Tag Archives: despotism

Hungary Goes That-A-Fascist-Way – Washington “Canaries” Chirp Warnings

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Hungary, Politics, Regions

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Citing as models Singapore, China, India, Turkey and Russia, Mr. Orban added: “We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society, as well as the liberal way to look at the world.”

The Hungarian leader traced his extraordinary conclusion to the global financial crisis, which he said had exposed the weakness of Western societies and mandated “a race to invent a state that is most capable of making a nation successful.” He was particularly scathing about the United States, claiming that “the strength of American soft power is deteriorating, because liberal values today incorporate corruption, sex and violence.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hungarys-illiberalism-should-not-go-unchallenged/2014/08/16/b2dc72d4-1e5c-11e4-82f9-2cd6fa8da5c4_story.html – 8/16/2014.

3. Call German Prime Minister Angela Merkel
to discuss a) Greek political and economic
conditions, as well as the need for Troika
policies to blunt the suffering caused by
austerity and to defuse the appeal of
extremism; and b) coordinating policies on
Hungary.

4. Instruct the Director of National Intelligence
to investigate allegations of Russian and
Iranian financial or other support of
European far-right parties and present a
classified assessment of whether the
Kremlin is attempting to use such parties to
undermine the European Union or thwart
further NATO expansion. Release an
unclassified version to Congress and the
public.

5. At the North Atlantic Council meeting at the
2014 NATO Summit, express concern
about the rise of neo-fascist parties in
Europe and its impact on security and good
governance in NATO member countries and
the strength of the Alliance. Instruct the U.S.
Ambassador to NATO and senior military
officials to raise these concerns—especially
with regard to Hungary and Greece—with
their European counterparts.

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/HRF-report-We-Are-Not-Nazis-But.pdf – August 2014.

Off-the-cuff and fast blogging brought “canaries in the cave’ to mind, but in actuality the editorial board of The Washington Post and the downtown think-tank Human Rights First have voices far greater than metaphorical canaries in coal mines.  However, as with the lesser birds, they are both sending a warning and should be heard loud and clear.

When referencing “the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei”, I had for a while to note the other axis of power that was Putin-Yanukovych.  Yanukovych’s now long gone from Ukraine (online, we are all living dog years [more animals, egads]) but the principle remains: the despots know how to gang up on the democratic among souls, and in league, they are force with which to be reckoned.

I wonder if in Syria, Bashar the Butcher al-Assad didn’t give al-Nusra and the young ISIS a break in order to clear the field of the moderate and ensure his war would leave one despot, preferably himself, or another standing, which would suit defending the indefensible principle that is “political absolutism”.

Regarding Iranian and Russian sabotage, potential or real, of NATO, a review of Turkey’s position in relation to fascist Islamism and the Islamic State, which is using for its headquarters Turkey’s embassy in Mosul, Iraq, would seem also in order.

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Aside

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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Our “malignant narcissists” — self-aggrandizing, grandiose, messianic personalities who prize for themselves the absolute control of others (like that dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”) — work hard to script and limit the intellectual experience of their marks. They do that by producing with force (intimidation) and wealth a pervasive information environment around themselves and in foreign states an alternative press, which is really their press.

When next we see a “Gaza Flotilla” or an “Apartheid Week” demonstration, it’s worth giving some thought to the character in personality involved in the mounting of the same.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve seen coordination lists for the kind of “actions” that “make the news”.  There’s nothing spontaneous about them or actually mysterious as regards the motivations for involvement.  The argument is only about power, not actually doing anything for anyone, and just back of that argument are despots and fascists who through their rhetoric convey perhaps love and family (of a sort) to those who would and do follow them.

However, the history of the same follows a familiar program, and none should be surprised by either the accumulation of wealth or ruin brought to others attending the life of, say, a Mugabe, the junta in Burma, a Putin with a “mafia state”, a Khamenei, a Khaled Mashaal (worth billions of dollars today), and so on.

The despotic tend also to be demonic.

Assault videos posted by ISIS online become their own reflection: in essence, they put on display exactly what they look like.

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FTAC – by Tanit Nima Tinat – A Comment on Tyrannies

22 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Poetry, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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People, eventually will unite against any form of tyranny and dictatorship, be it religious fanaticism or other forms- as they did against puritans and the dictatorial rule of Oliver Cromwell, who was known as : a self-styled Puritan Moses-in England, the copy of which exists in Iran, the so called Khamenei; who ironically refers to himself as Supreme actually, and so on. However, it is the actual people of a country themselves that have to bring about and cause a democratic government rather than an outside force. This might be the main reason for people criticizing America, or any other country’s role for that matter, in terms of interfering in their internal affairs. Many Iranians, on the other hand, and here’s the irony; actually criticize America and other countries silence during the bloody green revolution that took place in Iran a decade ago and was against the tyranny of Ahmadinejad.  They see America’s indifference to that secular movement as a green light to the continuation of the so called Islamic regime, which is not far from truth.

A big thank-you to my social network friend Tanit Nima Tinat.

My two-cent riff in reply —

The assumption that “regime change” and revolution may in order would seem to include the presumption that the change brought is what the people really wanted.

Americans have repeatedly given “blood and treasure” in the name of democracy and freedom for others, but once produced, whether in Iraq or in Afghanistan, it would seem up to The People and their own ethical and moral backbone to secure benefits obtained.

That may sound good to the ears, but the realpolitik of place includes themes not addressed by merely taking down a government.

Whether one speaks of Hamid Kharzai in Afghanistan or Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, one confronts the sways of loyalties against the possession of integrity and merit, and the resulting nepotism undermines “equality, fraternity, and liberty” — and security most of all.

In the people, one also encounters various attitudes toward authority, which in the west turns up often skeptical and questioning, but elsewhere may be cowed or ingrained when it comes to obedience before the powerful.  Such observation brings up the arch comment, “With democracy, people get the government they deserve!”

Of course, from the perspective of Christian-Greco-Judeo-Roman esprit, people may get worse than what they might be supposed to deserve.  Some Germans may have well deserved Hitler, for example, but what Hitler brought to Germany and what Germans were made to suffer at his hands and then at the hands of the enemies made sails beyond comprehension.

And what to do about The People, many for whom the cleric’s words are yet today received as if from God Almighty himself?

Such faith — or fear, laziness, or weakness — makes obedience blind.

Note: in the Torah, while God sets out a test for Abraham, the purpose of the test is never defined, and the vaunted “test of obedience” may well have been equally a more a “test of conscience”, which Abraham fails.

Divine infallibility — caliphate, empire, kingdom, or papacy — ought to be left to just one indefinable, unreachable, irreducible, nearly inconceivable entity or symbol: God.

All else — and all others — are mortal.

If a constituency must assert, declare, and support a divine alliance and avatar with taxes, then perhaps too it should keep itself invested in its own freedom of conscience and armed with countervailing power as well.

Earlier today on Twitter, I asked in regard to Syria’s agony, “Who defended the humanity in the middle?”

Bashar al-Assad had an army; the al-Qaeda affiliates are armies: who was there to defend the interests of the happy homeowner?

For a while now, I’ve suggested that for the purposes of analytical political psychology, Bashar al-Assad and al-Nusra in Syria are of the same malignantly narcissistic personality: different talk — same walk.

With ISIS on the move in Iraq, the ability to entertain and perhaps recognize this thesis may be crucial to the future economic and spiritual well being of the large population beset with murderous forces all around them.

In effect the Islamic Small Wars may be reduced to the The Despotic vs The Democratic — and in realpolitik, absolutists and extremists against everyone else.

Whatever the despots win, they really do not give a shit about anyone, much less everyone, else.  In fact, everyone else exists to serve them, adore them, aggrandize them. die for them, and generally keep them (and their families and favored old friends) in wealth and power beyond measure.

Remember: they are the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei, and together they are defending absolutism.

ISIS is defending that too.

Where the people have bought into what those people are selling, they’re done.

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Unfreedom – Saudi Arabia – Daddy Dearest

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Saudi Arabia

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Many Saudis have stopped expressing their opinions in such public forums as Twitter and Facebook and have chosen instead more guarded options, such as Whatsapp, Telegram and Path. The stranglehold on expression of dissent makes the future of Saudi Arabia more difficult to read. Diminishing freedoms and security to publicly discuss issues facing the country has made the reality on the ground more volatile.

Al-Nafjan, Eman.  “Saudi activists ‘hibernate’ after series of arrests.”  Al Monitor, May 15, 2014.

Eman Al-Nafjan also edits Saudiwoman’s Blog, where the above quotation and the article that conveyed were found.  In fact, I had been looking for something else: comment on the confinement and starvation of these two women, daughters of King Abdullah:

http://youtu.be/VI44jJSjc_U

* * *

The silence of the world is deafening, as they issued orders to starve us. We were prevented from going out to buy food and water on March 17th, our heavily guarded bimonthly outing. They prohibited home delivery as well; the person trying to deliver food and water was threatened to be jailed should he attempt to return. Food will soon run out. We are on one meal a day, surviving on some expired food and distilled seawater.

Wickham, Daniel.  “An Interview with the Imprisoned Daughters of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.”  Muftah, June 2, 2014.

Related: Finley, JC.  Saudi princesses held captive in royal compound for 13 years appeal for release.”  UPI, March 13, 2014; Brown, Stacy.  “‘We are hostages’: A Saudi princess reveals her life of hell.”  New York Post, April 19, 2014; CAMERA.  “Saudi Games of Throne, and Slaves.”  June 3, 2014.

Eventually, of course, one wants to see the compound, the women, and the King in person.  🙂  The UPI story (March 13, 2014) begins with appropriate ascription: “The ex-wife of Saudi King Abdullah is claiming the king has imprisoned her four daughters — Saudi princesses — in a royal compound for the past 13 years.”

The ex-wife: Al-Anoud Daham Al-Bakheet Al-Fayez.

At the moment, the tweets are flying across the Twitterverse, and even though this post has been viewed from Saudi Arabia about 16 times since publication (update: June 5, 2014), one worries over the fate of the women involved.  In fact, I’ve been asking myself, where are the (conservative, humanist, liberal, progressive) feminists?  They should be all over this story.

Update February 23, 2015

Was the story ever true?

Is it not true now?

I can’t make that call from a remote computer; nor, perhaps, could the call be made where political life is influenced by show business, “political theater”, deception, put-ons, appearances.

As happens with blogs, there are many of these now on BackChannels, links disappear (“link rot”), and videos once useful become inaccessible.  Accounts close.  Somebody changes their privacy rules.

Feudalism gains sway riding the back of darkness.

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FTAC – A Note on Perceiving Hillel the Elder and Encouraging Greater All-for-All Inclusion in Global Politics

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Religion

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“All for All” is a better deal the “All Against All”.

The spirits of each monotheist construction — taken as divine, oral history, written history, scholarly poetics, etc. — have each their ways of talking out of both sides of their mouths.

In the bloody American civil war, both sides held their Bible high.

To help everyone get off the self-destroying triangle and on to a better interlock (I’m about to change the popular perception of the Star of David, lol), I refer often to the intellectual who challenged, revolutionized, and revitalized the Judaism of his day and whose thought set the stage for Jesus, Paul, and Constantine and later Muhammad: Hillel the Elder.

http://www.amazon.com/Hillel-Not-When-Jewish-Encounters/dp/0805242813

I can take myself — mind and spirit — more deeply into this area only with funding that covers the specialization, as much in this area (reading-writing) and other parts of my life absorb greater time and energy. So far, we don’t have robust mechanisms for getting beneath independent scholarship. So I’m kind of stuck. Nonetheless, I hope a few will venture into Hillel’s thought not merely as a rabbi but a mortal “Everyman” of his era intent on developing wisdom within the sphere of divinity, as the conversations we have with one another may be also perceived as part of humanity’s great conversation with God, nature, and the universe.

Our survival as a species may also encourage greater emphasis on greater bonding over universalized principles and values, e.g., “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” against those who would degrade or negate them.

Such has been part of my reasoning when aggregating “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” as a unit representing autocratic absolutism that by its nature indulges in and promotes kleptocratic state-exploiting and state-based theft serving the grandiose aspirations or needs of the “great leader”.

Dictatorship.

The bands of this theme, the despotic vs the democratic, the malignantly narcissistic vs a still boisterous humanity but one capable of containing itself and keeping itself within bounds as regards the exploitation and subjugation of others, are global.

Putiin-Assad and others at polar extremes have wanted to cast their conflict set as “secular vs religious” or, in their own eyes, perhaps, “Heroic Secularism” vs “Heroic Religiosity”.

That’s a small war, generally, and for many reasons having to do with the appeal of the cause and true motivation of the individual.  In light of such, I’ve called the current set of conflicts infused with religious dogma and confused by it “The Islamic Small Wars”; however, the same may not comprise The War — shall I type “The True War”? — which is the defense of a varied humanity overall — a creative and gregarious species supporting about 6,980 languages and the cultural perception and self-concept each represents — from greater subjugation by the despotic through he set of mafia-type methods and systems — first, they make you shut up (state control of the press): then deceit, flattery, intimidation, patronage, and murder — that produce and sustain idolatrous totalitarianism.

That’s the bare bones script I see.

The story to come is what the reader writes in the course of the political aspect of his living.

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FTAC – A Note Near the Antagonist’s Corner of the Humanist Intersection on the Web

08 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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It’s not Israel, R. A portion of Hamas went to fight with al-Nusra in Syria in keeping with their interests as Sunni Muslims. Also, Hamas, along similar lines, lost a part of the faith invested in it by Ayatollah Khamenei . . . and then, because they had felt their interests aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they lost that too when the people of Egypt (in overwhelming millions on the streets) won their plebiscite and looked to the Egyptian military to intervene.

Along with the adjective, agitprop, and all that early learning, I want to suggest that real independent journalism, from Fox to Mother Jones, seeks factual data to report with reflection and honesty. It takes a dose of paranoia from elsewhere to view “9/11” as an “inside job” or Hamas as a “Zionist invention”.

The central fact about the Jews is their refusal to accept authority at face value and without insight and to then search for knowledge and insight about humanity every day, if perhaps using the Torah as a basis that works — but it never works without argument, commentary, additional research in every realm — or these days an actualizing psychology (Maslow) or an ethical humanism (Hillel to Adler). Either way, trust a Jew to support others in their development, culturally, individually, according to the unique (and wonderful) qualities of each.

That is something narcissists, who are busy with themselves, either don’t care to do or don’t know how to do: they’re better at exploiting others. Putin-Assad-Khamenei, bound together in Syria’s Civil War, have the qualities of malignant narcissists (http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1). One might add to Khamenei, “Khamenei-Nasrallah” — and what they do themselves, they will tell you the Jews do, Israel does, the west most of all: except the criminality they complain about is not that of the Jews, Israel, or the west: the accusation is the project of what is in themselves and has been allowed or enabled by fate and a vast ignorance. And fear.

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People who care about people, or say they do, carry their prejudices with them, and that perhaps often with anti-Semitism foremost.  The above note, which by the time I got to it seems to have been off-topic, addresses the ad hominem attack rhetoric that passes for thought in some places.  At the end, it found its way to the Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation that provides despots the language leveraging tool to launch arms against the innocent and unprepared.

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FNS – Ukraine – Get Ready

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Fast News Share, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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http://youtu.be/bGEZzZUDKGw

NATO calls on Russia to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine – YouTube

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Note: undated references are current within 24 hours.

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PEREVALNE, Ukraine (AP) — Warning that it was “on the brink of disaster,” Ukraine put its military on high alert Sunday and appealed for international help to avoid what it feared was the possibility of a wider invasion by Russia.

Outrage over Russia’s military moves mounted in world capitals, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling on President Vladimir Putin to pull back from “an incredible act of aggression.”

Associated Press

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“This is not a threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my country,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said in English. Yatsenuik heads a pro-Western government that took power when the country’s Russia-backed president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted last week.

Ukraine mobilizes after Putin’s ‘declaration of war’ | Reuters

Related: Ukraine mobilizes troops after Russia’s ‘declaration of war’ – CNN.com

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Of potentially even greater concern are eastern swathes of the country, where most of the ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as a native language. Those areas saw violent protests on Saturday, with pro-Moscow demonstrators hoisting flags at government buildings and calling for Russia to defend them.

Ukraine mobilizes for war, calls up reserves

Related (2/28/2014): Crimean crisis: Russia holds most of the power against Ukraine

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Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a press conference that Russia should pull back its forces and refrain from interfering elsewhere in Ukraine, according to Reuters. NATO is urging the two countries to seek a peaceful resolution through dialogue.

Secretary of State John Kerry — who is heading to Kiev on March 4 to meet with representatives of Ukraine’s new government — has called Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine “an incredible act of aggression” and said Putin has made “a stunning, willful” choice to invade another country.

Putin defends Russia’s response to Ukraine crisis as gunmen surround military bases | Fox News

Related: Secretary of State John Kerry vows visit to Kiev as Russian forces surround Ukraine military base in Crimea – NY Daily News: “A second administration official indicated that the U.S. was not weighing military action to counter Russia’s advances, saying the Obama administration’s efforts were focused on political, economic and diplomatic options. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the situation and insisted on anonymity.”

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Ukraine, as a whole, is going to move fast.

The Bear regards the old system of buffers as its own, but it has a remarkable failure going in Syria.  That President Vladimir Putin pumped $52 billion into the Winter Olympics at Sochi while pledging $10 million for humanitarian relief in Syria has not gone unnoticed — nor have election shenanigans, the Night Wolves, allegations about “mafia state” and “fragile empire” — and all will reflect poorly on his sense of responsibility to Russians and to others.

However, Ukraine is also a borderland naturally spanning a cultural divide between Europe and Eurasia, between the politics of the now open democracies and their common currency and shared values and a stalwart attempting to build some kind of new Slavic society out of the 19th Century manners of aristocracy, now an energy-fueled oligarchy committed not only to its survival but the survival of Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei, a veritable arc of despotic displays of power.

While Syria has become a battleground squeezing out Syrians as casualties and refugees between despots, Ukraine’s democratic revolutionary opposition to despotism has its feet and spirit planted against the “vertical of power” in Moscow.

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As Russian forces seize key objects in Crimea, their objective is not just to create chaos in Ukraine but also to protect kleptocratic rule in Russia itself.

Russia and Ukraine under Yanukovych shared a single form of government – rule by a criminal oligarchy. This is why the anti-criminal revolution that overthrew Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych is a precedent that is perfectly applicable to Putin’s Russia. It is also the reason why, from the Russian regime’s point of view, the Ukrainian revolution must be stopped at all costs.

Ukraine’s Revolutionary Lesson for Russia – The Daily Beast

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Perhaps the last time the Russian intelligentsia watched the internal struggle in another country this intently was in 1968 during the Prague Spring, when they hoped the Czechs would succeed in building what they called “socialism with a human face”. They also believed it would hold out the promise of something better for life in the Soviet Union. In August 1968, the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, quashing the Prague Spring. In Moscow, seven people came out to protest against the invasion; they were arrested and the modern dissident movement was born.

Most Russians believe the Crimea is theirs – Putin has acted on his belief | Masha Gessen | Comment is free | The Observer – 2/1/2014.

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“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ‘high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. Palin was resoundingly mocked by comedians like Tina Fey and eggheads for saying in 2008 that Alaska’s proximity to Russia forced her to deal with foreign policy issues just like George W. Bush said thatTexas’s proximity to Mexico compelled him to deal with Mexico when he was governor of Texas.

Sarah Palin on Ukraine: I Told You So – 2/28/2014.

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On Russian propaganda: StopFake | Fighting untruthful information regarding the events in Ukraine

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