Oh Gulen Again . . . .

16 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Turkey

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Tags

American-Turkish Relationship, despotism, Erdogan, Fethullah Gulen, kleptocracy, malignant narcissists, NATO, political absolute power

If there’s the sniff of a Clinton tie to corruption and crime, the conservative press will find it. In the listings below, The Daily Caller shouts on that.

For any interested (including the FBI) in Fethullah Gulen, BackChannels has visited the presentation of the personality in online news at least twice (as listed) and somewhere on this blog there’s a related poem involving “winks ‘n’ nods” (you’ll appreciate it more if you find it on your own). 🙂

Erdogan the Malignant with the White Palace?

BackChannels has had some say (also as listed).

Psychological alignment: Erdogan along with Orban may share more with Putin as personalities than they may with other NATO leaders and the leaders of westward-leaning former Soviet states or clients.

That’s life with “malignant narcissists”.

Their people will be beaten up for a buck; their manipulated constituencies will drift toward fascist nationalism or some near equivalent (on this blog, keep in mind “Syndicate Red Brown Green“); but they will be glorious in wealth and treasure plundered from state coffers — just as Putin would have it (and has as much for himself as regards kleptocracy and absolute power).

Americans, often written off as being more concerned with Kardashians and sports scores, probably should immerse for a brief spell in Cold War and post-Soviet history, so as to get a grip not only on machinations driving contemporary foreign affairs but to check the state’s own Machiavellian preference for developing perhaps too much business and politics “behind the curtains”.

Appearances in BackChannels

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Fast Share – ‘What the Cold War Can Teach Us About Jihadism’ | Stratfor

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Cold War, counterterrorism, Jihadism, Marxist cohort, Soviet Era

But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement. This got me thinking even more intently about the similar ways that the two — despite their differences — have applied, encouraged and supported the use of violence. In light of these parallels, the lessons derived from the decades-long struggle against communism throughout the world may provide important guidance for the continuing fight against jihadism.

Read more by Scott Stewart: What the Cold War Can Teach Us About Jihadism | Stratfor – 7/14/2016.

Note: #Nice #Dallas – Central Post-Soviet Manipulation

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics, Russia

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#Dallas, #NiceAttack, feudal themes, Moscow, political absolute power, Putin, Russian medievalism

From the awesome conversation:

These attacks — Dallas, Nice / Black Lives Matter, ISIS (et al) — should not be seen separately. Each devolves to familiar Soviet / post-Soviet agitation, manipulation, and misinformation, at least. With “terrorist-type” “actions”, direct relationships (or “orders”) are not needed as “actor” compulsions pushed by incitements, and permissions plainly work to produce attacks.

Moscow’s Themes

Confusion Through a Massive Agitprop Press — e.g., Information Clearinghouse, Mint Press, RT, etc. — confusing or inverting issues — developing and promulgating disinformation that may weave into more moderate but still far liberal press like Democracy Now and Mother Jones, legitimate stalwarts on the west but perhaps also a little seduced;

Corruption, Kleptocracy, State Mafia — “Chaika” may be all that needs to be signaled to find the entrance to that rabbit hole;

Ends-Against-the-Middle throughout NATO-aligned and westward-leaning states — “Syndicate Red Brown Green” — Old Comrades, New Nationalists, Islamists;

Political Absolute Power — centralized governance; state aristocracy; sustained secret police state (read through the “Russian Section” of this blog’s library);

Terrorism – Moscow refuses to designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and in recent years it has hosted representatives of the infamous PFLP.

Immediately Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/15/ftac-its-not-islam-its-moscow/ – 7/15/2016

Fast Related Reference

http://carnegieeurope.eu/publications/?fa=37199 – 2/3/2009 – “Media Manipulation and Political Control in Russia”;

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/shadow-economy-and-media-control-russians-fed-up-with-putin-s-manipulations-a-818930.html – 3/2/2012;

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/has-vladimir-putin-always-been-corrupt-and-does-it-matter – 4/16/2012;

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/russia-putin-revolutionizing-information-warfare/379880/ – 9/9/2014

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/how-the-media-became-putins-most-powerful-weapon/391062/ – 4/21/2015;

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/11/17/russia-hamas-hezbollah-democratic-not-terrorists/ – 11/17/2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/vladimir-putin-corruption-five-things-we-learned-about-the-russian-presidents-secret-wealth-a6834171.html – 1/26/2016;

http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/01/28/expert-putin-and-assad-support-hezballah-terrorism/#arvlbdata – 1/28/2016;

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/why-putin-tolerates-corruption.html – 5/15/2016.

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FTAC – ‘It’s Not Islam – It’s Moscow’

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iraq, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syria

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

foreign affairs, malignant narcissism, Moscow, political manipulation, political psychology, political theater, politics, Putin, Putin-Khamenei, theater of politics and war

Posted to YouTube February 14, 2012.

The response-sparking comment had to do with yesterday’s attack in Nice, France: “Qaddafi was right.”

From the BackChannels side of the awesome conversation:

It’s not Islam — it’s Putin (he who has brought the Russian Orthodox Church back into state favor). Playing ends — Far Right and Far Left — against the middle, he has a special relationship with Islamic extremists. http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

From my blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

The last piece posted in October 2015, and it may need an update. However: having incubated ISIS to blackmail and goad the west, Putin has now the option of demonstrating “revived” Russian military prowess by eating ISIS alive but not too much at a time. Khamenei-favoring Shiite militia in Iraq, long hosting Revolutionary Guard advisors, have also their convenient foil.

As regards Europe, Moscow-(Tehran) favors resurgent nationalism — le Pen or Orban (and Jobbik), which is exactly what terrorism compels or encourages in the states it targets.

It’s hard to imagine the kind of narcissism / malignant narcissism (and cowardice and — what sets off the narcissism — “narcissistic mortification”) that would build such a theater of politics and war as Syria-Iraq and a troubled Europe, but go back to the Cold War, which was supposed to have ended 25 years ago, and drag forward the Soviet / KGB Era methods in manipulating whole “chess boards” — both sides of any conflict to advantage.

Then look again at Moscow.

How has Moscow played both sides of a conflict?

There’s a related history lesson in this gem of a BBC video interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 – 4/7/2016 “The Ogaden War”.

Fast Related Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union – excerpt as viewed August 8, 2016:

Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as “the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide.”[4][5][6] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”[7] He also claimed that “Airplane hijacking is my own invention” and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[7]

Lt. General Pacepa described operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States. According to Pacepa, the following organizations received assistance from the KGB and other Eastern Bloc intelligence services: PLO, National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara), the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, and the Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975.[8]

http://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-russia-crimea-putin-money-bank-national-front-seeks-russian-cash-for-election-fight/ – 2/19/2016;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11515835/Russia-bought-Marine-Le-Pens-support-over-Crimea.html – 4/4/2015. There may be in these stories the KGB-style “framing” of Le Pen, but the “9 million euro” loan from First Czech-Russian Bank” seems uncontested, so one may ask what such loan approval buys, if anything.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/russia-europe-right-putin-front-national-eu – 12/8/2014 – “We should beware Russia’s links with Europe’s right” (by Luke Harding in The Guardian).

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4112/hungarian_neo_nazis_court_russia_as_inspiration_for_attacks_on_gays – 9/5/2013;

https://www.thenation.com/article/decrying-ukraines-fascists-putin-allying-europes-far-right/ – 5/21/2014

https://eu.boell.org/en/2015/05/05/i-am-eurasian-kremlin-connections-hungarian-far-right – 5/5/2015

http://hungarianspectrum.org/2016/01/20/is-the-hungarian-far-right-jobbik-party-financed-by-russia/ – 1/20/2016

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016 – Note: ISIS has also served Moscow as a target to which to channel its own Islamists. In effect, ISIS by existing in numbers in Syria provides a “KZ” or “kill zone” in which to concentrate fighters for later warfare. HOW such fighters may then come to launch actions against NATO members forms a question beyond the means of this blog to address.

The last word on this post goes to Stratfor’s Scott Stewart:

In an earlier column, I briefly addressed the similarities between the utopian ideology of the Islamic State and that of the global communist movement. I have also compared the counterinsurgency efforts used against the two movements in the past. But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/what-cold-war-can-teach-us-about-jihadism – 7/14/2016.

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Gone Viral! — Opposing protesters meet in Dallas – CNN Video

11 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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A Black Lives Matter protest group meets a counter-protest group on the streets of Dallas.

Source: Opposing protesters meet in Dallas – CNN Video – 7/11/2016

Related on BackChannels: “Syndicate Red Brown Green“.

The post-Cold War, post-Soviet Era remain a legitimate framework for understanding contemporary American political protest. Organizations like Black Lives Matter and the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and Repression offer a perspective that should have faded with the dissolving of the Soviet almost 25 years ago.

The world has changed around them.

The chief of police might be a black man; the “white” policeman a Latino; the lawyers, the social workers, other professionals: any minority, faith or race, or white and possibly Christian, or not: basically, anyone can become what they want to become in these United States of America. The politics that promote division and the psychology that accompanies some want of respect and manages to turn that into a tyrannical voice may devolve to “malignant narcissism” (on this blog and with reference to dictatorships: “differents talks — same walk”).

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Video Module -Farrokh Sekaleshfar, Nouman Ali Khan, and Omar Mateen’s Ex-Wife

11 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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authoritarianism, homosexuality, Islam, Islamic reform, Islamism, Mateen massacre, puritanism, Quranic interpretation, religion, religious exclusion, religious fascism, religious narcissism

Our YouTube feeds respond to our Internet habits — all that Google Chrome or other mammoth machinery may capture (about us), crunch with algorithms, and throw back to us with the logic that if we clicked on it, we must have been interested in it — but let me not get distracted with computer-human interactions, social engineering, and programmers.

Regarding the above clips: Farrokh Sekaleshfar had his name made the moment Omar Mateen operationalized at least an opinion similar to his own; Nouman Ali Khan, whose online presence I found connected with the Islamic Center of Irving (Texas) appears a countervailing speaker to Sekaleshfar; and then, in the way of YouTube’s relational “other video” options, comes a voice of reason about madness — Omar Mateen’s ex-wife.

What do they look like together, these three videos?

What are they telling us?

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Snapshot – Churches and Mosque – “Great Days of Service” – Irving, Texas USA

10 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, North America, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green, United States of America

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community appearance, Great Days of Service, Islam, Islamic Center of Irving, political perception, religion, religious subscription, religious succession

Posted to YouTube by Eddie Shaw, an instructor in the Tae Kwon Do Club of the Islamic School of Irving, February 24, 2015.

Posted to YouTube by the Irving Masjid, April 29, 2016.

Great Days of Service (GDS), Irving, Texas, describes itself this way on its home page:

GREAT DAYS OF SERVICE IN IRVING, TEXAS, IS AN INTERFAITH ASSOCIATION OF FAITH COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNITY PARTNERS UNITED IN SERVING GOD AND COMMUNITY THROUGH RENEWING NEIGHBORHOODS AND AIDING HOMEOWNERS IN THE RESTORATION OF THEIR PROPERTIES.

And on its “About” page, this way:

Great Days of Service is a non-profit association of diverse Irving faith communities, businesses, and civic groups who are united in serving God and community by renewing neighborhoods and aiding homeowners in the restoration of their properties.

The GDS website supports pages displaying Church Partners (there are many — 14 churches listed and one mosque – the Islamic Center of Irving) and Community Partners, a melange of relevant government and the kinds of good-hearted private businesses that anchor the tapestry of small town America.

The Islamic Center of Irving featured recently in an Esquire article — “The Real Muslims of Irving, Texas: With armed protesters outside their mosque and freedom of religion and the right to carry crashing together on their doorstep, Lone Star Muslims just want to say howdy. Before somebody gets hurt” (by Colby Buzzell, May 9, 2016). Four months earlier, those armed protesters made the virtual pages of The Dallas Morning News (“Armed protesters gather outside Islamic Center of Irving” by Avi Selk, November 21, 2015). Work “Ahmed Mohamed”, the student who one day brought the clock-in-a-box to school and by the next, more or less, had achieved global notoriety, into the search string, and you might get this:

Screen capture, Google search, July 10, 2016.

Oh, my — and there’s still a $15 million Ahmed Mohamed vs City of Irving lawsuit on the docket.

BackChannels has heard that in the past year– and for the next — one or two churches have dropped out of the ranks of the multi-faith “Great Days of Service” in the wake of a “dust up” with the mosque.

Will details arrive?

Is the “skinny” really needed?

James Ragland writing for The Dallas Morning News (Muslims are now an organized political force in Irving”) noted the following back in May:

Those who keep tabs on voter rolls say the number of Muslim voters has jumped from about 150 two years ago to over 800 in the May 7 election. Of the city’s 92,000 registered voters, about 3,800 — slightly more than 4 percent — identify as Muslims.

But they made up nearly 18 percent of the ballots cast in an election where the turnout was low.

Possibly, this given the direction of those not-so-sacred numbers (indicating growth), it may not hurt the representatives of Irving’s Muslim community to share back into the Christian community the making and posting of participation-and-accomplishment videos having to do with those “Great Days of Service” –(added per the addendum at the top) nor would it hurt the churches to produce and post their own videos on the matter . . . or have a hand in the interfaith making of the next video.

Sigh.

In the medieval mode, religious succession — initially, the ascent or uptake of Christianity displacing (for most) Judaism (source of history and inspiration) and much else — accounts for bloodshed through many ages, but cue the angels (“Aaaaaaah”) and The Enlightenment arrives, the church divides and divides again — and fends off Islam’s incursions in what has become Europe– until within its many domains Northern Ireland quiets down and that seems the end of that part of the bloody story.

But wait: about here enters those “Red Brown Green” malignant narcissists — “Comrades, Nationalist, Islamists” but Kleptocrats (and subscription builders) most of all — and we’re once again on this potentially bloody — and still medieval — merry-go-round.

In the way of the web and YouTube, this video automatically followed the two cited and displayed above:

Posted to YouTube April 29, 2016.

Wikipedia on “Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan”.

Apparently, the fishers of souls continue to count their success in subscriptions and may adjust their talk to compete.

Addendum and Mild Retraction – July 10, 2016

There have been other “Great Days of Service — Irving” videos recent within the past two years. However, the top search results appearing on YouTube come up absent of productions posted by the Christian churches.

This is what BackChannels found:

“Interview: “Great Days of Service” – Post by the City of Irving, April 21, 2016.

“Great Days of Service at Irving 2015” – Posted by GDS Irving, May 18, 2015.

“Kizoa Video Maker: Great Days of Service 2015” – Posted by GDS Irving, May 18, 2015.

“Great Days of Service 2015” – Posted by The City of Irving, June 8, 2015.

Presented in the order noted:

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Reading BC – Those Big Headlines

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Notes On Reading BackChannels, Political Psychology

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BackChannels, blogging, news, perception, politics

This follows from the previous post.

What is the difference between “moderate” and “extreme” politics?

And how “packed” should a blog post be?

Closing in on “Syndicate Red Brown Green” works a little at a time, at least for those who care to overview the results from a search like “Ferguson and Gaza”.

Ferguson is not Gaza — and Gaza would not be Gaza without Hamas, and Hamas is just another Muslim Brotherhood / Muslim Botherhood organization like . . . ISIL, the gang of the day.

In some ways, suffering — hunger, indignity, inequality, injustice — is the same everywhere, but we all don’t point the fingers the same way.

“White police shot a black man!”

Uh huh.

Except it was a Latino policemen, neither “white cracker” or Yalie WASP.

Should we even notice the “white guy” was Latino?

Not really.

We only do it because we’ve been made to notice that the deceased was black.

Before this is over, more fingers will point to force personnel evaluation or training, one or the other, not the whiteness of the force or the blackness of the community.

Probably, Philando Castile was an American Everyman who could have been any man.

This is what courts are for: examination, second looks, reevaluations.

Those old Lefties (and, believe me, this is being written by an old liberal) — now the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left?: to hell with the courts!

It was murder — and don’t forget to show whitey what’s what downtown.

So here comes that long hot summer involving some kind of 1960s and 1970s American Revanche — Glory Days!

There’s a whole new generation ready to pick up the cudgels.

Parts of the Revolution will be televised.

Anything not televised will show up on the World Wide Web.

–33–

Appearances in BackChannels

Gulen

Erdogan

Erdogan and Gulen

In the News Today or Recently

Moscow’s Themes

Immediately Related on BackChannels

Fast Related Reference

Fast Related Reference

Addendum and Mild Retraction – July 10, 2016