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

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: Hezbollah

Lebanon’s Chief Threat: Hezbollah

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Regions

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hezbollah, Hezbollah designated terrorist organization, Hezbollah terror tunnels, IDF, Israel, Lebanon

This may not be what you expect to hear, but it’s the truth and it needs to be told. pic.twitter.com/pDvaa9GL7b

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) December 18, 2018

Lebanon deserves better than the war sustaining and warmongering of Moscow and Tehran.

For Israel, Moscow has had to be delicately handled, but BackChannels has over many years relayed some sense of Moscow’s endemic and deeply entrenched history of animus toward the Jews. Credit Stalin with picking up the relationships that Hitler and the Nazis could not hold at the end of World War II; credit Yuri Andropov with the airline hijacking of the 1970s beneath the banner of communist revolution on behalf of the Palestinian Cause; credit successive Soviet Era regimes with the abuse and captivity of Russia’s Jews yearning by the tens of thousands for freedom beyond Russia’s borders; credit Moscow today with the continuing diplomatic defense of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among others, that appear intent on bringing chaos and death to their own people as well as sustained impoverishment and political repression.

Tehran’s role in the stoking of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist hate needs little introduction. It’s deadly political rhetoric keeps spilling into related “field operations”. Not only Hamas has been building “terror tunnels”.

Posted to YouTube December 6, 2018.
Posted to YouTube December 18, 2018.


However, he said,  “the fact that the Lebanese army is doing nothing means that they are either unable, or unwilling, or both. It doesn’t absolve Lebanon’s culpability. Their territory is being used to attack our territory. Therefore, we hold Lebanon accountable.”

Netanyahu spoke immediately after IDF Spokesman Jonathan Conricus announced the discovery of another tunnel.

https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/announcing-new-tunnel-netanyahu-says-lebanon-responsible-for-hezbollahs-actions – 12/19/2018


“There is a clear line of communication between LAF elements and the terrorist organization; those elements help Hezbollah destabilize the region,” Danon said on Tuesday. “Under the Lebanese government’s watch, Hezbollah has created an entire network of tunnels and factories for precision-guided missiles; this is a brazen violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution but also endangers the lives of the residents of southern Lebanon, who are being used as human shields.”
Danon vowed that “Israel will act with force against Hezbollah and any other entity that tries to undermine its sovereignty.”

https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/world_news/israel-to-present-evidence-proving-lebanese-army-is-helping-hezbollah/article_6f90cb89-4135-5d2c-8b91-248709548a8a.html – 12/19/2018


An examination of Security Council Resolution 1701 twelve years later indicates that the key paragraphs, whose objective was to give full sovereignty over the country to the Lebanese government and to prevent the reconstruction of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, were not enforced by the Lebanese government and army. To replace the infrastructure damaged during the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah has constructed an upgraded, improved, more extensive infrastructure, centering around an arsenal of more than 130,000 rockets and dozens of precise missiles. Hezbollah’s arsenal threatens Israeli population centers and strategic sites. Hezbollah built its military infrastructure in the region south of the Litani River, embedded within the local Shi’ite population. Hezbollah’s weapons were smuggled from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, in direct violation of Security Council Resolution 1701.

https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/security-council-resolution-1701-systematic-violation-hezbollah-iran/ – 12/19/2018

Lebanon and its defense forces remain weak before Hezbollah, its sponsor in Tehran, and its armorer in Moscow.

While the Lebanese may prefer peace, this criminal rogue — see https://www.jns.org/justice-department-designates-hezbollah-as-transnational-crime-group/ from October of this year — has positioned the same for arms caches and slaughter.

Nice people.

Again, it appears today that Hezbollah fairly “owns” the Lebanese Army, which has become too weak to defend the better interests of the state.

–33–

FTAC: Lebanon – Iran: Cash – Arms – Trade

01 Saturday Sep 2018

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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

Inspiration:

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

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


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

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

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


–33–

Nigeria: ‘Fulani’ Herdsman, Razed Villages, Arms Running, Hezbollah, Even Turkish Diplomats –>

18 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Nigeria, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arms running, Fulani Herdsman, Hezbollah, Nigeria, rural conflict

BackChannels source this morning relayed the following from Lagos, Nigeria in relation to raids by apparent herdsman against largely disarmed villages.

  • Since the first of the years, source claims, more than 500 Nigerians have been slaughtered in raids and no arrests have been made;
  • The number of Internally Displaced Persons associated with the conflict exceeds 200,000;
  • The Nigerian government has been repossessing simple weapons from villagers while attackers typically carrying AK-47s surround their targets and destroy buildings and stores with burning petrol;
  • The complement attending raids may average about 100 or more fighters;
  • Source of arms: Libya, other Arab nations, and Turkey.

In 2013, news reports mentioned a Hezbollah cell and weapons cache in Nigeria; the latest weapons seizure of similar scale in 2017 appears to have originated through Turkish channels.

Although Fulani herdsman have been blamed en masse for the aggression noted, BackChannels has heard suggestion that the weaponizing may devolve to the same forces backing extremist organizations elsewhere.  The 2013 Hezbollah connection and the more recent 2017 interdiction involving Turkey would appear to support that thesis.

Recruitment into raiding units would also appear to correspond to conditions channeling fighters into rogue organizations elsewhere.

Dr. Omolade Adunbi, Assistant Professor, Political Anthropology, University of Michigan noted the following earlier this year in the publication Africa is a Country:  “The question then becomes, how are these insurgents with no clarity of purpose able to recruit members into their dysfunctional group? The answer to this question is not far-fetched. First, the effect of climate change on the rise of social inequality in many parts of the country has meant the increased susceptibility of socially vulnerable groups to recruitment.”

Related on YouTube

Posted to YouTube 3/28/2014


Posted to YouTube 1/11/2018


Posted to YouTube 8/2/2016


BackChannels can never “vet” these videos, but most recognize this conflict in Nigeria as involving cattlemen, basically, and farmers.  Less played may be the role played by religion in the conflict, which here has been made apparent:

Posted to YouTube 1/16/2018


Considering the 2013 Hezbollah weapons cache story, the latest interdiction of arms involving Turkish (criminal, of course) channeling, the claim of arms coming from Libya and more recent participation associated with Turkey and the activities of Moscow and Tehran in manipulating conflicts and extremism into existence (listen to the BBC interview of a once Soviet admiral on the Ogaden War), the drivers of this latest tragedy in Nigeria may start to surface.

Reference

Abiodun, Eromosele.  “Turkish Govt to Deal with Collaborators of Arms Shipment to Nigeria.”  This Day Live, September 27, 2017.  Denial —

The Turkish Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Hakan Cakil, in a meeting with the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), over importation of four containers of pump-action rifles into Nigeria in last eight months vowed to help Nigeria fish out criminals behind the illegal arms shipment to Nigeria.


Adunbi, Omolade.  “How did Fulani herdsmen become such bogeymen in Nigeria?”  Africa Is A Country, February 1, 2018 —

The question then becomes, how are these insurgents with no clarity of purpose able to recruit members into their dysfunctional group? The answer to this question is not far-fetched. First, the effect of climate change on the rise of social inequality in many parts of the country has meant the increased susceptibility of socially vulnerable groups to recruitment . . . .


Amnesty International: Nigeria 2017/2018.

Amnesty International.  “Nigeria: Dozens killed as military launches air attacks on villages beset by spiralling communal violence.”  January 30, 2018 —

On 4 December 2017, Nigeria’s air force sent fighter jets to fire rockets at villages as a “warning” to deter spiralling communal violence, as hundreds of herdsmen attacked at least five villages in Adamawa state to avenge the massacre of up to 51 members of their community, mostly children, the previous month in Kikan.

An Amnesty International team visited the villages in the aftermath of the air raids and gathered witness testimony from residents who described being attacked by a fighter jet and a military helicopter as they attempted to flee.


BBC News.  “Nigeria: Hezbollah armoury discovered in Kano city.”  May 30, 2013 —

The cache, including rifles, anti-tank weapons and an RPG, were found in a warehouse in the city of Kano, he said.

Nigeria’s State Security Service said they were intended for use against “Israeli and Western interests”.

BBC News.  “Nigeria: How Customs seize 1,100 guns for port.”  September 11, 2017.

BBC News.  “Nigeria’s Benue clashes: Mass burial after farmer-Fulani clashes.”  January 11, 2018 —

Mr Onoja, who was at the funeral, said 73 people were being buried.

He defended his state’s controversial ban on open cattle grazing implemented in November, which Fulani herders have complained targets them unfairly.

“Our economy in Benue State depends on agriculture,” he said. “Take that away and we have a serious problem.”


Come to Nigeria.  “Hausa and Fulani People”.


Eboh, Camillus.  “Nigeria says arrests Iran-linked cell targeting U.S., Israel.”  Reuters, February 21, 2013.

(Reuters) – Nigeria’s secret service say they have arrested a “terrorist cell” trained in Iran who planned to attack U.S. and Israeli targets in Africa’s most populous nation.

The State Security Service (SSS) said they arrested Abdullahi Mustapha Berende and two other Nigerians in December after Berende made several suspicious trips to Iran where he interacted with Iranians in a “high profile terrorist network”.

Inyang, Ifreke.  “No one can defeat us in Nigeria — Fulani national leader, Bello boasts.”  Daily Post, January 29, 2018.

The National Chairman of Fulbe (Fulani) Development Association of Nigeria (FULDAN), Malam Ahmad Usman Bello, has declared that they cannot be defeated by any ethnic group in the country.

Bello made the remarks while speaking with Saturday Tribune in Kano, amid the widespread outcry against the murderous activities of Fulani herdsmen in Benue, Plateau and Taraba states and many other parts of the country.


Sahara Reporters.  “470 Guns Seized at Lagos Port.”  September 22, 2017.

The federal government is set to meet Turkish diplomats today over the spate of illegal importation of rifles from Turkey to Nigeria.

Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Comptroller-General (CG) Col. Hameed Ali (retd) said this when he briefed reporters over the seizure of another 470 rifles at Tin-Can Island port in Lagos.

Sahara Reporters.  “Amnesty International Brands Nigeria’s Response To Fulani Herdsmen Violence Inadequate, Reveals 717 Killed In Less Than 2 Years.”  January 29 2018.

The body also said communal clashes have claimed over 700 lives since last year. AI made its position known in a statement issued on Monday. It stated that clashes between herdsmen and farmers in Adamawa, Benue, Taraba, Ondo and Kaduna states have resulted in 168 deaths in January alone.


Sahara Reporters.  “Fulani Herdsmen Kill 4 Soldiers in Garrison Commander’s Convey, Injure Scores in Plateau.”  March 17, 2018.

–33–

 

Also in Media: “Israeli Defense Minister Suggests Hezbollah Was Smuggling Chemical Weapons” | The Tower – 12/8/2016

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in Also in Media, Islamic Small Wars, Israel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Hezbollah, Israel, WMDs

Israel does not usually acknowledge foreign military actions, but Liberman told European diplomats Wednesday—the same day that the Mazzeh military airport near Damascus was reportedly hit by surface-to-surface missiles, and a week after two strikes elsewhere in Syria—that that his country was taking action to keep Hezbollah from acquiring “advanced weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction.” His latest comments to the Knesset seemed to suggest that at least one of the strikes was in order to stop Hezbollah from acquiring chemical weapons.“

Our policies and our positions are very clear and are based on three red lines: We won’t allow any harm to the citizens of the State of Israel, we won’t allow any harm to the sovereignty of the State of Israel, and we will not allow the smuggling of high-quality advanced weapons and chemical weapons from Syria to Lebanon for Hezbollah,” Liberman told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Source: Israeli Defense Minister Suggests Hezbollah Was Smuggling Chemical Weapons | The Tower

UAE Sentences Hezbollah Cell – Moscow-Tehran Promote Hezbollah

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Journalism, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, Russia, United Arab Emirates

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Moscow-Tehran, Totalitarian Theater of Realpolitik, UAE

The State Security Circuit of the Federal Supreme Court on Monday handed out varying jail terms to seven people for setting up a UAE cell of the banned Hezbollah group.

Three defendants were sentenced to life in jail, two got 15-year jail terms and two others were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The court chaired by Judge Falah Al Hajiri also sentenced leader of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood group Esam Al Din Al Erian to five years in jail, in absentia.

Al Zarooni, Mustafa.  “Group jailed for setting up Hezbollah branch in UAE.”  Khaleej Times, November 1, 2016.

According to political commentator with Russia’s Kommersant publishing house Sergei Strokan, there now exists a “Russia, Iran, Hezbollah military triangle” in Syria.

In a telephone interview with Al-Monitor, Strokan said, “Hezbollah can do some things that Russia can’t afford to do itself,” as putting “Russian boots on the ground [in Syria] is a subject of heated debate [within Russia].”

Rizk, Ali.  “The Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah military triangle.”  November 2, 2015.

Hezbollah can and has done more than put “boots on the ground” for Bashar al-Assad in Syria with the blessing of Moscow and Tehran.

Read the headlines (along with BackChannels):

USA Today – “Lebanon chooses a president supported by Hezbollah” – November 1, 2016.

The National Interest – “Lebanon’s New Hezbollah-Led Political Order” – October 31, 2016.

“Hezbollah-Led Political Order”?

Try again: Moscow-Tehran.

BackChannels knows the public, generally speaking, “sees” ISIL, not “Assad OR The Terrorists” AKA “Assad vs The Terrorist“.

And the public may read about Hezbollah in Lebanon with the shadow of the Ayatollah moving about in the background, but it may take more work to grasp how Moscow works with Tehran to elevate Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon while channeling its fighters into action in Syria.

Again, on general terms, the KGB Era catch-all “Active Measures” may preoccupy wonks — enthused amateurs and professionals in intelligence and foreign affairs — while barely signaling up through the background clamor set by the entertainment and sports industries.  As much — specifically, public ignorance of the mechanisms involved in the KGB-style sustaining of “political absolutism” (try using that one down at the bar) by way of a totalitarian approach to a political theater of realpolitik —  moves this chatter into more specialized but also open circles.

Related Reference

Fadel, Leith.  “Syrian Army, Hezbollah begin counter-attack in west Aleppo”.  AMN News, November 2, 2016.

–33–

FTAC – Narcoterrorism, Hezbollah, and Human Rights in a Nutshell

08 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Lebanon

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

fascism, Hezbollah, Islamofascism, Moscow, narcoterrorism, Tehran

“Narcoterrorism” is the term and a large part of what has become transnational crime.

From the blog some time ago: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/11/11/reference-pakistani-political-attitudes-taliban-arab-influence-heroin-cash-uae-and-the-marines/

This is the stuff of political thrillers in films and novels.

In general, both Hezbollah and Hamas may be interpreted as the advanced troops of Tehran as ultimately backed by Moscow. Again, the prize: political absolute power and destruction of democracies and the decimation of the concept — as demonstrated in Syria — of human rights.


Inspiration: The Jerusalem Post.  “Analysis: Hezbollah’s drug trail.” October 7, 2016.

–33–

Also in Media – “Israel’s Next Hezbollah War” – Philos Project – 8-12-2016

17 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, MEC, middle east conflict

Shaharabani said that the July 2006 Lebanon War “was the longest Israel had experienced since its War of Independence in 1948,” but any future clash with Hezbollah will make those destructive 34 days pale by comparison. According to his FDD coauthors, the Israeli government estimates that Hezbollah has approximately 150,000 rockets today as opposed to the mere 14,000 it possessed prior to the 2006 conflict. Writing for the Weekly Standard, Vanderbilt University law professor Willy Stern said that this gives Hezbollah a “bigger arsenal than all NATO countries – except the United States – combined.”

Source: Israel’s Next Hezbollah War – Philos Project

FTAC – The Medieval World’s Loopy Dead End

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Hezbollah, medieval vs modern

The Obama Administration has played the weak hand in relation to overt confrontations while possibly working behind-the-scenes to kick the legs out from under the should-be-defunct Soviet arrangements. As I don’t live “behind the curtains” — or the doors of the CIA, Defense Department, and State and other national security and defense elements — I encounter the news with an analytical bent that really can’t confirm nor deny American weakness in the encounters with serious challenges. Neither, perhaps, can America’s enemies produce better estimates, so it would seem. In the end, the despots, the commanders, and their generals wage bets with every act of war. For these, if they don’t aggress in the face of weakness, they’re pussies (sorry); if they do and have their asses handed to them (eventually), they’re gone but with some grudging respect for following orders and going over the cliffs together. It’s a dubious honor, but so many belligerent “Armies of God” seem so completely invested in the medieval beliefs and visions that serve their handlers that they have no exit into the modern world. War, in essence, becomes for Hezbollah and others a loopy dead end.


The 21st Century’s investment in total in feudalism may be immense: it goes far beyond Hezbollah and into any number of “state capitalist” dictatorships (whatever the “ism” they preach) and criminal enterprises.  Still, the medieval outlook and the barbarism associated with it, whether mafia, state mafia, or religious mafia, becomes less and less wanted given the modern tools enabling more fair distributions in power and greater security to the lawful through the earnest development and sustaining of “rule of law”.

Probably, the lands of the lawless have always to implode over internecine doubts, jealousies, suspicions, and rivalries.  The depth of their tragedies, whether of Hitlerian or Stalinist proportions, may be measured in the suffering in extent and time of the constituencies made to ride along with maddened power inherently inherently malign and narcissistic.


The prompt was a comment suggesting Hezbollah’s possession of Syrian chemical weapons stocks, an issue that had been in the news in 2013 and appears more recently in The Wall Street Journal (July 23, 2015): http://www.wsj.com/articles/mission-to-purge-syria-of-chemical-weapons-comes-up-short-1437687744

Other of the Morning’s Remarks

Promotion of the Shiite vs Sunni feud promotes the medievalism endorsed by Putin, Assad, Khamenei, and Baghdadi whose own positions rest on sustaining political “absolute power” (dictatorship) for themselves!

From the modern and perhaps outside perspective, the medieval worldview brings its horrors to the surface in continuous and unresolvable conflicts. The medieval order has become today a ceaselessly demonstrated death machine.


With comparatively less headcount, a solid foundation in a single ethnolinguistic cohort, and thousands of years of varied history, the Jews have unhappily but successfully ejected much of what failed them over the years — animal sacrifice may serve as a convenient symbol of the abandonment of priestly magic. When the near 0-CE Hillel makes principle ascendent over ritual and works to improve convert access to Judaism, the religion “tails forward” (my opinion) to the Ethical Culture Movement associated with Felix Adler. It’s not the end of the story, God willing, nor a story about the abandonment of Judaism, but it is a story about staying the same and changing at the same time. Some beliefs, ideas, and rituals have well stood the tests of time, and time may disappear altogether between the lighting of the Sabbath candles between millennium.

The Qur’an’s promotion of the authoritative voice and injunction may make movement away from the medieval world more difficult. What I witness (by having been here day after day for years) are the channels, trials, and errors of a community that plainly will not travel further with the Muslim Brotherhood’s (et al.) guidance, but how people deal with Bad Baghdadi and similar others seems varied. Atheists, “apostates”, converts, modernists, reformists — everything but barbarians, and the barbarians (that go off to join ISIS or knock around in the killing fields — and the odd bombing — with Hezbollah) may be setting themselves up for slaughter. Many things will be tried as the future gets under everyone’s feet (as it apparently has in Egypt) and we hope a few things will work and peace will prevail between the “Abrahamic religions”.

Re. Obama: I don’t know that region that is “what’s really going on”, but it appears evident that Obama wants the world to police itself because he has most of American military policy focused on acute issues (like ISIS in Iraq) and covert and policing this-and-that in Somalia and other places where efforts only occasionally ping the headlines but have to have been continuous for those headlines to appear.



&

https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/short-and-pointed…/

Re. Arafat to Abbas — we may go back to the start of the KGB-generated PLO: https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/quote-manipulation…/

Re. Islam: it appears to have an issue with Baghdadi, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood Organizations, and with the medieval troika Putin-Assad-Khamenei — but ALL of that involves a potentially archaic feudal world from which modern souls should and do wish to depart. Getting more people across that bridge may be what the modern world needs to do to survive itself. However, that world appears flanked by two “superpowers” — Russia under Putin’s aegis and a China that straddles the medieval and modern worlds with the appropriation — via investment — of western assets and continuing “state capitalist” / political elite control of its nation, which might serve to keep away chaos from 800 million residents of the state.

Re. Trump: he’s a businessman, not a politician; he’s a pretend “tough guy”, a poker player, not a statesman; and I believe he’s ill-educated for leadership in the foreign policy of the United States. The world is not a China shop, but he’s a bull in it nonetheless and in need of a completely different education to come up to speed.

******

Israel’s a strong state in command of its own defenses and related defense doctrine. However, as life need not be always a competition between similar entities, comparisons involving the cliches of Israeli prowess and Arab ineptness seem to me always questionable as well as certain to induce jealousies and resentments.

Immediate Arab states of affairs start with much greater populations and a more challenging melange of environmental and social themes. While the Hebrews have forged their lives apart, a kind of breakout or breakaway from despotism and disorder, Arab leaderships — and the latest suffered by the Persians — have wrestled long with systems of patronage and repression that have alternately kept the lid on darker forces or let them out, a bipolar political swinging fit to the medieval world that the modern might strive to attenuate but with a node for the scale and scope of the effort.


The BackChannels editor may cover a lot of topics in a day, but all talk and no reading (or play) makes for a dull pundit.  More importantly, the greater the familiarity with political material, the stronger the need for more in-depth reading, other research, and talk, and that and other interest may slow the feed to this blog.

China’s martial ambitions have come up in social network chatter, of course, and that world too, this despite decades of development, investment, and trade, appears to remain committed to its possession of medieval absolute power and the related military force required to first defend it and then expand its influence and reach.  The prompt for this note, which was made on the morning of January 8, 2016, was a January 7 article in the National Interest describing Chinese-Pakistani sea exercises involving submarines in anti-submarine warfare drills:

When you look at any state-of-the-art military machinery, you’re seeing the result of a long forward-looking process that started with talk, got the design bench, won funding, and produced a small industry in supplier contracts. In part, the incessant preparation for war _across the spectrum_ helps keep war in abeyance and the process of its part in aggression slow. Still, that process is there.

What I find frightening is after so many post-Nixon years of expanded investment and trade, the Chinese communist talk (despite all the mansions of Melbourne, AU sold to elites — plus ownership of the world’s largest bank) hasn’t changed a jot. Back-Channels observation of the defense of medieval political absolutism in relation to the Moscow-Damascus-Tehran axis of power may well apply to Moscow-Beijing. With Putin perhaps the Baghdadi of despotism, these old familiars may well be ganging up to force the United States and the world to accept what Assad plus the invasion of Crimea represent to Europe and the United States: i.e., the will of the despotic to impose themselves on the world at any cost to humanity.

If the United States had gambled on money as being the first principle of power, it appears to be losing its own shirt. Indeed, while the west has been kicking the legs out from under the old Soviet order (Moscow-Damascus-Tehran), a part of the arrangement may well be kicking back, and for the west, the distribution of money through constituent populations count for much more than it appears to in Moscow and Beijing (where Russian and Chinese development may be traded off for the ambitions of imposed military power and subsequent plunder, which may be the point of that power for those leaders).

# # #

← Older posts
  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

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

Recent Posts

  • Reference: Journalist, Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm In Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings
  • Among the Twitterati: Answering Russia’s Big Lies
  • FTAC: Moscow Suffocates the Palestinians
  • Sudan: Burhan’s Choice
  • Sudan’s Civil War: Smuggled Sudanese Gold Funding Russia in Ukraine
  • Tweets Enshrined: Compressed Political Poetry

Categories

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

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

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

Organizations

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

Meta

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

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

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

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

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

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

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

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

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

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

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

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

Abraham Isaac Kook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

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

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

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

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

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

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

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

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

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

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

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

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

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

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • BackChannels
    • Join 353 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar