Tag Archives: 21st Century Feudalism

Nigeria: Ethnic Cleansing of Christians: “Bribed? Scared? Sabotaged?” — “Order From Above”

17 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Nigeria, Regions

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For the Christian communities of Nigeria’s semi-arid northern margins: death by a thousand cuts, but just a few at a time.

And what in Nigerian conflicts constitutes “a cut”?

There are over 5,000 persons who have been displaced and these people are being camped at Numan. So far, we have buried 27 persons; these are corpses of men, women and children recovered from Gon, Nzumosu, Bolki and Nyanga.

Above: Adamawa Assembly Representative Sodom Tayedi as quoted yesterday by Hindi Livinus in Punch “ICYMI: 27 buried after Adamawa herdsmen attacks”.

The “cuts” — the atrocities — have been taking place across Nigeria’s portion of the “middle belt” of Africa for years without resistance and without end.

Apparently in store for the Christian population in general: rape and rapine designed to break hearts and spirits and move the feet toward the unknown sea of humanity abused, driven off, ignored, loathed, perhaps, as the expensive and unwanted detritus of chaos and conflict.

Nigeria’s military and police services appear to avoid or deny responsibility in relation to the repeated success of the employment of Kalashnikov and burning petrol in making the land fit for cattle and the Fulani herdsman who own them.

Bold italics added by BackChannels:

The lawmaker, however, accused security agencies of stationing in Abbare of negligence noting that she wonders why they could not prevent the attack which has been consistent from that axis.

Police authorities could not confirm the attack as calls put through to the police spokesman, Habibu Musa, were not answered.

Oladele, David. “Suspected hersdsmen reportedly invade 3 communities in Adamawa.” Naij.com, September 14, 2018.

Dozens of women are reportedly being held by suspected Fulani herdsmen after a raid on Gwon, Bolki and Nzumosu communities in Numan local government area of Adamawa State.

The member representing Numan constituency at the state House of Assembly, Mrs. Sodom Tayedi confirmed the incident.

She explained that the villages were attacked during the week and that the exact casualties’ figure was yet to be ascertained as locals scampered to safety in the bush.

Odunsi, Wale. “Herdsmen reportedly hold dozens of women captive in Adamawa.” Daily Post, September 14, 2018.

Adamawa State (Wikipedia link).

Earlier this year (bold added) —

YOLA- Four communities in Numan local government area of Adamawa state, have been completely razed by suspected herdsmen, killing no fewer than 15 persons.

…

Fleeing residents disclosed that the attackers numbering over 50 came in hilux vans to commit the heinuos acts and razed down many buildings in the affected villages. They alleged that the attackers stormed the area shortly after troops of the Nigerian Army ransacked the villages to enforce the disarmament of citizens in line with a presidential directive.

Yusuf, Umar. “15 feared dead, 4 communities razed as suspected herdsmen overrun Adamawa villages.” Vanguard, May 2, 2018.

Buhari-Nepotism-180917-0806-316x.jpgI asked a source about police not answering what must have been a distress or emergency call:  “Bribed?  Scared?  Sabotaged?” — “Order from above,” he said.

Today, opinions about President Buhari’s nepotism in related hiring appear abundant in the Nigerian press.  Critics feel the president has been slowly feeding Christian communities in the north to equipped, experienced, and deeply sadistic  Muslim raiders representing the interests of Fulani herdsman.

The records of top executives in state security, military, and police roles may add credence to the complaint.  Here is a remark published in relation to Ibrahim Kpotun Idris, Nigeria’s Inspector-General of Police:

With Idris at the helm, there has also been a disturbing increase in the arrest of journalists and bloggers in Nigeria. His reign has been a threat to free speech for journalists. This Idris is committing so many atrocities in the name of maintaining law and order, while the places in need of law and order are becoming national atrocities.

Global rankings for press freedom has gotten worse under Buhari and this IGP. Nigeria now sits at 122 of 180 countries surveyed, falling from 111 under former president Goodluck Jonathan and ex-IGP, Solomon Arase.

“Are these the real reasons Buhari won’t let go of IGP Ibrahim Idris?” The Cable, March 14, 2018.

An op-ed concerning Nigeria’s Minister of Defense Alhaji Mansur Dan Ali leads this way:

ONCE again, Alhaji Mansur Dan Ali, Minister of Defence, has demonstrated his characteristic insensitivity to the feelings of thousands of people who lost relations, homes and other material belongings to the murderous adventures of the herdsmen militia groups in some states in the North.

On Tuesday, June 5, 2018, Dan Ali shocked Nigerians, particularly, the traumatised survivors of the mass attacks and killings by herdsmen with the suggestion that the law prohibiting open grazing passed by Taraba, Benue and Ekiti states governments be suspended as precondition for the killings to stop. He offered the suggestion on his way out of a security meeting held at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, suggesting, perhaps, that this may have been the decision taken at the meeting.

Michael, Danasabe. “A minister in the eye of the storm.” Vanguard, June 27, 2018.

A kind boilerplate appears in the press for the newly appointed Director-General of Nigeria’s Department of State Services (DSS), Yosuf Magaji Bichi.  The DSS serves as the the seat of intelligence and secret police operations for the state.  So far, it would seem it too has failed to provide security to Nigeria’s now battered and embattled Christian communities of interest to “herdsmen”.  Whether or not DG Bichi will turn that tide toward civility and modern economic and political possibility, BackChannels does not know but may suggest that expectations for improved law enforcement are not high as regards what BackChannels has referred to as the “Fulani Land Pirates” and their lengthening record of atrocities.

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Kurdish Struggle – Kurdistan v Iran-Aligned Shiite Militia

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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

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The Kurdistan region enjoys autonomy in Iraq, and that has meant running its own airports; borders; maintaining its own Peshmerga security forces; and exporting oil through its own economic management.

Baghdad now wants to use the referendum as an excuse to roll that back.

With the war on the Islamic State seemingly close to an end, Baghdad wants to punish the Kurdish region for seeking independence.

Frantzman, Seth J.  “How Baghdad is Punishing the Kurds Post-Referendum.”  Jerusalem Post, October 4, 2017.

BackChannels has turned up the following themes related to the Kurdish struggle for independence:

  1. Iranian resistance expressed in Iraq via Iran aligned and backed Shiite militia.
  2. Persistence of the Kurdish PKK and a perhaps too robust relationship with a persistently feudal and political absolute, criminal, and totalitarian Russia.
  3. Inability, so far, to attenuate the power of chiefs and produce a disciplined and power balancing democracy.

Reference – Iraq: Iran Aligned Shiite Militia

Note, please, the date year associated with reference.  Whether 2015, earlier, or later, BackChannels’ Kurdish source has cited Iraq’s Iranian-aligned Shiite militia as posting a persistent challenge to the defense of the Kurd’s ancestral land.

Khedery, Ali.  Iran’s Shiite Militias Are Running Amok in Iraq.  Foreign Policy, February 19, 2015.

Washington’s response to the Islamic State’s (IS) advance, however, has been disgraceful: The United States is now acting as the air force, the armory, and the diplomatic cover for Iraqi militias that are committing some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet. These are “allies” that are actually beholden to our strategic foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and which often resort to the same vile tactics as the Islamic State itself.

Vatanka, Alex and Sarkawt Shamsulddin. “Forget ISIS: Shia Militias Are the Real Threat to Kurdistan.” The National Interest, January 7, 2015:

 . . . from the KRG perspective, two Shia militia forces—Asaib Ahl Haq and the Badr militias—are uncontrollable.

Both these militias are backed by Iran, and the their military operations are effectively overseen by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Qods Force, which serves as the external arm of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Rudaw.  “Peshmerga commander warns Shiite militias a threat to Kurds.”  September 8, 2016.  The piece winds around but ends this way:

Hashd al-Shaabi is the defender of “Iraqi sovereignty and its unity,” he declared, and it will not fight any other group except ISIS.

Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite militia forces have clashed several times in Kirkuk’s southern ethnically-mixed city of Khurmatu in recent months. Several people from both sides were killed in the confrontations.

 

Ahmad, Aziz.  “The Defeat of ISIS Must Mean an Independent Kurdistan.”  The New York Times, July 13, 2017.

A century after the breakdown of the Ottoman boundaries, Iraq remains a forced union of peoples whose national aspirations and sense of identity have been suppressed. Members of my family spent decades in exile from successive Iraqi governments that, since the turn of the 20th century, butchered generations of Kurdish men, women and children who struggled to find their place in this artificial state.

Thus there has always been a lingering, unresolved question of identity for the Kurds of Iraq. That identity will finally achieve resolution when the people of Iraqi Kurdistan vote in the referendum. This expression of popular will should not only close a long chapter of grief but also bring new certainty and stability to an increasingly volatile region plagued by sectarian conflict and bloodshed.

Hannah, John.  “The United States Must Prevent Disaster in Kurdistan.”  Foreign Policy, October 2, 2017:

Of special concern was the possibility that Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq could seek to gain political advantage by challenging Kurdish control in the oil-rich, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories also claimed by the central government in Baghdad.

John Hannah relays a chilling list of actions taken or threatened by Iraq and Turkey in their pique with the Kurdish referendum. He goes on to note the following and then pleads for Washington’s regaining its own initiative in moral courage in partnering with the Kurds and forestalling the escalation of force applied in keeping them captive to forces clearly out of step with Washington’s moral and political missions:

I was taken aback by the intense frustration and anger directed at a critical wartime ally and longtime, loyal U.S. partner whose history of oppression and even genocide at the hands of other nations leaves it with — if nothing else — an almost unimpeachable moral case for self-determination.

Reference – Kurdish PKK

Posted to YouTube August 21, 2017.

Posted to YouTube June 29, 2017.

Backgrounder (January 2, 2014)

(More is in the works).

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Also in Media: Mark Galeotti on “How Russia Manages Its Political War in Europe”

02 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Notes On Reading BackChannels, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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ECFR218-Graphic-PSA

Source and Recommended Reading

http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR228_-_CONTROLLING_CHAOS1.pdf

“Listen: we engage in foreign policy the way we engage in war, with every means, every weapon, every drop of blood. But like in war, we depend on both the strategy of the general in the High Command, and the bravery and initiative of the soldier in the trench.”

Russian former diplomat, 2017

Russia sees ‘active measures’ (aktivnye meropriyatiya) – from supporting populist parties through disinformation and espionage campaigns, all the way to incidents such as the attempted coup in Montenegro – as an essential part of its efforts to influence Europe.  Along with the usual instruments of foreign influence, such as diplomacy and economic levers, Russia is especially active in using covert and non-traditional means, from intelligence operations to military pressure and even organised crime, all of which have been the foci of recent policy briefs for ECFR.3 This final publication in an informal series seeks instead to consider the extent to which these campaigns are carefully planned and coordinated – and, if so, by whom.

Approximate date of publication: September 2017.

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Also in Media: From Chechnya to Myanmar — Military Brutality and Political Control: The Creation of War

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Asia, Burma, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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False-Flag Fire Starter:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible

Brutalizing of Chechnyan noncombatant villagers:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3617244.html

Backgrounder, published yesterday, on the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/what-the-hell-is-happening-in-myanmar.html :

The monks, too?

There’s one famous Buddhist monk who was on the cover of Time magazine a couple of years ago, and he’s described as a “Buddhist Bin Laden.” His name is Ashin Wirathu. He’s a very strange character because he wears the Buddhist garb, which is worn to demonstrate your withdrawal from the world. At the same time, he has diamond-studded watches; he flies on a private jet. It’s completely contradictory. He’s one of the main instigators of the violence. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and Wirathu and followers of his Buddhist nationalist 969 movement believe that the Rohingya minority have all reincarnated from snakes and insects. So when you actually kill them, you’re not actually killing people, you’re actually just killing snakes and insects. That laid the foundation for the current situation that we’re in.

Who would know the beauty of a malignantly narcissistic kleptocracy better than Moscow?

And I will add, though it may be irrelevant, what hypocritical kleptocratic and medieval entity would know how to infiltrate and support terrorists worldwide better than Tehran?

Give the transitive formula a moment to sink in:

Chechnya : Myanmar

Ingush : Rohingya

The world has been once again drawn into global warfare, Moscow’s way.

By way of wholesale abuse and slaughter, the innocent of war have been pushed in both regions into flight and defensive conflict while being branded as “The Terrorists” — perhaps not unrelated to the process that has burned through Syria but the very facsimile of it.

Given how Moscow / Moscow-Tehran work, the world gets “The Terrorists” — and, oh, they’re real in an of themselves, they’re channeled with their ranks filled out by the efforts of manipulating “leaders” greater than themselves.

Related in the News

There is an urgent need for de-escalation in levels of violence in Rakhine State as there is a strong possibility of other displaced Rohingyas being radicalised by Sunni fundamentalist groups including the Bangladesh chapter of the Islamic State to take to arms. The Rohingya displacement is a matter of serious concern but the root cause of increased animosity among the Burmans and other ethnic groups against the minority community should also not be glossed over. The international community has questioned Myanmar for the crisis but has forgotten the bloody contribution of Pakistan-based jihadist groups to this catastrophe.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/pakistan-is-fuelling-unrest-in-myanmar-s-backyard/story-LXHqEMzdW5mE4Ut1EwtefO.html – 9/15/2017.

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FTAC: 9/11 – Sixteen Years of Accelerating, Expanding Conflict Between Archaic Worlds and the Modern One

11 Monday Sep 2017

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

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The medieval worldview and its marriage to financial and political power may be archaic in the modern world.  Faith in God and religion may be good things, but as demonstrated by the Islamists, by the Saudi Royals and their spreading of Wahhabi madrasas, and by related clerical wealth dependent on subscription plus political repression, too much of that kind of “religion” suffocates creativity, freedom, and economic exchange.

I believe the modern world wishes not to be dragged back into the “medieval mode” — or your nation should have a new King with his legitimacy validated by Bishops and the Pope.

Yours has also a different kind of contest going with archaic systems: the tribal systems (with chiefs) are absolute and often worlds unto themselves, and they may well be discomfited by seeing their children yanked into mines and (perhaps) abused.

The Third World War seems to me quite healthy and under way as regards barbarism and the most cynical and evil worship of money by those encouraging horrific acts worldwide.  

Thank Putin who has been most visible in relation to the barbaric horrors of Syria, the creeping warfare ongoing in Ukraine, numerous “frozen conflicts”, which become transfer points for smuggling, potentially on a nearly unimaginable scale, and today the support of al-Qaeda-like Taliban in Afghanistan.

When, and since we woke up sixteen years ago this day, has the modern world — the civilization of open democracies — not been at war with barbarism?

My South American correspondent counseled the various forms of “sword” against the evils wrought by bankers who sought deregulation that invited the 2007/8 financial meltdown, by the godless forces of still nominal and virulent communist and socialist politics, and by indigenous either living in older worlds or lost in this one.

Since 9/11, a curtain in time has come up on the world that surrounds all of us as we have come to casually and commonly access cultural activities and political news around the world via Internet.  Perhaps the community of foreign affairs and international relations enthusiasts as well as professionals has been grown as a consequence of access to . . . the online universe of media, political institutions, and, of course, fellow travelers — and, perhaps, we have become or started on the path toward greater cognizance and sophistication about the world’s myriad conflicts and their true underlying drivers.

For brevity, BackChannels will leave this post “airy” — short on specifics — but note that we — “the west”, “EU / NATO”, “the open democracies of the world” — may be more at war today with feudal despots and medieval illusion and “The Terrorists” — the global network of clerical power bound to media production and incitement and transnational crime (arms, diamonds, drugs, for a start) and related and active cells than was the case before this day sixteen years ago.

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FTAC: On Arrogance, Religion, and Related Political Rhetoric

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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The prompt came also from the Qur’an (“5:82-83”) as presented this way: “You will surely find those closest in friendship to the believers to be those who say, “We are Christians.”  That is because among them are priests and monks who are not arrogant.”

Response —

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people”. – https://quran.com/5/51-61

Apparently, if one is not close to a monk or priest (or perhaps a recluse with a library), one may be in danger of trusting an untrustworthy friend.

Note: one might ask whether caliphs, kings, and emperors are not inherently arrogant in their assumptions of power over all others, and therefore particularly sensitive to arrogance in those whom they would subjugate.

Compact between shaman and chief and cleric and king spans the ages but may not be a permanent feature in humanity’s intellectual and political evolution. That may be something to think about in the experience of language, both in political rhetoric and in scripture (no matter to whom the words belong), and that of power as dominion over others.

The region of the Qur’an cited, 5:82 and 5:83 presents in English through several well-remarked translations — and of a standard four — Asad, Malik, Pickthall, and Yusuf Ali — the conveyances of none would seem as sweet as the statement quoted as the prompt.

Here is the presentation of the verse as translated by Yusuf Ali:

“Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans; and nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say: “We are Christians:” because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world and they are not arrogant.”

Source: http://www.alim.org/library/quran/ayah/compare/5/82/disbelievers-among-the-children-of-israel-were-cursed-by-the-tongues-of-david-and-jesus-and-christians-are-closer-to-muslims-than-the-jews-and-pagans

One thought attending the description of “men devoted to learning” and “who have renounced the world and are not arrogant” is that such men would seem less than challenging to martial or political power and therefore dismissible by any speaker intent on monopolizing and wielding such power.

Qur’an 5:83 although cited in the prompt appears not present in the statement at the top of this post.  Here is that verse in the Yusuf Ali translation from the Alim library URL noted:

“And when they listen to the revelation received by the Apostle thou wilt see their eyes overflowing with tears for they recognize the truth: they pray: “Our Lord! we believe; write us down among the witnesses.”

If thou woulds’t be apostle, caliph, king, or emperor would though not note the sweetness of the complete and grateful surrender of thine greatest potential resistance?

Given that question and thought, one might appreciate attempts at transitional revisionism.

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FTAC – Middle East Conflict (MEC) – The Big Wrap

24 Monday Jul 2017

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

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

In the bridge between the medieval and modern eras, Germany’s Luther had at least opened the coffin’s lid:

“Luther’s influence was not decisive, and certainly not neutral, but ambivalent. So, for example, his writings communicated a generalized distrust, describing Jews as thieves in his preface to the 1528 edition of the influential 15th-century handbook for policing vagrants, the Liber vagatorum. This “evolved into a powerful and all-embracing stereotype—‘that of the Jews as a people of thieves and robbers extraordinaire,’” except that Luther by no means propagated this message alone.”

http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-312

We shouldn’t be writing with crayons, but on the web where ideas move quickly in these small tiles, broad statements and telegraphing are what we do.

The intellectual history of modern “Jew hate” appears to move from Russia (with the “Protocols”) via White Russian emigre fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution; at the end of WWII, the Soviet Union was in position to amplify and leverage anti-Semitic sentiment in the middle east into political influence and power.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

The Arab World could not have hated the Jews quite so much prior to WWII and Nazi and later Soviet influence for it’s states sustained a population of (that well-known figure) 800,000 Jews and their businesses and synagogues. There’s certainly a minority experience contained in the memory of that population, but that it was there and working tells us that the politics of the World War and its immediate aftermath set the stage both for the birth of Israel and the Arab expulsion of the Jews.

IF the Kingdom represents today’s Arab world, it is heavily invested in western success through Kingdom Holdings. It has taken small steps toward updating its culture (I have yet another blog piece standing signal to that), and it has taken interest in developing technology requiring the western interface. Nonetheless, the narcissistic medieval worldview needs must prevail for the time being, and cultural inertia continues to leverage anti-Semitism. (just a little more).

Rival Iran — Moscow / Moscow-Tehran — challenges the liberalism of the west with “absolute power” — the rule of the emperor or king for his own desired ends and with sufficient contempt and cruelty to enforce a malign will. One may consider the destruction of Syria by a tyrannical Assad as flanked by Putin and Khamenei merely a demonstration of the “principle” of absolute ownership of an entire people.

In 2011, Barack Obama offered President Putin a gambit: lean west — and Putin rejected the role of tempering Assad and instead embraced the KGB past — that which groomed Arafat and approved Abbas — and here we are. By focusing on ISIS and some on Tehran while “working with Russia”, we avoid a fast disaster.

For the Palestinians, all of the above involving Russia’s historic influence, has been a disaster, and this view — I don’t think I’m the only one propagating it — may be reaching the Arab World on the “Anglo and western axis”. The other channels and manipulates and incites along medieval lines that it means to sustain, and it wants the wars of all against all that lend it glory.

An earlier post noted social media’s unsuitability for “long copy”.

In “Life Online”, readers much prefer epigrammatic statements and slogans to digested narratives or overviews — we want to get the message quickly and then get back to the next social moment or breaking news.

I’ve tried with BackChannels to find a place between the scholarly tract and the lay observation with hope that other journalists — more powerful — and some in the generally interested public would pick up on the blog’s themes.

Of course, I place some faith and hope in each post at the moment it’s published, and often that is all a writer may do.

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FTAC: On Governance and Realpolitik

21 Friday Jul 2017

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

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Okay — we know how smooth politics are with 300 million Americans — you design the system for 1.4 billion Chinese. 🙂

Possibly, Russia’s answer and part of the seduction of the EU / NATO states may be to protect the power of financial and political elites against the demands of great populations with needs to match.  Why not sew it all up with friends in the nomenklatura?

When the west demurred from engagement in Iran’s 2009 attempted revolution, I don’t know whether the decision was to buy time for Russia to run itself down or to capitulate to governments representing kleptocratic dictatorships. Instead of making the world safe for democracy (these days), we may be preparing it for governance by powerful and wealthy elites who think little of the liberties, lives, and happiness of others (who exist to serve them).

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