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Tag Archives: information

FTAC – A Note on ‘Trump – Manafort – Millian – Kilimnik’ and the Irrelevance of Old News

25 Friday Nov 2016

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

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21st Century Feudalism, information, journalism, politics, time, Trump-Manafort

In paraphrase, the prompt was how would Hitler have been viewed if he had not produced the genocide of the Jews of Europe, i.e., The Holocaust.


Hitler would not have been Hitler without the ‘racial” foundations of Nazism already laid through the 1920s.

I’ve noted only recently the near concurrence of Stalin’s installation as the leader of the Soviet Union, the establishment in 1928 of the Muslim Brotherhood (in response to western colonial abuses, but also accessing religious supremacist thought in defense of Egyptian Muslims), and the already-built intellectual ferment — papers circulating in universities — for Nazism.

I have tried venturing toward the kind of conversation Stalin may (!) have had with Hitler in the course of coming to a delusional agreement over the parsing of Europe between them and then Hitler’s treacherous move against the same.

It’s too soon to draw the comparison “Stalin : Hitler” as “Putin : ? ”   , but that there is a conversation between feudal powers may be something that cannot be either doubted nor overlooked nor in content — i.e., what’s the story behind the public’s glimpses of Manafort, Millian, and Kilimnik? — known.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-ukraine-kiev-russia-konstantin-kilimnik-227181

What appears to my _imagination_ is a conversation involving medieval lords and their knights, who are today well paid “nobility” suited up in suits and carrying briefcases full of explosive agreements.  

From the Politico article:

Joking aside, Trump has demonstrated more interest in Russia’s affairs than in perhaps any other area of foreign policy. And his laissez faire approach toward Russia’s confrontational relations with its neighbors, combined with his open admiration of its authoritarian President Vladimir Putin and his employment of Manafort, have led experts from across the political spectrum to predict that a Trump presidency would augur to the Kremlin’s benefit.

How far passed is the election season “past” as America moves toward the inauguration of its new President?

The conversation prompted here is only quasi-public or constrained by the social distribution chosen for the original topic post. Therefore, we may be of the public, but we may also note in passing that this now old “Trump-Manafort” news has been discarded from the public conversation.

As news, it’s old news.

As a theme (for foreign policy wonks) it may remain relevant, but as much becomes a conversation between specialized journalists and researchers, and therefore politically irrelevant.


The public will rush on to the next day’s headlines, and the same will overlay, blanket, and suffocate the previous day’s curiosity and its items of interest.

The powerful and wealthy of the world have always inhabited a world greater than their own family, clan, tribe, and nation-state: whether Chinese political elites or Forbes-listed billionaires, the world has no boundaries and its laws must suit them for them to keep them, provided, lol, they keep a lot of other interested parties — above the table and quite some distance beneath it — interested in their success and largesse.

–33–

Link

31 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions

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anti-Semitism, Hamas, information, Israel

Using the UK as a case study, Ms. Phillips addressed the prejudiced attitudes towards Israel from both Muslims and left-wingers and so-called liberals before criticizing the UK Jewish community for failing to respond adequately and preferring to keep their heads down.

She also criticized Israel’s failure “to grasp that information is a strategy of war on the battleground of the mind, and a strategy that has been used to enormous effect against Israel, and against which it doesn’t even seem to know that it is fighting.”

http://honestreporting.com/melanie-phillips-calls-for-new-strategy-to-present-israels-case/ – 8/31/2014.

FTAC – On Global Conflict’s Edge

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

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

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dictatorship, Far Left, information, political, politics, propaganda, rhetoric, totalitarianism

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yuri-Bezmenov/46501554141 Sign on. 🙂 Not quite everyone’s on Facebook, especially if they’re wanted (by INTERPOL) or popular in some heavy (as in the 1960’s “heavy, dude”) way, in which case they may be found at their university or think-tank address.

What’s interesting here, perhaps, is watching this edge in conflict surface, a conflict between the criminally deluded and utterly dishonest and the victims and targets of that form in political delusion and dishonesty.

Related: Yuri Bezmenov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; (1) Yuri Bezmenov (Facebook).

Video one-of-nine about control of political language:

Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press 1/9 – YouTube – 1/5/2009.

From the above-cited personality page for Yuri Bezmenov:

Yuri Alexandrovitch Bezmenov (1939 – 1993) is a former KGB propagandist who was assigned to New Dehli, India, defected to the West in 1970, and was interviewed by Edward Griffin in 1985. Bezmenov explains his background, some of his training, and exactly how Soviet propaganda is spread in other countries in order to subvert their teachers, politicians, and other policy makers to a mindset receptive to the Soviet ideology.

* * *

Not so oddly, I spent the morning watching Gene Hackman and Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Then after brunch this cold rainy day turned to Facebook where I had a message waiting from a correspondent in South America noting the Far Out Left’s desire to destroy Israel. My response to that:

Far Left: thieves.

I’m a liberal socialist.  Correa and I would probably understand one another.

These guys of the Far Out Left seem descended from the 1970s. Time Warped. Everyone’s a Carlos wannabee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal

If he / they didn’t have a convenient political lingo, he / they would be — and have proven so — dumb criminals.

The world faces stark choices as regards the political kleptocrats (sometimes, when I’m feeling jazzy, I call them “kleptocats!”) we have come to know and sometimes love — for being too easily charmed — as dictators, but when you watch what they do to constitutions, courts, and laws, then to men — old ones too, and women and children — in their unbridled ambition for absolute control over others, you know that the war “over there”, or perhaps the one you’re in, is no longer a lonely war but rather a war — sub-state, transnational, global — neither contained nor isolated.

* * *

Often for revolutionaries there are two wars: one rages outside of the person, the other rages within.

* * *

My South American correspondent acknowledged (and here I quote with light editing for style), “many studied in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with scholarships.”

Such would be at least in their 40s — it has been more than 22 years — and in the prime of their programming.

Others, say the first to rifle through abandoned STASI offices in defunct East Germany, may be in the prime of their counter-programming program, and I should think them today an unknown quantity in the former Soviet empire.  Perhaps they too will surface in the coming days, weeks, and months.

# # #

Syria – Actionable

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Syria

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chemical attack, conflict, democracy, free press, information, journalism, money, politics, press, propaganda, subjugation, Syria

Speaking after U.N. chemical weapons experts came under sniper fire on their way to investigate the scene of the attack, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the use of chemical weapons was undeniable and “there is very little doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime is culpable.”

Wroughton, Lesley and Erika Solomon.  “Syria chemical weapons attack: Kerry accuses Assad of ‘a moral obscenity’.”  Chicago Tribune, August 26, 2013.

Russia has no evidence of whether a chemical weapons attack has taken place in Syria or who is responsible, Russian President Vladimir Putin told British Prime Minister David Cameron in a telephone call, according to Cameron’s official website.

Tehran Times.  “Putin to Cameron: No evidence Syria chemical weapons attack occurred.”  August 27, 2013.

* * *

Syria stinks.

Not only does Syria stink for Syrians — keep in mind this latest imbecility takes place in a war zone that has killed more than 100,000 and displaced upwards of four million souls — but it envelopes everyone with a hand in it.

Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the US think tank the Heritage Foundation, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Monday that in response to an attack on their Syrian ally, Russia could “expand supply of dual use nuclear technology” to Iran as its nuclear energy company, Rosatom, is anxious to sell more reactors.

Solomon, Ariel Ben.  “Expert: US-led attack on Syria may lead to increased Russian cooperation with Iran.”  The Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2013.

Let’s do business, shall we?

* * *

Because that’s what Syria’s about.

I happen to have the audacity to think the west wants to earn back some part of its investment in oil; Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey would seem to want to expand the Sunni side of the Islamic enterprise in the middle east; Israel could do with a weakened Iran-Hezbollah-Syria structure on its flanks; and God bless him, truly, for Christian Russia, President Vladimir Putin wants to use Iran’s errant ambitions to keep an old Soviet Era cash machine (we could call it “Cash Mir”) chugging along, Ayatollah –> Assad and Associates –> Post-Soviet, Neo-Oligarch Russia.

It wasn’t a chemical warhead that took lives in the Damascus suburbs last week.

It was the money.

Follow it from Doha to Moscow on its twinned tracks and you will have the outline of the implosion I might just refer to hereafter as “Syria Dark Star”.

Two of the world’s three most powerful states have a business interest in their relationship with the Assad regime.

Analysts say both China and Russia have their reasons to maintain good relations with Syria.

Russia is one of Syria’s biggest arms suppliers. And China ranked as Syria’s third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission.

Yan, Holly.  “Why China, Russia won’t condemn Syrian regime.”  CNN, February 5, 2012.

What is the effect of that, information-wise?

In one video appearing in an alternative or dissenting context in World Net Daily (WND), you will see a frame referring to Saudi Arabia’s “Saudi Factory for Chlorine and Alkalais” (Sachlo) in relation to last week’s chemical attack — again: follow the money and do note, please, the production values — the addition of music and titles to what should be as straight as timely documentation gets — on two of the three videos promoted.

What’s true?

What’s not true?

The money is true — and the reportage may be consigned to following state presentations.

The sucker punch is NATO vs. Russia all over again but for no good reason apart from from the ginning of foreign trade receipts.

It’s business.

Conscience has no role in it.

With China perhaps fat, smiling, and unperturbed, that same money will loan out to the United States and others who will happily accommodate this absurd state of affairs between themselves.

As the chips make their way around the Grand and Global Poker Table, all that will be missing comes to (green shades on and lick the nub of the pen) about 355 souls permanently and about 3,245 incapacitated or traumatized souls.

BBC.  “MSF-backed hospitals treated Syria ‘chemical victims’.”  August 24, 2013.

* * *

One has to ask of conscience and desire: are the worlds now “imaged” by CNN and RT — presented to us with many questions left unasked — anything like a world in which one should want to live?

The early 2010 “Question More” advertising campaign created for RT in Britain by McCann Erickson was highly controversial.[33]One advertisement showed American President Barack Obama “morphing” into Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asked: “Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?” The ad was banned in American airports. Another shows a Western soldier “merging” into a Taliban fighter and asks: “Is terror only inflicted by terrorists?”[34] One of RT’s 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising “Ad of the Month.”[35]

Wikipedia.  “RT”.

CNNi’s pursuit of and reliance on revenue from Middle East regimes increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships. It thus pursued all-new, journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from governments around the world. Bahrain has been one of the most aggressive government exploiters of the opportunities presented by CNNi.

Greenwald, Glenn.  “CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news.”  The Guardian, September 4, 2012.

The human rights-oriented modifications that may come to autocratic states will neither bring to them nor emulate democracy.

That’s life.

However, bending and twisting it some in journalism to suit The Money — yes, you have just been dragged from chemical weapons reports into international trade and on to integrity in journalism (even from my Second Row Seat to History) — will erode and eventually destroy democracy.

American conservatives know the litany: “Without the First Amendment, all of the others are useless.”

Add to it: without a press free of all but ambitious good conscience and readers, there will be no freedom.

Only political programs and programmers — God give them all the money they want because on this most dismal, obscene, and tragic of today’s war stories, The Money would seem the hidden alpha-omega of all motivation, coverage, and presentation — and the feckless programmed, which would be everyone else.

Additional Reference

CBS/AP.  “Fearing a U.S. strike, Syria warns of global ‘chaos’.”  August 27, 2013.

Corsi, Jerome R.  “Evidence: Syria Gas Attack Work of U.S. Allies.”  WND, August 26, 2013.

CNN Press Room.  “CNN International’s Response to the Guardian — Update.”  September 5, 2012.

Whether with CNN or RT, we have journalists working in the vicinity of the wheels of history, which for this BackChannels post seems to be a Qatar-backed Sunni-NATO alliance helped into being by the need to address the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran that is in turn supported, in part, by Syria’s geopolitical view and Russian greed (we know for Putin that cooperation is not about the endorsement of Shiite Islam as laid down by Ayatollah Khamenei).   While that plays, the journalism story plays too, for whether in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere in the world authentically or nominally subscribed to open democracy, if one cannot trust the main run of journalists to report “accurately, clearly, and completely” — add “relentlessly” — on the stories of their day, then one returns to subjugation, and whether with such power cloaked in the name of God or for the cause of Gold makes not the least difference.

Eltsov, Peter.  “Putin Stumps for the Orthodox Church in a Film Celebrating the Kievan Rus Anniversary.”  The Atlantic, July 29, 2013.

Keath, Lee and Zeina Karam.  “Syria Chemical Weapons: UN Inspectors Probe Allegations of Nerve Gas Attack.”  Huffington Post, August 26, 2013.

Stack, Liam.  “Videos Show Aftermath of Possible Syrian Chemical Attack in March.”  The Lede, The New York Times, April 25, 2013.

Walker, Peter and Tom McCarthy.  “Syria: US secretary of state John Kerry calls chemical attack ‘cowardly crime’ – as it happened.”  The Guardian, August 26, 2013.

# # #

For Pakistan – A Note on Empiricism, Obscurantism, and Justice

02 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Journalism, Pakistan, Philosophy

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commentary, empiricism, information, journalism, justice, Kainat Soomro, obscurantism, political, politics

If they are hiding the truth, it would seem both self–preservation and loyalty keeps the lock on closed mouths.

If they are hiding nothing, then their names in the world find themselves attached to a libel that cannot be disproved.

The miracle of contemporary justice is that by design it serves neither plaintiffs or accused but rather the greater public interest in knowing the truth of a matter.


To shift from complaining about bad deals, injustice being the rawest of them, to doing something about them, the parts of the world steeped in propaganda and rumor and subject to deep wells of missing information will have to wrestle with the development of systems dedicated to that most public form of knowing with something approaching certainty: empiricism.

Since 2007, Kainat Soomro’s story, that of a 13-year-old girl allegedly gang raped by four men in her village, Dadu, rural Sindh, in Pakistan, has been making the rounds of the civil to conservative press.  For complaining by way of alleging the crime, Kainat became the target of so far threatened “honor killing” while two of the men of the family, the father and a brother, refusing to abide barbaric custom (by killing her themselves) have been beaten and an older brother murdered.

In “Outlawed in Pakistan” the related documentary appearing on PBS, an older brother says, “They said, ‘You failed to follow your traditions.  You failed to kill your sister.  You should have followed our customs . . . .’   I got really angry.  But my dad said that we do not follow the gun culture.  We are educated people and we will get legal help.”

What would the law do when the process of the law has stopped at the precinct desk?

Police and prosecutors in more developed and stable systems — also far less squeamish and defensive– would have been quick to investigate the allegation of rape for proof the crime took place, a procedure so common and familiar that the field has established kits and methods (see “What is a Rape Kit?” posted by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) ready as part of the police and investigative service response at the moment of complaint.

Pakistan’s tribal councils, to which such a complaint may revert, appear to have nothing similar of an empirical — also ethical and humane — investigative method: what they have are elders lost in their own heads.

Kainat and her family seek justice.  “We want them to get punished through the courts,” she says, “so what happened to me won’t happen to someone else’s daughter” (10:12 in the documentary).

The men involved have denied the crime took place.

If they are hiding the truth, it would seem both self–preservation and loyalty keeps the lock on closed mouths.

If they are hiding nothing, then their names in the world find themselves attached to a libel that cannot be disproved.

The miracle of contemporary justice is that by design it serves neither plaintiffs or accused but rather the greater public interest in knowing the truth of a matter.

* * *

At about 22 minutes into the documentary, one sees what happens in the absence of an empirical forensic process.

On Kainat’s complaint, the men have been arrested, held in jail without bond and an uncle and assorted fellows from the village have shown up angered and loud.

Madness!

Then comes to light a little more to the story: a marriage contract, pictures of the couple.

Kainat’s claim: made and recorded under duress when she was thirteen years old.

“If I wanted to marry, I would have told my dad,” she says.

* * *

Let’s go back over this experience I’m having from my “second row seat to history”.

Forensics in a Developing State

While Kainat may be taken at her word, and one wants to do that, neither the word of the complainant nor that of alleged perpetrators mean much absent of observed physical evidence — photographs of bruises, blood chemistry analysis (if the complainant was drugged as claimed), semen scrapes and  DNA comparisons, even circumstantial evidence of struggle — where are Kainat’s shoes?  What happened to her scarf?

It turns out some medical examination took place, enough to confirm intercourse, but examiners and police dropped the ball for lack of interest in the claim and, with reference to DNA matching, lack of resources.

Both the PBS documentary and greater public interest in the case tell us something not said: everyone involved — claimant, defenders, lawyers, villagers, courts, and police — know the forensic issues, and would that I had known that before starting this post.

Social Practices, Morals, and Values

This is where the partisans, either side, power up for confrontation, and first and foremost by keeping stories of outrageous miscarriages of justice before the eyes of the peers.  Let’s go with the accusers on this one, but with a question not likely asked in Pakistan: even if Kainat agreed to be married or played along genuinely lustful, being of age for that, as “wedding pictures” suggest, what is any adult involved, especially the cleric — I don’t want to call to him through the search engines, but his name appears at 32:36 –who facilitated the marriage, doing abetting that contract without the consent and presence of a parent!?

The cleric says he was not aware of her age, “And she looked 18.”

The age of independence sufficient to enter into marriage in Pakistan is 16 under secular law.  Under sharia, the earlier passage into puberty suffices, and the sharia trumps secular law.

Conservative Propaganda

That a 13-year-old child may be injudicious or manipulated in such a way as to alter the character of her life for a lifetime — and in this instance alter her family’s way of life as well — seems to me the most opprobrious aspect of Kainat’s case.

However, close by that may be the kafir conservative’s ambitions to conveniently ridicule Islam and its medieval vision supported by myriad subcultures rather than dig down into each separable core transformative issue and lay it out.

Here, from the western perspective, Kainat’s ordeal involves simply the vigorous and timely investigation of claims involving criminal behavior and, unbelievably, the recognition of childhood and adolescence and the development of laws appropriate and protective of the interests of each and of the surrounding community.

Indeed, the sharia, essentially 7th Century law, has failed, both by tainting Kainat (until she finds herself in the larger world where what’s past is past — and please, dear, get on with living) and detaining the defendants in jail for four years without decision.

Probably, in the political environments of the kafir, the case would have been dismissed for lack of evidence on the first day but the entire matter brought to the legislature with legislators forced to think (for once) with modern comprehension and conscience about what their laws were doing to their young.

* * *

What may and should come to pass,  this through the will of Pakistan’s educated — and one may hope for the application of the will of similar others in other places — is the development of greater and more timely forensic capability and responsibility throughout police and court operations.

Add to that an open discussion about the utility and wisdom of sharia law where it involves relations between young but older men and 13-year-old girls.

Reference

Frontline.  “Outlawed in Pakistan.”  Video (53:39).  PBS.

News Desk.  “Outlawed in Pakistan — Kainat Soomro’s story on film.”  The Express Tribune, February 7, 2013.

Oppenheim, James.  ”When the Second Row Seat to History Ain’t So Hot.”  BackChannels, June 5, 2013.

“Outlawed in Pakistan (Video).”  Huffington Post, May 29, 2013.

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.  “What Is A Rape Kit?”

War Against Rape – Pakistan NGO

FTAC – A Note On Democracies

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

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

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democracy, information, interpretation, investigation, journalism, politics, research

The audience for this sort of verbose Facebook posting has its concerns focused on Pakistan and its getting its act together.

I’m of the mind that there are no silver bullets in the architecture of governance as regards managing human energy, intelligence, and the myriad cultures and societies that come of both, but many things may work in a good direction, and democracy provides a great gauge of the character of the people (in place and time) and a responsiveness to that character that can be progressive in terms of “Qualities of Living” across a constituency.  Even so, with Germany’s stunningly regressive election of Hitler in mind and so many contemporary “President for Life” in offices worldwide, the People can turn themselves into Lemmings too and from there find themselves captives again to one sort of autocratic nut case or another.

Verbatim From The Awesome Conversation (FTAC):

Democracies only give voters a chance to change the personalities representing them (which leads to the arch saw: “In a democracy, people get the government they deserve”). The participatory format is not the quality of the government created, but it is progressive and responsive by way of the expressed character, needs, and wants of the culture represented.

Power and the powerful ferry a built-in issue with information that is exacerbated by conflict: how much can and should a government or leader share with “the little people”? Add beneath that the slush and sociology of everyday lobbying in other sectors. Constituents of the open societies get some fight-back from a slew of organizations and professionals who for many reasons investigate every inch of the political machinery in sight and then some.

While political candidates play up access and transparency in the process of selling themselves and their programs to voters, the truth is even the most open societies — perhaps the most open societies — are loaded with closed doors. The private side floats on a sea of proprietary information and relationships somewhat nailed down by confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with associates and staff; the government at the higher levels may similarly share out information for the lay constituent but sewing up the more specialized details and issues in their own circles; and, of course, at the highest levels, a few words in a closed room, bureaucratic back-channels . . . there’s plenty for imagination.

In the U.S., we can vote presidents out of office after their first term, and the system retires them after two terms, but we cannot see but in small fragments the full weight of continuing relationships and prior agreements bearing down on those who assume office or rise to chair critical committees. In essence, for example, the public can “see Libya”, the end of the Qaddafi era, the advent of a proto-democratic society, but it cannot see the CIA, illicit arms deals, the complete social layout of revolutionary militia, etc. — all those items the province of established, specialized, institutionalized government.

In God we may trust, but for government we want as honest, unfettered, and skeptical and dogged a press and research community as can be funded out of private pockets in the general interest.

A dark space by cultural measures may be so either because of the boundaries, limitations, and qualities of the language attending the experience of living within the cultural mind or by way of the qualities of information available and accessible (!) to a culture.  Consciousness of states-of-affairs may involve not only having good data — cogent, valid, reliable — at hand but also having a honed abstract, imaginative, and value-oriented processing facility within the mind, and that too may have a cultural complement.

FTAC – Pakistan – Fast Note – Integrity in Information – Generalists and Governance

11 Monday Feb 2013

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

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dark regions, information, intimidation, journalism, journalists, murder, Pakistan, politics

Information possessing integrity may be Pakistan’s most critical missing piece between the feudal (and obscure) and modern (and open). Getting there, unfortunately, may involve the good — the most sound, the most righteous — fighting for every inch of carpet pulled back and curtain pulled aside. Some motivation may come from the polls, some from personalities already in place and fed up with some things they may have seen or that are bothering (leveraging) them personally, but however it happens, the bringing of more things to light, factually and in reportage, in information open to challenge and further investigation, may spell an end to many things.

As regards management, I’m inclined to agree with F. as regards the want of “bigger picture” generalists at the helm, but perhaps the “generalists” themselves need to be formed to fit the ends of the meshing of the various moving parts within their assignments. Getting improvements in Qualities of Living — physically / materially ; psychologically / spiritually — have a foundation in spatial relationships, and as much takes some brights to manage or produce or enable a whole and healthier human ecology.

While the flow and sensibility of my prose may be easily approached, such falls also too often into regions of the mind where it is much easier to imagine a better world, provide guidance to it, and avoid looking at those nasty gremlins crawling around the space and known as “facts on the ground”.

“We talked about ways to confront the dangerous conditions facing Pakistani journalists. It was a bad year: Seven journalists would be killed before 2011 concluded, making Pakistan the deadliest nation in the world for the press. The year before, eight had died.” [1]

Pulled from an interview with a Pakistani journalist, Ayesha Haroon, who was to be subdued by cancer, the statement only hints at how bad the record has been for journalists in Pakistan; in fact, according to the Center to Protect Journalists, some 51 journalists have been killed in relation to their work since 1992, and the coverage of politics, war, and crime account for about two-thirds of that grim news. [2]

The latest, Mirza Iqbal Hussain, caught the second bomb in the combined suicide and car bombing of a billiards hall in Quetta.  CPJ lists two other journalists killed in the same incident and one other journalist killed in another incident of similar “double-bombing” kind.

Fifth on CPJ’s list, Rehmatullah Abid seems to have been directly targeted — “Unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle killed Abid in a barber shop in Panjgur District, about 375 miles . . . from Quetta . . . .” — in relation to his reporting on the Balochistan Conflict.

In such ways, I suppose, “dark regions” remain dark.  (In fact, a “dark region” is an information concept: it could be a thug’s backroom in any city as well as a locale distant from consolidated military and police operations.  It could be a bureaucracy too — any place where the cards cannot be turned up by the public’s “trusted others” — journalists, in general; appointed official investigators who enjoy the imprimatur of a free and informed electorate).

Working down CPJ’s list, one finds possible dual or triple motives for the offing of Abdul Haq Baloch: one journalist submits that Baloch had been threatened by a state-sponsored militant army; another route: rebel armies upset about their exploits being ignored (!); and yet another path: a government cover-up involving missing (Baloch) persons.

From a related article:

“The latest victim of the violence against independent media in the area – Abdul Haq Bloch – was the Secretary General of the Khuzdar Press Club. He was a great source of inspiration for his colleagues and his violent murder has affected his community members quite deeply. The intensity of the panic amongst local journalists can be gauged from the fact that many of them decided to leave Khuzdar along with their families soon after the burial of their friend, Abdul Haq Baloch, in the evening of September 30th.” [3]

Intimidation works, unfortunately, and it takes a government — a very good one — to turn around to face criminal violence, investigate it thoroughly and to conclusion, and to mete out to murderers their name and their due.

(I’ve just sent a note to an associate asking about security in regard to covering government agencies and operations in Pakistan.  I’m looking forward to hearing back on that).

Now continuing to crawl down CPJ’s list, I find myself going back to January 2012, more than a year ago, to find a conventional, however, reprehensible listing of a murder.  Of Mukarram Khan Aatif, a Taliban spokesman said the journalist had been warned “a number of times to stop anti-Taliban reporting, but he didn’t do so. He finally met his fate.”

We in the west expect to read that kind of a statement.

It fits with what we know we know.

Two more stops down (the list is teaching me to set aside the Baloch theater as a separate variable associated with the killing of journalists), one finds a murder more associated with mainstream politics: “Shahid Qureshi, who also wrote for The London Postwebsite, told CPJ that he and his brother had received death threats from men who claimed they were from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement political party, or MQM.”  Faisal Qureshi had edited a a web site, The London Post, that was, according to CPJ, “widely recognized as anti-MQM.”

Also possibly more in context with Jihad vs. anti-Jihad thinking, and, finally, possibly involving the state, this lead packages the murder of Saleem Shahzad: “Shahzad, 40, vanished on May 29, after writing about alleged links between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s navy.”  Shahzad had also written a book with a dangerous title: Inside the Taliban and Al-Qaeda; and he had complained about receiving threats from intelligence officials.

Cited Reference

1. Dietz, Bob.  “Remembering Ayesha Haroon, editor who embraced facts.”  Committee to Protect Journalist, February 7, 2013.

2. Committee to Protect Journalists.  “51 Journalists Killed in Pakistan since 1992 / Motive Confirmed”.  Current to January 10, 2013 as I type.

3. Capital Talk.  “The tragedy of journalists in Balochistan.”  October 6, 2012.

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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.
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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.

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