim Brotherhood. His replacement, Yahya Sinwar, is an arch-terrorist linked to the extremist Islamic Salafist movement.
Sinwar was released from a twenty-year prison sentence on gross terrorism charges as part of a prisoner exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped from Israel and dragged into Gaza by a Hamas terror cell and kept in captivity for five years. Sinwar is not only responsible for the deaths of many Israelis. He is also reported to have murdered Palestinians with his own hands on alleged charges of “spying” or “collaboration” though it is more likely that they opposed his ruthless Hamas oppression.
Probably most stories about the Middle East Conflict are unconsciously about the oppression of Palestinians by tyrannical Palestinian governments. BackChannels may note as well that all have some relationships — from talk to arms — with Moscow as in the Soviet days. Today, of course, Moscow represents not Communism but plain despotism — “political absolutism” is the term for look-up — beneath the banner of resurgent nationalism that in fact sustains an enormously wealthy oligarchy while much of the rest of the state falls into financial collapse. That Hamas and the PLO exploit the Palestinians for similarly kleptocratic gain should surprise no one but the perpetually naive given to the programming of the leftover Far Left.
Official Russia today has something greater today than a Navalny issue as regards whatever pretenses to moral clarity and virtue it may have sustained despite the barbarism displayed in Syria and poker-faced dishonesty exhibited throughout the ordeal it has imposed on Ukraine. The Russian State has been hammered for years by capital flight, reduced oil revenues, and reliance on rule-of-law western banking for what it has left of its diminishing cash reserves (and for the “oligarchs” pricey western real estate for parking wealth).
As the truth comes out (and perhaps gets passed around at light speed), the centralized control of information also may be lost to the greater efforts of the less greed ridden and more tenacious and virtuous of the world.
If you’re reading this post . . . that could be you.
However — wait just a minute — what happens where the wealthy, and by whatever means, control the whole of the state far at the expense of those not in the club?
At this time — and as the above video has been viewed more than seven million times — BackChannels may suggest the official response might be a giant narcissistic shrug on the part of the Powers of the State — a big . . . so what?
Nurses and Technicians at Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Upper Darby walked off the job at 6:45 am on Sunday launching a two-day strike. Pennsylvania Staff Nurses and Affiliated Professionals (PASNAP), the union representing striking nurses and technicians, say that the hospital’s new owners have failed to live up to promises they made to the community when they bought the hospital in July 2016. The new owners, Prospect Medical Holdings, Inc. Prospect is a for-profit, wholly-owned subsidiary of the private equity firm, Leonard Green & Partners, which also lists BJ’s, Shake Shack, and J. Crew in it’s portfolio. Prospect Medical Holdings has announced it will lock out striking nurses and technicians until at least Friday.
“This is actually the real map of the Middle East,” Kedar said, pointing to a slide showing a MENA geographic map without borders, a largely arid area in which vast deserts surround isolated water sources. “To live as a tribe is essential in this area. Otherwise you are weak; otherwise you cannot defend your source of water.” This means that families in the region banded together as clans millennia ago. Clan members could marry only fellow clan kin, lest familial connections create competing tribal claims for resources while the tribes developed codes of conduct (e.g. rules of retaliation) that predated and had more tribal loyalty than Islamic and state law.
Four days ago, conservative libertarian Charles Murray stood on a stage at Vermont’s Middlebury College to talk about his latest book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, with political science students. Instead of being heard out, this in Murray’s own words is what happened before a packed house:
Then I went onstage, got halfway through my first sentence, and the uproar began.
First came a shouted recitation in unison of what I am told is a piece by James Baldwin. I couldn’t follow the words. That took a few minutes. Then came the chanting. The protesters had prepared several couplets that they chanted in rotations—“hey, hey, ho, ho, white supremacy has to go,” and the like. It was very loud, and stayed loud. It’s hard for me estimate, but perhaps half the audience were protesters and half had come to hear the lecture.
BackChannels readers are by now familiar with terms like “Active Measures” and “Reflexive Control”(URL –> PDF) that connect the amplifying of America’s political polarization with Moscow and its efforts to destabilize the European Union and NATO to better establish the feudal worldview on which depends the greater promotion and sustaining of dictatorship in the world.
This blog’s readers know also the chains: Putin-Assad-Khamenei (or “Assad the Tyrant as flanked by Putin and Khamenei”); Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan; Putin-Le Pen. Such relationships need not be too friendly, only merely authoritarian and encouraging of conditions favorable to a shared “malignant narcissism“.
The below referenced tweet packages reflexive control, Moscow’s continued dabbling with terrorism (for more of how that works, see BackChannel’s post on ISIS as Moscow’s tool — follow up by looking up “Zawahiri, Russia”), and the induction of a disturbing new American politics: Republican Party associated “Brown” New Nationalism v Democratic Party associated “Red-Green” Resurgent Socialism.
Islamic Terrorism -> U.S. "Brown" v "Red-Green" Polarization -> Feudalism: Moscow's preference. https://t.co/QAhMHsai71
Some of us Conservative or Liberal but definitely, perhaps becoming stridently so, more Middle have not been pleased by the eruption of Fascism on the Left and the appearance of a hardening contempt for the public (and media) on the Far Right, the latter falling just a little all white, all male, and all superior short of the ranks of the white supremacists.
There’s the possibility that any effort to bring people together may begin by seeing them apart, Farthest Left to Farthest Right, and, later, in Keith Ellison fashion, curbing the indignant toward accommodation. However, be that possibility as it may, Americans have most certainly experienced the development of a uniquely cant-ridden, contentious, uncivil, and unreasoning national politics.
As happens always in general combat, it’s those caught in the crossfire or whose turf — region, city, community, home — has been overrun that suffer most of all, and that whether in Syria (generated: 4.8 million refugees), Ukraine (generated: 1.7+ million Internally Displaced Persons), or the United States (okay, we’re a little uncomfortable here in the middle): for anyone else still hanging around the middle of the political aisle, this may be a good time to pull the wayward of the Parties back to reason — and then have a good push of the irredeemably immoderate back toward the margins where they have always been and, God willing, will return to grumbling.
Hicks also asked other superiors why Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, had said the attack might have been a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islamic video. That video was a “non-event” in Libya, Hicks said, adding that it seemed clear from the first that the assault was a terrorist attack.
“The sense I got was I needed to stop the line of questioning,” Hicks told the House panel.
Related more recently by former diplomat Gregory Hicks:
When asked about security at Benghazi on Sept. 11, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly asserted her lack of responsibility. Initially, she said that she never read any of the reporting on security conditions or any of the requests for additional security, claiming that “she delegated security to the professionals.” More recently, she stated that “[I]t was not my ball to carry.” But the law says otherwise. Sound familiar?
The Benghazi attack and Hillary Clinton’s explanations — it was a video that did it, but no it wasn’t; security was left to the experts, she reportedly said, but the buck had been by law made to stop at her own desk . . . and she delegated downward and away from herself — became strong talking points for conservatives.
Now there comes a full suite of talking points for liberals questioning President Donald J. Trump’s (” . . . you grab ’em by the pussy”) character and the weight of complex business and political relationships involving “Moscow”, the metonym here for the “Russian State” as headed by Vladimir Putin.
Posted by mtvnations February 13, 2017.
Putin’s Kiss is available for viewing via Amazon by purchase or by subscription to Amazon Prime.
Are you making the allegation that President Obama conducted electronic surveillance of Trump Tower in your capacity as President of the United States based on intelligence or law enforcement information available to you in that capacity?
If so—that is, if you have executive branch information validating that either a FISA wiretap or a Title III wiretap took place—have you reviewed the applications for the surveillance and have you or your lawyers concluded that they lack merit?
When an obscure blogger asks that question, it’s time to roll out the ROTFLMAO!
However, please do note this blog’s — this blogger’s — providing ample reference to many (most) of the most reliable sources in journalism and the think-tanks.
When an American President asks / demands trust, that’s something else.
Asked about Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of him on “Saturday Night Live,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer had some advice for the actress: “Dial it back.” May I suggest the president adopt that phrase as his administration motto?
So far, Donald Trump has made it a practice to obliterate every known limit and pump up every grievance. Harvard law professor and former Reagan administration official Charles Fried, marveling at the president’s Twitter volleys at federal judges, said, “There are no lines for him. There is no notion of, this is inappropriate, this is indecent, this is unpresidential.”
Perhaps the word order in this post’s title needs to be changed from the alphabetical “credibility, integrity, trust” to what comes first and last:
Integrity –> Credibility –> Trust
Although this piece would seem to end with Trump, it may be thought to go back some decades to Carter and Reagan (remember “Iran-Contra”?), to Mr. Clinton (how would you define what is and what is not sex) and forward to Obama and Clinton and the New Guy, but it’s that last with whose grandiose posturing and promises and tweets the nation awakes or falls to sleep.
Today’s compilation may be light – what am I even doing here at the computer, and so early? Still, my eyes see a lot of political coverage from around the world having to do with the support of democracy and its liberal humanist values.
This kind of post has had its own category on BackChannels for years, but has not been a staple for the blog. The writing by others and the reading is so good an spot-on it would be a shame not to share on one sheet.
The links may be dated variously but close to the day encountered (or not — I’ll have to make up my mind about that).
“Is Islam an enemy of the West? It does seem like such a ridiculous question, doesn’t it?” asked Georgetown University professor Tamara Sonn on February 22 at its Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). What seemed manifestly obvious to this Qatar-funded Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam at the ACMCU presentation of her new, eponymously-titled book, is not clear at all to skeptical observers. Thus, her work resembles that of many of her Middle East studies colleagues, who long ago replaced rigorous scholarship of Islam with a fawning approach that blames the West for the region’s systemic problems.
Sonn presented her “little, airport-size book” to an ACMCU conference room filled with about fifty listeners, included like-minded Georgetown colleagues Jonathan Brown, Jordan Denari Duffner, and Father Drew Christianson.
Earlier, on Friday, February 24, Head of the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) Natalia Korchak says her agency has received a request from Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk to probe into the finances of Ukrainian State Fiscal Service chief Roman Nasirov`s trip to attend the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ukrainian state agencies sought to detain the head of the tax and customs service on Friday over the alleged embezzlement of around $75 million – a potentially landmark case after patchy anti-graft efforts from the Western-backed authorities.
Putin’s mission: sustain feudalism in service to political absolutism and reap the benefits of sustained conflicts and, eventually, subjugated and taxed populations.
KGB method: Reflexive Control via the indirect channeling of terrorism to promote the authoritarian nationalism certain to weaken EU / NATO cohesion and favor the development of political environments subject to the control by the wealthiest and most powerful of personalities.
Western Response Most Adverse to Democratic Modernity: in former Moscow-aligned organizations or personalities, adoption of “active measures” and forms of perceptual control, including the “false flag” painting of events, to channel popular perception in service to greater political power.
Western Response Most Favorable to Democratic Modernity: strongest possible emphasis on empiricism, integrity in investigation, and the promotion and retention of American and associated constitutional methods, principles, and values.
In the feudal mode, “the masses” — BackChannels finds the term itself degrading — may be controlled by disinformation, disingenuous information, framing, innuendo, rumor, and suspicion.
In the modern mode, the curious and the reasoning of the public may sift and evaluate for strong information — valid, reliable, significant, and straight.
North Americans and Europeans accustomed to political decency may wish to evaluate whether they really want to have the Feudal Mode installed in the future experience of their own presently democratic and modern rule-of-law states.
I would question the authenticity of each posture or pretense presented, and I should think a good detective would start with the accuser. Again, we have been made to enter an era marked by the potential for KGB-style “false flag” and other manipulation. Where some people dare the improbable — do the unthinkable — the numbers (what are the odds?) may not help them.
I find the Linda Sarsour side of the story deeply suspect given her relationship with Hamas.
What if Jews and Muslims accomplished the vandalism together, and then made a show of amity in the wake of tragedy?
In the feudal mode — where power is concentrated by a force in personality that generates immense wealth and patronage without regard for common law — and in the mind supporting the feudal worldview (blessed with imagination but cursed by limited access to applicable data, critical research and reasoning skill, and relevant knowledge), what, however improbable, is not possible?
In this imbroglio, to accuse either Jews or Muslims — or representatives of either — of engaging in a “false flag” operations draws immediate condemnation as either anti-Semitic or Islamophobic — and therein lies the beauty of medieval manipulation and political theater and the greater horror of it as well.
What happens when power play magus?
Syria — and the incubating of ISIL as useful tool for Moscow and the depopulating of the state to present the west with a major headache.
What will happen to the western public IF subjected to continued “reflexive control” and artifice in the presentation of political event?
Whatever the answer may be, it’s unknown to BackChannels.
However, BackChannels would attempt to armor the “American Mind” against so many feudal methods of perceptual control even though an obscure foreign policy / political science / political psychology blog cannot begin to do what perhaps the American Intelligence Community (IC) needs must do in defense of the Constitution and the related cohesion and integrity of the state itself: set the record straight.
How is it possible that an act of vandalism on the scale reported — in Philadelphia’s Mount Carmel Cemetery, some “75 to 100 headstones were topped” according to CNN — produced no claims (by person or organization), no witnesses — none that have been in any way publicized, at least — and to date no suspects.
What has been produced: innuendo, rumor, suspicion, each a part of the shifting — and at times easily manipulated — perceptions well known to feudal lords and their loyal subjects.
BackChannels 