13 Tuesday Jun 2017
This gallery contains 10 photos.
Originally posted on Half Chips/Half Rice:
“Just because Hitler used the knowledge for negative reasons doesn’t reflect on the knowledge itself.” –…
10 Saturday Jun 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Kurdish Autonomy, Kurdish Liberation, Kurdish State, Kurdish struggle, Kurdistan, Putin, Trump
The gang was indulging in Trump bashing and only loosely discussing the surfacing of the “Kurdish Question” — should Kurdistan become a state representing the autonomous self-determination of 35 million souls now subjugated in suzerainty across five states: Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey?
Not to poop on the party, but you know that’s what I’m going to do. 😦
Prepare.
🙂
On the surface and pro-Kurdistan:
–The Kurds have been producing a rapidly developing and modernizing society;
–The Kurds appear inherently communal and tolerant in their views of themselves and others;
–Of course, the Kurdish Peshmerga and separate men’s and women’s defense units form the advanced line against ISIS in Iraq and Syria;
–For a glimpse of Utopian values in place, it would be hard to beat the experience of Rojava (enjoy the look-up).
On the surface and negative:
–Since we’re all just one big family, what’s your may be theirs, at least in the minds of remote brigands;
–The suzerainties (Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey) support about 35 million people governed by many chiefs. Having been defeated by the arms of militarized states, they’re seeking a sub-state state of confederation, which may work for peace and prosperity but remain far from the American and other western experiences;
–Finally, the push-back against stronger states involved a guerrilla movement / terrorist organization aligned with the Soviet Union (1978) known as the PKK, and although the organization has been displaced by updated banners, it may be that the same personalities continue the good fight for autonomy and statehood. (Look-up Kyle Orton’s piece in The New York Times).
I explore a little bit at a time from the desktop; try to get in some background reading; and certainly try to “meet” (virtually) personalities much closer to the politics at hand.
The United States has betrayed the Kurdish desire for independence numerous times; however, noting that, the Kurdish leadership has also leaned back toward Moscow — effectively a dictatorship today — in its development politics, rather like India and Pakistan in earlier days playing east against west and back and forth, the ambivalence of the west would seem understandable.
Between the Feudal and Modern Worlds
I’ve gotten the impression that the Kurds in earlier days had used the mountains as their defensive barrier against the barbarism of others, but the greater world and changes in the technology of martial force have put them in the position of leveraging decent ideals and values, would that they would keep to them.
Those who patiently make their way through my words (more than once) know that I regard Putin’s Russia as representing feudal absolute power bent on compromising the economies, ideals, and values of the EU and NATO states, and toward that end, Russia has gotten its way with Erdogan in Turkey, a NATO signatory but no longer NATO in at least official spirit. Putin’s preference in leadership has involved other autocrats, and not so much for exacting cooperation, which he gets, but most for reinstalling the feudal and medieval worldviews in the modern democracies.
Now: tell me how Putin has done so far and where Donald J. Trump fits in that scheme.
That, I believe, is what the fussing is all about in Washington.
Do Americans want a real democracy and greater cohesion around it or rather another of the world’s sham democracies masking elite governance and kleptocracy (that’s how things usually work out with autocrats)?
You decide.
–33–
09 Friday Jun 2017
Are all conversations between American presidents and government employees classified?
It appears that the President attempted to leverage Comey’s personal loyalty to take care of an uncomfortable “matter” being investigated by the FBI. Comey then shared the experience with a friend who forwarded the same to the press, and so Comey lost the executive’s confidence. Where was the classification for the memos; where is the nondisclosure covering the conversation?
As AG Loretta Lynch has been relieved of her position, her blocking actions regarding Clinton will probably be ignored, imho. The elections over; she’s over: attention has shifted to where public attention is most needed: America’s political character, Russia’s political character, and the relationship between the two at the highest levels of governance.
The note on Comey’s so-called “leak” may reflect the fact that classification and discretion were within Comey’s authority to call, and given the President’s behavior and the FBI’s mission to defend the Constitution, the antagonism developed between the two would seem to have developed naturally in the defense of the democracy.
Lynch: old news.
Related on BackChannels for any newly arriving from Mars: Moscow’s Rules.
–33–
08 Thursday Jun 2017
Posted in Journalism
Live feeds from Capitol Hill would seem old news for television watchers and no longer brand new for web watchers, but it is something to have the option of witnessing national affairs as members of the media have attended these events for years. Perhaps greater opportunities will develop for remote “desktop-based” journalists to ask questions in the venue of choice.
Moscow’s “Active Measures”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
Moscow, Reflexive Control, and the New Nationalism: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/
Flag-waving Americans love their FBI and have — or have had — the highest regard for the nation’s preeminent law enforcement institution. This — and I’m listening now to Comey’s answers to inquiry — is going to be awfully tough for the more strident of American conservatives to favorably “deconstruct” with credibility. Plainly, President Trump asked for loyalty to himself and by extension his power and his designs. Our top police officer listened very carefully to that talk, and now we are all listening carefully. On the table: the public’s judgement of the integrity of our Federal government.
–33–
07 Wednesday Jun 2017
Tags
classical liberalism, medieval worldview, political absolutism, political poetry, post-Soviet political philosophy, post-Soviet politics
Anti-Semitism : Medieval Political Tool
Islamic Supremacists : Civilizational Narcissists
Why?
Isolation somewhere at some time
&
Because he could; because they could.
Later and latest: “Moscow” — today, a political police state, still fundamentally feudal.
Moscow-Tehran : Red-Green ; Brown-Green: all about force in power.
Mudar Zahran – Mahmoud Abbas has the KGB record, a record that represents a relationship that never disappears. It’s the KGB that set up Arafat and the PLO — and it has been the Palestinian main ranks that have been made to suffer on behalf of those who have mightily enriched themselves.
Nadiya Al-Noor – is there a “modern world” capable of opposing the persistence of the medieval mode in the lives of states?
I think the general conversation on the middle east conflict across the forums has grown way beyond the Che image and poetry of the “freedom fighter”.
We’re all freedom fighters these days.
We should take a good look around at “what was” and needs be no more.
The Soviet Union dissolved in bankruptcy officially on December 25, 1991, i.e., more than 25 years ago, and its offspring Putin strives mightily to sustain feudalism and associated motivations for conflict because his kind of narcissism loves appearing heroic amid the chaos and destruction he himself has created. He’s representative of the worlds so opposed to classical liberalism, justice, and life itself, and perhaps we may now dismiss the phantoms of earlier days.
Are we becoming public figures — are we public figures — enough for leaving the names in?
On this post, I think so.
There’s a lot alluded to in the excerpt, and I incline to leave it be but with the echo of its question:
Is there a modern world capable of opposing the persistence of the medieval mode in the lives of states?
–33–
05 Monday Jun 2017
04 Sunday Jun 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, disinformation, kleptocracy, middle east conflict, New Nationalism, psychology, weaponizing humans
Q: “Is it our psychology or our nature that prevents us from being peace loving people?”
A: As regards the “middle east conflict”: _malign and manipulated_ psychology.
Post-WWII, post-Nazi Germany, Soviet Era agitation-propaganda leveraging anti-Semitic sentiment –> “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“, i.e., the myth that the Jews were out to take over the middle east —
_Reflexive Control and the Encouragement of Absolute Nationalism_
Terrorism promotes intense concern with basic security wherever, however, and for whatever reason politically-focused violence takes place. In crayon fashion here (I’m pressed for time this morning), political violence associated with the Palestinian cause, from the air hijackings of the 1970s to the latest murder by car, essentially promotes Israeli nationalist fervor and the western program. The deeper problem: it never helped the Palestinians but rather the piratical leaderships drawing income from the sustaining of the conflict. Arafat passed away a multi-millionaire; Abbas has accumulated a similar share of wealth; Haniyeh and Mashaal have developed reputations as billionaires.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
Israelis and Palestinians genuinely tired of near 70 years of artificially sustained conflict — and the “information / disinformation psychology” has been a part of keeping things just as they have been — may need to bring these questions up with “Moscow”.
Historically, Moscow has been intensely anti-Semitic — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/ — but under Putin’s guidance, somewhat opposite today. Things have changed even though Putin continues to foster or control or appreciate (choose any option) kleptocratic absolute power. This seems to me something Palestinian intelligentsia need to consider and research independently.
I often note that “the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews”, a trope that lends emphasis to authentic ethnolinguistic cultural affiliation with land. At the moment, there are fewer than 7,000 living language cultures on the planet, and each developed their language somewhere at some time. Baloch, Kurds, Hebrews, Pashtun have land claims as do others. I may grant that after 70 years of isolation and wicked disinformation, the Palestinians need not be the leading edge of “Arab pan-nationalism” which should have passed away with the Soviet Union (at the end of 1991). One may urge reconsideration for having become unique but perhaps misguided by the politics of a much earlier era and, all may hope, one passing finally into history.
End the Preoccupation With the Jews!
Easier said than done?
The world’s political science scholars may be unraveling the relationship between Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany in the first half of the 20th Century, and today there’s plenty for reading as regards Moscow’s efforts to sustain a piratical feudalism even as it runs short on ready cash and the rest, less ready, appears sunk in western assets and banking institutions.
Change, so BackChannels may observe, must come slowly where it involves BIG Family, Military, and Religious Institutions. In the feudal mode, money moves along more by way of relationships than by way of merit or virtue. That’s life. Such themes will never be black and white but they may be better balanced for ethical and moral merit — greater rule of law; greater real justice — in the long run.
Whether the latest assault on innocents will be quelled by security organizations or grown into an absurd set of what should be archaic struggles based in race and religion and any number of assorted lesser discriminators — black/white; Asian/European; gay/straight; single/married; poor/rich; etc. — we together shall see.
–33–
02 Friday Jun 2017
Tags
alternative narrative, big lies, MEC, middle east conflict, political lying, Russian anti-Semitism, Soviet political engineering of conflict
All wars are tragedies.
When they’re done, what next takes place tells a lot about both sides. No other refugee of war population on earth has been so cruelly suspended in time as have the Palestinians by Arab and former Communist interests.
I don’t believe Israelis — Christian, Jewish, or Muslim — care to teach an “alternative narrative” made out of whole cloth to assuage the feelings of the then Arab world. Seventy years of Arab apartheid have contributed to this conversation that in the realpolitik of greater history masks the culturally transmitted hatred of the Jewish People.
Credit Russia with the forgery that has been “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; credit White Russian emigre fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution with the transmission of Russian anti-Semitic invention into Germany in the 1920s; credit the Nazis and Hitler with soaking it up; when the Nazis were settled at the end of WWII, credit Soviet Russia with once again promoting anti-Semitism in the Middle East to seduce Arab figures of similar bent into the Soviet sphere of influence — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/ — and further credit the Soviet KGB with the setting up of Arafat and PLO and operating the conflict for the gain of the leadership and its feudal system of patronage.
So for how long should so hideous an anti-Semitic narrative be sustained by Arab interests at the expense of the Palestinians?
The malign narcissistic expression of power in the feudal world had always the strength to turn day into night and call darkness light.
That such dishonest and sadistic systems fail in their far out drifts into battle and bankruptcy — have a good overview of today’s Syrian Tragedy — seems seldom to bother the demented leaderships largely insulated from the dismal effects of their expression of will.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels
Such stories — murdering children to build tunnels through which to attack Israel; destroying a city so thoroughly that it overshadows the once unique images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for horror — have become emblems of what today’s medieval mentality continues bringing to (and doing to) the Palestinians.
BackChannels had placed Efraim Karsh’s book at the top of the comment because it so well lays bare the want of covering of what might be perceived as shame associated with the the two failures: 1) the failure of multiple Arab armies to destroy the State of Israel in its infancy; 2) the failure to defend Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs caught between armies and displaced by battle and wartime politics.
Add today to those two remarkable events the impressing of the refugees in camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt for nigh on 70 years while those clustered around Gaza City and Ramallah ingest a placating narrative focused ever on the blame and destruction of Jewry for all their woes — and as much goes down while the multi-millionaires and billionaires of the “Palestinian Resistance” (to democracy and human rights) comfortably sip coffee while continuing to make nefarious deals elsewhere that include keeping the Palestinians in political irons.
–33–
