15 Friday Jun 2018
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Donald J. Trump, Kim Jong Un, medieval v modern, North Korea, political screenshot, Russia, United States
Is perception reality?
Should The People leave Big Business to Big Daddies?
Should we all just adore our Great Leaders?
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04 Wednesday Apr 2018
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Modern, broad political population psychology, Left Extremism - Right Reaction, Medieval Political Absolutism, medieval time bubble, medieval vs modern, medieval worldview, red-green alliance, Reflexive Control
Old “Red-Green” — old comrades, neo-Islamists — has been a real force in foreign affairs. Consider the response to it a modern update on political manipulation: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/
While most of the western public has been focused heavily on violence associated with Islamic extremists and the sense of related threat coming off the brutal depopulating of Syria (in no small part, that’s what the stupid piece of bloody theater has been about), it may have overlooked its own predictable reaction. Where we have been stung by an attack, we naturally respond with cultural pride and state patriotism leaning into nationalism. The result of the dictatorships of the world (different talks — same walk) is the modern renewal of feudalism and related conflict.
The manipulation has been paying off for the world’s political criminals.
In the post-Cold War framework, the “West” has been duped and played into perhaps assisting the enterprises of former and current communist elites in sustaining the feudal worldview needed to maintain for themselves medieval political absolute power.
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12 Thursday Oct 2017
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Gaza, middle east conflict, Palestinian Autonomy, Palestinian Home Rule, Palestinian KGB, Palestinian Separation, West Bank
The illegitimacy of two deeply authoritarian, corrupt, and kleptocratic governments may need acknowledgment along with the continued meddling if not discernible presence of two “greater” others as well. Distill down so many issues, all that would seem wanted is integrity — honest, responsible, reliable, responsive governance — in Palestinian territorial-to-state rule. What makes that autonomy and self-respect so difficult to attain? After 70 years of Arab Apartheid and related political abuse, one might think a People might wish to be truly their own People.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/
JCPA. “Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Authority.” November 5, 2015.
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11 Monday Sep 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Modern, 9/11, 9/11 anniversary
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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09 Saturday Sep 2017
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, feudal anachronism, medieval absolutism v modern distribution of power, modern political temperament
Paraphrasing the famous lecture from “Behind Enemy Lines” — “Every day we wake up, we’re at war!”
With the Russo-Sino axis engaged in sub-nuclear military activity and provocation with intent to produce imperial gains in business or area of influence, I think we’re indeed being played.
Moscow has a long acknowledged history as a polity endorsing or exploiting terrorism and practicing totalitarian theater.
Regarding al-Qaeda, any may look up “Zawahiri, Russia, 9/11” and “Afghanistan, Russia, Taliban”.
What do today’s most feudal societies defend?
Answer for yourself.
If you have been leveraged and enriched without soul or, alternatively, dispossessed by political anachronism and barbarism, consider what has been stolen by the latest editions in dictatorship.
Check pulse for signs of conscience and integrity.
For western military and politicians and assorted analysts and planners, the “war by other means” would seem now to include the spreading of intellectual confusion (“Active Measures!” “Disinformation!” “Fake News!”); intellectual infiltration (big on campus and off, Farthest Left, Farthest Right); frozen and low-intensity conflicts (like the middle east one, which has proven great for criminal businesses, corrupt politicians, and entrenched families — and not too great for the Palestinian People enthralled by power while being themselves kept from it); provocations eliding engagements (stimulates worry in the targets and thereby promotes greater allocations in broad and continuous defensive spending); “Little Green Men” charades and possible manipulation of noncombatant elements, like commercial or private boats, to produce situations that produce damage to western military assets.
Beijing, Damascus, Moscow, Pyonyang, Tehran.
Nice people up top.
The best.
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04 Monday Sep 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, absolute power, anti-Semitism, Christianity, Islam, medieval worldview, medievalism, political absolutism, political power, Quranic anti-Semitism, religion
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.”
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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12 Saturday Aug 2017
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Active Measures, agitation, American domestic conflict, black segregationists, extremism, foreign influence, Moscow / Moscow-Tehran, white supremacism
Now who would seek to divide the American political campus against its own best interests?
The above played live on YouTube earlier today. It’s now appears or sounds like a recording. (Post-Publication Note: the YouTube poster revoked third-party replay (perhaps) because it knows its feed was designed to present Charlottesville and the United States of America as a House Mightily Divided, and while it has seemed that through the election season and this most turbulent of Administrations, we may not be so divided as confused by so much media devoted to the dramatizing of extremes. “Active Measures”? Could be. The poster, “CCW News”, boasts (boasted) some arrangement with PressTV — and, reliably (if you click over to YouTube), listen to who is talking, masking away history, and framing the present.
Here, I will leave the copy as initially published.
*
We are told that we are divided.
Are we?
We’re “reminded” in the Jahi Issa interview that southern slavery was a colonial enterprise apparently absent of African and Arab practices in conquest and trade.
Here’s a block of URL’s on the history of the world’s most spiritually dismal industry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Muslim_world http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Sudan https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/history/slave-trade.php
Contemporary (and a sad thing to note):
http://www.africanholocaust.net/articles/21stcentury%20slaves.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa http://www.dw.com/en/as-slave-trade-abolition-is-celebrated-millions-of-africans-continue-to-live-as-slaves/a-18337189 |
Portal Page: http://www.stoppingslavery.org/slavery-in-mauritania.html
Regarding the “southern” contribution, which seems archaic in this day and age: “blood and soil” and “the Jews will not replace us . . . .” — even absent of close-up evidence, the process has Moscow’s political “fingerprints” all over it.
Color codes previously noted and applied on Backchannels:
Red = Old Comrades (Soviet Era communists)
Green = Islamists (strident of Islam)
Black = Black Segregationists
“Red-Green Alliance” serves to represent the effort in the 20th Century to combine political forces to unseat the political intentions of the liberal democratic west. The “Black” component flows down, imho, from older radical politics.
“ANTIFA” is a mystery organization with a global footprint, BackChannels wonders who is behind its development, recruitments, and evidently (and ironically) uniform counter-demonstration programming.
Regarding the New Nationalism (and resurgent feudalism and embrace of the medieval mode) in Europe and North America, BackChannels has suggested that Islamic Terrorism (“Allahu Akbar Terrorism”) has been channeled to goad Americans and Europeans toward the defense of their respective homelands.
Related Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
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24 Monday Jul 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, anti-Semitism, MEC, Russian contribution to the middle east conflict, Soviet Era
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.”
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.
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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