Tough, Scrappy, Independent! _The Golden Veil_ – An Interview and Trailer

03 Thursday Sep 2015

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

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Posted to YouTube 9/2/2015

Posted to YouTube 8/3/2015

Related: http://www.thegoldenveil.com/

If it’s promotion, it’s unrequested and unpaid.

Disclosure: the editor of BackChannels has been a social networking acquaintance (a better word is needed for many remote personalities with whom we feel affinity if not complete agreement, and with whom share interests even if from different and often changing stances or circumstances), with producer, actor, and director Bahman Nassiri for some years and has watched him refuse to give up on his project, his vision, and his opinion of the regime Tehranasaurus medievalistas.

A Nassiri video has appeared once before on BackChannels: “Khomeini on Islam as ready by Film Producer Bahman Nassiri” (July 27, 2015).

The 41-minute indie film may be launched for $1.99 from this location: https://youtu.be/oCur-yTqc94 (proceeds go to benefit California’s mountain lions).

For all intents, Iran has quietly divided into two states, albeit perhaps not of equal proportion: a fanatical and piratical regime and a constituency that bears its burden to the side of it.  While as much may be said of democracies for the period of any incumbent president’s stay (because the other voters didn’t like him), noting the same where the leader installed is supreme and permanent until God flips the lever makes the situation quite different.

In this blog’s analysis, post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia, Syria, and Iran have produced a piece of theater that could be titled “Assad vs The Terrorists” and a look at the horrifying dimensions of that, from the incubation of ISIS (by bombing the al-Qaeda types less frequently than more politically moderate units and noncombatant targets early in the shaping of the war) to images of drowned children washing ashore, may be accessed for free in media worldwide.

The Oryx Blog and its article “New evidence proves Russian military directly engaging in Syrian Civil War” (August 29, 2015) and others on that site may help frame the Syrian Tragedy as a post-Soviet but still KGB-like piece of work.

Related in the News

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/refugee-crisis-syrian-boy-washed-up-on-beach-turkey-trying-to-reach-canada – 9/3/2015.

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FTAC – Syria – A Terrible Puzzle

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

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

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The world has been dealt a terrible puzzle: Syndicate Red Brown Green (Shiite) has through “Red” (post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia) a nuclear armed block to its ability to impose its better nature; “Brown Green” — national socialist, Islamist (Sunni side) promotes a program unpalatable most to those whose humanity, sense of justice, and sentiment could motivate intercession despite a nuclear armed Russia and an Iran positioned to acquire a similar capability if given about a year’s lead surreptitiously. Change those politics. I think Putin-Assad-Khamenei cannot get off their track by way of their investment in a medieval world view intended to keep themselves in power to the end of time. Baghdadi is about in the same place, but others might not be.

The God (concept) intended by the Jews was thrown out beyond the universe, made greater than even the universe, and with finality separated from humans, even Moses — and not even Moses parts the waters — and this is why. Somewhere between Assad and ISIS, the middle must pioneer its way, cast off the medieval, reach for something more human, more kind, more modern, more present, more survivable, more evolving, more progressing.

Perhaps when Syrians involved in fighting perceive their jihad as one involving the middle against the extremes, they will be on their way to peace.

For this day, dependence on the medieval concentration of power in one dictator, dynasty, junta, or nobility masks off the potential for a greater future.  “Syndicate Red Brown Green” appears to be playing — by having other people die for its privileges –for the feudal mode and the perpetual war needed to keep the criminally powerful and wealthy in business for generations.

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FTAC – Soviet to Syria – Now

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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Blame Berezovsky (the wealthy man who effectively upgraded Putin’s political clout — http://www.thedailybeast.com/…/how-boris-berezovsky…). The Russians, as a people, and Afghanistan as a financial black hole for military expansion, managed to derail the Soviet (dissolved December 26, 1991); however, hardline privileged had already produced a plan to outlive the Soviet (reference: Karen Dawisha – http://www.miamioh.edu/…/cultural…/putins-russia/ – and the results of that today plus the Islamist stance of the opposition (Assad needed “the terrorists” for his play, “Assad vs The Terrorists”) has led to today’s mass murder and destruction in Syria.

Compression and distillation matter.

The ability of the average victims of fascist and feudal sociopaths may depend on a quick pickup on critical information — accurate, clear, complete (delivered honesty and with the highest integrity) — and the independent discernment and both personal and public political decision making it enables.

A good telegraphy should open on to new worlds, truth revealing and trustworthy.

For those with the necessary time and resources (and intellectual freedom), the Russian Section of the Library of this blog provides ample reference for seeing the Putin machinery as it worked across the president’s years in power and across the arc of the impositions of the Soviet Era.

For those horrified by the destruction wrought by Assad in Syria and determined to address it, BackChannels suggests addressing first endemic Syrian anti-Semitism and anti-westernism, which may contribute to blocking greater western intercession — actually, at the moment, any intercession — in Syria.

For a look at the Russian contribution to man’s inhumanity to man as overseen by President Putin, Oryx, a blog oriented to military tactics, provides a look through such articles as “New evidence proves Russian military directly engaging in Syrian Civil War” (August 29, 2015) and “Captured Russian spy facility reveals the extent of Russian aid to the Assad regime” (October 6, 2014) — and there’s more between those dates.

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Link – Orton on Saddam’s Fedayeen

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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Saddam had begun Islamizing his foreign policy as early as 1982-83, making alliances with all manner of Islamist terrorists, thousands of whom came to Iraq for training in the 1990s, where they attended camps run by the Fedayeen. In the Fedayeen—connected to the global Islamist terrorist movement, combining elements of Ba’athism with an increasingly-stern Salafism—is a microcosm of the Saddam regime’s mutation into the Islamic State (ISIS).

Orton, Kyle.  “A Case Study of the Islamic State as the Saddam Regime’s Afterlife: The Fedayeen Saddam.”  Baghdad Invest, August 30, 2015.

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FTAC – On Conflict and “Nominal Affiliation”

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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

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“Humanity” is between or in the middle in tragically real ways and should not be divided “nominal affiliation” and core moderate belief, Shiite or Sunni (eastern or western; Christian, Jewish, or Muslim; northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere). The malignantly narcissistic, whatever other adjectives and labels might apply, believe themselves born to rule — to lord over others — by birth, and in their quest to do that or sustain their positions, they refer to birth or affiliation as exclusive and privileged: and then they relentlessly manipulate their friends (flattery, pandering, patronage will do it) and subjugate and plunder their critics and rivals. In that regard, all dictators are the same. Their labels and causes matter much less than key aspects of their lost personalities. Those listed above: no compassion; no empathy; no generosity with others if not in the name of their own glory. A question naturally follows: who else?

The prompt appeared in a forum on Syria in which, as BackChannels itself might have it, Putin, Assad, and Khamenei (also Nasrallah and an illustrated figure I didn’t recognize) were presented as a Shiite axis of evil.  That realpolitik model holds.  The producers and actors have put on the play, “Assad vs The Terrorists” — but what about the opposition: does it too wish to sustain its feudal and medieval perception of others?

Let the question stand.

Bigots, bullies, cowards, and liars take note: there may be more and less in a name when it comes to carrying around contempt for others on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, or, at times, the coast, desert, mountain, plain, or valley of origin, or the name of clan, family, or tribe.

Where is the enmity located?

No one minds a little competition, but conflict on the basis of “the other”  — actually, the name of the other — appears to BackChannels to become self-destructive and self-defeating.

 

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FTAC – Conflict, Graphic Images, Social Sharing – A Comment

28 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Notes On Reading BackChannels, Philology, Political Psychology

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All I might suggest is “cultural updating” throughout the . . . what do we want to call them? “Unmodern”? — and no modern nuclear blast will be pretty either — world plus some shift in rules of engagement, including photography and communications, in the field.

I’ve been an accidental viewer of “war porn” — not always accidental: I “clicked” to see my first beheading, firing squad, mass execution, combat helicopter footage (all on YouTube), and so on, and then as a casual blog editor — no connections, no revenue — I found myself posting forensic outrages: https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/ftac-on-war-porn…/ The start of the worst was a photo of two children hanging from rafters in a Burmese hut. I was writing about the Rohingya Muslims. That photograph, which I had downloaded and republished, changed my statistics, and I eventually deleted it from my blog’s library and provided the LiveLeak URL in its place. We’re an f-ing wild and ghoulish species, apparently. And “porn”, which I interpret loosely as “exceptional explicit display” of anything, sells. When it’s pretty and waxed, it sells cars and cameras and guitars (“guitar porn” — ask a musician). When it’s conflict and sex, countless thousands to millions want to see spilled blood and sperm.

I don’t like sensationalized conflict shock images because they’re used to mask other political, social, and psychological realities. They make us angry when we see them — those children hanging from rafters, this young man to the left, infants washing up out of the water in Libya after their attempted migration by boat fails. We know what’s happening; we need to leave the dead to the grace of God; and we need to better focus on the politics (and psychology and language behavior — if you’re like me) that produced the horror.

Prompt: a discussion about visual propaganda.

BackChannels decided some time ago to demur on reposting sensational images of death and tragedy.  If it had a photographer in the field sending live data?  Perhaps it would go with the feed . . . I don’t know; however, promoting cause with shock — humans burnt alive (seen it in stills and videos — what is done to “witches” in Africa); hangings from cranes (who hasn’t seen that obscenity from out of the Ayatollah’s Iran?); stonings (at least the Soroya movie version); chemical gassing (thanks, Assad); barrel bombing (thanks, Assad); etc. — seems to me a particularly egregious practice (look at me! look at me! look at me!) and one that should undermine the publisher’s argument and cause.

Partisan causes — Christian missionary publications, for example; ISIS on display in the media, for another — turn death into art (like Nazis turning skin into lampshades) frequently, and I, and I hope others, abhor them for doing that to us.

Related: DiLonardo, Mary Jo.  “What are thought viruses?”  Mother Nature Network, August 27, 2015.

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Syrian Refugee Camp From the Air

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Journalism, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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Note: Examination of the downloaded clip showed no EXIF (camera) or IPTC (author or editorial) data. Although Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has been noted as visiting the Zaatari Refugee Camp in northern Jordan on April 22, 2014, whether or not he’s the passenger on the above flight — a pretty good look at the establishment of a new town, at least for a while — could not be ascertained.

Many of the refugees were from middle-income families and communities in Syria.

Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are now selling fruit and vegetables at illegal stands in Zaatari or in communities around northern Jordan. Around five percent of Zaatari’s residents were university students in Syria before coming to the camp.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/26/a-lost-generation-where-have-4-million-syrians-fled/ – 8/26/2015 – In the lede, journalist Charlotte Florance reports, “According to United Nations figures, more than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland, with another 7 million displaced internally within Syria.”

http://observer.com/2015/07/is-saudi-prince-talal-going-to-israel/ – 7/14/2015

https://www.alwaleedphilanthropies.org/alwaleed-philanthropies-supported-300-syrian-refugees-bekaa –

Posted to YouTube 9/7/2013

Posted to YouTube 1/2/2014

Posted to YouTube 2/2/2014

Posted to YouTube 1/8/2015

Posted to YouTube 7/30/2015

I have found this blog a paste-up board for snapshots of time.  Visitors here see a part of a day that I have experienced online, and then longitudinally, over time, the series in events, places, and themes begins to tell the story of a desktop journey through time.

http://blog.worldvisionyouth.org/2014/03/12/syria-6-stories/ – 3/12/2014.

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