31 Wednesday Mar 2021
–33–
20 Saturday Mar 2021
I don’t know if the groups and leaderships attending what the SPLC might refer to as “Neo-Confederate” and “Neo-Nazi” are authentically homegrown perennials or stylish annuals that keep seeding themselves from year to year, but it has occurred to me that world always moves on around its hotheads, especially the archaic and romantic who may wish to hold on to what they believe they once had. So from the awesome conversation with the world at my desktop, here’s a note on all of that.
I would think the Southern Far White Right in part the great-great grandchildren of settlers and the last of the pioneers, invariably white and looking for their place in the developing New World and who bore with them from one generation to the next the legends of the settling of the west. Farms, ranches, railroads, trading posts, towns, cities, dirt tracks, and highways. Where are they now? Ill-educated, some; overrun, for sure, and no longer the law and the outlaw with a few Mexicans around for decoration. They’re working for their hires; the children of slaves are bosses (some, I’m sure); John Wayne’s a foggy memory; Denzel’s more the memory for America’s middle aged; Bond’s partner is a black woman . . . .
The cities may be cool or mildly restive with all while the rural lanes, whether real or just winding through the heart, may be still what they were and now surrounded by an alien colorful all-inclusive all-tolerated multi-gendered multicultural powerful hypermodern New American political and lifestyle culture.
Bureaucracy, law, and technology may support American domestic security, but it sure can’t solve cultural issues involving birthrights and expectations about how the world should work. It’s understandable that we would have some disappointed-struggling sons of old white sons for whom official favor might seem (by themselves) deserved.
Who would stop history?
The processes attending conquest and the establishment of sovereignty across geopolitical space and time give way, inevitably, to periods of Administration either, Genghis style, for sustained plunder or, alas, for The Good, i.e., for renewed husbandry, shepherding, and stewardship of all that may be valued in peace. These days, bloody expansions needs must give way to community care, development, and trade, mere avarice proving insufficient for the defense of sustained new wealth.
My correspondent accused me of holding hackneyed views in relation to what I’ve labeled the “Far White Right”, a term invented for Donald John Trump’s not-so-colorful base. Members of the FWR, I was told, were also highly educated and wealthy and enamored of the American Dream, so I was told. My response –>
If “They both believe in and live the American dream”, wherefore the racial angst and want of (renewed) privilege?
Wherefore the want of racially-based political ascendance and dominance?
I’m inclined to publish my own words, but, as always would be interested in seeing what a true political topology looks like for those now deeply resenting the darker hues along with Jews.
I had also inserted a link to Far Out Lefty Noel Ignatiev’s book, How the Irish Became White.
Here’s the thing about race and white boys and black boys and girls and all the shades and stances between –>
As a species . . . .
Hitchhikers thumbs, cars, old shoes, planes, ships, and trains and legions of defenders, traders, and raiders — we sure do “get around” and have gotten around, and there’s nothing to undo it.
The mentalities of criminals and extremists seems always archaic, self-adoring, and self-aggrandizing as if humiliation and mortification somewhere near has compelled repair and some former perceived noble state of affairs may be found forward with an heroic defiance of the future.
–33–
17 Wednesday Mar 2021
Tags
What I believed –>
Jamal Khashoggi, almost royal family given his access, provided as a journalist intelligence for Mohammed Bin Salman. When he departed from the royal line by being positive about the Muslim Brotherhood and progressive about human right in the The Kingdom, the King chose to retrieve him a manner probably impressive even to Putin who forgives no KGB turncoat.
Witnessed: “Political Absolutism”. Unquestionable authority. Capricious, unyielding, sadistic, tyrannical. Add for some: black and white in judgment; inflexible in execution.
More True?
At the time of my brief discussions with him, Khashoggi happened to work for a man at the heart of some of the issues I had been investigating: he was a media aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi ambassador to London, and later Washington, and previously Saudi intelligence chief for 25 years before he abruptly left the post just prior to the 9/11 attacks.
It was Prince Turki as former head of intelligence who brokered the Saudis’ fateful deal with al-Qaida, according to documents and testimony from Taliban insiders cited by Vanity Fair journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. In their book Eleventh Day (2012), they report that under al-Faisal’s deal, as early as 1995 the Saudi royal family paid ‘protection money’ to Osama bin Laden on condition that he avoided targeting the kingdom.
The NSA was closely monitoring the operation, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars channelled to bin Laden through philanthropic activity.
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.
Regarding 9/11, one may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s enshadowed role with Ayman al-Zawahiri — reference: Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014:
That Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s right-hand man and the leader of the global jihad movement since bin Laden’s death in May 2011, spent almost a half-year in the mid-1990s in the custody of Russian intelligence is admitted by both sides and is a matter of public record.[3]
Just as significant, Zawahiri’s Russian sojourn occurred at a pivotal point in the development of al-Qaeda; the shift in strategy, resulting in attacks on the “far enemy” (i.e. the United States), the road leading to 9/11, occurred after Zawahiri’s imprisonment by the Russians.
Spies, of course, both uncover and keep secrets, and there seems no question regarding Khashoggi’s service to the Kingdom as a journalist with extraordinary access to power as well as, apparently (as suggested by Nafeez Ahmed’s coverage) admiration for it. As “dead men tell no tales”, the public may never know the full extent of motivations for Khashoggi’s torture, death, and dismemberment.
In the shadows: every intelligence agency on the planet with eyes keenly fixed on the course of international affairs and hands on levers responding to immense political power in the figures of dictators, kings, and presidents. So The Kingdom may have paid protection for al-Qaeda’s promotion of Islamic inflexibility and viciously anomic inhumanity elsewhere in the world — and Russia may have “handled” Zawahiri as an anti-western force with which to be reckoned as so well demonstrated on 9/11.
So ensues the west’s global war on Islamic terrorism.
Has it been “The West’s” war only?
Talibanicide
For the Ancestors
For the Martyrs
Keep Fighting!
With poppy
With Russian arms and materiel
Keep fighting!
For war crippled children
For war-killed dead
Keep fighting!
For Allah
For Prophet Muhammad
For dogma
For whatever authority says
Keep fighting!
For Russia
For America
For God’s sake
Keep fighting!
Reference
I didn’t know how to treat “Le Monde diplomatique” whose typeset name featured a reversed italic for “diplomatique”, so I bolded the publication’s name — and then what papa does for one . . . . 🙂 No more games. I won’t do it again. I believe italics just fine for book and other whole publication titles.
Ahmed, Nafeez. “Saudi’s new king of terror.” Middle East Eye, June 6, 2016.
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.
Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.
Wikipedia. “Mohammed bin Salman”.
As the world has waited for further answers about Khashoggi’s death, more details about his background are coming to light. They paint an interesting picture of a man known today in the U.S. as a Washington Post columnist but whose family has deep ties to the Saudi monarchy that go back generations.
“They were a rich family, educated,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C. He knew Jamal Khashoggi for many years and saw him until recently as more a loyalist than a critic of the royal family.
Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.
–33–
03 Wednesday Mar 2021
Posted in 21st Century Modern, Politics
Tags
American Issues, Antony Blinken, Biden Administration, Defining American Issues, medieval v modern, Modern America
I may not agree with what Secretary of State Antony Blinken has to say, but I very much agree with his defining the issues (again, if not the Biden Administration’s stance) and his civility. America’s most powerful political machine — the White House — has returned to democracy, effort, and meaningful work.
Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/11/27/a-short-note-on-chinas-contemporary-political-sins/ .
–33–
03 Wednesday Mar 2021
In the excerpt from life online at Facebook, “HE” is who you think “HE” is, and HE is not God, whatever else HE may think about HIMSELF.
The Dems were Dixie once, and, yes, HE was good for the Jews.
HE as been this too: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/mike-kelly/2020/01/24/donald-trump-still-owes-money-to-contractors-who-built-taj-mahal-atlantic-city/4547037002/ | https://www.amazon.com/MAFIA-Don-Donald-Trumps-years/dp/1537454692 | https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian-ebook/dp/B07F5XV3ZZ/ | https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-manafort-russia-ties-2017-10 (Manafort was HIS first choice for campaign manager).
Republicans, no less committed to Israel as well as liberalism of the west, have been left to either join or repudiate an authoritarian assault or solution to American governance. Again, enough switched sides to get Biden elected. That doesn’t make Biden great; it just means the electorate refused to go further down the line with the then incumbent President Trump.
Regarding today’s latest in Democratic fashion: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/02/15/one-uniquely-modern-american-united-states-senator-kyrsten-lea-sinema/
At least for Arizona, Goldwater’s long gone, or so it seems, and this most modern woman has been making her mark.
I don’t have a crystal ball, but if I did, I would see the Republican Party distilling down and out both its most reactionary representatives and anti-state extremists.
For the Democrats, the Far Out Left presents other issues, mostly holdovers from the ferment of the 1960s and the flow-down from Russia’s “Active Measures” — investment: $1B during the Vietnam War Era — some of which comes through in our environmental policies and some, alas, freighted with the Palestinian Solidarity Hoax. For the Dems too, the “Modern and Moderate” had best get to work against a fringe that seems to have gathered power but has nowhere to go with it. It too proves itself archaic.
Character ‘done in’ Trump’s chances for a second term.
On YouTube, “Republicans Voting Against Trump (RVAT)” and the same but titled “Republican Accountability Project (RAP)” provide plenty of material for again regarding Republicans as plain old good solid Americans, much relieving more faddish and unthinking Americans of their preference for demonizing one another over taking more sensible courses in facing challenges together and defining and resolving issues.
Stanislav Lunev’s claim that the KGB invested $1 billion in America’s own Vietnam Era Anti-War movement stands (as it has with Congress), and while we may appreciate grounded environmental policies, we may from this perspective question the fallout from that meddling in political culture. Putin, by the way, has continued the KGB/FSB tradition of meddling so well that both the Obama and Trump Administrations took action to expel the “known spies”, i.e., the crowd working under diplomatic cover in Maryland and San Francisco, California. BackChannels has commented on one aspect of that lesser and little known world in “Diplomatic Harassment–Short Compilation” (Dec. 29, 2016).
The term “Dixiecrat” may be easily summoned online. My fave for reference after the encyclopedia observations: https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south
–33–
28 Sunday Feb 2021
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern
Tags
Adam Kinzinger, Russian Bear Squats on Eastern Ukraine, Trump & The Republicans, Trumpian Authoritarianism
No production, no nonsense, and not a lot of thought on this Fast News Share (FNS) via BackChannels. Most of the time, such posts make it to the Facebook page. Here I experiment with the time involved in relaying information as well as my posture as an editor and writer overall. Today’s dilemma for all involved in Open Source Intelligence (OSI) hasn’t anything to do with how or where to access information, but a) where to dwell within the feed and b) what to do with it. In what follows, bold added for telegraphy.
“I don’t have a constitutional duty to defend against a guy that is a jerk and maybe says some things I don’t like,” Kinzinger told me, explaining what had pushed him to finally break with the president. “I do when he’s getting ready to destroy democracy—and we saw that culminate on January 6th.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/man-who-refused-bow/618156/
Remember Paul, Don’s first choice for a campaign manager: https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-manafort-russia-ties-2017-10 (“What we know about Paul Manafort‘s tangled web of connections to Russia”)
Related online: https://www.country1st.com/ !
Related online: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/01/962246187/spurred-by-the-capitol-riot-thousands-of-republicans-drop-their-party (2/1/2021)
Instead of the Trump kowtowing reactionary cadre echoing the America First Party (1943) into which the Republican Party has apparently morphed, Rep. Kinzinger will set the standard for a New Republican Party equal to LBJ’s Civil Rights and Great Society Projects — and equal as well to the challenges posed by a totalitarian Beijing and the Mafia State of Moscow’s Putin.
Russian radar station of this type was first discovered by the OSCE observers on the footage from a mini UAV. Text information about the sighting was published in the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) daily report 38/2021 dated February 17, 2021. It indicated that a 51U6 Kasta-2E1 target and acquisition radar was spotted on February 15, 2021 in a training area near Buhaivka (37km south-west of Luhansk) in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine controlled by Russian hybrid forces. It was also indicated that the station was located 30 km from the contact line.
https://informnapalm.org/en/kasta-2e1/ (2/26/2021)
Russian forces chose to camouflage the radar using a Ukrainian flag.
Why there why now?
Possibly:
The InformNapalm article adds depth to observation of Russia’s military movement and intents in Donbass.
–33–
26 Friday Feb 2021
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/01/fbi-antifa-and-swamp-gas/
That something may be believed doesn’t mean it exists, at least not in a format known to investigators.
Re. BLM: of the three founders, Patrisse Cullors has — or has had — issues related to the Far Out Left’s group-think with the Palestinians and related BDS. BDS has been well debunked by representatives of the Far Left, i.e., i.e., at least Finkelstein and Chomsky — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/ (as much has been shared with Ms. Cullors, but where her hinge is in relation to the demystification of Palestinian myth, I don’t know). The Israel Action Network has an in-depth PDF on BLM: https://www.jcouncil.org/sites/default/files/documents/BLM%20and%20M4BL%20%28002%29%206.30%20.pdf For the most part, Blacks and Jews share minority status in the United States and may be regarded as equally worth lynching (more or less) by the White Supremacist faction of more the general Far White Right politics that drifted into the Republican quarter with the development of the Civil Rights and Great Society movements and programs of the mid-early 1960s.
The Far Out Left flows down from Russia’s Soviet Communist Era and remains likely to ignorantly fly and sport the image of “Che” — or Red-Green art. Look up Danish illustrator Rune Agerhus who may be in Yemen with the Houthis these days.
Where the center — moderate and reasoning — has not held in American politics, the drift toward OLD extremism has been distinct and polarizing.
Rx for the confused (or prepared to be bigoted): dive into real intellectual and political history.
Useful reference regarding our long-lived enmity with Stalinesque political psychology:
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/22/russian-active-measures-donald-trump-and-either-evil-or-gullible-americans-or-both/
Moscow’s “Active Measures” programs and other assaults — critical western cybersystems hacking — remain quite active.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dixiecrat | https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south
Kenneth L. Marcus, Accusation in a Mirror, 43 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 357 (2012).
Available at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/luclj/vol43/iss2/5 (a good reminder of the adage, “He who points the finger has three pointing back at himself”).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Measures_Working_Group | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/
While the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU) dissolved into history, more or less, on December 25, 1991, what emerged in the character of the Russian Federation could not be called “democratic” in any modern sense. The renewal of the Russian State under Vladimir Putin’s aegis has been regarded — by those who have looked! — as feudal as mafia and heartbreaking for Russians in the breadth and depth of related state-bound corruption. Putin challenger Navalny’s nationalism now lends itself to national pride but with the hurdle of overcoming Russia’s complex networks of undeniably criminal relationships.
Here is another form of “Active Measures” – whether or not by intention, a true “Manchurian Candidate” and President: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/22/russian-active-measures-donald-trump-and-either-evil-or-gullible-americans-or-both/
In which political realm do you wish to live — medieval with ignorance (and ignorant mobs) serving political absolutism? Or modern with democracy propelled by higher integrity and empirically reasoning souls?
Your choice.
Americans now floundering in the vicinity of the Far White Right have got to be some kind of anti-intellectual dumb and lazy to avoid substantial — and substantiated — tracts online related to broad cultural, intellectual, and political history. Exactly that, however, appears to have happened — and to be happening — with the continued defense of Trump’s largely miserably (politically) arrested and fixated “conservative” (in Self-Labeling Only [SLO]) and now self-distilling medieval base (for support of that assertion, watch the volunteered testimonials still arriving at the old “Republicans Voting Against Trump” cum “Republican Accountability Project” on YouTube).
–33–
25 Thursday Feb 2021
I’ve no idea how many megabytes of e-junkmail I handle each morning, but in the sludge — and a separate folder for circulars associated with defense, diplomacy, and security — there are often gems. Some I share to the BackChannels “Reader” on Facebook, but this morning I thought to share a few here as well.
Forwarded by Katrina Lantos Swett on behalf of the real life hero of “Hotel Rwanda”, Paul Rusesabagina — Birrell, Ian. “The dictator who fooled us.” UnHerd, February 23, 2021 | Barbaro, Michael. “A Battle for the Soul of Rwanda.” Podcast. The New York Times, February 18, 2021 | Kellner, Mark A. “Paul Rusesabagina, ‘Hotel Rwanda’ Hero Who Credited Adventist Upbringing, On Trial in Kigali.” Religion Unplugged, February 24, 2021. The Lantos Foundation accepts donations, and there is a petition for Paul Rusesabagina: “President Biden: Demand the Release of Paul Rusesabagina.”
Recent and related: Burke, Jason. “Hotel Rwanda dissident goes on trial accused of terrorism and murder.” The Guardian, February 17, 2021.
The trial is controversial. Kagame, who won a third term in power with 98% of the vote at elections in 2017, is credited with the development and stability Rwanda has experienced since the genocide in 1994, but is also accused of intolerance of any opposition, whether domestic or international. Critics of his rule are frequently detained and several high-profile political dissidents have been murdered abroad.
Burke, Jason. “Hotel Rwanda dissident goes on trial accused of terrorism and murder.” The Guardian, February 17, 2021.
Well, perhaps that’s enough before I get into listing what catches my attention (what doesn’t?) from the global defense and security shops and others moving related information worldwide.
–33–
BackChannels 