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Tag Archives: political coherence

FTAC: On the American Constitution and American Ideals

18 Saturday Aug 2018

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

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Tags

addiction, American government, domestic issues, homelessness, national security, Orwellian trash talk, political coherence, political cohesion, political compromise, public-private compacts

Reactionaries Inspire Revolutionaries

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez caught a bit of criticism today for her control of a “town hall” type meeting — although partisan — on behalf of a portion of those discarded or discounted within the American system.

Regarding the young politician’s social concerns and the knee-jerk branding that is the ever malleable bogey ne “socialism” as framed by a self-righteous Right, a statement about comprehensive governance serving the American People seemed appropriate.


A whole systems approach to the governance of a nation need not be a totalitarian approach but rather sensible in producing and sustaining cohesion and national security, which is in part defined by a nation’s political coherence.

On the present course, the wealthy have become wealthier, the poor more overwhelmed by ordinary lifestyle costs (an issue that reliably drives inflationary battles for higher minimum wage), and the numbers of abandoned, addicted, droned out, incarcerated, and politically impotent Americans continue to rise. While it’s good to push the top of the game, as it were, one might consider it prudent to get a good image of what’s going on in the basement too — and respond to it by other than shrugging it away.

I’ll repeat — or not if I haven’t said this already — I’ve framed the present general challenges to democracies as “medieval v modern”. We have to choose by adjusting ourselves to where we think the _whole country_ needs to be in the next one or two generations. Divided between Left and Right, rich and poor, dotted by islands of prosperity surrounded by seas of misery: that’s not where I would want this ship to go.


While it would seem every age needs its Dickens, and this one seems no exception, our United States of America was born with extraordinary ideals and insight.  The nation was given a great future at the outset.   Also appearing earlier this in my part of the awesome conversation:

The authors of our Constitution created a document beyond their own time.

Americans have produced miracles in the multidimensional accomplishments designed to ensure “domestic tranquility”. However, much has been done as well to undo that progress and return us all to the capricious rule of the strong while returning the nation to the conditions of feudal estates.

[Steps off soap box].

I’ve had a look at the place; can’t fix it with a Facebook post; maybe it’s time to take another step back . . . .

I keep this scene handy:

Much of the American public has been trained to “argue” using slogans (e.g., “Two legs bad; four legs good”) — and then there’s an Administrative part that actually gets into the issues and argues through them to give us the public-private compacts — agreements that serve our capitalists and our public both. That’s being eroded and there’s not a thing I can do about it but . . . publish.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution#1787_drafting


Homeless Cody, American Citizen 2017

Posted to YouTube April 29, 2017.

Videographer Mark Horvath’s “Invisible People” project has made the “invisible” quite plainly seen and now into the millions of views.  From BackChannel’s perspective, there has been a cold and impersonal aspect to life in America despite the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman humanism built into her foundations.  Fill in the gaps in the “precipitating event” part of Cody’s story: how did we become — when did we become — so callous and so cruel a national culture?

No need to blame President Trump on this score.  The problem didn’t develop with his tenure.  Nonetheless, one may question the developing atmosphere and mentality that “kicks to the curb” or just leaves there 0.17 percent of the nation’s headcount, rejects culpability, and looks away.


Americans – San Francisco Public Transportation Shooting Gallery 2018

Posted to YouTube April 25, 2018.

They may not all be Americans (I don’t know), but America’s opioid crisis also begs the Whisky Tango Foxtrot question:  how did this happen?  It’s hard linking business and political elements to so troubling an aspect of personal and social behavior, but there too one may wonder how so many, many souls became so unfathomably lost in America.

We know all about machines and systems but seem either unable to defend the vulnerable or address their motivations before the great slide down the groove to a make-shift make-do “Skid Hallway”.


As I’ve referenced Orwell in this post, any interested in a refresher may find it here:


For another sort of “refresher” or an introduction to civic responsibility and sense, I recommend acquaintance with the following:

United States of America: Basic Training

–33–

“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

≈ Leave a comment

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–

FTAC – Questions on the Portent of Conflict in the Middle East

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by commart in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

middle east, political coherence, politics

The scapegoating of the Jews : KSA vs Iran / Sunni vs Shiite : medieval conflict vs modern transition (with other cultural essentials intact) should probably be on the table for discussion all at once, for they seem to me inseparable issues.

Is security in the ME a “balance of power” issue? Are conflicts in the region about imposing one will or another on large populations? Or are they about “updating” — i.e., seeing things very differently?

Is ISIS a Sunni enterprise reinforcing Sunni vs Shiite animus — or is it an entity that needs to be fought by Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and other forces in concert?


In which world should a reader wish to live?

The one of deceit dividing others from self — or the one of integrity in which a virtue is a universal virtue?

A world modeled on “all against all” and certain to find cause for further division and means toward a nefarious discrimination and patronage — or the other that is “all for all” and against those who foment division and promote conflict between what they divide?

# # #

  • 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.
___________

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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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