Tag Archives: democracy

FTAC: A Note on Faiths, Political Attitudes, and Beliefs

23 Sunday Apr 2017

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

What happens when friends talk and compare notes, and discover they’re no long “on the same page”?

Attitudes rest on beliefs, and beliefs don’t always rest on empirical evidence nor good conscience and empathy.  Beliefs may be grown on lies, and when it comes to the once Soviet-engineered “middle east conflict”, there is a cultural Petri dish loaded up with lies to induce, motivate, and sustain anti-Semitism in the Arab world and in the world at large with a focus on Zionism.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/social-grammar/

When a friend changes the conversation so abruptly, the conversation has a chance to change.

The sun did not revolve around the earth.

And the earth was found to be other than flat.

Lo and behold . . . .

In addition to the early and academically relaxed BackChannels page on “Social Grammar” — how we learn the ropes around family, clan, tribe, and nation in the process of language uptake and with it the ingestion of the culture into which we have been borne, there are couple of other pieces quietly alluded to the in above note from the awesome conversation:

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

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

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

Online, there’s telling BBC interview involving the Soviet instigating of Somalia’s Ogaden War:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1

Around the world — and not least in the United States with President Donald J. Trump’s rants about “Fake News!” — the world may be having a quiet conversation — a social back channel consideration of which this post is a part– behind the storms of news that concerns itself with the authenticity, validity, and reliability of what is delivered to it in media.

For a few moments “back there” in time — perhaps only some months to years — I was getting word of a “post-constitutional America” and coming across such “lovely” (bogus) concepts as “illiberal democracy” (ain’t no such thing as the first principle in the establishment of democracy has been and remains that of embracing “classical liberalism”, a dignifying, loving, magnanimous, and magnificent view of humankind that speaks to every person’s potential nobility in freedom and in power) and “post-fact” world (facts, like red traffic lights and the dangers of leaping from heights) appear to persist despite their “post-modern” dismissal.

Democracies are not illiberal.

The world is not “post-fact”.

And while Muhammad may have had the final word on God as enforced by war in his place and in his day, the world with its nearly 7,000 living language cultures persists in proving greater than any one perspective on God, nature, and the universe or the many curses and miracles that accompany our human experience.  The evolution of our species — Homo Sapiens sapiens in its totality — and within it the emergence of human awareness, self-awareness, and the development of conscience may prove a thing greater than the observations and arguments of the many prophets and shaman who have accompanied and determined mankind’s cultural history.

–33–

From Correspondence – Frozen in Time – The Promise of the ‘Unreachable Untrue’

23 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

We think of refugees and displaced people in a spatial context.

Somebody has lost their home, their security, their purchase on the control of their own life, and so they wander in-country or beyond, and depending on their personal characteristics – the movies always say “character”, but social reality is much different – they’ll grow again where they plant themselves or suffer the indignity of loss and rootlesness.

The segment you’re interested in is wandering through time with an unhelpful toolkit, and the obedient base can’t figure out why it’s not working. They’re mired in conflicts wrought by mutual greed and jealousy, and, perhaps like Imam ______, the more clever of tongue thrive on the turmoil by offering the unreachable untrue.

I recall a Star Trek episode in which a “holodeck” (synthetic surround theater) Dr. Moriarty achieved sufficient mastery of his own artifice and cyber environment to threaten the ship. Spoiler Alert!  The solution at the end, which had to be negotiated because Moriarty really had interfaced with ship’s control, was to provide him and his woman (it’s complicated) with a cyber universe of their own. The world that would seem infinite to the evil couple was in the greater reality contained (and possibly ejected into space).

One might say of Catholic and otherwise conservative or orthodox observance in religion that all of it sustains something that took place a long time ago.

We do that with art –

Keats_urn

Sosibios Vase rendered by Keats.

The figures have been frozen in time. The particular above have been especially well preserved by Keats’s poem.

Most of the religious in the modern world who attend a service also leave it with something taken away, and that adds its part to their lives and their search for a place for themselves. The monastery exists too. Add pope and papacy, the “Christ Process” – got that one from a Jesuit supplying blankets to the Four Corners region – and the existence of a timeless space maintained in the mind with the volition of the thinker.

Muhammad and his Islam may have had issues with boundaries – related on BackChannels: “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” – just an opinion, of course, and that got into the patronizing and permits and orders produced within the Qur’an, not so complete for this world but ever so demanding in its build around injunction. The Muslims — the Islamists — that interest you may believe they are carrying out still relevant orders when they are raiding their targets – murder, theft, rape, and rapine – but in reality they are doing so much only for the aggrandizement of their chosen authority beneath the Eye of Heaven.

Ditto Putin.

What is the escape plan from the medieval worldview and its imposition – and impoliteness – today?

Also on BackChannels:

Malignant Narcissism

Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation

Universally, nature figures out how to destroy or mutate monocultures, whether in agriculture or in human existence.  While we may be in a divine sense of “One cloud, one earth, one sky”, we are nonetheless highly differentiated humans x person x family x clan x tribe x nation.

For agriculture, the related science industry strives to maintain comprehensive seed banks as part of the arsenal at hand to address natural mutations adverse to production — of the simple enjoyment of something gardened — in the growing environment.

For the discussion of culture, BackChannels promotes the view that our planet’s cultural inventory” links to fewer than 7,000 living languages, each of which represents how a group of people in comparative isolation — population-in-place — used human sound and sign to aid in perceiving and addressing from their perspective their own particular environmental and social challenges and opportunities.

Often, instead of typing “The Jews (live in Israel)”, the note may be similarly but more tellingly expressed as “The Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews”.

Arab, Baloch, Kurds, Pashtun — same treatment.

As “The English” — and English — have gone everywhere in some fashion, the language today provides a modern medium for communication without the demand for the erasure of other language cultures.  And with the age of English colonial expansion now past, one may expect the resurgent greater being of other language cultures in their cores (x ethnolinguistic cultural density) and at their margins and finally in the mixing bowls of heterogeneous (multi-cultural) political spaces.

E pluribus unum.

Out of many, one.

The American slogan, well linked to the European invasion of or presence in — interpretation is moot — North America, well reflected the necessity of tolerance and varying degrees of separation and mixing in the New World beneath the benevolent and idealist umbrella of a secular and humanist vision of governance.  The delivery thereby of great personal freedom — to be Christian, Jewish, Muslim or of any other faith community — and to speak the new language, English, while retaining the power to speak also every other language on earth, to be multilingual by choice, has been also part of the bargain.  Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Pashto, Urdu, “Jamaican” — no problem, mon.

The American way has worked in America.

Other of the authentic open democracies of the world have found similar equilibrium and a key to prosperity and survival in related law and rule of law.

Other systems, much less liberal, some totalitarian, appear still invested in the feudal / medieval worldview and they “express” in nefarious methods (e.g., “Active Measures“, deception, disinformation, disingenuous speech, etc.) and vanguards their desire to impose their singular will — criminal, despotic, intolerant — far beyond their own context, and not only in space but in time as well.

For the most part for those preferring to live “back there” somewhere, the world goes on around them and evolves a both more inclusive but also widely varied cargo packed into the myriad cultures of humanity.

–33–

 

Also in Media: “How to lose a constitutional democracy” – Vox – February 21, 2017 

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The most important reason the sudden collapse of democracy is rare — and a key reason it is unlikely in the US — is that a sudden derogation of democracy simply isn’t necessary. Would-be autocrats have a cheaper option to hand, one that is far less likely to catalyze opposition and resistance: the slow, insidious curtailment of democratic institutions and traditions.

Source: How to lose a constitutional democracy – Vox

Reflection: Sebastian Gorka – Medieval or Modern?

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

sebastian_gorka
Photo by Sebastian Gorka via Wikipedia‘s Wikimedia Commons.

Three factors led to Russia’s defeat and any outside actor will have to deal with these factors should they wish to drastically change the Afghan reality in a lasting way.

To change Afghanistan, an outside power must do the following:

  • install a national leader who is a Pashtun but who is recognized by, and able to make lasting deals with, the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic groups;
  • effectively co-opt the most significant tribal players;
  • cut off sanctuary to any insurgent element exploiting the porous border with Pakistan.

The Soviet Union failed on all three counts.

Gorka, Sebastian.  “U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan: The Lessons of History.”  Jewish Policy Center, Spring 2010.

Related on BackChannels: “FTAC: The New Nationalists and Moscow’s Reflexive Control.” February 7, 2017.

The Cold War ended on December 25, 1991, and although the Phantoms of the Soviet would seem to haunt Moscow as the revived capital of a persistent KGB State under the guidance of President Putin, the axis of east-west competition has been both profoundly changed and clarified.

Throughout the Soviet Era, Washington promoted the virtues of Capitalism against Communism, and for most Americans, that argument between “centralized economic planning” and the “free enterprise system” appears to have sufficed for explaining east-west hostilities.

Perhaps there was more to it then — something more about the soul of historic Russian politics in the mix — but the public — or perhaps only this editor, lol —  would not seem to have been able to “get it” until now:

Medieval Political Absolutism

v

Modern Democratic and Checked Distribution of Power

In the process of developing his own political stance, Sebastian Gorka, the son of a fiercely anti-communist, anti-Soviet father — one Paul Gorka betrayed by the infamous spy Kim Philby and subsequently captured by communist officials in Hungary and imprisoned and tortured — appears to have focused on Moscow’s continuing totalitarian aspect but not on the medieval aspects that may characterize his own authoritarian response to challengers of American democratic principles and values (including America’s classically liberal outlook).

Instead, perhaps in reflexive response to Islamic Terrorism, Gorka may have played precisely into Moscow’s feudal worldview, preferring to amplify the forces of Islamic Jihad as part of the Trump Administration’s sense of mission while missing the observation that the threat of Islamic terrorism has served Putin quite well.

Here’s a trick: look up “Zawahiri, Russia”.

Also see, for example, David Satter’s work on the “Moscow Apartment Bombings” (National Review, August 17, 2016).

Also consider Moscow’s near 100 years of experience exploiting, sometimes sponsoring, and today perhaps manipulating terrorism.

By focusing perhaps overmuch on “Islamic Terrorism” — a deus ex machina that generally targets for slaughter those Muslims who seem the first to be in its way — Sebastian Gorka has perhaps missed the necessity of putting to rest the yesterday that was the medieval world and its worldviews while further widening the scope of connectivity and cooperation that has brought us our modern world, boosted international trade beyond imagining, and far promoted the secular humanist ideals and values associated with democracy and its defense of community and individual belief.

As now long demonstrated by the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy as well as continuous warfare in Ukraine, the existence of Putin’s world and worldview depends mightily on the validation of authoritarian nationalism and its indulgence in barbarism.

Encountered earlier today: fragments from the web involving Sebastian Gorka.

Note: Gorka’s own misplaced emphasis on loyalty to an elected official, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and by extension himself would seem part of the medieval formula and precisely that which personal and political insight would now do well to address.

My father spent 6 years in a communist prison, two years in solitary. Not two months, two years. Two years in a prison coal mine where each prisoner – hold on to your seats – without machinery or explosives was required by the communist wardens to break ten tons of anthracite off the coal face every day. But, a few years later, in the cold, cold autumn of 1956, something happened that was monumental. Not as monumental as Wednesday morning, but monumental. The group of young Hungarian students and manual laborers, believe it or not — quite a coalition, think about Wednesday. Yeah? Think about the blue-collar rural vote. Some students and some manual laborers decided to have a demonstration in Budapest, the silent demonstration. That silent demonstration devolved into the first freedom fight against communism, the October revolution of 1956, 60 years ago this year. As the result of that revolution, my father was liberated from prison by a revolutionary commander who had captured a Soviet tank.

Frontpage.  “Sebastian Gorka: How We Defeat the Global Jihad: The ISIS threat in our midst and a plan for victory.”  November 30, 2016.

Posted by The Majority Report With Sam Seder, February 9, 2017.

There has been an incredible amount of interest in “our” Sebastian Gorka. I say “our” because Hungarian Spectrum was the first internet site to deal at some length with Gorka, who, by the way, is turning out to be a much more important character in the Trump White House than we first realized.

It was on January 31 that I wrote “Sebastian Gorka’s Road from Budapest to the White House” and on February 2, “Sebastian L. von Gorka’s encounter with the Hungarian National Security Office.” Subsequently, with the help of Eli Clifton, who wrote a fascinating article titled “Why Is Trump Adviser Wearing Medal of Nazi Collaborators?” I ascertained that I was wrong in assuming that the “v.” in Sebastian L. v. Gorka’s name stands for “von.” I came to the revised conclusion that the medal on Gorka’s “bocskai” is the symbol of the “vitézi rend” or “Order of Heroes” and that the “v.” stands for “vitéz.” Clifton’s article is a real gem, which should be read by everyone who wants to know more about Gorka’s right-wing roots.

Balogh, Eva S.  “Donald Trump’s Influential Advisers: Sebastian and Katharine Gorka.”  Hungarian Spectrum, February 13, 2017.

Related

Balogh, Eva S.  “Sebastian Gorka’s Road from Budapest to the White House.”  Hungarian Spectrum, January 31, 2017.

The White House’s omission of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in its statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day raised objections from Jewish groups across the political spectrum but the Trump administration’s combative defense was perhaps the most surprising move by a presidency facing record low approval numbers. Last Monday, Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka refused to admit that that it may have been poor judgment not to specifically acknowledge the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust.

Gorka was an odd choice of proxies for the White House to put forward in defense of its Holocaust Remembrance day statement.

He has appeared in multiple photographs wearing the medal of a Hungarian group listed by the State Department as having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Clifton, Eli.  “Why is Trump Adviser Wearing Medal of Nazi Collaborators?”  LobeLog Foreign Policy, February 12, 2017.

On February 7, 2017, Gorka asserted that the White House would continue to call all media criticism of Trump “fake news” until the media let go of its “monumental desire” to destroy the President.[26]

&

Gorka is a member of the Order of Vitéz (Vitézi Rend), an hereditary order of merit which was founded by Miklós Horthy in 1920.[29][30][31] Although required to list and renounce his membership in the Vitézi Rend, an order prohibited along with other Nazi-linked organizations, on his N-400 Application for Naturalization in 2012 when he sought U.S. citizenship, Gorka appeared on FOX News on Inauguration evening dressed in the uniform and wearing the badge, tunic, and ring of the Vitezi Rend.[32][33]

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

What editors and writers seem to be detecting in their presentation of Sebastian Gorka is a latent fascism that would appear to mirror Moscow’s character.  As much surfaced with Trump’s choice of Paul Manafort, consultant to Ukrain’s corrupt and piratical Viktor Yanukovych (among other of the world’s dismally kleptocratic personalities) as a campaign manager.  By now, the White House should be figuring out that it needs to change public perception of its own authoritarian bents or continue eroding the confidence of the electorate, and that across Party lines.

Founded by Sebastian and Katherine Cornell Gorka: Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security

Harris, Ben.  “Trump Aide Sebastian Gorka Calls Criticism of Holocaust Statement ‘Asinine’.”  Forward, February 7, 2017.

Clifton does not bother to report why the order was awarded then, or even why the “Hungarian diaspora” existed in the first place; he shows no interest in the order as an anti-communist symbol, merely noting that the Soviets banned it.

And of course Clifton offers no evidence — none at all — that Gorka, or his antecedents, had any kind of empathy for the Nazi regime or its views.

Clifton could have consulted Gorka’s book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, to know more about his background. His father grew up during the Nazi siege of Budapest and later joined the anti-communist resistance. He was betrayed by Kim Philby, a British double agent for the Soviet Union, arrested and tortured.

Pollak, Joel B.  “Fake News: Media Smear Sebastian Gorka as Nazi Sympathizer.”  Breitbart, February 14, 2017.

Gorka says journalists have deliberately misrepresented Trump’s intentions, and that on occasion it provides comic relief at the White House.

“I come in every day and with my colleagues we have a good old laugh because we open the newspapers, the ones that are supposed to be the leading authorities in America, and they write about issues where we were in the room the day before, and their reportage has absolutely no resemblance to what is actually happening inside the White House,” he says.

Gorka says the White House is not in disarray and denies its officials are sending mixed signals on policies including Washington’s stance on Ukraine and Russia. But contradictions are apparent.

PRI.  “Breitbart alumni shape the message at Trump’s White House.”  February 7, 2017.

Posted by Fox Business February 7, 2017.

Generally speaking, “If it bleeds, it leads” has been the working rule in journalism, but if nothing much happens — perhaps as when the FBI publicizes a sting — it may well be met with a shrug.

One may flip the question and leave it rhetorical: what conflicts and acts of terror (on BackChannels, “Allahu Akbar Attacks”) have the major media overlooked?

https://youtu.be/k-a7Y-6nM9E

Posted by AfterPod on February 8, 2017.

Related Reference

McKew, Molly.  “Putin’s Real Long Game: The world order we know is already over, and Russia is moving fast to grab the advantage.  Can Trump figure out the new war in time to win it?”  Politico, January 1, 2017.

Reaboi, David.  “In Hungary, Sebastian Gorka Fought and Tried to Undermine the Anti-Semitism of the Far-Right.” PJ Media, February 28, 2017.

–33–

United States of America – Basic Training

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green, United States of America

≈ 44 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

President’s Oath of Office

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

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

Oath for Civil Servants

I, AB, do solemnly swear(or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Oath of Office (for other than the President of the United States of America)

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

“I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.” (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

In Congress, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article. I.

Section. 1.
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section. 2.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section. 3.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

. . . .

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

The U.S. Bill of Rights

The Preamble to The Bill of Rights
Congress of the United States
begun and held at the City of New-York, on
Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Note: The following text is a transcription of the first ten amendments to the Constitution in their original form. These amendments were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the “Bill of Rights.”

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript

Old history.

The eyes cloud over with impatience!

So what about now?

“Now” is about the abandonment of America ideals, principles, and values based largely on mutual partisan demonizing, “Brown” or “Red-Green”.

Americans should focus on extremism itself, their own foremost where the same appears in evidence.

–33–

Module: ABC’s Trump Interview on January 25, 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 1)
President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 2)
TRANSCRIPT: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews President Trump

Experience the interview first — no filters, no judgments, no intermediaries — just you, the media consumer, and President Trump and ABC anchor David Muir.

Not thirty seconds into the interview, Trump answers a question about being changed by becoming President: “I can be the most Presidential person ever other than possibly the great Abe Lincoln . . . but I may not be able to do the job nearly as well if I do that.”

Huh?

If the President does not intend to be the “most presidential” President ever — or at least up there with the finest and most fondly remembered of American Presidents — then what is that aspiration?

Ten days ago, chess champion and Kremlin critic Gary Kasparov posted on Facebook this excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 1855 “Letter to Joshua Speed”:

lincoln-quotation

There’s Russia again – and the mention of its frank despotism.

About eight years ago, Andie Brownlow writing for the conservative American Thinker (August 30, 2009) had this to note about Soviet-style ideological subversion:

The point of this “Ideological Subversion” was to weaken an enemy country, strip its culture and corrupt their values to a point of complete vulnerability. Mr. Schuman describes it as:

[An] overt…slow process…[to] change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.

The first step, Demoralization, has already been completed in America and continues to perpetuate itself. The Obama Administration policies are accelerating the second step of Destabilization and rapidly approaching the third phase of Crisis.

As you have read, Brownlow, opining in 2009, had taken aim at the Obama Administration!

The Trump Presidency has arrived, and the laudable and scrupulous Big Press, the majors, are hot with articles on the President’s ego and the Administration’s credibility and integrity in its discussion and presentation of information.

From historical experience, the business — it is a business, and one particularly loathsome and pernicious! — of messing up someone else’s “information space” may be characterized as part of Soviet KGB “Active Measures”.

Has that been happening here in the United States?

Has Moscow had a hand in it?

Have we through our own now immense and unfettered online press — and may it be always so! — been doing it to ourselves in the cause of being strident enough for obtaining notice?

Perhaps the answers don’t matter so much.

At base, the only issue having to do with the national experience of media involves the popular and professional assessment of the credibility and integrity of information encountered.

BackChannels could promote an opinion, and perhaps has, but would rather the BackChannels reader take patient time to look into the matter as well and form some new opinion about both the Marxist-Leninist mission of the former Soviet Union and, now one month more than 25 years later, the ultra-nationalist imperialist mission of today’s Russian State — and then ask where Trump has positioned, or may position, the United States of America in light of that well-remarked — and by no less than the great President Lincoln himself — habitual Russian despotism.

–33–

FTAC – Trump and America’s Broadest Divisions

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I’m not going to jump all over Trump’s case. We in the United States have become a deeply polarized people given to extremes.

The general layout:

“Brown” – New Nationalism – Conservative – Far Right

“Red-Green” – Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists – Far Left

Neither “Brown” nor “Red-Green” should be defining classically liberal American politics, but those color codes have made deep inroads into both of our political parties, and that’s leaving the middle and moderate ranks anemic, or at least looking so.

I’m remaining stuck in the middle!

🙂

As always, and also, I want to follow what actually happens over a little bit of time — the famous “First 100 Days” may do — before becoming strident about predictions — and I hope never to confuse “political conservatism” with “conservatism in research”, i.e., careful data collection and thoughtful analysis over time.

BackChannels does not want to practice writing the same article over and over; however, with repetition of some ideas comes increased compression for the same.

If nothing else, this post — and this blog — advocate for empiricism and high integrity in journalism matched by some breadth in knowledge and insight.

Critical reading and reasoning abilities also count in the politics we American have either dealt ourselves or allowed to overtake us.  If en masse we’re subconsciously intent on becoming, keeping, or aligning ourselves in brutal, vicious, and vulgar mobs, then power may become the permanent province of an immensely wealthy business and political elite, i.e., our democracy will simply melt away into just another authoritarian, capricious, feudal, and spirit crushing nightmare.

–33–

FTAC – Russia’s Hack, Meddling, and Control – Believe It

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

America’s law enforcement, intelligence, and military communities — the foundations of America’s national security complex — have long established and maintained themselves as the best in the world.

This is not a partisan issue — and it very much has to do with how the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, the practical translation of our Constitution into law, and the security of our Bill of Rights have been passed from one generation to the next. To believe or even propose that your FBI or DHS or other national security institution has lied to you beggars belief.

Perhaps Allen West understands that patriotic vigilance, now well alerted by so many “Allahu Akbar” terrorist attacks, may also spin into national paranoia.

For those feeling somehow good about Moscow:

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

Do the reading on the Cold War; have a good hard look yourself at the “Moscow Apartment Bombings“; then have a look at ISIL in Syria — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/ — and, oh, with a few minutes for examining the Russian economy, ask yourself: is Putin’s Moscow what you now admire?

I’ve added the URLs back to the above plain text, so it was really left up to Facebook readers to depart from laziness and embark on some research of their own.  It’s a shame, but those pointing the finger and calling others “sheeple” would seem often those who need to point that finger back at themselves.  On the Russian hacking scandal, those defending President Elect Trump’s rejection of firm intelligence findings — again: from the best services in the world — have already swallowed Putin’s poison.

Breaking Reference – Fast Links

The FBI confirmed last night (Friday) that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered a campaign to interfere with the US presidential election. He acted in order to promote US President-elect Donald Trump by blemishing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s name.

http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news/world-news/around-the-globe/putin-interfered-with-us-presidential-election-25800 – 1/7/2016.

–33–