Tags
decency, democracy, dignity, freedom, New Years Day 2023, Ukraine, western civilization, Zelensky
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“We Are All One Family” — #Ukraine #NATO #Europe #Democracy #Freedom #Western Civilization — Stand!
01 Sunday Jan 2023
Tag Archives: freedom
We Are The Free People of Independent Ukraine
24 Wednesday Aug 2022
Tags
freedom, Freedom from Corruption, Freedom from Dictatorship, Freedom from Mafia, Independence Day Ukraine, Ukraine Independence, Ukrainian Independence
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COVID-19: Enslavement Through Peonage
19 Tuesday May 2020
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, COVID-19
Inspiration for this post —
Well, Mary Papenfuss, this old liberal too will call the protesters Great People, for they have been long the backbone of this Great Nation, the builders in the workplace, the fixer uppers at home, the great energy and muscle that builds America and renews her every day. Start with Whitman and wind it down in the vicinity of Studs Terkel: wherefore your contempt for the hard working men and women of the United States?
I’m aware of potentials for class resentment once involving education, income, and shoe polish (perhaps) and the general demeanor and plumage of the wealthy, but who are you talking about — and to whom are you speaking — these days?
These very fine people who have worked their asses off to hold their place in America, specifically to keep a roof over their heads and their families safe, and own some part of what their labor built in freedom — or investments acquired — have suddenly been introduced to absolute power of the sort that may shutter their businesses by edict and throw employees out of their jobs without debate.
Perhaps they want their country returned to them.
My fear for America is the enslavement of Americans through peonage and the cultural, political, and spiritual degradation of ordinary Americans who may find themselves at the mercy of an economy that may not have much in store for them but addiction, crime, desperation, exhaustion, stress, and suicide.
While President Trump’s demeanor, history, and track record well reflect the interests of the most selfish among the wealthy, his intent to get America back to work (and into economic recovery) would seem agreeable even to old liberals.
Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/04/26/ftac-covid-19-on-the-hijab-of-health-fascists/
The raging public debate over statewide coronavirus lockdowns is running parallel to a series of legal battles in state capitals — and the lockdown skeptics got a big boost this week.
The decision by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to toss Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide shelter-in-place order set off a scramble in cities across the state to impose their own local restrictions. Elsewhere, bars and restaurants shut down by the order declared themselves open for business.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/17/democratic-governors-coronavirus-lockdown-legal-challenges-261428 (5/17/2020)
President Trump told governors on a conference call Monday that he “will step in” if the federal government disagrees with state reopening plans, as he largely expressed satisfaction with how the governors are moving to lift coronavirus restrictions in their individual states, according to a report.
Trump, whose administration last month revealed guidelines for when states should begin lifting stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures meant to slow the spread of the virus, has vocally pushed for the rapid reopening of the economy. The president said in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo last week that his critics want the economy to remain shuttered until the November election, calling Democrats’ reluctance to lift the coronavirus measures “a political thing.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-tells-governors-feds-will-step-in-if-government-disagrees-with-state-reopening-plans (5/19/2020)
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Active Measures
13 Thursday Feb 2020
Tags
Active Measures, authoritarianism, democracy, dictatorship, disinformation, freedom, integrity, medieval v modern, perceptual control, totalitarianism
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
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.
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.
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George Will: Independent
05 Wednesday Jun 2019
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.
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
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FTAC: Despots – Different Talks –> Same Walk!
05 Wednesday Sep 2018
Tags
absolute power, authoritarianism, despotism, dictatorship, dignity, freedom, humanism, malignant narcissism, political psychology
Different talks — same walk! When it comes to dictators, all are malignant narcissists.
Many want to keep repeating old arguments, especially, yawn, “communism v capitalism” but the truth is more like “sweet words — foul deeds”.
Add incitement, the role played by anti-Semitic cant and libel by despots through the ages.
In the eastern tradition too — I have in mind the Golden Horde — there appears to have been no difference in treatment between persons and property, and, in fact, for some (reference Richard Pipes books on Russian history) proof of sovereignty might be made to lie in the senseless destruction of either with impunity. And I would cite as another characteristic of the “authoritarian” breed the ability to visit suffering on others at will and with impunity.
On the street, they’re bullies; in office, presidents for life.
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Changing Time for All Time: A Note on Antietam
22 Sunday Apr 2018
Tags
American history, American values, Antietam, Antietam National Battlefield Park, democracy, equality under the law, freedom, great societies, greed, human dignity, human rights, integrity, liberalism, modern state, modernity, slavery, valour, Visitor's Center
Visitor’s Center, Antietam National Battlefield Park, Sharpsburg, Maryland, June 1, 2017.
For visitors from other lands, the small patch of Maryland countryside on which the center has been planted represents the beginning of the end of slavery as an institution in the United States of America. In one horrific days of battle, General McClennan’s forces pushed General Lee’s Confederate army from the field but left it also to retreat west across the Potomac River and thence to fight a long war that would end about where it began but with the moral vision and structure of the country forever changed in favor of equality under the law and “liberty and justice for all”.
It takes a long time to change men — and to change their attitudes and beliefs about money and about one another. My America remains a work in progress, but as long as the work hews to the liberal view of man and the earnest distribution of political power through democracy accompanied by integrity, I think we Americans — and everyone else — will continue getting better in the building or forming of greater societies.
Where we have let people down, I’m sure we are going to be made to remember it. Where we have helped people up, one may hope we’ll be remembered for that too.
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Ukraine – Westbound and Down . . . .
31 Wednesday May 2017
BackChannels 