Video

FTAC – ‘This is Moscow’s Game’

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

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This is Moscow’s game.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1*

Today, Putin plays “ends against the middle” by supporting Far Right and Far Left movements and personalities; he indulges in breathtaking political theater — Sochi or Syria, both have been about demonstration of political values; and he’s ruthless (poor Assad), enough so to have engineered through influence the incubating of ISIS (for the production “Assad vs The Terrorists”) and the creation of an EU / NATO stressing immigrant headache, to which the Brits have responded and played directly into his bid to keep restored feudal political absolute power.

Related in the news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/29/post-brexit-the-u-k-is-in-its-worst-political-crisis-since-1940-and-the-e-u-may-be-about-to-unravel/ – 6/29/2016.

Most of the public will keep Putin’s feudal revanche in Russia separate from the issues attending the Great Britain – European Union split, but the general weakening of the European Union and NATO would seem fit to his own image of himself as the unassailable primary political force in a state suspended between a secret police organization (FSB) to whom he refers to as the “New Nobility”, himself, and the financial oligarchy that he controls.

*In the above cited and linked video, attend to Moscow’s creation of a conflict that it chooses to manage from both sides.

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FTAC -Islam – A Comment on Sophisticated Interpretation / Reform

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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I’ve never doubted Jasser’s sincerity but I have questioned the power of modern sensibility to “re-map” scripture. We’re beyond the age of miracles but not of religious sentiment, and to approach the updating of the legacy in scripture and related literature of Islam involves first overriding Muhammad’s warnings about tampering. On the part of modern and sophisticated people, I’ve seen two channels organizing effort to either interpret the Qur’an as a multilayered exercise in thought — and who is to say it’s not? — or, as Jasser and others have done, question the instructions and have the great conversation, and may both tracks lead away from the barbarism on display in Baghdadi’s emulation (so he believes) with ISIS in Syria-Iraq.

Related

ISIS – BackChannels supports the idea that ISIS was incubated by Damascus with the support of Moscow and Tehran, and that the method used we “de-selection” for combat and bombing early in the process that has become the “Syrian Tragedy”.

Chief in evidence: http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

More recent and related to the above as regards Moscow’s predictable style:  http://www.newsweek.com/russia-has-killed-more-syrian-civilians-assad-or-isis-last-month-report-426775

As interpreted by BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

Islam

Mention is not endorsement, but as much may help move the conversation farther away from consideration of Baghdadi’s 7th Century display as immutable.

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

Center for Islamic Pluralism

Ex-Muslims of North America

LibForAll Foundation & International Institute of Qur’anic Studies

Muslim Reform Movement

New Age Islam & Rethinking Islam

Plain Islam & Islamic Society of Britain

Qanta Ahmed – National Review — BackChannels considers conservative American and Muslim physician and writer Qanta Ahmed a force of nature sufficient for mention as a figure representing a modern pluralist stance in Islam without reform and opposite the Muslim Brotherhood as regards leveraging concession from the rest of the world.

Wasatia

I have not subjected the list to scrutiny beyond the declared penchant of each for moderation and good.

Those who obsess on fundamental core tenets and advisements and hadith and sunnah may be expected to continue to condemn an unreformed Islam by way of its reflection from the past — the Religion of Peace web site conveys the tough critic’s perspective.  Whether the religion, which hundreds of millions of Muslims have assumed perfect from the start, has strength to weather genuine moderation and updating remains to be seen.

Political Psychology

“Cults of personality”, “dictatorship”, “fascism”, “feudal political absolutism”, “idolatry”, “malignant narcissism” — such terms revolve around the construction of feudal space and the will and rule of a single overwhelming and ruthless personality that through the carrot and stick of patronage and intimidation creates and manipulates a universe around itself.  On BackChannels, the great struggle with the past has been presented this way:

Feudal Absolute Power vs Modern Democratic Distribution

For Islam and for Muslims to integrate with the cultural complexities of modern, pluralist, and secular democracies, which may then develop stronger capitalist economies with social welfare attachments, may require some reconsideration of Muhammad’s conflation with God, whether generated originally or by clerics or others promoting their own power in supposed emulation.

Addendum

http://www.danielpipes.org/17792/why-islams-reformers-are-vitally-important – 7/18/2017.

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Select Committee on Benghazi Releases Proposed Report | Select Committee on Benghazi

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Domestic Affairs, Politics

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Rep. Mike Pompeo (KS-04) released the following statement regarding these findings:

“We expect our government to make every effort to save the lives of Americans who serve in harm’s way. That did not happen in Benghazi. Politics were put ahead of the lives of Americans, and while the administration had made excuses and blamed the challenges posed by time and distance, the truth is that they did not try.”

Rep. Martha Roby (AL-02) released the following statement regarding these findings:

“Our committee’s insistence on additional information about the military’s response to the Benghazi attacks was met with strong opposition from the Defense Department, and now we know why. Instead of attempting to hide deficiencies in our posture and performance, it’s my hope our report will help ensure we fix what went wrong so that a tragedy like this never happens again.”

Select Committee on Benghazi Releases Proposed Report 81 New Witnesses, 75,000 New Pages of Documents Reveal Significant New Information, Fundamentally Changes the Public’s Understanding of the 2012 Terrorist Attacks that Killed Four Americans Washington, D.C. – Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (SC-04) released the following statement after the committee’s Majority released a mark of its investigative report:

Read More: Select Committee on Benghazi Releases Proposed Report | Select Committee on Benghazi

Truth Telling about Israel by Think Tank EMET

27 Monday Jun 2016

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

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Dershowitz focused on largely unsuccessful efforts to promote Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel among American universities, campaigns that nonetheless helped “mis-educate a generation of future leaders.” BDS leaders admitted to wanting “to destroy Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people” contrary to rhetoric of pressuring Israel to conclude a peace settlement with Palestinians. Simultaneously the “very anti-peace” BDS movement “sends an erroneous message to the Palestinian street and the Palestinian leaders that says you don’t have to compromise…we will get you your state through extortion.”

Read more: Family Security Matters – 6/23/2016

FTAC – Sideways on Brexit and Putin’s Medieval Theater

27 Monday Jun 2016

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

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🙂

A fair part of the world is now The World x multinational business x communication x shipping x transportation, and while sovereign states must control their borders, few are able to ignore their neighbors, their neighbors’ ambitions, or bad habits and bad sectors. Probably the way to think about criminality, as determined by familiar western and modern precepts is to attach it to “filtration” — catch the “bad apples” — and osmosis from ungoverned conditions and space to governed.

At the moment, there’s a feudal-criminal world (psst: Moscow and its assortment of Far Right and Far Left helpers) continuing to drive chaos into the more civil, more “rule-of-law” west. While the west should (must!) push back, it should do so with other than reversion to its own feudal tendencies.

What Moscow / Putin promotes has been on full display between Sochi and Syria — immense accumulations of wealth and power beside the most inhuman of practices and the most thoughtless and provocative real behavior in foreign policy. I know I can’t keep going over how Damascus incubated ISIS, or, in Russia, (or Iran), how criminality / kleptocracy leak down through the justice systems and corrode their entire societies, but all of that is what is actually represented by ISIS and so many Syrian refugees.

I know as an editor (of possibly the world’s most obscure political blog) that similar specialists or academics “get” the post-Cold War “big picture” but for most with more parochial interests, it’s “ISIS” and what Putin’s sayin’ sounds about right — lower the portcullis!

BackChannels has developed a whole image of the “Post-Cold War – Cold Struggle” environment anchored yet in Moscow and Washington.  In getting to this point, it has learned that “research analyst” (self-assigned, autodidact) knowledge and public impression and perception diverge often and quite, which fact of life may suit the treatment of the public as “the masses”, for as much fits with Moscow’s philosophy regarding information, “information space”, and political manipulation via, as with the handling of Syria, political theater writ large.

Related and Highly Recommended Summer Reading

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev, 2014.

Vovochka: The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant by Alexander J. Motyl, 2015.

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FTAC – Brexit Vote and Putin’s Feudal Revanche

25 Saturday Jun 2016

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

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Putin in his own feudal revanche has played extremes against the middle, backing both Far Left and Far Right movements, including “new nationalists” and related personalities. Dictatorships want for cause and revel in creating the instability against which they may make themselves look good. In the struggle between the medieval worldview and absolute power and the modern democratic distribution and “checking” of power, this unwitting vote plays to Moscow’s feudal intents.

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Committee for Russian Economic Freedom » Putin’s Regime Thumbs its Nose

23 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Russia, Ukraine

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On May 23, during a visit to Crimea, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev made a fool of himself with a cynical and provocative phrase that quickly became one of the most popular hits on Russian Internet. Answering the question from an elderly lady about why pensions are not being raised, Medvedev, without so much as a thought, retorted: “There’s simply no money. If we find the money, we will raise pensions. You hold on here, I wish you all the best, good spirits and good health.” But the money is lacking not only for pensioners: all those who had for years depended on the needle of “Putinomics” are experiencing problems.

Source: Committee for Russian Economic Freedom » Putin’s Regime Thumbs its Nose – 6/16/2016.

Iraqi Priest Unveils Islamic Oppression

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion

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Islamic State (IS) members “are following sharia, Quran, word by word,” stated Iraqi Catholic Chaldean priest Douglas Bazi at Washington, DC’s Catholic Information Center(CIC) during a May 10 presentation.  His comments, part of an American speaking tourthat included a Heritage Foundation panel the next day, gave an unusually frank assessment of Islam’s inherently dangerous aspects born of bitter personal experience.

Bazi has previously been similarly politically incorrect, telling a 2015 conference in Italy that “there’s no such thing as moderate Islam.”

Source: Iraqi Priest Unveils Islamic Oppression – Religious Freedom Coalition, June 20, 2016.

BackChannels has consistently promoted the perception — and believes it valid and reliable — that the Ummah is broad and that modern Muslims have engaged in a great conversation as regards the character of Islam and their options within its framework and with the world beyond it.   Nonetheless, how does one engage a partisan publication whose authors and subjects know firsthand the nature of Muslim-borne diminishment or marginalization, subjugation and greater persecution, and, in the end, nothing more or less than theft and murder in the name of Allah?  One cannot argue with that experience, and the same repeats itself in history, lending veracity to Baghdadi’s efforts to emulate Muhammad’s existence and his politics.  At the same time, who among Muslims living in the west would care to live today as Baghdadi maneuvers today on the proceeds of crime and general pillage?  Pray God, everyone, we do not place the medieval world forward of the one in which you have accessed this blog.