Tag Archives: democracy

A Note on the Political Destabilization of the West

07 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

From the Awesome Conversation

ISO Radical Moderates.

Cultural extremists and party zealots may be laying the groundwork for extraordinary blowback. However, that reflexive response would call for a renewal of enthusiasm for the most advanced standards of western culture and its modern (rather than medieval) devotions.

Has EU / NATO, much less the United States, the educated and enlightened empiricist and humanist populations for that?

We’re certainly living through the process of finding out.

States contributing to political incoherence associated with or within EU/NATO might include Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States of America. Authoritarianism, extremism, feudalism (family as state mafia), and unreasoning religious faith have long had their posts in the medieval world. The learning modern west has battled even longer, however, to overcome its own worst tendencies to produce a world and associated politics steeped in compassion, empiricism, equality in justice, humanism, and mutual responsibility for improving (rather than degrading) Qualities of Living (QOLs) across Europe, throughout North America, down through Latin America and against the intellectually limited and nefarious dictatorships of the world.

How goes the battle for mankind’s more enlightened future?

Three generalist organizations provide clues: https://cpj.org/ | https://freedomhouse.org/ | https://www.occrp.org/en .

The blood-and-soil nationalism buoyed by revivals of church and military enthusiasm following 9/11 and numerous other Islamist attacks (perhaps associated with Moscow’s covert influence) has marched a portion of the 21st Century political establishment headlong into the political models of the 19th.

How else to interpret the big picture for the BREXIT or Trump narratives?

Add the Syrian Tragedy as challenge and goad to Western resolve.

Obama had offered Putin his “Come Westward” in 2011 (it’s now hard to find that moment online, but I recall the same as the “Syrian Gambit”), and Putin said “Nyet!” while Obama scoffed at the return to the “KGB Playbook”.

Well, here we are — and here is EU/NATO — talking up Western Values while nonetheless losing momentum and a handful of compromised or, as with Hungary and Turkey, philosophically and spiritually traitorous states.

While lumping America’s President Trump with others possessed of autocratic and martial patriotic fervor, I would note that his Administration’s actual policies and postures fall into line with greater American state tendencies in judgment and policies. For example, he has not been wrong about China (i.e., https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/16/barr-chinas-abuses-of-power-and-privilege-against-client-states-and-the-west/). Moreover, the Trump Administration’s leveling of sanctions against Crimean officials (“so-called”) has been especially caustic as well as damaging.

One might suggest with relation to Donald Trump that he has been a worse candidate, one deeply inspiring his own opposition, than American President.

In any case, the United States is not Hungary, and while Viktor Orban has been able to degrade his state’s political character, I believe the present polarization and related turmoil in the United States will abate with a greater general want of return to “normalcy” — and normal in the United States involves much, much greater mutual concern and regard for one another and related practical political reason and compromise.

–33–

FTAC: Rah Rah! The Better American Way

03 Friday Jul 2020

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Some of my Right Wing Nut friends hate Black Lives Matters, Democrats, George Soros, any compassionate souls qualifying as “Libtards”, and probably just plain puzzled (and suffering) human faces on general terms. While the United States of America heads now into rougher waters — here’s a schematic –>

COVID-19 –> National Stand-Down of Basic Economic Activities (Bars & Restaurants and Events) –> Peonage (Americans in Unsustainable Debt) –> Foreseeable Loss of Hope, Independence, Opportunity, Property, and Stability –> De Facto Enslavement (and more about that on this blog later) –>

–> these same complain about “appeasement” before “radicals” (misguided youth generally among them) when governments stay their forces a moment to give peace a chance and clarify essential battlespace as the opponent has cared to define it. Those old levels of contempt, determination, and penchant for violence may remind us of how differently America works — when it’s working.

From the Awesome Conversation

Internally, Americans accommodate, compromise, and repair conditions through argument, reason, and talk.

None of that compares to “appeasement”.

Where are there foreign actors, however, fitting the label “agent provocateur”, then our tolerance of their presence, or disinterest in it, would amount to appeasement.

Islam has a concept for what interlopers may do in geopolitical space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasad

In its feudal and narcissistic way, it’s self-centered with the Ummah in mind, but universalized, most statesmen would recognize the problem of having foreign agents in one’s domestic business.

BLM is domestic, somewhat poisoned by old rhetoric, and it may be infected by interlopers, but having become a visible element in OUR politics, it has to have its conversation with other Americans in public.

America’s two “rivals” in international influence and powers, Beijing and Moscow, believe in force and totalitarian control.

We don’t.

We don’t muzzle our critics: we defend protest; we investigate issues and try to bring their components into public view; we face political and social challenges and address them with peaceful but vigorous means. The day we stop listening, arguing, reasoning, accommodating, and compromising, and agreeing is the one on which we have failed as a democracy.

Those we refer to as “extremists” and “violent radicals” believe they have cause and permit to abandon those tenets and achieve their ends “by any means necessary”. Well, it’s at that point that the state must stand firm and take apart what has defined itself as a martial adversary. Generally speaking as regards that kind of “revolution”, the state wins.

If the state has been compromised, corrupted, and weakened from within, well then it may lose.

Even if a politically repressive regime “wins” against an enemy representing the better part of human values, as I believe democracies represent, it loses for being and displaying its ultimately closed, controlling, and destructive character.

Porch Talk at Magic Hour, Annapolis, Maryland, September 4, 2005. (c) 2005, J. S. Oppenheim.

Related on BackChannels: “Basic Training”.

Addendum, July 4, 2020

On FB, one reader posed the question, “What’s to like?”

Here’s the BackChannels answer –>

Our system of governance remains strong, i.e., embraceable and not yet hollowed out. I am certain most Americans are counting on America to work some political magic and return the ship to firm and steady sailing. Our present turmoil devolves to our hosting so many authoritarians, extremists, sophists, and zealots that supporting an authentic _and reasoning_ conversation has become nearly impossible. While throwing mud at one another, we seem to be ignoring “America the Beautiful” while melting down in fits of jealousy, greed, and resentment.
When idiots have tired themselves out with fighting or raiding — down on the street or up in the boardrooms — then more real people, so one may hope, will come out to sweep up the glass, turn over indictments, produce new law, and so on, and cobble the place back together and refresh it as it should be.

–33–

Active Measures

13 Thursday Feb 2020

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

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

As BackChannels Would Define It

Active Measures — The collection of Russian Agitation, Disinformation, and Propaganda Methods made evident through covert or subtle Influence Campaigns applied to wrecking the political coherence and cohesion of EU/NATO for the purpose of reestablishing Political Absolutism in the same and then using the most thuggish of feudal and medieval methods to leverage loyalty and wealth from them for contribution to the Greater Imperial Glory of Moscow, the Russian “mafia state” it has come to represent, and the immense enrichment of its oligarchy.

Indeed the west, the melange of classically liberal democratic open societies built and structured around fair dealing, freedom, and integrity and related humanist and liberal ethics, principles, and values has been unprepared for covert agent provocateur, e.g., covert agitators Far Right and Far Left, disingenuous publications, false front organizations, trolls, etc.

I’ve chosen to demur from producing “long copy” and a lengthy reference section for this post. Awareness of “Active Measures” — the kernel of Russia’s covert campaign to degrade and ruin the democracies of the west — should suffice for both the interested and the unwittingly vulnerable.

Related Online

Cull, Nicholas J., Vasily Gatov, Peter Pomerantsev, Anne Applebaum, and Alistair Shawcross. “Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against It.” Final Report (PDF). LSE Consulting, London, October 2017.

Darczewska, Jolanta and Piotr Zochowky. “Active Measures: Russia’s Key Export.” (PDF). Center for Eastern Studies, Point of View 64, Warsaw, June 2017.

Linville, Darren and Patrick Warren. “That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It.” Rolling Stone, November 25, 2019.

Lipton, Eric, David E. Sanger and Scott Shane. “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.” The New York Times, December 13, 2016.

Pond, Elizabeth. “The West wakes up to the dangers of disinformation.” The Christian Science Monitor, February 28, 1985.

According to rough Central Intelligence Agency estimates presented in US congressional hearings in 1980 and 1982, Moscow spends some $4 billion a year on overt and covert propaganda, with some $3 billion of this going to Pravda, Tass, and other overt activities and the residual $1 billion presumably going into covert disinformation. Georgetown University Prof. Roy Godson, coauthor with Richard H. Shultz of the book “Dezinformatsia” says the Soviets employ 15,000 in “active measures.”

“Active measures” — the term came into use in the Soviet Union in the 1950s — include international front organizations, agent-of-influence operations, and forgeries. Front organizations straddle overt and covert measures, Godson and Shultz explain. The International Department of the Soviet Communist Party “coordinates the activities of these organizations,” but “the fronts actively attempt to maintain an image of independence.”

The flagship of these fronts is the World Peace Council.

Shane, Scott. “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election.” The New York Times, September 7, 2017.

Wikipedia. “Active Measures”.

Addendum — From the Awesome Conversation

Through the Cold War Era and now with Putin leading the Russian Federation, the purpose of Soviet / post-Soviet “Active Measures” has been to fragment EU/NATO for the purpose of Russian expansion and its feudal practices. A video like this one — the same as above on this page — will help a little bit with understanding the greater east-west politics and the tension between the worlds of “Absolute Power” and the open democracies of the west.

Active Measures” represents an international (RF v EU/NATO) dispute over the future, not only an American one.

If we are at one the other’s throat, Moscow will have succeeded in exploiting our natural political arguments and issues by heightening them and undermining our national political cohesion and coherence, thereby weakening our state and degrading our democracy.

Regarding “Far Out Left” and equally distant Far Right tendencies, the related foreign and disingenuous domestic manipulations of political perception targets us all.

Addendum – Miscellaneous Quotations and Reference Having to Do with Disinformation

“It was unthinkable before Trump for anyone to run this kind of disinformation campaign from the White House against the American public,” according to Jonathan Rauch, the author of the forthcoming book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. As a result, we live in an era defined by epistemic chaos and noetic disarray, one in which a large portion of the population embraces falsehoods and fairy tales and thinks of them as “alternative facts.”

The deceit being dispensed by Trump & Company is hardly universal, but it is extensive, which is why defeating Trump was essential if we’re going to move away from perspectivism as the interpretive theory in our politics. But objective reality as a concept—truth as something that exists independent of affect, independent of subjective narratives, independent of whatever a partisan information silo claims is true—has been badly damaged. Among the most urgent tasks facing America, then, is to strengthen our regard for what Plato called episteme over doxa, true knowledge over opinion, reality over fantasy.

Wehner, Peter. “Trump’s Most Malicious Legacy.” The Atlantic, December 7, 2020.

A Diffuse, Unregulated Network of Propagandists

In the Cold War, the Communist Party defined the USSR’s information strategy from the top down. Today, Russian information warfare is waged by a variety of groups that have different interests, domestically and internationally, and different connections to the outside world. Modern Russia is a loose, networked state with multiple actors allowed to conduct domestic and foreign policy, usually to benefit corrupt political groups around (and including) Putin. These different groups influence state strategy both directly and indirectly;some have their own areas of interest, such the oil company Rosneft’s interests in Africa and Latin America.

As a result, Russian information warfare is not consistent and strategic; its fundamental quality is tactical opportunism, which of course leads to inconsistency. This inconsistency makes attribution difficult or even misleading. We still cannot be certain, for example, which particular vested interest was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee in the US. It is possible that business groups under sanction in the US organized the hack because they believed that a President Trump would lift the sanctions; it is equally possible that the FSB organized the hack with the idea of undermining Hillary Clinton, for geopolitical reasons. Either way, it is likely that the actual hackers were criminals, hired for this particular purpose, and not state employees.The Kremlin, in other words,is just one of myriad actors pumping out disinformation, alongside domestic media as well as the teenagers in Macedonia who produced anti-Clinton fake news for personal profit.

Excerpt (on page 68) from Cull, Nicholas J., Vasily Gatov, Peter Pomerantsev, Anne Applebaum, and Alistair Shawcross. “Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against It.” Final Report (PDF). LSE Consulting, London, October 2017.

–33–

George Will: Independent

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in American Domestic Affairs, Books, Philosophy, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Charles Lane: . . . . that brings us to the present day and present President whose name, by the way it’s Donald Trump, does not appear in your book. Now that can’t be an accident.

George Will: The names of Charlemagne and Audrey Hepburn and Duke Ellington don’t appear in the book either [Lane: That’s true] because this is a book about ideas and the current president is not part of that discussion. He has nothing to do with conservatism. He really to his credit has never pretended to be a conservative. He’s an entrepreneur in politics and he’s maximizing whatever he wants to maximize. This is a book about important arguments, and he’s not part of that.

Lane, Charles. “George Will wrangles with God, the conservative sensibility and the dangers of progressivism.” YouTube, 9:33-10:15. The Washington Post, June 2, 2019.
Posted to YouTube by Washington Post, June 2, 2019

BackChannels will leave to others, especially the young, familiarization with one of America’s most iconic of conservative opinion makers: George F. Will.

Curious about “important arguments”, BackChannels has made the purchase.

Related Online

East, Kristen. “George Will leaves the GOP”. Politico, June 25, 2016.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/02/united-states-of-america-basic-training/

Also Related on YouTube

–33–

Venezuela: Putin’s Choice

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, International Development, Political Psychology, Russia, South America, Venezuela

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Venezuela is of limited strategic importance to Russia, though it offers symbolic significance in demonstrating Putin’s reach into a region seen as Washington’s backyard. Russia doesn’t have the capacity to send forces there as it did to support Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, limiting itself to publicity stunts like a December visit by two nuclear-capable bombers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/russia-starts-to-worry-maduro-s-grip-is-slipping-in-venezuela – 2/6/2019

Big Crayon BackChannels suggests that nominally socialist Venezuela indulged its leaders in breathtaking kleptocracy while failing to develop its oil industry with care and taking measures to free and diversify the licit potential of its national economy (for coverage of the illicit potential possessed by Venezuela’s present leadership, one may click over to InSight Crime‘s eight-part series, “Venezuela: A Mafia State?”).

Moscow reads the news too, and while perhaps absent of conscience but mindful of money, it’s confidence in the success of the political societies once aligned, captivated, or enthralled with their relationship to the Soviet may be dimming. While perhaps putting a “little” money in the under-the-table pockets of its own, it has also watched parts of Central and South American states churn into cesspool of competing cartels and gangs destroying communities, exporting the nasty — the full smorgasbord of contraband — and for hundreds of thousands producing flight en masse anywhere that hasn’t become a personal no-security hell. Now the chief Phantom of the Soviet appears to be having a look-see at the future of at least one portfolio of debt accumulated by a once ideologically favored son and the picture just isn’t so wonderful as it must have once appeared.

Related Online

Aris, Ben. “Russia’s National Wealth Fund can withstand one more crisis vows Kudrin.” bne Intellinews. August 22, 2018.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Eight-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018.

Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck It Poor: The tragic — and totally avoidable — self-destruction of one of the world’s richest oil economies.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.

Laya, Patricia. “Maduro’s Bid to Fly Gold Out of Venezuela is Blocked.” Bloomberg, February 1, 2019.

Meyer, Henry and Ilya Arkhipov. “Russia Starts to Worry Maduro’s Grip May Slip in Venezuela.” Bloomberg, February 6, 2019.

Paraskova, Tsvetana. “Russia Begins to Fear Maduro May Lose”. Oil Price, February 7, 2019.

Rapoza, Kenneth. “Could Russia Be Subject to Venezuela-Style Sanctions”” Forbes, February 19, 2019.

The Moscow Times. “Russia’s Reserve Fund Ceases to Exist: Budget deficits have exhausted the rainy day fund.” January 11, 2018.

Trading Economics. “Russia Cash Reserve Ratio”. Current.

Banning the trading of Russian bonds have been tossed around ever since Trump got elected. Anti-Russian politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken full advantage of Trump being caught in a Russian scandal to force the president to play super hardball with Vladimir Putin and anyone within a country mile of him.
Since taking office, Trump has already signed harsher sanctions against Russian individuals and Russian companies, making some of them extra-territorial. Extra-territorial means sanctions apply to non-U.S. citizens and entities transacting with the sanctioned firm subject to penalties.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/02/19/could-russian-bonds-be-subject-to-venezuela-style-sanctions/#9aa301d75664 – 2/19/2019

–33–

Shameless Promotion –> Radical Acts of Love

05 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

mlk-promo-01

mlk-promo-02

https://secure.civilrights.org/page/s/unite-against-hate

Signatories

Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council
NAACP
National Action Network
National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE)
National Association of Human Rights Workers
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund
National Association of Social Workers
National Center for Learning Disabilities
National Center for Transgender Equality
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Jewish Women, Pittsburgh
National Council of Teachers of English
National Disability Rights Network
National Down Syndrome Congress
National Employment Law Project
National Employment Lawyers Association
NATIONAL FAIR HOUSING ALLIANCE
National Immigration Law Center
National Legal Aid and Defender Association
National LGBTQ Task Force
National Organization for Women
National Partnership for Women & Families
National Urban League
National Women’s Law Center
New York City Anti-Violence Project
OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates
People For the American Way
PFLAG National
PolicyLink
SEIU
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)
South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Campaign to TAKE ON HATE
The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law
The Sikh Coalition
The United Methodist Church-General Board of Church & Society
UnidosUS
Union for Reform Judaism
YWCA USA

–33–

 

FTAC: Ocasio-Cortez: Re. The “Closed” Meeting

18 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Political Psychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Reference: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/17/ocasio-cortez-bans-press-from-covering-campaign-event.html

Stimulus: a Facebook-based accusation to the effect that Ocasio-Cortez will come to resemble Castro and other socialist dictators.

Baloney.

The event in question appears to have been designed for partisan listening and not for open public discourse:

——
She said the journalist ban “was designed to protect + invite vulnerable populations to PUBLIC discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse, and so on.”

“We indicated previously that the event would be closed to press,” she said. “Future ones are open.”
——

I think all political organizations have the prerogative to determine their meeting doors open or closed to facilitate policy planning and research. To amplify the decision to avoid the media circus and actually listen to the underserved or, in some ways, people with problems that are nonetheless a part of our communities seems to me execrable — but if that’s the way Fox wants to operate, well that says a lot about Fox News.

BackChannels agrees with the explanation.

Dictators, not “isms”, have killed millions, and therefore having a look at the psychology of dictatorship — and the nature of disingenuous news personalities, lol, may be more helpful than the demonizing of a young American politician.

–33–

FTAC: A Note on President Trump and the Prospect of a Feudal Modernity

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Trump’s support of Israel is about respect for tribal identification and the narcissism related to it. It matches Putin’s views of a renewed and sustained feudal world — a feudal modernity — featuring absolute authority, fated and unquestionable, placed in the future rather than left to history.

Accompanying that vision: a low-intensity war of re-conquest in Crimea, Ukraine and the tragic obscenity that has been made of Syria.

Most of us carry what we value of our pasts with us through life, but we try also to leave our futures open for good things to come.

These “malignarcs” (malignant narcissists), by comparison, wish to force the future forward into the past. Their personal visions — and behavior — have been dreadful, myopic, selfish as have been the habits, in lesser and greater measures, of caliphs, dictators, emperors, and feudal lords through time: for the mafia-type power and wealth, their methods, willful and thuggish, have been more known to history than those of democracy.  However, our Mr. Trump has a powerful employer and a job defining his position, and whether he personally likes it or not, he is duty-bound to promote democracy — the systems of checked and distributed power — against the political absolutism known to dictators.

As has been my habit with BackChannels, the titles promise greater and lengthier articles while format and inclination keep the verbiage down to a paragraph bloc.

Related on this blog —

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/04/04/ftac-reinforcement-reflexive-control-islamic-terrorism-and-perceived-threat-newest-nationalism-and-renewed-feudal-conflict/

With the public focused on the air assault of “9/11” (see the gems placed in reference) and numerous “Allahu Abkar” attacks worldwide across many years, the patriotic reaction has permanently altered the west’s political and security societies — and yet we wish to defend authentic democracies against the potential for the rise of the Orwellian police state and with it, indeed, a “new nobility”, an invisible, unimpeachable, unquestionable (“military-industrial”) aristocracy.

Reference: Related on the Web

http://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6 – 6/10/2014

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/02/security-brief-russia-providing-arms-to-taliban-chinas-global-kidnapping-campaign/ – 4/2/2018

–33–