Tag Archives: 21st Century Neo-Feudalism

Also in Media: “The Kremlin’s Newest Hybrid Warfare Asset: Gangsters” | Foreign Policy | June 12, 2017

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

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. . . as they look to prosecute their “political war” against the West, the Russians are emerging as the most enthusiastic users of gangsters’ services. Given that their intelligence services are now up to Cold War levels, it seems ironic that they would even need such amateur auxiliaries. However, so ambitious and numerous are their operations that even they sometimes need some extra capacity or deniability.

Mobilizing Moscow’s Mob

Some of the instances when Russia has used criminals as proxies are well known. Russia’s seizure of Crimea, for example, and the subsequent undeclared war in Ukraine’s Donbass region were carried out not just by Russian special forces, but by local gangsters serving as so-called self-defense volunteers. Similarly, many Russian cyberattacks, especially large-scale ones, involve mobilizing criminal hackers. (Indeed, the cyberespionage division of the Federal Security Service has actually recruited hackers by giving them the choice of prison or service.)

Read the whole enchilada: The Kremlin’s Newest Hybrid Warfare Asset: Gangsters | Foreign Policy

FTAC – A Note on Clinton’s Post-Cold War Knowledge

13 Tuesday Jun 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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The Soviet Union officially dissolved itself in bankruptcy on December 25, 1991. It did so with plans for the survival of the privileged of the Party — reference: Karen Dawisha’s groundbreaking book _Putin’s Kleptocracy_.

KGB Colonel and today President Putin has ditched the old banner, Communism, for “State Capitalism” and rebuilt essential elements of the Russian cultural-political experience: KGB/FSB, Centralized Power (that would be himself), and Aristocracy (“the oligarchs”).

The general public’s knowledge of the Cold War has been dimmed by time and the passing of a generation that needed to impart a base of knowledge in foreign affairs to the general public and failed to do that.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

Putin has displayed preference for other autocrats — Erdogan, Orban, Le Pen, Trump — and the cause for that has been the reinstalling of the feudalism and the medieval worldview in the states of the European Union and NATO, and he gotten far with that project using Islamic Terrorism as a goad to getting there.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

Read a little bit considerately, independently (no spin — your thoughts only), and quietly.

And look up “Zawahiri, Russia”.

Clinton, for all the many faults of the family and its character, knew the post-Cold War history and what it meant for the United States of America and the open democracies of the west. I don’t defend her; I didn’t vote for her. What I’ve come to observe — and I edit Back-Channels — are the processes by which my fellow Americans have been driven toward polarized extremes.

If BackChannels didn’t post it here, it would be lost somewhere beneath Sean Hannity’s latest Facebook comment about Susan Rice, a thoroughly partisan info-morsel for his hungry crowd — better to preserve it in an obscure blog that matters — or should matter — more and more as the free world, the European Union, and NATO approach Putin’s politically absolute and frequently criminal Moscow.

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FTAC: Kurds, Trump, Democracy

10 Saturday Jun 2017

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

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The gang was indulging in Trump bashing and only loosely discussing the surfacing of the “Kurdish Question” — should Kurdistan become a state representing the autonomous self-determination of 35 million souls now subjugated in suzerainty across five states: Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey?

Not to poop on the party, but you know that’s what I’m going to do. 😦

Prepare.

🙂

On the surface and pro-Kurdistan:

–The Kurds have been producing a rapidly developing and modernizing society;

–The Kurds appear inherently communal and tolerant in their views of themselves and others;

–Of course, the Kurdish Peshmerga and separate men’s and women’s defense units form the advanced line against ISIS in Iraq and Syria;

–For a glimpse of Utopian values in place, it would be hard to beat the experience of Rojava (enjoy the look-up).

On the surface and negative:

–Since we’re all just one big family, what’s your may be theirs, at least in the minds of remote brigands;

–The suzerainties (Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey) support about 35 million people governed by many chiefs. Having been defeated by the arms of militarized states, they’re seeking a sub-state state of confederation, which may work for peace and prosperity but remain far from the American and other western experiences;

–Finally, the push-back against stronger states involved a guerrilla movement / terrorist organization aligned with the Soviet Union (1978) known as the PKK, and although the organization has been displaced by updated banners, it may be that the same personalities continue the good fight for autonomy and statehood. (Look-up Kyle Orton’s piece in The New York Times).

I explore a little bit at a time from the desktop; try to get in some background reading; and certainly try to “meet” (virtually) personalities much closer to the politics at hand.

The United States has betrayed the Kurdish desire for independence numerous times; however, noting that, the Kurdish leadership has also leaned back toward Moscow — effectively a dictatorship today — in its development politics, rather like India and Pakistan in earlier days playing east against west and back and forth, the ambivalence of the west would seem understandable.

http://www.nrttv.com/EN/birura-details.aspx?Jimare=6333 – “A Russian Revolution: Can the Rosneft Deal Reverse Kurdistan’s Fortunes?” by Megan Connelli. 

Between the Feudal and Modern Worlds

I’ve gotten the impression that the Kurds in earlier days had used the mountains as their defensive barrier against the barbarism of others, but the greater world and changes in the technology of martial force have put them in the position of leveraging decent ideals and values, would that they would keep to them.

Those who patiently make their way through my words (more than once) know that I regard Putin’s Russia as representing feudal absolute power bent on compromising the economies, ideals, and values of the EU and NATO states, and toward that end, Russia has gotten its way with Erdogan in Turkey, a NATO signatory but no longer NATO in at least official spirit. Putin’s preference in leadership has involved other autocrats, and not so much for exacting cooperation, which he gets, but most for reinstalling the feudal and medieval worldviews in the modern democracies.

Now: tell me how Putin has done so far and where Donald J. Trump fits in that scheme.

That, I believe, is what the fussing is all about in Washington.

Do Americans want a real democracy and greater cohesion around it or rather another of the world’s sham democracies masking elite governance and kleptocracy (that’s how things usually work out with autocrats)?

You decide.

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FTAC: Comey, Lynch – Authority

09 Friday Jun 2017

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Are all conversations between American presidents and government employees classified?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-other-administration/336985-trump-lawyer-attacks-comey-over-leaks

It appears that the President attempted to leverage Comey’s personal loyalty to take care of an uncomfortable “matter” being investigated by the FBI. Comey then shared the experience with a friend who forwarded the same to the press, and so Comey lost the executive’s confidence. Where was the classification for the memos; where is the nondisclosure covering the conversation?

As AG Loretta Lynch has been relieved of her position, her blocking actions regarding Clinton will probably be ignored, imho. The elections over; she’s over: attention has shifted to where public attention is most needed: America’s political character, Russia’s political character, and the relationship between the two at the highest levels of governance.

The note on Comey’s so-called “leak” may reflect the fact that classification and discretion were within Comey’s authority to call, and given the President’s behavior and the FBI’s mission to defend the Constitution, the antagonism developed between the two would seem to have developed naturally in the defense of the democracy.

Lynch: old news.

Related on BackChannels for any newly arriving from Mars: Moscow’s Rules.

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FTAC: MEC – Passing Into History (One Hopes One Day Soon)

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Psychology, Politics

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Q: “Is it our psychology or our nature that prevents us from being peace loving people?”

A: As regards the “middle east conflict”: _malign and manipulated_ psychology.

Post-WWII, post-Nazi Germany, Soviet Era agitation-propaganda leveraging anti-Semitic sentiment –> “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“, i.e., the myth that the Jews were out to take over the middle east —

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

_Reflexive Control and the Encouragement of Absolute Nationalism_

Terrorism promotes intense concern with basic security wherever, however, and for whatever reason politically-focused violence takes place. In crayon fashion here (I’m pressed for time this morning), political violence associated with the Palestinian cause, from the air hijackings of the 1970s to the latest murder by car, essentially promotes Israeli nationalist fervor and the western program. The deeper problem: it never helped the Palestinians but rather the piratical leaderships drawing income from the sustaining of the conflict. Arafat passed away a multi-millionaire; Abbas has accumulated a similar share of wealth; Haniyeh and Mashaal have developed reputations as billionaires.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Israelis and Palestinians genuinely tired of near 70 years of artificially sustained conflict — and the “information / disinformation psychology” has been a part of keeping things just as they have been — may need to bring these questions up with “Moscow”.

Historically, Moscow has been intensely anti-Semitic — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/ — but under Putin’s guidance, somewhat opposite today. Things have changed even though Putin continues to foster or control or appreciate (choose any option) kleptocratic absolute power. This seems to me something Palestinian intelligentsia need to consider and research independently.

I often note that “the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews”, a trope that lends emphasis to authentic ethnolinguistic cultural affiliation with land. At the moment, there are fewer than 7,000 living language cultures on the planet, and each developed their language somewhere at some time. Baloch, Kurds, Hebrews, Pashtun have land claims as do others. I may grant that after 70 years of isolation and wicked disinformation, the Palestinians need not be the leading edge of “Arab pan-nationalism” which should have passed away with the Soviet Union (at the end of 1991). One may urge reconsideration for having become unique but perhaps misguided by the politics of a much earlier era and, all may hope, one passing finally into history.

 

End the Preoccupation With the Jews!

Easier said than done?

The world’s political science scholars may be unraveling the relationship between Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany in the first half of the 20th Century,  and today there’s plenty for reading as regards Moscow’s efforts to sustain a piratical feudalism even as it runs short on ready cash and the rest, less ready, appears sunk in western assets and banking institutions.

Change, so BackChannels may observe, must come slowly where it involves BIG Family, Military, and Religious Institutions.  In the feudal mode, money moves along more by way of relationships than by way of merit or virtue.  That’s life.  Such themes will never be black and white but they may be better balanced for ethical and moral merit — greater rule of law; greater real justice — in the long run.

Whether the latest assault on innocents will be quelled by security organizations or grown into an absurd set of what should be archaic struggles based in race and religion and any number of assorted lesser discriminators — black/white; Asian/European; gay/straight; single/married; poor/rich; etc. — we together shall see.

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FTAC: Dismissing the Mockery of the Mocking Bird

01 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Psychology

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The conversational partner wished to play Atticus on behalf of the Palestinians apparently beset by Israeli nationalist — “Zionazis” in the more fervent of anti-Semitic Lost Left circles.

The analogy fails, Mohammed, because the integrity in the American lawyer who would pursue justice — the truth — before an angered and bigoted mob would not find the interlocutors for the Palestinians, i.e., the clans, organizations, and leaders who have funneled so much money away from the Palestinians, particularly honest or sympathetic.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/05/29/norway-demands-palestinians-return-funding-for-youth-center-named-after-infamous-terrorist/

When the Soviet Union dissolved in bankruptcy, the nascent new Federation managed amid the ensuing non-state crime and chaos to sustain certain aspects of the old architecture and relationships, including those with extremists, but the SU really is gone, and practically every one of its former satellites prefers autonomy to renewed subjugation.

What choice — or choices — have the Palestinians today between Abbas and Haniyeh?

Everyone remembers the Palestinian children who died building tunnels into Israel to abet assault. http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels No modern and sane adult should wish to re-read the story and call it “resistance”.

Why placate or pander to such a mob?

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Orwell in America – President Trump’s Sudden Firing of FBI Director Comey

10 Wednesday May 2017

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“It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Mr. Trump wrote in a letter to Mr. Comey.

“The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them,” he wrote.  “Having refused to admit his errors, the director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.”

Ballhaus, Rebecca.  “Trump Fires FBI Director Comey.”  The Wall Street Journal, A1, A4, May 10, 2017.

Comey’s errors?

Publicly commenting after close of investigation on Clinton’s e-mails, an act with which then candidate Trump and later President Trump appeared to have had no issue.

That’s one error.

That’s it.

One possible other, not cited as an error, might be Comey’s heading up the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign effort and Moscow.

The format of Trump’s ire and its delivery appears to BackChannels that of j’accuse, the Jacobin’s pointing the finger at all suspected of political heresy.

Regarding the President’s claim of having had no business with Russia — it might be true; however, the query may be also complicated by Russia’s feudal gaming over time plus the business class in which he resides.

 

At this point, the reader may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s duplicitous and manipulative feudal character and its kleptocratic ends:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

Motivation?

Feudal wealth; feudal power; absolute and above and beyond questioning — if not rule by divine right, then by way of most worldly thuggery.

Reminder: Flynn

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-russia-today-rt-kremlin-media-vladimir-putin-213833 – 5-6/2016:

I saw the relation with Russia as necessary to the U.S., for the interests of the U.S. We worked very closely with them on the Sochi Olympics. We were working closely with them on the Iranian nuclear deal. We beat Hitler because of our relationship with the Russians, so anybody that looks on it as anything but a relationship that’s required for mutual supporting interests, including ISIS, … that’s really where I’m at with Russia. We have a problem with radical Islamism and I actually think that we could work together with them against this enemy. They have a worse problem than we do.

Flynn’s statement sounds true enough on the surface, but place it beside this analysis of ISIL and it’s role in the east v west, feudal v modern contest:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/04/09/ftac-reprise-how-isil-serves-moscow-damascus-and-tehran/

BackChannels thesis: Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran ditched a mild revolutionary opposition in favor of the al-Qaeda type organizations, so as to produce for themselves and the west a political spectacle, “Assad v The Terrorists”, certain to aggrandize themselves while blackmailing and goading the west in the direction of complicity with — or weakness in the face of — each their own totalitarian dictatorships and kleptocracies.

General Michael T. Flynn, proving less than one-hundred percent honest with Vice President Pence in relation to his Moscow-related experience got himself fired in much the same brusque manner as now former FBI Director Comey.

Here’s a smattering of related URLs, but the main thing here is to remind of Flynn’s connection to Trump’s denial of his initial team having had nothing to do with Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-michael-flynn-russia-money-20170316-story.html – 3/16/2017

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russians-paid-mike-flynn-45k-moscow-speech-documents-show-n734506 – 3/16/2017

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/31/michael-flynn-new-evidence-spy-chiefs-had-concerns-about-russian-ties – 3/31/2016

Reminder: Manafort

The header alone should operate like Proust’s fabled taste of Madeleine, for Manafort falls into place with Yanukovych, Putin’s puppet deposed by cause of his own corruption in Ukraine, and then Sergei Millian — http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-russia-sergei-millian (1/19/2017), Konstantin Kilimnik — http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-russia-manafort-235850 – 3/8/2017 – and on to the dreaded “Steele Dossier”, which has done Trump’s reputation some damage while being simultaneously dismissed for appearing itself beyond corroboration — http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/comey-intel-community-could-not-corroborate-trump-dossier/ – 5/8/2017.

Still, “kompromat” aside, there’s Manafort — and then question of how the leading consultant to the world’s bloodiest dictators got on to Trump’s campaign team in the first place.

One may leave that question in the shadows because that’s where it’s bound to live given the silence prized by political mafia and political consultants alike.  However, one may take note of this passage in the Politico article:

Manafort stressed that his work in Ukraine was intended to steer Yanukovych towards more pro-Western policies and more engagement with the European Union. And Kilimnik told POLITICO that “one thing that was grossly under-reported to date is the effort that Paul Manafort undertook to help Ukrainian leaders defend Ukraine’s interests and move the country towards [a European Union] Free Trade Agreement.”

Yet Yanukovych in 2013 backed away from a commitment to that agreement, and fled Ukraine for Russia under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid widespread protests over government corruption.

We’re a suspicious lot, we Americans, a condition amplified always by missing datum.

At the same time, we have been also subject to traditional KGB “Active Measures”, i.e., efforts to massively disinform and misguide EU / NATO constituencies, and it may take both an army of responsible editor-readers and plain curious and independent Americans to get a true measure on states of affairs.

Here’s the problem:

Manafort could be the “good guy”, a guy making great money transitioning the world’s worst leaders toward western and conscionable standards.  

How would BackChannels or the public know?

It seems in the President Trump “Trust Me” stories — on the economy, foreign affairs, immigration — that suspect alleys dead-end in political space.

It also seems to BackChannels that former FBI director Comey’s tenure has been particularly scrupulous as regards the investigator’s legal permit to share information with the public.  As much appeared in play before the public last month during the “House hearing on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.” The same may be shared in closed sessions with select elected public representatives: is the public to trust whom it has elected to oversight?

The public has no choice beyond what it has with its vote, and it either elects its officials for their integrity or it fails and suffers endless doubts.

The leftward Mother Jones has gone full tilt on news of Comey’s firing.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/donald-trump-james-comey-firing-watergate-russia-1 :

Not since Watergate.

How else can one start an article about President Donald Trump summarily firing FBI chief James Comey?

. . . This is reminiscent of when President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth. Nixon canned Cox rather than cooperating with his investigation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/donald-trump-firing-james-comey-investigation-fbi-russia (by David Corn, May 10, 2017):

Last month, Comey appeared before the House intelligence committee, and his testimony put Trump in a bad spot. Comey noted that the FBI had no information to support Trump’s baseless charge that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump before the election. He was practically calling Trump a nut or a liar. Then Comey, in an unprecedented move, revealed that the FBI had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russia since last July. It was a stunning moment: the FBI chief disclosing his bureau was running an investigation that could lead to his boss, the president. All of this showed the Trump-Russia scandal was still on fire.

If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment.

Naturally, Trump was enraged. He has dismissed the Russia story as fake news and a hoax. Comey said it was nothing but.

What don’t we know?

In an Orwellian society, the matter would end with authoritarian contempt, Orwell’s communist-socialist totalitarian “boot in the face”, a world in which the government’s monopoly on information and continuous diversion and suppression of criticism and truth were so notorious that interpreted through the work of the socialist George Orwell — Eric Arthur Blair — the same has left its stamp indelible on the informed western conscience.

 

http://www.george-orwell.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters

President Trump’s imperious and sudden decapitation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation smacks of the feudal approach to criticism and threat to authority.  Instead of allowing James Comey and his organization to come up empty handed, which result may have required only the President’s inaction, President Trump will now forever have appeared to have lashed out at someone he perceived as an actor and source intending to undermine this authority.

MOSCOW (AP) — He visited imperial palaces and construction sites. He presided at a Miss Universe pageant. He hobnobbed with city officials at gala functions and seemed to particularly enjoy dining on Russian sausage.

But Donald Trump did not strike any real estate deals here.

The New York real estate tycoon has his name on hotels, resorts and other properties from South Korea to Turkey to Panama, but none in Russia, though he repeatedly said he wanted to build a Trump tower in Moscow and discussed various deals in three visits dating back to 1987.

Vasilyeva, Nataliya.  “Russian real estate deals never materialized for Trump.”  AP, March 4, 2017.

One more excerpt, this from Reuters:

A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.

Layne, Nathan, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey, Ryan McNeill.  “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.”  Reuters, March 17, 2017:

The Reuters review of investors from Russia in Trump’s Florida condominium buildings found no suggestion of wrongdoing by President Trump or his real estate organization. And none of the buyers appear to be from Putin’s inner circle.

Addendum – Odd ‘n’ Ends

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/10/russia-is-trolling-the-u-s-over-james-comeys-firing-accusations-of-trumps-russian-connections/ 5/10/2017.

FTACT: Anti-Semitism and the Displacement of the Medieval Mode by a Developing Modern World

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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Anti-Semitic talk and thought have been the most medieval tools for controlling, deflecting, and moving mobs and, at times, producing a little extra money for the feudal nobility by way of plunder accompanied by theft and murder.

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

I have on deck a similar excerpt from Michael Kellogg’s book, _The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; online 2009). but I think what you may read by Walter Laqueur will give you something to think about.

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

The Soviet Union picked up a share of the pieces — relationships — after the Nazi defeat in WWII, and it exploited anti-Semitic sentiment to build a base for itself.

The medieval history of religion gets a little complicated. Ruling Christians in Hungary in the 12th Century formed laws to discriminate against Jews and Jewish potential and accomplishment, and then upon activation applied the same laws to Muslims.

I’ve taken the stance with anti-Semitism x feudalism and tribalism that associated conflict and cruelty are really about replacing the medieval mode and worldview with what has become politically and spiritually modern — democratically checked and distributed political power; multicultural inclusion; a great measure of compassion and secular humanism in the functional aspects of law, and where beneath such law, all are treated as equal.

The thought may at first seem spotty as President Putin handily sustains possibly the most pro-Semitic Russia in Russian history, but as one visits Moscow’s relationships with Assand and Khamenei, Hezbollah and Hamas (and PFLP) plus autocrats like Erdogan and Orban (add in Le Pen but perhaps not the now well-briefed Trump), Moscow’s medieval facets would seem unmistakable.  Add to that the cruelties so well demonstrated in Syria and the cloaked “hybrid warfare” in Ukraine that would seem to amount to not much more than recognizable old infiltration accompanied by massive disinformation (for the misguiding of the masses, and much more of Russians — the 93 percent of Russians who may read and speak only in Russian — than of anyone else) and the onset of conventional war.

The inspiration for the post came by way of a Muslim convert to Christianity who had expressed enthusiasm for modern Israel, calling it a “Hebrew state” and an inspiration for the world.

Addendum

Not shortly after publishing this piece, I found a well-known figure boasting of a recently attended Christian, Jewish, and Muslim colloquy and querying the presence of a “clash of civilizations”.  My response:

There is a “clash of civilizations” — but it’s not the one we have been led to believe exists, i.e., some thing between the Muslim and Christian worlds. That “clash” doesn’t exist in any meaningful reality: what does exist is the struggle of the modern world to displace several worlds — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim — remaining mired in medieval outlooks, politics, and practices.

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