“Iraq . . . only its shell remains” – Kurdish Major General Aziz Weysi Bani

09 Tuesday May 2017

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

Tags

cultural coherence, cultural self-determination, developing democracy, ISIS, Kurdish community, Kurdistan, middle east politics, neo-feudalism, neo-modernity, Peshmerga, political coherence, post-Soviet politics

Posted by Clarion Project, May 9, 2017.

BackChannels has repeated made the case and point that ISIL had been incubated — protected early on from annihilation — by Assad’s preferring to fight the west (and democratic liberalism in the distribution of power) first at the outset of the Syrian Tragedy, and that decision had been flanked by Moscow and Tehran.

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

By electing to make the primary enemy “The West” and only halting the advance of al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda-type organizations at critical points, Bashar al-Assad created conditions in which the true terrorist opposition could gather and grow. While Syrian forces were creating the horrific conditions that would spur the influx of jihadists into Syria while also inducing mass displacement and migration, it turns out that Saddam Hussein’s old Baathist officer corps had in mind some similar ideas regarding their own lives as puppeteers.

Haji Bakr was sent by the group into Syria in late 2012, as a part of a tiny advance cluster, with the mission to help plot out the steps for the emergent “Islamic State,” to capture as much territory as possible in Syria, and from there to launch an invasion back into Iraq. Haji Bakr settled obscurely in the small Syrian town of Tal Rifaat, north of Aleppo, where he put his immense knowledge of Saddam’s intelligence and totalitarian practices to work, charting out the invasion of Syria and emergence of the “Islamic State”—plans that were later meticulously carried out by ISIS.[17]

Haji Bakr was killed by a Syrian rebel group in 2014,[18] but not before he had transmitted his knowledge and intelligence plans learned inside Saddam Hussein’s former totalitarian regime to the nascent “Islamic State.” The documents he produced, discovered after his death, consist of 31 pages of handwritten organizational charts, lists, and schedules, all of which describe how to step-by-step subjugate a nation.

http://www.icsve.org/research-reports/the-isis-emni-the-inner-workings-and-origins-of-isiss-intelligence-apparatus/ – 12/3/2016.

It is into this greater intersection between “east and west” — actually: feudal dictatorship and western democracy — that the pro-democratic talking Kurdish presence and armed Peshmerga have emerged as forces for modernity.

Given, perhaps, that few in the general public get this far into the machinery of war, it’s possible that “Moscow-Tehran” and “baby Damascus” (between them) may now engage ISIS . . . more sincerely, with Moscow recovering some face and flexibility for doing so. As much may account for the Peshmerga’s wishing to work with Moscow against ISIS, but as ISIS has made for Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran the most useful enemy, there may be a little bit of funny business in attempting that.

Duplicity would seem much less known where American forces and political resolve have been involved although Turkey’s preference for suppressing the Kurds (while developing its own dictatorship) has complicated the Yankee do-good in the Syrian-Iraq theaters.

BackChannels feels that Washington and others may try to match Moscow in the realm of corrupt “realpolitik” but may suggest that working modern ideals against bad deals may better suit everyone’s future. Moscow may make a show of shutting down ISIS, but its clinging to dictatorship and totalitarian show business bodes ill for genuinely western and western-leaning cooperation.

“Right now, Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds can’t live together under a single administration.”

While the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews and mighty independent about being so, Baloch, Kurdish, and Pashtun communities, among others, continue to struggle against the dominance of hitherto more powerful states.

BackChannels would promote ethnolinguistic cultural community and political autonomy — i.e., what is really meant by the term “cultural self-determination of a People” — with central and margin-bearing features. To get there, however, requires great strength in independent cultural identity plus the cooperation of tribal leaders in producing a coherent unified proto-national politics.

Is the once communist Kurdish PKK the same as it was back in the 1970s, and may that account for some turn toward Moscow today?

BackChannels hasn’t that answer today. The last time this editor looked into that question was 2007 (as a rank political science beginner on an entirely different blog: http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2007/10/turkeys-pkk-hot.html — Turkey looked every inch a democracy back then; and the PKK looked like old bandits holed up in caves and just about finished as a political force.

Oh my how things have changed!

At this time, it appears that fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria has brought the multiply suzerain Kurdish community together as never before. Now it needs to sustain its cohesion and strength against the pressuring of the errant Arab and Persian worlds once swayed by the Soviet Union and still hungover from the increasingly anachronist experience.

A little BackChannels rah-rah for the home team:

What has given the American model its power has been first and foremost the immense adventurousness and imperialism of the British Empire AND it’s intellectual experience and loading with equal measures Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultural experiences. Had the ideals of the Cyrus Cylinder held sway in the middle east, the conversation would be quite different, but its Magna Carta that has worked its will through the western experience and now returns to intercede on behalf of cultures overrun by gross and malign power.

From the Kurdish general:

“Iraq needs to be divided into three neighboring countries, and each country to govern themselves according to the reality of the region. Sunni and Shia Arabs have different approaches in making relations with others. The Kurdish approach is different than both of them. These things have to be considered, so then each one will be responsible for their people, place and country. And these three groups are better as neighbors. Our message for the world is that Iraq is no longer the same, only its shell remains.”

At the moment, Turkey is not what it was either!

BackChannels suggests the United States would do well to deepen the bond with the pro-democracy forces of the Kurdish political community.

–33–

Video

FTAC – ‘This is Moscow’s Game’

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dictatorship, feudal absolute power, neo-feudalism, neo-imperialism, Putinism, Russia, Russian feudalism, Russian politics

This is Moscow’s game.

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

Today, Putin plays “ends against the middle” by supporting Far Right and Far Left movements and personalities; he indulges in breathtaking political theater — Sochi or Syria, both have been about demonstration of political values; and he’s ruthless (poor Assad), enough so to have engineered through influence the incubating of ISIS (for the production “Assad vs The Terrorists”) and the creation of an EU / NATO stressing immigrant headache, to which the Brits have responded and played directly into his bid to keep restored feudal political absolute power.

Most of the public will keep Putin’s feudal revanche in Russia separate from the issues attending the Great Britain – European Union split, but the general weakening of the European Union and NATO would seem fit to his own image of himself as the unassailable primary political force in a state suspended between a secret police organization (FSB) to whom he refers to as the “New Nobility”, himself, and the financial oligarchy that he controls.

*In the above cited and linked video, attend to Moscow’s creation of a conflict that it chooses to manage from both sides.

-33-

FTAC – On the Meaning of Al Aqsa

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ideation, middle east conflict, modern medievalism, neo-feudalism, political manipulation

I can’t endorse the sentiment, ______, having taken a moderate course, but I hope that more and more Arabs will take note of the abuse of the refugees at the hands of their leaders and the medieval disinformation and manipulation campaigns that have led to The Preoccupation not only with the Jews but their own self-concept and status in the world. Too many fathers like al-Husseini have put them on the worst imaginable track, i.e., the emulation of Hitler and the Nazis. Some who have embraced that most may be due to wake up from the nightmare within them that has long masqueraded as their dream.

BackChannels now has plenty of information as to how the Israelis, the west, the refugees of 1948 and their generations, got to this unpretty pass. The themes erupting in WWII — that Stalin-Hitler thing — have been sustained in the middle east conflict; the Soviet promotion of anti-Semitism in the middle east and the concomitant terrorism of the PLO and PFLP have been similarly and perhaps exhaustively covered; the formation and presence of what has been referred to here as “Syndicate Red Brown Green”; the self-dissolve of the Soviet on December 26, 1991 also has been remarked in these virtual pages, as have the feudal kleptocracies kept floating along in its place and around it; less has been remarked as regards the post-Cold War Era around the world, but BackChannels believes we’re in that realm as this is being posted.

All in all, and with Khamenei pressing for Israel’s destruction while a smattering of Sunni-majority states brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization (that move took a while plus some “war by proxy” on Iran’s part), the world, even in one of its most medieval appearances, appears to want to move forward, not backward — and forward would seem toward the classical liberalism of the west.

The comment to which the excerpt responds called for the realization al-Husseini’s manipulative lie: the Jews haven’t any desire to “take over” Al Aqsa Mosque — never did and never will — because while being Jewish involves attending to self defense, it also involves being about and for others, and that includes the Arab brother and sister.

Two of Hillel the Elder’s most famous statements ring down through the ages: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.” That is an idea predicated on the concept of human self-restraint. Israel may produce harm when harmed itself, but it does not have to prove its power through making others suffer with impunity. If met with the force that would do that to people, including its own people, then it may answer in kind.

The second of Hillel’s language-based corrals: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?”

Some Palestinians may be surprised to find Israelis for them in peace, but peace is needed as part of a sea change in the character of our humanity.

# # #

FTAC – Margins and Shadows

06 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Political Spychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

neo-feudalism, security states

The Machiavellian “behind the curtains” has been supplanted by “in the shadows” and into the shadows may be where mainstream media fears to tread.

Both the Bond movies and Le Carre novels, and I’ve enjoyed both in series, have reflected in fiction the issues (as well as atmosphere) of their day, each work of art in essence packaging up the look and spirit of a part of a decade using the secret world as its window. For the writers, intuitive exploration may turn out more secure than looking into essentially powerful secret societies. In fact, the possession of private power and wealth may be inseparable today from the control of political influence and movement in the mirrors of criminal and lawful worlds and the feudal and democratic ones in which the bad guys work in secrecy and the good guys do as well but, perhaps, differently.

http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2013/04/23/mad-spy-vs-spy-prints-for-sale

In real life, someone leads an organization that kidnaps an Israeli Olympic team at the event — and someone else leads another organization that quietly hunts down the miscreants.

Must the journalists know all? And when? As history? As now?

Many stories emerge over time.

I haven’t yet watched _Kill the Messenger_ but from description it appears that it will fit with a stack of nonfiction histories about the security services of states. Whatever happened may be done, but the processes may not be done, and that’s where the public becomes curious in its own interest. However, journalism has also a politics of discretion belied by the terms of art “on the record” and “off the record” and the public may never know what has been imparted “off the record”, much less what has been sealed in the minds of agents and the vaults of the KGB/FSB and others.

I’m more inclined to trust The Washington Post than, say, Alex Jones 🙂 , but one may suspect that the Post must also keeps secrets.

With conventional warfare somewhat nulled by the immense firepower developed by would-be adversaries, the twists that are “low-intensity conflict”, “hybrid warfare”, “war by proxy” and so on depend on mafia-type arrangements and relationships to produce activity (or perhaps as much has been always the way of the street in which conflicts are conceived and worked into reality).

Posted to YouTube 12/1/2014.

In books available through Amazon and in videos on YouTube, there’s a surfeit of material covering the history of spying, from The Bible, no less, and forward. One has only to look. Of historic interest and, perhaps, contemporary curiosity, may be the depth of control and integration a state has with its people along this axis. From the 20th Century experience, the mere mention of “Gestapo”, “STASI”, and “KGB” summon the vision of totalitarian police states operated by political elites with security forces sufficiently populated to reach down through their societies to the extent that even children are made into informants.

The prompt for this post was Diane Weber Bederman’s recent piece in the Canadian Press, “Media dereliction of duty to the citizenry” (August 6, 2015) about the film Kill The Messenger (which I have not yet seen, but I like IMDB’s quotation of the tag line: “Can you keep a national secret?”).

When Mr. Putin and company set out to preserve the privileges of the Soviet without the Soviet (reference: Karen Dawisha’s book, Putin’s Kleptocracy), the drive appears to have been developed precisely for interest already established within the KGB and Party to preserve power and wealth and the ability to distribute the same to similar favored elites. As a king to knights and lords, so has Putin been to his “new nobility” (another title in the Russian Section of this blog’s library).

Do the services of western powers mirror the security systems that maintain Russia’s neo-feudal governance (yes/no?) and, if so, democracy by democracy, how? What’s similar? What’s different?

I’d rather imagine the answers and work in fiction — and may, for this lonesome blogger is not The Washington Post or The New York Times, and even the “best and brightest” in those companies may choose — or have long chosen — to exercise discretion.

Who’s to know?

# # #

Gaza – Four Little Boys on a Beach | Hamas – Family Business

24 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Gaza, Hamas, neo-feudalism, philosophy of law, rule of law

Inside the pressure cooker, the battle between the clans and Hamas ebbed and flowed according to the fortunes and political needs of the Islamist group. One of the first clans targeted by Hamas was the al-Bakr family, which controls much of the strip’s fishing fleet. Known as Fatah loyalists, they came under attack during the clashes between Hamas and Fatah in June last year; after suffering heavy casualties, more than 200 al-Bakr gunmen surrendered to the Hamas fighters.

Buck, Tobias. “The clans of Gaza take on the men of Hamas.” FT Magazine, November 22, 2008.

From threaded chat correspondence with independent forensic media analyst Thomas Edward Wictor (July 21, 2015):

The problem is that reporters don’t bother to educate themselves, and words are losing their meaning. I have idiots arguing with me that shrapnel now means any fragment of a projectile. Fine, but the four victims had round holes in them, and not a single IDF munition uses round metals balls, whether you call them shrapnel or potato chips.

The IDF MAG Corps report says that the IDF fired two missiles. I can find physical evidence of only one missile being fired. The second missile left no trace evidence. No crater and no debris.

There’s video evidence of three separate explosions. One was the IED below the terrace of the Adam Hotel, one was the IDF missile hitting the shipping container, and one was the IED going off in the rubbish bin behind the Avenue Restaurant and Coffee Shop.

Those are the only explosions I know for sure took place.

If there’s a difference between the “Rule of Law” and the feudal alternative that is the “Rule of the Lawless”, it lies in final obedience to dispassionate courts working the representative will of a free people — free to speak; free to argue law in creation, theory, and fact; free to seek and hold office; free to submit themselves to their own best common and deeply argued and informed wisdom.

Wictor’s forensic investigations engage assertions and incidents that could do with such courts.

In relation to the murders of Mohammed Bakr, Ahed Bakr, Zakaria Bakr, and Ismail Bakr on July 16, 2014, Wictor has assembled raw video footage, media footage, research (as above) on Gaza’s true underlying political history and sociology, and both meticulously and repeatedly queried the same.

While Wictor may not represent a court of the lawful either — not more than anyone else — he represents a different kind of public defender and prosecutor: a global citizen fighting — in relation to this incident — the defamation of the Jewish People, which is equally a struggle for what is truthful and possessed of integrity regardless of the interests of men: good principal, good law, honest research — “clear, accurate, and complete” remains the journalist’s standard — and discerning, reasoned, and responsible judgment.

And if Wictor’s collection of conclusions remains doubtful?

Examination by a court of the lawful would begin with “discovery” in the presence of the prosecutor and the accused.

Here is a smattering of Wictor blogs on this piece.

“Timeline of the Hamas Gaza Beach Operation.” October 6, 2014.

“Hamas used three IEDs in the Gaza beach operation.” October 16, 2014.

“Why did Hamas threaten journalists in Gaza?” October 18, 2014.

“Reader questions, Hamas beach operation.” October 25, 2014.

“Gaza beach operation: the four decoys.” December 27, 2014.

“Journalist confirms Gaza beach deception operation.” April 10, 2015.

“The IDF conclusion on the Bakr boys.” June 11, 2015.

In the last article listed, Wictor says of himself, “What I’ve become—without either knowing it or planning for it—is an investigative reporter. I use what are known as open sources, meaning everything that I study is available on the Internet. This is something anyone can do. All it takes is patience.”

Do others see what Wictor sees?

The answer is unimportant, for it should be understood that the findings of one investigator remain subjective, however clinical and objective the undertaking: the presenter of so many reports — and ruminations — would appear to know that he is neither also judge nor jury nor even colleague or professional rival. Still, there is only one true story about what happened on July 16, 2014, and Wictor has done more to look it over twice, three times, and more in the public venue that is his blog and the “Hamas Operation on Gaza Beach” portion of it.

Related Reference

Hamas, which promotes political Islam, has mounted occasional crackdowns on more radical groups that chafe at its engagement with Abbas and truces with Israel. Such groups support the broader struggle led by Islamic State and al Qaeda.

Al-Mughrabi, Nidal. “Palestinian gov’t condemns Hamas for killing Islamic rival in Gaza.” Reuters, June 2, 2015.

Jewish Virtual Library. “Fact Sheets: The Hamas War on Palestinian Rivals.” Updated May 2015.

Hamas has attempted to crack down, often through violent means, against opposition displays in Gaza. In May, the Palestinian entity demolished a mosque that was allegedly a recruiting ground for ISIS jihadis. At the time, a tweet from a Gazan ISIS-aligned group said, “Armed men from Hamas came to Deir Al-Balah and destroyed the mosque, acting in a way that even the Jewish occupiers and the Americans have not acted.” Also in May, a group that claimed to be affiliated with ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing of Hamas headquarters.

Schachtel, Jordan. “ISIS Threatens to Take Gaza From Rival Terror Group Hamas.” Breitbart, July 1, 2015.

# # #

Link – Erdogan’s Turkey – Israel’s Image

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Turkey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

globalism, globally communicating culture, neo-feudalism, politics

A large number of the citizens of Turkey, a NATO member, see Israel and the United States as enemies.

A survey conducted recently in Turkey found that nearly half the country’s citizens (42.6%) see Israel as the biggest security threat, followed by the United States (35.5%), and only then Syria (22.1%).

How do they visualize Israel, a country with which they have made several military and trade agreements, as being a security threat? Do they think Israel would ever invade Turkey? Bomb Turkey? Nuke Turkey? This view seems to be based on either religion-induced paranoia caused by Islamic anti-Semitism, or else their understanding of reality has been distorted Nazi-style by Turkish leaders and the media.

Bulut, Uzay. “Turkish Journalist Uzay Bulut — Turkey’s View of Israel.” IsraelSeen.com, June 10, 2015.

Turkey was the first – and for decades the only – Islamic country to recognize the Jewish state, opening diplomatic relations in 1949. While Turkey became a member of NATO in 1952, and Israel served during the Cold War as a Western ally to counter Soviet alliances in the Arab world, relations between the two states were low-key through the decades of wars fought between Israel and the Arabs. Yet Turkey never severed the relationship despite Arab pressure to do so. With the end of the Cold War, Israel and Turkey emerged as the most democratic and economically dynamic states in the region. Their foreign pro-Western orientation and their self-perception as bastions of democratic and free market values in an unruly neighbourhood placed them, as was the case during the Cold War years, in the same strategic boat.

Inbar, Efraim. “The Resilience of Israeli-Turkish Relations”. 11:4 (591-607) Israel Affairs, October 2005; reprinted by The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 63; posted as a PDF online.

Given the neo-feudal and fascist will of Syndicate Red Brown Green, the resilience of Israeli-Turkish relations has not looked good for some years.

What may be looking forward, however, is how well humanity-adverse and anti-Semitic drives and manipulations may be overviewed on the World Wide Web. Not only may pro-democracy true progressives in the west do the homework on the Putin-Erdogan relationship, brave and independent souls in Turkey (and elsewhere worldwide) may search up “Putin, Erdogan, Democracy”.

Other cool related searches: “Putin, palaces”; “Erdogan, white palace”.

After a while, in the same fashion as the Reuter’s piece on Khamenei, these reports that develop online — and they do add up thematically — create a certain impression and, perhaps, also leave a lasting impression.

Additional Reference

Martel, Frances. “Erdogan’s Putin-Style Internet Trolls Blamed for Turkish AKP’s Election Losses.” Breitbart, June 10, 2015.

Sadar, Claire. “Dreaming of Russia in Ankara: Is Erdogan Following in Putin’s Footsteps?” Foreign Affairs, February 12, 2015.

Tisdall, Simon. “Erdogan plan for super-presidency puts Turkey’s democracy at stake.” The Guardian, March 25, 2015.

Relevant on BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology“

I fear to see the term “anthropolitical” take off, but it could happen: in a New Age Strange Way, we’re all going to be part of distinct and meaningful legacy (and ethnolinguistic) cultures, but any will have the option at all times to overview the same rapidly — to see their world mirrored in real time — and inquire into its intellectual arrangements. From that may come greater discrimination in preferences in values plus an active delineation of “desirable universals” and “critical positive” cultural and intellectual assets.

The English x persons x language shall not rule the world: the worlds of the world must rule themselves differentially even if and while wrapped in a unifying global communications environment.

Addendum – June 15, 2015

Efraim Inbar, a professor of political studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), is not optimistic about AKP’s imminent political downfall and does not expect a change in Turkey’s attitude toward Western nations and Israel.

“The struggle over the soul and identity of Turkey continues,” Inbar told JNS.org, explaining that while “the election is definitely a blow to the AKP, [the party] still remains the major political force in Turkey.”

JNS.org via The Algemeiner. “Will Erdogan’s Election Setback Mean Improved Relations With Israel?” June 14, 2015.

# # #

FTAC – Obama – Ambivalence, Feudalism, Obscurantism, and Political Jiu Jitsu – A Comment

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

neo-feudalism, Obama

He’s done more than screw up the region — or address larger political tectonics like the post-Soviet collapse of Soviet arrangements and behaviors. Boasting transparency, he has removed from popular observation the underlying policies of his Administration, transforming America’s democracy into its own neo-feudal world, a mirror perhaps of the feudal world he has engaged.

I remain both ambivalent and clinical cold in my “reading” of Obama’s domestic and foreign political policy involving his avoidance of confrontation and a kind of almost (!) but not quite complete rollover to the infiltration and possible perversion of intellectual assets (from advisors to campuses to think tanks). The U.S., perhaps others as well, has absorbed the agents of malicious movements, but it has also weakened the legs of the post-KGB Putin-Khamenei programs. The end of the Cold War and suspension of the Soviet failed to permanently transform Russia into a rule-of-law state. Colonel President Emperor Putin has extended the old program under cover of a neo-feudal nationalism and Obama has been either stuck with its disassembly or made part of its longevity.

Credit Obama with destabilizing the Soviet holdovers in international business and criminal relationships. The “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” arrangement has been looking a bit rough lately (I understand the preferred enemy — as opposed to a moderate popular revolutionary one — the “Islamist Front” — because it makes a better self-glorifying story for our malignant narcissists — has drawn close to the gates defending whatever remains of Assad’s governing power [he has really destroyed his own crib]).

Also looking unmasked and pale: Venezuela’s Maduro may handily deal with the direct opposition using the tools familiar to dictators, but with the economic woes derived from his own disastrous national policies, he appears bound to deal with enemies within his own circles as well.

Janus Feudal

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

neo-feudalism

With the assembly of “Syndicate Red Brown Green” — post-Soviet neo-Feudal Russia under Putin, the “new nationalist” signalled by Orban and Erdogan, and the Islamofascism expressed through any number of organizations, whether Sunni or Shiite or Hezbollah or ISIS doesn’t amount to much of a difference — one has one side of a coin forged in blood, corruption, and terror.

Opposite: Blue-Green — the Democratic Open Societies and perhaps latent progressive Islamic forces, the two signified by cooperation between Washington, D.C., and Riyadh (Obama-Salman).

What is the substance of this newly minted coin?

How feudal is it — how feudal will it be — throughout?

Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Orban, Erdogan, Kirchner, Castro, and Maduro may be quite different as leaders and their talk dissimilar, but in walk they are each autocratic, powerful, wealthy, and cloaked by opaque political arrangements. The mass of their constituencies cannot comb through their business alliances or political decisions with accuracy as each controls state “information space” (for unilingual speakers) through state-controlled press, Internet filtering, and political repression.

Of course, the west may be okay with “Red Brown Green” for its being ho-hum familiar and just so . . . 20th Century, so far.

More worrisome may be alterations in the character of the west itself: to what extent has the Obama Administration, possibly the most authoritarian and opaque in American history, shepherded the United States into a proto-feudal stance?

Up to this point, I have sensed variance between the Administration’s image and surface, especially as regards Islam and Israel, and actual programmatic budget and decision elements. The hand extended in peace to Islam from the first inauguration forward has not wiped away Department of Defense and Israel Defense Force cooperation in the field, associated contract deliveries, or weapons programs, not that I’ve looked (some years ago and from far outside the Beltway) beyond “bunker busting bombs”, “Iron Dome”, and the “F-35 radar-evading fighter” programs.

Still, it would seem the White House has become as much the “enigma wrapped in a riddle” — what has it been doing abetting the Khamenei regime’s acquisition of weapons-grade nuclear fuel accompanied by programs — in missile technology, for sure — that would make it useful for the annihilation of the “Zionist entity”?

Issues involving cooperation and disclosure with the the whole of the government itself have become so apparent that even Senate Democrats have weighed in opposite the Administration as regards anything-goes privilege in the fashioning of the nation’s foreign policy:

Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House have been sharply critical of a letter freshman Senate Armed Services Committee member Tom Cotton of Arkansas and 46 other upper chamber Republicans sent Iranian leaders last Monday. In it, the GOP signatories warned Congress would not support the reported terms a possible deal currently under negotiation.

But even in the wake of the letter fracas, many Senate Democrats still agree with Republicans that lawmakers should have a role in determining whether sanctions against Iran that Congress approved should be eased or lifted.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/congress/2015/03/16/iran-nuclear-democrats-obama/24842049/ – 3/16/2015.

While Trita Parsi, who looks and sounds like Khamenei’s man in Washington, argues that what hurts the regime helps ISIS, BackChannels has maintained that ISIS has been in essence an Iran-manipulated project, helped along to establishment by way of a stand-down letter from a mayor near Mosul and stopped short of the concentration of Shiite communities south of Baghdad.

How convenient!

Of course.

But that is what “political theater” is — i.e., a malignant narcissist’s show put on for the world by way of false flags, behind-the-curtain deals (helped along by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, patronage, theft), and all.

Where would despots be without smoke-and-mirrors showbiz?

In KSA-USA relations, one expects a feudal atmosphere regardless of the pace of cultural adaptation and change in the Kingdom. Because private wealth is feudal in character, one cannot expect the family-as-government to do its business in plain public view: with KSA, the modern democratic open societies may have had to reach back through time while “actors” external and interior have gone to work shaping a new society in “observable, measurable” ways (as moderate social progressives exist everywhere).

What about Obama’s USA all by itself?

I will just come out and say it: I agree with many who say that our current president has an un-American perspective. But I say, even further, that his perspective is, in fact, quintessentially ‘old world.’

Deddens, Kate. “Falling into Feudalism.” The Imaginative Conservative, September 4, 2012.

Then there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police officers to avoid prosecution when they strip search non-violent criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper spray peaceful protestors. These are the laws of the new age we are entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which can result in a person being jailed for possessing marijuana while bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free.

Unfortunately, this two-tiered system of justice has been a long time coming. The march toward an imperial presidency, to congressional intransigence and impotence, to a corporate takeover of the mechanisms of government, and the division of America into haves and have nots has been building for years.

Whitehead, John W. “The Age of Neo-feudalism: A Government of the Rich, By the Rich and for the Corporations.” Huffington Post, January 28, 2013.

The ambivalence and ambiguity of the above juxtaposition speaks for itself.

How well do we know — how well CAN we know — about what is going on in the surrounding world when government initiatives and the news itself seems freighted with “done deals” — arrangements made out of public sight and then rolled out by ye high and mighty, albeit elected, for public perception?

The freshman senator from Arkansas and 46 of his Republican colleagues sought to bigfoot Obama on a deal not yet done whose details are not yet known.

Capehart, Jonathan. “Tom Cotton picked apart by Army general over ‘mutinous’ Iran letter.” The Washington Post, March 13, 2015.

How is it the “details are not yet known”?

How is it that Congress, including a Democratic Party portion — so this goes beyond partisan politics — feel slighted and rendered impotent in their influence on American foreign affairs policy, enough so to speak some truth to the power of the presidency — and sign on to an end-run around it?

Has American collectively become so complex a place as to have become Byzantine and separated from direct and meaningful access to power and its influence?

What today is the Commander and Chief’s relationship with his generals, neither in theory or homily but in the “realpolitik” between White House, Pentagon, and the Big Defense contracting community?

Dive in anywhere.

And drown.

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

Cotton, Tom. “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” March 9, 2015.

Among the marks of the feudal systems may be their untrustworthiness, dependent as they are on ruling personalities, frequently malignant, given to betrayals and deceits involving their people, their rivals, and, alas, their own partners.

Related reference

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy-defense/62699-150228-israel-appeals-to-us-for-317-million-in-additional-defense-funding-report – 2/28/2015.

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

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116731/how-nicolas-maduro-controls-venezuelan-media – 2/24/2014.

Eisenberg, Roei. “The four-billion dollar question of Israel’s elections.” YNet News, March 16, 2015.

Haq, Husna. “Pentagon backlash: Why are top military leaders attacking Obama’s foreign policy?” Article and video. The Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 2014.

# # #

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

Tag Archives: neo-feudalism

“Iraq . . . only its shell remains” – Kurdish Major General Aziz Weysi Bani

FTAC – ‘This is Moscow’s Game’

FTAC – On the Meaning of Al Aqsa

FTAC – Margins and Shadows

Gaza – Four Little Boys on a Beach | Hamas – Family Business

Link – Erdogan’s Turkey – Israel’s Image

Additional Reference

Relevant on BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology“

Addendum – June 15, 2015

FTAC – Obama – Ambivalence, Feudalism, Obscurantism, and Political Jiu Jitsu – A Comment

Related Reading and Additions

Janus Feudal

Related reference