05 Wednesday Feb 2020
The news fairly erupts with a single tweet —
— hat has no immediate company and few details. Nonetheless, it comes out near the real time of events, and a few minutes later, the news starts to appear in diverse online sources.
https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/blasts-heard-in-damascus-syrian-air-defense-831010.html
Even in this day of streaming content, this old blogger remains amazed by the rapid and extraordinary reach of the World Wide Web in relation to conflict news.
05 Wednesday Feb 2020
Posted in 21st Century Modern
Inspiration for the author of this blog: a nice patch of short observations related to the Middle East Conflict, i.e., “Israel v Palestinian ‘Leaders'”.
Regarding the Framing of the Conflict: Notes on the Treatment of Time in Arguments About Control and Ownership of Contested Space
Time has been the New Space for a while, DM, and I have found two kinds of people plainly dangerous: 1) those who cannot keep themselves from dwelling in the past 🙂 ; 2) those who want to get to the end of their civilizational story as fast as possible!
😀
One is too far behind and the other way too far into the future — and both may be too attached to ancient and medieval dogma.
For the purposes of Administration and Adjudication, issues (real estate disputes) that can be worked in the courts have been submitted as such, and those that cannot be worked out in a civil fashion may be better set aside for what good may be achieved for everyone.
There are leaders, other personalities, and organizations invested in sustained conflict, and as long as the “middle east conflict” is around (forget about the others in the ME), they’re good to go.
Add the thieves who have factored in their own corruption in their estimation of personal revenues given conditions that don’t change.
I see no reason for either Israelis or Palestinians to remain subject to animosities that supposedly drive one or the other to violence while actually benefiting those who would manipulate them most for their own aggrandizement and enrichment.
Everyone should see how Time is used to frame issues and OBSTRUCT their resolution in exchange for political gain, and neither for the betterment nor welfare of Israelis and Palestinians but primarily for themselves and often in service to their own image.
For what is not already in the courts, there are no legal remedies — only political ones!
Feudalism and Tribalism figure highly in sustaining the conflict, but neither today offer healthy benefits to anyone but those institutionally invested in sustained conflict.
I believe Israelis would be happy with the cessation of Palestinian or related violence (within as well as without) and modern Palestinians might finally appreciate moving on with decency in employment, freedom, and prosperity. I also feel certain that both “options” or channels into the future are real.
Re. Time: Canaanite-Hebrew Civilization? Solomon? Roman? English? Saladin? Muhammad’s exceptions for Israel? The Ottoman? British and Allied Powers? After 1948? 1967? 1973? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel
By dwelling Back There in Time, Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis delay their own potential experience of reconciliation, resolution, and peace and security — and those who benefit are those who perpetually care about themselves at the expense of caring about others.
While my own sweet words belie difficult questions — e.g., what to do with civilizational ambition, greed, and pride? — there’s truth to them in relation to broader regional development plus improvements to be realized in Qualities of Living for Israelis and Palestinians.
Two projects already under way and related to the economic and political development and evolution of the middle east should make their way into a greater global consciousness: https://www.businessinsider.com/west-bank-palestine-rawabi-city-israel-news-2018-10 ; https://www.neom.com/en-us/ .
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30 Thursday Jan 2020
Tags
Futurism, Global Cultural Adjustment, global culture, Global Development, Global Furure, Global Future, Global Updating
Inspiration for this post: a conservative’s complaint over Yale’s decision to overhaul its “Art History Survey Course” — story told here:
It hasn’t been a man’s world for a while.
It hasn’t been a white man’s world for a while either.
It hasn’t actually been a neatly demarcated world either (sorry, Putin, but Russia is immensely multicultural), and while some believe nature favors cultural and racial “purity”, both the history of war and the biological domain in natural history would argue the opposite: our cultural and natural biological worlds prefer immense experimentation — and woe to the crops that have no genetic alternatives in their own defense when a blight or pest co-develops with their own most ideal but perhaps restricted and unprepared features.
It has been a world representing about 4,300 religions and fewer than 7,000 living languages — and by way of modern communications, trade, and transportation, it is all irrevocably interconnected in one place: Earth.
The New England set, once “WASP”, much less western Europe, may no longer define history quite as it did through the ages of exploration and feudal — and colonial — wars and every sort of migration.
What we once called “history” (Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian AKA Northern Mediterranean and later “European” (western) but north of the equator, west of Asia, apart from India, not including the views of . . . . well, point made —
We are, for better or worse, all “In It” — boy, are we ever! — together.
Now here’s a problem with boundary adjustments in space and time: how do We — the global — preserve one the other’s unique cultural and ethnic attributes and heritage while trading — and possibly over-producing — like crazy?
That’s a “Q” for an “A”: respect thy neighbor; refrain from expansion; seek improvement in “Qualities of Living” in one’s inherited cultural, ethnic, and historic space, and, with some defenses for sovereignty, see what can be done with that.
Reject fascism, Hobbes, and nationalism.
Embrace Humanism but know where ye come from — and appreciate it.
I don’t think the answer for nations is to retreat to the 19th Century – or early mid-20th — and their parochialism and wars but rather to grow together into the 21st Century, and, as soon as the collective American and global “We” clear out the idiots with the bad habits of the past convincing themselves that they are the future — they’re not — then we’ll take a great step forward but not without some issues as we do.
I’ve come across two development projects from seemingly unlikely spaces that may have more to say about the future than any present popularized political condition or stance.
Taking place in the Palestinian Territories today: Rawabi, a $1.4 billion Planned City in the West Bank.
Today, most of the businesses operating in Rawabi are owned by or invested in by Masri. The main company is Asal Technologies, a software development company that outsources developers. It includes Microsoft, Intel, and Israeli tech giant Mellanox among its clients.
Jacobs, Harrison. “A Palestinian-American billionaire built a $1.4 billion luxury city from scratch to be a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Palestinian economy.” Business Insider, October 20, 2018.
There may be lip service involved as regards The Preoccupation With The Jews — I hope that’s all it will be for now — but you are welcome to suggest to BackChannels what the development of Rawabi will do to the so-called (once Soviet-propelled) “Middle East Conflict”. Intel, Mellanox, and Microsoft, as modern corporations and as Asal Technologies clients, have probably little patience for either the promoting or sustaining of anti-Semitic animus.
From Saudi Arabia with Ambition —
Neom: An Acellerator of Human Progress
NEOM is a bold and audacious dream. It is a vision of what a New Future might look like (in fact, NEOM means, “new future”). It’s an attempt to do something that’s never been done before and it comes at a time when the world needs fresh thinking and new solutions. NEOM is being built on the Red Sea in northwest Saudi Arabia as a living laboratory – a place where entrepreneurship and innovation will chart the course for this New Future. NEOM will be a destination, a home for people who dream big and want to be part of building a new model for sustainable living, working and prospering.
NEOM will include towns and cities, ports and enterprise zones, research centers, sports and entertainment venues, and tourist destinations. It will be the home and workplace for more than a million citizens from around the world.
https://www.neom.com/en-us/about/#vision-2030
Complexity in all endeavors — and practically by definition — requires greater cooperation, coordination, integration, and stability between all of the elements involved, and with these ginormous projects, whether Rawabi in a future Palestine or Neom in The Kingdom, investors will not want to lose their money or see their projects ruined by essentially emotional and narcissistic outbursts certain to lead to their destruction.
What we often call “news” and read for the flash and the fire belies this other reality quietly developing behind the rancor and smoke. Have a look at it because what we have been calling “reality” — the whole miserable stew of injuries, jealousies, and resentments — will fade as this other reality becomes more and more apparent.
So it’s not a White Man’s World.
It’s a White (Aussie) Woman’s World!
🙂
No.
It has just been illustrated that way – and for some (with perhaps that Aussie-German-Nordic-UAE thing goin’ on — and that’s for those who might wish to think that way), that bit of pride may count for everything, but blood is 99 percent the same the world over (and intermarriage in a small pool invites illnesses).
Black billionaires are individuals of Black African ancestry with a net worth of at least US$1 billion. According to the 2019 Forbes 2019 ranking of the world’s billionaires, Nigerian business magnate Aliko Dangote had a net worth of $10.9 billion and was the world’s richest black person.[1] Other Blacks on the 2019 Forbes list included Nigeria’s Mike Adenuga with $9.1 billion, American investor Robert Smith with $5 billion, American businessman David Steward with $3 billion, American media mogul Oprah Winfrey with a net worth of $2.5 billion, Zimbabwean businessman Strive Masiyiwa with $2.4 billion, Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos with $2.3 billion, South African gold magnate Patrice Motsepe with $2.3 billion, American sports executive Michael Jordan with $1.9 billion, Michael Lee-Chin of Canada with $1.9 billion, Nigeria’s Abdul Samad Rabiu with $1.6 billion, Nigeria’s Folorunsho Alakija with $1.1 billion, and Mo Ibrahim of the United Kingdom with $1.1 billion.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_billionaires
The world’s wealthiest person of African descent (according to Wikipedia): Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, Chairman and CEO, Dangote Group. Have a look (Wikipedia also has a list of “Black Billionaires“). Now, for the sake of argument — i.e., supporting Yale’s overhaul of an art history survey course — let’s have a glance at the smallest nibble of Nigerian art history and contemporary art —
Yale’s Art Deparment would seem to have its work cut out for it, for there’s a whole world of art due for another look and appreciation.
Whose art should be left out of an art history survey?
The people of which color, culture, ethnic background, language community, or income level should be denied both access and presence in relation to all of the regions of information considered of public value?
In the development of new dreams, solutions to challenges confronting our species (and our planet), and technologies, which portions of the world should not be included in the fashioning of the good things to come in the Next World being born out of the present?
There are many evil answers to such questions, but there is only one good one to be applied to all of them: leave out no one.
The proverbial “boat” is Earth herself.
Best advice: stay.
WE are already living together, and if we pull together, we can and will do better.
Thomas Berry (“The present is not a time for desperation but for hopeful activity”).
Wikipedia. “Alexandra Mary Hirschi”.
Ready, Earth’s Drivers?
Forward — and at cultural and political warp speed.
All included.
No one lost or left behind in man’s quest for improved Qualities of Living (QOLs).
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28 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism
13 Monday Jan 2020
Tags
American Political Rhetoric, Conservative White Right, Larry Krasner, Left / Far Left, Michael White, Republican Conservatism, Sean Schellenger, Social Justice Prosecutor
Michael White didn’t deny killing Sean Schellenger. He admitted to police and at his trial that he plunged a knife several times into Schellenger’s back during a July 2018 scuffle in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. Numerous witnesses and a cellphone video confirmed what happened. Yet in October 2019 a jury acquitted Mr. White, a 22-year-old college student, of voluntary manslaughter. Many, including the victim’s family, blame Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s soft-on-crime district attorney.
Stefano, Jennifer. “Philadelphia’s Top Prosecutor Pursues ‘Social,’ Not Actual, Justice
Larry Krasner said he wouldn’t prosecute certain offenses and the bad guys got the message.” Wall Street Journal, January 10, 2020.
Who is op-ed writer Jennifer Stefano?
Jennifer Stefano is Vice President of the Commonwealth Foundation, a non-profit free-market think tank. Before joining the Commonwealth Foundation, Jennifer served in numerous leadership roles at Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The Emmy-nominated former TV reporter and anchor has spent the last decade advocating for public policies that maximize human flourishing and individual freedom.
https://http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/about/detail/jennifer-stefano
In good Orwellian fashion, most of America’s WSJ op-ed readers may be expected to grouse through Jennifer Stefano’s truncated portrayal of Michael White’s actions in the death of Sean Schellinger, nod their heads with the template set in the background — young black man (from the ‘hood, right?) kills (hard working) white one (honorably selling real estate) — and move on steaming right along with the coffee on all that’s wrong with America.
Well, BackChannels, having encountered the op-ed via Facebook this morning, chose to have another look at the depiction of the case that Jennifer Stefano used to damn “social justice” (Left / Far Left!) prosecutor Larry Krasner.
Authorities say White fatally stabbed 37-year-old Sean Schellenger after a brief but quickly escalating argument at the scene of a minor traffic dispute in Center City. The defense claimed and cell phone
Gordon, Bruce. “Michael White found not guilty in Rittenhouse Square stabbing death of Sean Schellenger.” Fox 29 Philadelphia, October 17, 2019.
video seemed to support that Schellenger was first to attack the knife-wielding White.
Schellenger’s family accused the DA’s office of victim blaming, a complaint that resurfaced throughout the trial from prosecutors themselves. Assistant District Attorney Sherrell Dandy said White’s defense team emphasized the victim’s behavior more than his death. Schellenger’s cocaine use, heavy drinking and even past fights were introduced as evidence against the one person who could not defend himself in court, Dandy said during closing statements.
But White’s supporters argued that he feared for his life after Schellenger threatened to “beat the black off him.”
“Michael White Given Probation on Tampering Charge.” NBC Philadelphia, January 9-10, 2020.
More than most cases, White’s trial seemed to touch on issues that have long affected the city, such as money, race, and opportunity.
White, a black man who had performed slam poetry and was working as a food courier on the night of the confrontation, testified that Schellenger — the white owner of a real estate company — said, “I’ll beat the black off you” before charging at him and trying to tackle him, causing him to fear for his safety.
Palmer, Chris. “Jury finds Michael White not guilty in stabbing death of Sean Schellenger near Rittenhouse Square.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 17, 2019 (updated).
After news of the Rittenhouse Square murder and White’s role in it broke, supporters of White took to social media to claim that he was acting in self-defense and to claim he is the “true victim.” White is an engineering student at Morgan University in Baltimore who grew up in Philadelphia and is interested in poetry, according to a Gofundme page he started to fundraise tuition money. He had no reported past arrests.
Schellenger has a criminal history including arrests in Chester County and Florida, including a 2008 arrest in Florida for disorderly conduct, battery and trespassing although charges were later dropped. He was found guilty of disorderly conduct in 2009 in Chester County, and previously charged in Chester County in August 2001 with burglary, resisting arrest, criminal trespassing, and theft, although the verdict in that case was unknown, the Inquirer reported.
Newhouse, Sam. “Conflicting stories emerge after Rittenhouse Square murder
Family and friends of Michael J. White say the Rittenhouse Square murder of Sean Schellenger was in self-defense.” Metro, July 16, 2018.
You decide?
No.
The jury decided.
The violation of journalism’s golden standard for reporting, “Clear, Accurate, Complete” produced the opportunity for this Bad Bloggie in the Windows. In her op-ed, Jennifer Stefano framed the case for a national audience by leaving out . . . the case. Again, Michael White was black and he done it, totally admitted it, and this soft Officer Krupke Lefty of a prosecutor Krasner made it easy for him to slip away with his crime.
For all anyone but WSJ might know, the Conservative Nodding Head Chorus may have bought it.
Next item, please, and another croissant.
Ah, but the American Press is free, vigorous, and decidedly not fake!
Gotcha!
Assailant gets out of his car. Black guy’s got a bicycle and a knife (c’mon, it’s Philly), and what he hears from the white guy about to charge him: “I’ll beat the black of you.”
“Pennsylvania Self Defense Laws.” FindLaw.
–33–
07 Tuesday Jan 2020
Tags
civilizational narcissism, Iranian Power, Iranian Regime Legitimacy, malignant narcissism, medieval v modern, middle east
And therefore it was Suleimani and his proxies — his “kingmakers” in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — who increasingly came to be seen, and hated, as imperial powers in the region, even more so than Trump’s America. This triggered popular, authentic, bottom-up democracy movements in Lebanon and Iraq that involved Sunnis and Shiites locking arms together to demand noncorrupt, nonsectarian democratic governance.
On Nov. 27, Iraqi Shiites — yes, Iraqi Shiites — burned down the Iranian consulate in Najaf, Iraq, removing the Iranian flag from the building and putting an Iraqi flag in its place. That was after Iraqi Shiites, in September 2018, set the Iranian consulate in Basra ablaze, shouting condemnations of Iran’s interference in Iraqi politics.
Friedman, Thomas L. “Trump Kills Iran’s Most Overrated Warrior”. The New York Times, January 3, 2010.
Ali Khamenei is a cagey leader who did not become one of the longest serving rulers in the Middle East by impetuously going to war with America. The clerical oligarchs respect American determination and understand the imbalance between a superpower and a struggling regional actor. They have never figured out Donald Trump, a U.S. president who offers unconditional talks while working to crater the Iranian economy. We should not expect Iran to take on a president who just ordered the killing of one of their famed commanders.
Takeyh, Ray. “Why the Death of an Iranian Commander Won’t Mean World War III.” Politico, January 3, 2020.
In Karbala – one of Shiism’s holiest cities, where a 7th-century battle resulted in Islam’s biggest schism between Sunnis and Shiites – the unthinkable has happened.
“The government doesn’t even rule any more. They’re Iran’s puppets. If Iran loosens its grip, then things can change,” explained a protester.
France 24. “In Shiite holy city of Karbala, Iraqis protest against Iranian ‘meddling'”. November 14, 2019.
Iran looks pale this morning.
The mullahs have within their body politic a severely contracting economy. Beyond it, they have inspired the limitless hate of Iraqi Shiite Muslims whom their ambitions have overrun and threaten to permanently subjugate in Iraq. Within their operations centers, they have greeted a dawn that has been deeply and strategically compromised by spies and with the extent of it unknown. Perhaps most lethal: their treatment of Earth herself: desertification, deforestation, severe pollution, etc.: corruption and mismanagement have helped produce not only a noxious politics, inside and out, but literally in some aspects a dying geophysical platform for the state’s existence.
As represented by Tehran, how long a lease has the feudal-medieval mode on earth?
God Almighty himself would not destroy his creation but in the greater natural processes to which Earth is heir — but for ambition, Iran’s Ayatollah would.
–33–
03 Friday Jan 2020
Tags
After years of Iranian provocations directly and through proxies, America’s defense machinery returned fire in no uncertain terms. President Trump’s order was no subtle back alley “hit” involving a dimly lit peripheral figure among the state’s proxies or some obscure but critical figure engaged in rocketry and nuclear arms development. Qassim Soleimani was Tehran’s top general and (second) most vigorous master of the levers and tools of the state’s diplomacy and conflict-inducing and war-fighting capacity. His taunt as quoted by The New York Times, “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine. We are ready. We are the man of this arena” was his invitation to his kind of party.
Washington will wake up later this morning to . . . what? “Heightened tensions with Iran”?
Call it what the strike represented: war.
BackChannels, ever strident and stubbornly independent, suggests that Left / Far Left Democrats and Always Right / Far Right Republicans should both can their bitter and frequently counterproductive and surreal partisan sandbox fight and take a moment to consider together the many acts of terror sponsored by Tehran, including attacks on American forces, the harangues and threats against the Democratic Liberalism of the West — and nonstop threats promising the annihilation of Israel, the seizing over many years of British patrol and other sea craft, and most of all the barbarism — the inhumanity — meted to all within and beyond Iran who have been abused, murdered, and subjugated by the regime.
Wikipedia. “General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper”.
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02 Thursday Jan 2020
Tags
east-west politics, Kurdish Constitution, Kurdistan, Real Liberalism, realpolitik, Turkish Aggression
Moscow’s Phantoms of the Soviet Era — old friends, old state relationships, Kurdish political incoherence at the leadership level, and confusion over the idea of liberalism has produced a deadly and medieval quagmire in Northern Syria and opened the gate to thoroughly retrograde politics — thank the Turkish “sultan” Erdogan the (most-un-NATO-like) Egoist. In effect, America’s — and the west’s — chief allies in the fight against Islamic State in Syria have been betrayed to the extent that the west now looks on at their deprivation.
If integrity is to be an international standard, it is important to grasp how artificial and brutal an enterprise has been Bashar al-Assad’s civil war and “war on terrorism”. As BackChannels has commented on Assad’s nurturing of al-Qaeda types early in the Syrian Tragedy, it will list here just a sampling of posts asserting that the state’s theater of war has been developed and managed for totalitarian effects — “Syria – Assad – ISIL – Background (December 9, 2016). The “Kurdistan” and “Syria” categories of this blog contain other listings, of course, and here for convenience are a few quickly chosen URLs to posts that may be helpful to Kurdish political analysts asking the eternal political question: “Where from here”?
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/01/02/moscow-as-medusa-with-all-the-snakes-attached/ |https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/23/a-precarious-kurdistan/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/22/the-devolution-will-be-televised-kurdistan-end-of-ceasefire/ |
Yesterday, ASHARQ published “Syria Kurds Urge Moscow to Return Damascus to Constitutional Committee” (January 1, 2020) with naivete perhaps regarding Russia’s own deeply paternal authoritarian political habits and long-term rejection, so far, of constitutional power. In the days of the Tsar, the peasants found suggested arrangements for “constitutional monarchy” suspect 🙂 , never mind the monarch; the Bolsheviks appear to have produced power for the leadership (incidentally, Stalin himself had a turn in the Tsar’s secret political police, the Okhrana) and death and imprisonment for Russians, among others, by the millions; and, finally, KGB Colonel Putin has come to rule Russia with again despotic controls and with “liberalism” virtually removed from the discourse of the powerful who appear to prefer plunder (ask Khodorkovsky) to responsible political stewardship.
Suggestion for those now arguing about the character of a Syrian Constitution for which the troika of Assad, Putin, and Khamenei have no need as well as the character of a proposed Kurdish agreement between communities: err toward the compassion, complexity, and integrating liberal humanism owned by the rapidly evolving and modernizing west — take cues from the west’s most advanced (and happiest) states, not the ones sinking backward into feudal and nationalist fascism.
Start, perhaps, with Finland, so that what is to end does so where it began.
Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015. Stated on the Amazon page:
The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia.
Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime.
Kurdish leaders should take note of Russia’s early and Imperial history and the character of the state under Putin’s sway, and they should ask whether the same is today authentically interested in their health and well being.
BackChannels knows the historic response: “No friends but the mountains.”
This blog’s editor hopes that the time-honored expression of abandonment and isolation is either no longer true today or that it becomes untrue as EU/NATO and perhaps others take interest themselves in Kurdish aspirations, bravery, hopes, and ideals for a greater and more just and more autonomous state.
Mohamad, Sinam. “Once We Beat ISIS, Don’t Abandon Us.” The New York Times, May 11, 2017.
Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Polymeropoulos, Marc. “The Inevitable Day of Reckoning in Syria.” Just Security, December 23, 2019.
Wikipedia. “Russian Constitution of 1906”.
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BackChannels 