• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: cash

FTAC: Lebanon – Iran: Cash – Arms – Trade

01 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Lebanon, Middle East, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cash, Hezbollah, Iranian arms, Lebanon, transnational crime, western appetites, western civilization

Inspiration:

The Iranians, with their crashing rial economy, have been offering Beirut even more cash – from where, exactly, we don’t know – than the Americans, along with guns, agricultural and industrial assistance.

Fisk, Robert. “Lebanon is on a tightrope, balancing Saudi, Iranian and Western interests — its position is precarious.” The Independent, August 31, 2018.


I’d assign the delusional surrealism to the narcissism involved in most politics middle east but may also note that the transnational narcotics and other smuggling businesses may be doing well for Hezbollah and whatever else Iran has going “behind the curtains” and “under the table”. The main player in pressuring up illicit funds from all sources has to be Moscow — and Moscow loves frozen conflicts as well as unsettled and weak governments. It doesn’t seem to know how to create much good, but it sure knows how to gin up a lot of cash ready for the laundry.

Back to something like observable reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_equipment_manufactured_in_Iran

Iran has the industry; the west has the addicts and coke heads — and there may be the cash for the arms. I do wonder how that might actually look in numbers.


–33–

Gaza – No Justice – A Glimpse Into Kleptocracy

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cash, corruption, Gaza, governance, Hamas, kleptocracy, politics, poverty

Ironically, throughout all of the alleged Israeli siege on Gaza, Israel has consistently been providing Gazans water and power supplies, which Israel threatened to cut in 2011 if Palestinian Authority pursued reunification with Hamas — a threat which Israel never carried out.

Moreover, numbers speak for themselves: in March 2012, the same month when 300 Hamas rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli towns, 3,653 truckloads of goods were delivered from Israel to Gaza and 1,375 Gazan patients and companions entered or passed through Israel for medical treatments, followed by another 1,364 in April, 2012.

In August 2012, the Hamas prime minister’s brother in law was allowed to enter Israel for treatment in an Israeli hospital.

Who Is Really Besieging Gaza? :: Gatestone Institute – Mudar Zahran – 11/15/2012.

* * *

“there are 1,200 millionaires in Gaza since Hamas took power… these people took advantage of the tunnels and the commerce of fuel to Gaza and took advantage of the people in Gaza.”

Gaza Strip full of corrupt millionaires, says Palestinian official – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 11/16/2013.

* * *

WAFA reported that the wealth came from controlling the smuggling of good through the tunnels with Egypt, including “alcohol and drugs,” describing Hamas leaders as “Gaza’s drug lords”.

In addition, the prominent Egyptian newspaper, al-Mesryoon, quoted Egyptian writer and academic Abdul Munim Saeed as saying that Hamas was the main importer and exporter of drugs into Gaza.

The Jewish Press » » Hamas’ Drug Lords – 4/22/2013.

*

A campaign against drugs was launched by Gaza’s interior ministry last month targeting tramadol tablets which are widely used by youth in the Sector.

Tramadol is a drug prescribed by doctors as a pain killer; however it is widely misused by drug addicts as a replacement drug. Opium, marijuana and various other kinds of drugs are in short supply in Gaza as a result of the strict anti-drug campaigns carried out by the ministry of interior.

Gaza government fights ‘tramadol’ smuggling – 7/8/2013.

The quotations having to do with narcotics proceeds and trafficking in Gaza rather seem to contradict one another but are not necessarily irreconcilable: the soul of corruption and crime resides in the opaque qualities of a governance that enables some to many to engage in illicit activities without consequence to themselves.  In such atmospheres, tightening laws and initiating crackdowns may as well serve to remove one’s own competitors or enemies from the market, which is not to say that’s what’s happening, but who is to know — and how would they know it?  Independent accounting and audit would see unknown to governments — this is not about Hamas only — that rely too heavily on their own opacity, privacy, and security in doing what they do.

Results nonetheless come out in one form or another of cash input and output comparisons, and if cash seems in short supply where in fact it has been signaled as abundant, than one knows it has been disappearing down into very dark and bottomless pockets.

* * *

The tunnels that move goods into the Strip from Egypt have been linchpins of the economy, employing 12,000 to 15,000 and supplying as much as 75 percent of the products sold in the markets, according to Sameer Abumdallala, head of the economics department at Al Azhar University in Gaza. Now the smugglers say their importance is waning: Access to Israeli goods is improving, and the Gazan government has begun regulating the tunnels, sapping profits.

Twilight of Gaza’s Smuggling Tunnel Millionaires – Businessweek – 1/31/2013.

* * *

Palestine – Gaza City.

Septemper 4, 2013

palestinian man who lost his right foot (disabled)he has 10 children in Gaza City ( Alzayton area) suffers poverty and the family lives in just two rooms.

Five of the children they don’t going to school because of the bad economic situation in the family. — family also thay don’t have an sewerage network

Gerechtigkeit für Gaza – justicia para Gaza – justice pour Gaza – justice for Gaza: Ezz Al Zanoon – brilliant photographer from Gaza – 9/4/2013.

Whose constituents are they?

Readers who click on the above link will arrive at an almost too beautiful picture of an equally ugly circumstance made more so by the point of this post: enormous sums have channeled through the Gaza Strip, but evidence of fair and responsible distribution through local governance has been weak and, in fact, both Israeli and Palestinian presses seem to have turned up stories indicating interests opposite accountable and responsive area-wide governance.

______

Dictatorships and the “malignant narcissists” who manipulate and thieve from their areas of control often offer sweet words to their constituents but their wallets and their forces tend to serve mostly themselves.  For such, ideologies and religions would seem to serve mostly as cloaks and shields inscribed with the con artist’s favorite invocation: “Trust me.”

Addendum 12/5/2013

The streets of some Gaza neighborhoods are completely flooded with raw sewage, so that pedestrians have no way to go but through the muck. The Hamas government has been sinking Gaza into a quagmire of violence, blackouts, water shortages and now: a cholera epidemic waiting to happen.

The Jewish Press » » Israel Warns EU of Emerging Gaza Humanitarian Disaster – 12/3/2013.

* * *

In the past few years, the war-torn Gaza Strip relied on Egyptian fuel at 3.5 Israeli shekels (one dollar) per litre. Then in July, Egypt closed down all supply tunnels to Gaza in an attempt to crush the Hamas Islamic movement for being an ally to overthrown Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (2012-2013). The municipality says that fuel coming through Israel is heavily taxed, forcing them to pay double, at 7.0 Israeli shekels per litre.

Gaza Returns to Donkey Days – Sabbah Report – 12/5/2013.

1. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sets out to establish a family dynasty in the last years of his tenure;

2. Egypt, en masse, decides to not let Mubarak get away with that, and he’s ousted from power;

3. The only political player on the block turns out the Muslim Brotherhood, which handily, ruthlessly, takes care of its competition, ascends to power, and sets about the business of consolidating everything, starting with the army, quickly advancing to the constitution, its way;

3b. Hamas, itself a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, cheers for the arrival of its new buddy;

4. Civil war breaks out in Syria, partially, initially, aligning Shiite against Sunni Islam, and Hamas, knowing what it’s really about (read the charter), knows what it’s about, which alienates the puppet master in Iran;

5. Meanwhile, in Egypt, President Morsi turns out so ham handed, venal, and on his economy just plain absent or stupid — you decide — Egyptian about half or three-quarters en masse demand his ouster and return to the comfort of the arms of the army;

6. Uh oh for Hamas — Egyptian, Israeli, and United States diplomatic and military interests discover common cause in heading off the fascist Brotherhood (while mouthing away for more genuine democratic process, one way or the other) — and it’s Hamas — the Hamas government and governance — that can no longer sustain an inscrutable presence in the lives of Gaza’s constituents;

6a. Hamas successfully stifles the launch of protests in its streets by way of pre-event arrests and detentions and the usual methods amounting to intimidation — and no one shows up: the by-Hamas-silenced continue suffering (related on this blog: “Hamas – Tamarod – 11/11 [You’re Going to Need a Cup of Coffee“]).

7. Israel, watching this meltdown in governance, the wholesale shirking of responsibility for basic services — keep in mind Gaza’s millionaires, their number, their sources of income, their comforts — alerts the European Union as regards the strips vulnerability to other human catastrophe, including the creation of conditions for cholera.

* * *

A STRING of regional developments over the past two years has left the Islamist Hamas government in Gaza in dire straits and opened up new opportunities for Israel and Palestinian moderates.

In backing the Sunni rebels in the Syrian civil war, Hamas forfeited its special ties with its biggest arms supplier, Iran; the military ouster of its Muslim Brotherhood allies in Cairo put serious strains on its relations with Egypt; and a change of leadership in Qatar left a big question mark over the extent of financial aid from the oil-rich Gulf state it can continue to count on.

ICT – Commentaries > Hamas in disarray – 11/26/2013.

* * *

“I can’t emphasise enough that Israel’s security in this negotiation (with Iran) is at the top of our agenda,” Kerry said at a joint news conference in Jerusalem.

“The United States will do everything in our power to make certain that Iran’s nuclear programme of weaponisation possibilities is terminated.”

Kerry stressed the two men had spent “a very significant amount of time” discussing the peace talks with the Palestinians.

“Israel’s security is fundamental to those negotiations,” he said.

Israel security key in talks on peace, Iran: Kerry – Yahoo!7 – 12/5/2013.

Hate may for a while drive the heart but it consumes it too and all it envelopes.

* * *

The charter states that “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[1] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[2][3] The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they do not block Hamas’s efforts.[4] The Charter adds that “renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion” of Islam.[5]

Hamas Covenant – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/5/2013.

Any who care to look ahead to how that story ends may well look beyond Gaza, Hamas, and Israel: a figure approaching 130,000 have died in neighboring Syria’s civil war, which effort to depose a dictators has been skewered by the forces of “Islamic Jihad” that would have it a war for Islam rather than for democracy, human rights, and inclusion in power; beside that figure stands the displacement of one-third of Syria’s population before the war.

I’ve seen no figure describing the suffering and trauma visited on Syrian innocents and noncombatants, but then I believe no such figure can ever exist.

# # #

  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • A Few Keys Related to ‘East-West Rivalry’
  • Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State
  • FTAC: Russia’s One Big Step Backward-Why Ukraine Must Prevail to the Four Compass Points of Its Pre-Crimean Annexation
  • A Note on the Demise of the Medieval Rus
  • Victims of the German Democratic Republic: Brief Reflection on Germany’s Forgotten Internal Immigrants
  • FTAC: Big Picture Made Small: Moscow’s Narrative Arc from the End of the Cold War

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Qualities of Living (QOL)
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Guinea
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • BackChannels
    • Join 766 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar