Tag Archives: political psychology

Dark Spaces – Darker Empires

06 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Political Spychology, Politics

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Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus and Switzerland: the cables unpick a dysfunctional political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300 billion a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of government and organized crime.

Harding, Luke.  Expelled: A Journalist’s Descent Into the Russian Mafia State.  P. 233.  Guardian Books, 2011; New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012.

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Among the most striking allegations contained in the cables, which were leaked to the whistleblowers’ website WikiLeaks, are:

• Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.

• Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor’s office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.

• Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB’s successor, the federal security service (FSB).

WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as ‘mafia state’ | World news | The Guardian – Luke Harding – 12/1/2010.

In the list excised, there are more bullets (no puns intended).

Related: BBC News – Wikileaks: Russia branded ‘mafia state’ in cables – 12/2/2010.

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Snowden’s father, Lon, also expressed his gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for protecting his son from the legal consequences of having violated his NSA confidentiality obligations.

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Human Rights Watch analysts also took note of the irony of the Kremlin coming to the defense of a self-styled champion of privacy and free speech rights.

“He cannot but be aware of the unprecedented crackdown on human rights that the government has unleashed in the past 15 months,” Rachel Denber, the rights group’s expert on Russia and other former Soviet states told the Associated Press by email.

WikiLeaks cheers Snowden asylum in Russia; rights groups dubious – latimes.com – 8/1/2013.

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Is it just a coincidence that former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, a valuable intelligence asset, ended up in the hands of Russia’s security services?

Or did WikiLeaks, the “anti-secrecy” organization that has taken responsibility for Snowden, send him there in collaboration with the Russians?

Did WikiLeaks Sell Out Snowden To The Russians? – Business Insider – 9/3/2013.

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Who do you trust?

Throw away God; give up on one humanist ideology or another: what’s left?

Money.

Are governments businesses?

Who do they serve?

Among those served, what are they serving?

* * *

In the capitalist democracies, most expect private businesses to keep proprietary the business processes, relationships, and technologies that enable their sales, investment strategies, and accumulations of wealth distributed back to stakeholders or to the public in the form of consumer spending.  As regards governments, they may be expected to keep secret fundamental military and security edges involving security intelligence and operations.  These days, whether with billions networked through criminal pacts or blacked out for “black ops” budgets, governments, known criminal or not, would seem to be transitioning into deeply feudal empires — not of, for, or by The People but of, for, and by Some (Very Enriched) People.

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Spanish police arrested four people Friday suspected of laundering large sums of money from Russian criminal gangs as part of a network they said may be linked to Semion Mogilevich, one of the FBI’s ten most wanted fugitives.

The arrests took place in the Mediterranean coastal town of Lloret de Mar near Barcelona, which has a large Russian community and is popular with tourists from the country, police said in a statement.

The four are suspected of tax fraud, document falsification and money laundering.

Spanish police break Russian mafia money laundering ring < Spanish news | Expatica Spain – 1/25/2013.

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MOTHERBOARD: Let’s start with public perception. People believe the Taliban is fueling the drug trade in Afghanistan. To what extent is this true, and why is it so widely believed?

 The Taliban are players in the Afghan drug trade, but minor ones in relative terms. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is to look at the value of the annual drug trade within Afghanistan, which is about $3 billion. The Taliban capture only about 5 to 10 percent of those profits. The bulk of the profits is appropriated by other groups, such as traffickers, government and police officers, as well as warlords.

What’s Wrong With the Taliban-Heroin Narrative: A Chat With Julien Mercille | Motherboard – n.d., 2012.

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Web searched first-page reference to data on the Taliban’s narcotics trafficking seems to trail off for 2013, but relayed at the bottom of this post, there’s combat footage from early 2013 posted just six days ago.

Reference Pakistani Political Attitudes, Taliban, Arab Influence, Heroin, Cash, UAE, and The Marines | BackChannels – 11/11/2013.

No pun intended here either: the impression as regards the latest admixtures of crime and politics is getting rich.

According to American national intelligence watcher Tim Shorrock (reference: Spies for Hire), the annual bill for U.S. security-oriented intelligence efforts approximates $52 billion, not that the distribution is known.  The social integration of the state’s population with its defense and security sectors may suffice for trust — are we going to trust our neighbors or not? — but the informational dark space created by the development of a large population of government-employed or contracted secrets keepers may not bode well for democracy.

Who is getting that intelligence budget?

On what basis?

To what end?

Shorrock’s sturdy journalism illuminates many paths in the national security intelligence complex, but as seems true today in Russia, the public may be told that it’s being served, but given the enormity of the spooky business and its continuing growth in its institutional aspect, public also has room – more cause – to suspect otherwise.

This is not to impugn the American intelligence community: by and large, we still trust our neighbors.

With help from books like Spies for Hire, the privileges known to the free press and more affirmed than not (so far as I know — and infringements by government gets play in the press pretty damned quick), and the web, it’s not that hard getting a glimpse of the cobbling developed to counter the narcotics trade, the terrorism business, and other contributors to international crime.

Still, the more a government privileges a class with secrets-keeping powers, the more paranoia it may inspire in those who are not of it.

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But, without naming names, Medvedev said Russia should be careful about freeing people convicted of crimes like hooliganism – the charge in the Pussy Riot case – and theft, which was the indictment against Khodorkovsky.

“Our people really are not much inclined, for example, to conduct acts of amnesty for individuals involved in violent crimes, for individuals who committed crimes against society, including hooliganism,” Medvedev said in a TV interview.

Putin dampens amnesty chances for Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot | Reuters – 12/6/2013.

In political Russia, it appears deflection has become a high art.

The Khodorkovsky case has become legend and no realist expects more from the Kremlin then in its realpolitik the continued expression of absolute power that has dogged the matter from before the arrest stage and forward.

▶ Khodorkovsky – Official Trailer [HD] – YouTube – Posted 11/28/2011.

I’ve chided Pussy Riot (no, children, we do not take bawdy shows into churches without a big, friendly invitation) but most watchers feel the Kremlin’s punishment back-to-the-gulag! vulgarity bespeaks itself of criminal callousness.

In Medvedev’s above cited statement, the infantilizing of the Russian people by way of a paternalist stance should be as clear to neutral onlookers as the heightened projections of criminality.  “Pussy Riot” may indeed be a vulgar noun, but the girls are not the evil ones; as for Khodorkovsky, he appears to have leaned westward with Yukos and in the direction of integrity (gasp!).

Since the late 1990s, Khodorkovsky had taken steps to transform Yukos along the lines of western business models. These steps included the introduction of corporate transparency, the adoption of western accounting standards, the hiring of western management, the creation of an independent board of directors with a corporate governance subcommittee, corporate growth through mergers and acquisitions, and increased western investments. These actions had marked Khodorkovsky as an outspoken leader who was pro-western and challenged the non-transparent means by which government and business operated in the Russian energy sector. These practices, along with the possibility of Yukos selling a major stake to Exxon Mobil or Chevron, deeply unsettled the Kremlin.

Legal | Mikhail Khodorkovsky – as viewed 12/6/2013.

With Russia as with Syria as with, not so oddly, Islamic Jihad in large part, one may expect the patina of legitimate cause to wear away before the eyes of a widening and more profoundly comprehending global public.  Even so obvious, so visible, however, one wonders about the better options available to that same public.

One may note that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has survived decades in power without a shred of statewide legitimacy left intact, but the crowds of those patronized, the money involved (for himself and those to whom he distributes spoils) has proven sufficient to lead him into his 90s with probably a fairly good night’s sleep.

No conscience?

No cares.

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FTAC – Assertion Regarding the Malignant Aspect in Vanity

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology

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A note on narcissism and vanity: both are to be found universally in the human experience. The aspect of malignancy is social and transactional — it has to do with HOW we do our thing and what we might do to others to do it. The difference is that between fair dealing and mafia dealing; also between accountable and open democracy — if you can get it — and corrupt and thuggish tyranny; also between a president that preserves a democratic constitution and relinquishes power at the end of his term, and one who manipulates the law and his political surrounds to keep himself central to power and in power.

The subject of a sociopathic narcissism came up on a wall, and after putting in my two cents with “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” — now a hobbyhorse of a phrase — I thought to give just a little more thought to what is contextual, what might better suit Hollywood than Washington, what is normal — or we should be without air conditioning, golf courses, and Cadillacs — and what is malign.

A part of “malignant narcissism” would seem to involve “license”, i.e., absence of conscience in regard to others and no brakes on behavior associated with boundaries, propriety, and, down the line, sadism as a dimension in the capricious and ultimate control of others.

As much the treatment of Shweyga Mullah within the Qaddafi household (at the hands of daughter-in-law Aline) stands signal (with much else from that regime) as to how crazed and depraved that cruelty may become.

“License” — perhaps Muhammad would have applied the term “exceeding limits” — seems to me a late expression along a curve that may find a basis in language (from the uptake stage) and “narcissistic mortification” for its path that will, for the person so affected, inevitably lead to the dehumanization and discounting of others.

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FTAC – Islam vs. Islam vs. (Yawn) Everyone Else – A Note

22 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Politics, Psychology

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“However, you all know the answer to the above questions. The painful truth is that much of the world is largely insensitive to the oppression and sufferings of Muslims” — the statement is not true, or I and so many others would not be engaged here at all. Every Muslim death matters! That the carnage involves Muslim-on-Muslim violence, however, makes every form of cooperation, criticism, and intervention difficult and problematic.

Just back of Harun Yahya’s statement lays a hidden grammatical rule involving the concept of loyalty that is true to the speaker but perhaps not every reader. The statement sides with Muslims on a familiar but provocative and timeless note: “it is more important, more safe, more good or good-feeling, to be with one’s own (on the basis of a single noun) than to be uncertain among others however decent and noble they may appear.” As much echoes the notion that it may be better to believe or tell a loyal lie than to live with an uncomfortable reality and truth.

Note that in the American Civil War, both sides held The Bible high in defense of their positions; perhaps similar ambiguity and ambivalence attends philosophy over the Qur’an; and it may be noted that Judaism involves itself eagerly in schismatic argument, but in Judaism, that’s part of the charm (look up “Hillel and Shammai”).

Values associated with the greater dignity of man, ennoblement — “One scholar is worth more against the devil . . . .” — may persist through the Ummah’s internal fighting and its interfaces, and I hope they do — but Islam’s travail ties to language behaviors and concepts largely irrelevant to others developed and engaged in living in other ways, largely nullifying the legitimacy of messianic intention, the mighty spark of “political Islam”.

My words.

The inspirational source (apart From the Awesome Conversation): Muslims must be valued as they deserve | The Jakarta Post – by Harun Yahya, Istanbul – 11/22/2013.

“Bigotry” is a loyalty-related issue bound up in the social grammar of one talking head or another within some population.  Reasonable and reasoning human beings contain themselves; nasty people may bait and provoke the reasonable; and nasty bigoted people cannot help themselves: with those, it’s “garbage in-garbage out” and the garbage probably gets in very, very early in the development of their verbal cognitive style to form the basis for the subsequent content and manners that erupt in their speech.

(For diversion, visit the old blog — “N-Word Metonymy – Richards, Schlessinger in Context”).

As of this moment, the Islamic Small Wars (ISWs) have nothing to do with how Jews think about Muslims, how Americans think about Muslims, how Buddhists and Hindus and Sudanese animists think about Muslims, or how Islamic Humanists think about Muslims, or even how Muslims think about Muslims.  The ISWs have to do with assumptive thinking seeded into the mind at a very early age and bending adult thought in a rule-based way for a long time to come.

Without a language update, without the fresh breeze of free, considerate, and empathetic thought, without the good and sweet rest of imagination and heart and preparation, perhaps, for something a little different and much, much better, the Muslim-on-Muslim destruction and self-destruction (in myriad ways, much including the drugs-for-guns criminality of the Taliban) will continue.

Relentlessly.

Let it stop sooner rather than later.

Now would not be too soon.

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Link Surfing Libya – Why Can’t They All Just Get Along?

22 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Libya, Politics, Psychology, Regions

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▶ Video from the Libyan capital Tripoli believed to be from Saturday – YouTube – 11/15/2013.

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“Tripoli” you know.  “Misrata” and “Zintan”, probably, you don’t.  Yet from such obscure sandpits come the scorpions to sting Libya’s still nascent revolution in the ass.

Instead of cooperating in the development of an open and progressing democracy, the militia, apparently, perhaps unknowingly as they act in their own self-interest, have set the stage for a loose confederation of feudal city states.  We’ll learn soon to what extent, if any, yesterday’s handover to the military of militia positions in Tripoli proves merely cosmetic.

Setting aside the God Mob for a moment, the militia, whatever their motivation, own each the monopoly on arms within their own bailiwicks.  Why should any give up control of an airstrip, oil field, port, or transfer point?

What’s in it for them after having ended the reign of Qaddafi?

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The heavily armed groups, some of them led by Islamic extremists, have defied control by the weak central government, carving out fiefdoms, acting as a law unto themselves and imposing their control.

Militias Pull out of Libya’s Capital, Tripoli – ABC News – 11/21/2013

Esam Mohamed’s AP article posted to ABC goes on to note intentions to introduce law criminalizing “the illegal possession of arms” to get at “unruly militias”.

Yo!  My fellow Americans: how is that gonna work?

It’s not going to be that easy with Libya, i.e., beefing up the Libyan military with NATO vitamins and punching down those unruly militia: the truth is the entire paradigms involving big kahuna and militia-warrior self-concept plus the idea of real sustainable power has to be addressed by way of the poetry installed in the heads of militia chiefs.

538px-Ali_Zeidan_at_US_State_Department_2013

Libya’s Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.

The witnessing world (online, at least) knows how corruption and government have worked out in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, also how the Muslim Botherhood has asserted its botherly values in Egypt, Syria (I am conflating MB with the Al Qaeda affiliates in that theater), and Turkey (if Erdogan had had the free rein he had hoped to possess): how is Libya’s central government to tell a city-state militia how fair the  nascent state’s constitution, laws, and actual real political workings will be to his clan, family, and tribe the day he and his loyal own give up their arms and both the defensive and piratical capabilities implied — or demonstrated — by their ownership?

Libya’s Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and NATO may have to threaten other than force and offer other than corrupt deals to Libya’s seemingly equally nascent warlords to wrap around this challenge, which is not solely, or even practically, frankly, a military problem.

The fighting would seem to go on (and on and on) in the heart, and that is an intellectual problem, a problem in the language and related cultural conventions of the place.

* * *

Along the Popular Militia Fronts

Barqa Army — related:

The imposition of a political narrative by Libya’s eastern federalist movement, represented by the Cyrenaica Transitional Council (CTC), on the August series of strikes by the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) has complicated Libya’s problem of widespread disruption to the oil and gas sector, which began in late 2012. The PFG, the body officially responsible for oilfield security, succeeded in shutting down all oil export operations in the east of Libya in mid-August.

Oil disruption increases likelihood of de facto eastern Libyan autonomy – 8/28/2013.

That directly above may provide the Left with a good tale about greed and oil.

There’s something of Pakistan’s “Baluchistan Conflict” in the mix involving indigenous interests, much including armed ones, associated with the local outstanding natural resource and more remote nascent state interests in the same.

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Nuri Abusahmain – President, General National Congress: ordered Libya Shield into Tripoli; reference also Wissam Bin Ahmid who leads Libya Shield.

“I don’t know why the Americans don’t come here,” said Wissam Bin Hamid, commander of the Libyan Shield Brigade, a militia that came under sustained attack while helping defend the second compound on Sept. 11. “Maybe they are afraid.”

U.S. pulls all its official government personnel out of Benghazi, Libya – The Washington Post – 10/1/2012.

Wissam’s (we have a way to go with the transliteration of Arab last names) took a hit defending the compound in Benghazi (I think that’s what I’ve read), but at the Arab world’s troubled nexus in which rightful autonomy slams into righteous and justifiable mistrust, Ahmid/Hamid has gotten a uniformly bad rap in the right-side’s anti-Jihad press.

The west wants to play it like a one-hour television drama: get in; get rid of the President-for-Life and some related assortment of knuckleheads; establish a democratic constitution; get out; chocolates, flowers, and champagne all around.  Go team!  However, with absolute authoritarianism the region’s bad habit in practice and in thought — and perhaps too in language — and the possession of a theocratic political ideology to match it, evolving forward proves an extraordinary challenge to those to whom it has been posed.

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“Zintan Brigade” — established by Osama al-Juwali and based in Ziintan.

Zintan’s tribal alliance against Misratah raises civil conflict risks in Libya – 7/8/2013

In an effort to oust Qaddafi, independent militias of varying strength have been formed inside Libya and are threatening regional security inside the country. Of these the Zintan militia is one of the foremost examples of a brigade with strong organizational skills, effective tactics and entrenched authority in their base city of Zintan. On December 10th, the Zintan brigade was involved in a firefight with the convoy of the ex-commander-in-chief of the National Army, Major General Khalifa Haftar. The Zintan Brigade acted without orders from the National Army, which they accused of not notifying them of the convoy’s approach to the Tripoli airport. It is becoming a major challenge for the Libyan Transitional Council to integrate these militiamen in the new security structure of Libya. The Zintan Brigade and other militias will continue to be key actors in Libya affecting the domestic security situation until they become fully integrated into the new Libyan National Army.

www.jamestown.org/uploads/media/Zintan_Brigade_Grey.pdf – 1/19/2012.

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To some extent, the struggle is between Islamists and more secular-minded Libyans. If the Misratans are indeed pushed back to their home town, it will be a setback for the Islamists. At the heart of the retreating forces is the Libyan Shield, hitherto the most powerful of the militias, both in Misrata and in the country at large. It is allied to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party,

Libya and its militias: Make or break | The Economist – 11/18/2013.

* * *

Libya’s deputy intelligence chief has been freed a day after being abducted at the airport in Tripoli, military sources have told the BBC.

Mustafa Nuh had reportedly been held by gunmen from the western town of Zintan.

BBC News – Libya spy chief Mustafa Nuh freed ‘by Zintan militia’ – 11/18/2013.

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Rival Militias Quit Tripoli, Hand Bases to Libyan Army – 11/21/2013.

* * *

Armed militias are the real power in the land. They range from former revolutionaries to criminals to al-Qaeda affiliates. Some have taken over key Libyan oilfields. Others are providing muscle to those who want to set up a breakaway autonomous entity in the east of the country . . .  The trouble is that the militias do not respond to polite requests.

BBC News – Libyans yearn for order to replace gun – 11/18/2013.

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Libyan military sweeps into Tripoli to drive militias back to Misrata | News | DW.DE | 18.11.2013

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BBC News – Armed militias still on the streets in Libya – 11/18/2013.

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U.S. Military Considers a Mission to Train Libyan Security Forces – NYTimes.com – 11/17/2013.

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Libyan militias clash after death of their leader | The Raw Story – 11/7/2013.

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BBC News – Why gunmen have turned off Libya’s oil taps – 9/11/2013.

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Oil disruption increases likelihood of de facto eastern Libyan autonomy – 8/28/2013.

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Who’s Really In Control of Libya’s Guns? | Transitions (Foreign Policy) – 8/16/2013.

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“We want to save the mankind and humanity.”

▶ Bizarre Qaddafi Rant on Taliban, U.S. Civil War, Humanity – YouTube – Posted 9/23/2009.

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Qaddafi’s bipolar semblance in public may be typical of the disorder’s associated delusional grandiose and messianic ideation.

The west has gotten around the problem posed by extraordinary revenue accruing to individuals and dynasties by invoking — albeit from time to time — the concept that is “noblesse oblige”: the expectation that the nobility must prove itself noble or face the wrath of the people, such wrath proving overwhelming across the four or five centuries preceding the 21st.

With the Qaddafi’s of the world too, the west has developed a so far applicable and useful conceptual inventory in psychology: we look at persons and various aspects and channels in their behavior and can perceive “bipolar disorder” or “narcissistic personality disorder” and in political psychology the manifestations of the “malignant narcissist”.

In the still medieval politics of Islam, power knows systematic corruption — bribery, intimidation, murder, patronage — and the tools known to all self-asserting “Men of Honor and Respect”, which is the humanity, essentially, associated with mafia dons.

For countermeasure within those societies as well as outside of them, the abstract invisible “hinge of fate” remains the cold hardened spiritual steel that all humanity knows to call “integrity” or equivalent: specifically the essential and irreducible identity and best qualities of the person as made by God and set out in relation to others.

Bedeviling that valued concept may be the consequences for remote tribes, their elders, and chiefs and sons and daughters of misplaced trust plus the realpolitik and real money that accompanies a host of feudal practices: start with “tribute” along “protected routes” and end somewhere around the preference for the telling of a loyal lie — or an advantageous one — over the clarity of a disadvantageous, inconvenient, or uncomfortable truth.

All in all, “resetting” Libya isn’t the government’s challenge: it’s the militia’s challenge and it has to do with resetting themselves without degrading or endangering their parochial interests or their image before those closest to them.

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FTAC – If Information is Power, How Much Greater Must Be Power Over Information

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Philology, Politics, Psychology

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Some settlers may not be perfect 🙂 I don’t know for the paucity of mainstream media or otherwise vetted journalists combing the territory and less weighed down with agenda channeled by a special interest press. The “Pallywood” and issues related involve a stepped concept: the belief that 1) information is power, and if that is so, then 2) power over information must be really powerful. That organizations would arm Palestinians with cameras for their defense but also do so in an environment in which baiting, false flag, and provocation seem a part of the atmosphere may well produce viscerally compelling images without necessarily telling a whole story. Accompanying the idea that “power over information must be really powerful” (let’s ask Putin what he thinks about that — and also what he learned on the way to becoming a colonel) may be the conceit that one is above it and others merely susceptible tools, especially if the information environment is pervasive enough and there’s a little something in the target’s heart (in my world: learned but forgotten messages gleaned during early childhood language uptake) that wants confirmation still of the rule embedded and unconsciously in suspension.

Much of the Islamic Small Wars as well as the ghosts of the Soviet Union persist in informational dark space. Neither Fatah nor Hamas have produced around them anything close to “open democracy”. http://www.cpj.org/tags/fatah-voice For all the bloodshed along the several axis coinciding in these so far small wars — autocratic, criminal (narcotics, arms running, kidnapping, extortion, other trade), and religious — much would abate with growing strength in integrity and perhaps greater insight into the cognitive mechanics of “malignant narcissism”.

The interpretation of the world in language – how one knows how to talk about the experience of life in a place — may be also reflective of language programming in the head.  That programming is powerful, sufficient, certainly, to see in some fashion – or confirm with enthusiasm someone else’s observation — ghosts and witches in one century and to find the experience of either inaccessible in the next.

Autocrat, dictator, or totalitarian monster would wish his constituents (and everyone else) to see things his way.

Perhaps the little monster consign themselves to writing poetry while the larger ones erupt with whole political programs.

In any case, I suspect both grandiose and hateful desires and illusions follow sensibly from the time-hidden tracks of childhood’s social grammar.

What might keep a really bad train boiling down the line?

Absence of resistance linked to concepts not articulated within or otherwise remote from thought suspended generally in the cognitive texture of the culture of interest: one cannot call a man crazy who appears (given the tools at hand) merely inspired and passionate even if he turns out a copy of Charles Manson.  Indeed, there’s a certain malignancy that knows its targets cannot defend themselves from what they cannot — or for love, will not — perceive in the reality that has approached them to engulf, use, and eventually destroy them.

Related

Palestinians Shoot Back With Video Cameras – Video – TIME.com, n.d.

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Islamic Terrorism at Westgate Mall – Atrocity, Barbarism, Savagery – A Complete Collapse of Boundaries and Limits

28 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology

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Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers’: Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details

Headline – Kenya mall attack torture claims emerge from soldiers: ‘Eyes gouged out, bodies on hooks, fingers removed’ | Mail Online 9/26/2013.

Psychopathic people and behaviour are found within all cultures and religions. But one tops them all — by many lengths.

Lead – Nicolai Sennels: Psychology: Why Islam creates monsters – Jihad Watch, 9/27/2013.

In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there’s a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint.

Lead – I’m sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern Islamist terrorism – Telegraph Blogs, 9/28/2013.

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Many years ago and with reference to Al Shabaab, I have mentioned the unbridled aspect of a force of nature that may cloak itself in some kind of program but that in reality has no program apart from its own hypnotic inclination to indulge itself in mayhem, murder, and sadism beyond all limits.

Has Islam helped them along?

Probably — certainly no other major religion today supports the breadth, frequency, intensity, and undeniable and inexhaustible sadism associated with atrocious acts of violence committed most often against unprepared innocents with the war cry, “Allahu Akbar!”

With twisted political force, double-binds, intimidation and darkly teased loyalty one may warp the child whose greatest possession would seem to become his hate and his liability, equally consuming, his inability to contain it.

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Hitler exhibited many psychiatric symptoms, including extreme paranoia and defenses that ”could fill a psychiatry textbook,” he most likely was not truly mentally ill. Hitler’s paranoid delusions, Dr. Redlich writes, ”could be viewed as a symptom of mental disorder, but most of the personality functioned more than adequately.” Hitler, he added, ”knew what he was doing and he chose to do it with pride and enthusiasm.”

Insane or Just Evil? A Psychiatrist Takes a New Look at Hitler – New York Times, 11/17/1998.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve an expanding toolkit built around “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy“, and it seems to be working just fine with such as Adolph Hitler, Al Shabaab, and Charles Manson.

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With every “Islamist” attack, Islam draws greater scrutiny, and even though as a class Muslims may not identify with terrorism or terrorists, especially with themselves comprising the vast majority of victims of this brand of criminal behavior, the same may taint them.  This, of course, is part of “shimmer“.  The more murder that takes place beneath the banner of Islam, the more conflict generated in its name, the more breathtaking — or numbing — the violence indulged, the more difficult it becomes to claim cultures associated with it equal, noble, or virtuous, their children and their doings becoming the most important gauge of their acumen and success.

Manson relocated the Family to a ranch near the Simi Valley owned by a friend of one his followers. Life there was dominated by rules meant to render Family members — particularly the women — enslaved and dependent. Suddenly, no female was to ever carry money. At the two daily meals, men were served first and “the women got what was left.”

‘Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson’ draws portrait of psychopath as a young man – NY Daily News, 8/28/2013

Has the treatment of women in, say, Saudi Arabia, been so much different?

Notably for Americans, Manson occupies his one legendary true-crime space.

The assorted criminals and nut sacks associated with similarly outrageous crimes have no central connection to him apart from their recognition as comparatively isolated psychopaths.

What Al Shabaab does — and Al Qaeda and Taliban and . . . . well, you get the point: it’s a little different, more tied together across time and space and shared gruesome fantasia.

The reason one may note how Charlie Manson treated women and ask whether similar arrangements have not been as true of Saudi Arabia is that with the unnatural horror unleashed in Al Shabaab’s mindless zombie attack in Nairobi, the Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murder comes naturally to mind.  It’s not only a convenient analog — again, one an isolated American lunatic crime (knives more than guns, if any, in that one too): the other as lunatic but predictable given the many nations hosting each a part of the Islamic Small Wars and how often similar mayhem occurs — but a key also to what the two entities may have had in common in part: a narcissism similar in its contemptuous and malignant aspects.

and why is that?

To shake the head and not understand seems only that much more dumb given what happened in Kenya at whose hands and with the authority, at least in their own heads, of what book beneath what banner associated with whom and what.

Whatever it is, it is not primarily “the west’s” fight.

Additional Reference

Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet: Fritz Redlich: 9780195057829: Amazon.com: Books (1998).

The Making of a Serial Killer | Psychology Today, 12/7/2012.

Official Tate-LaBianca Murders Blog, 9/25/2013

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A Short Note on The Dictator, The Mirror, and the Fragile Surface

16 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Zimbabwe

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When Robert Mugabe dies — I predict peacefully, in his sleep — he will go believing himself the most beneficent and magnanimous of leaders, the champion of his state, black and beautiful, bountiful and good.

If the children of Zimbabwe are starving or dying of the cholera he introduced to some parts, if the currency would seem to be forever foundering, if the cries of brutality, corruption, and injustice remain constant in the air and on the airwaves of either opposition or truthful radio, all of that would be no fault of his: he, Robert Mugabe, did what he could.

And he got away with it!

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Do dictators know what they do?

I don’t think they do.

At least they may not be aware of their effects with a depth in any way anchored in a human and sentimental heart.

In the Great Halls of Mirrors, the brightest reflections are of heroic men, each dictator alpha among others, struggling on their own behalf, their families (not really but it’s made to look that way, for image matters), and their people for place of pride against a world that would otherwise undo and enslave them.

Theirs is a fight for every inch and measurable Nth of property, business, and resource, while every reflection — the stuff of “narcissistic supply” — by way of paid and patronized advisers and associates, fawning (or faking it) family, and permitted controlled media agree with that outlook.

In the contempt and disparagement of others, in the inability to connect with a common humanity, in the abuse and intimidation of others, in the callous disregard of deep injustice and tragedy suffered by others directly or indirectly at their hands, there seems a surface ever ready to shatter, ever uncertain of its own basis in being that has long gone missing.

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I may slip from analysis to poetry to fiction here as the depth of what one witnesses in such figures eludes “observable-measurable” note making.  However, for this post, the following statement and the URLs accompanying it all report or reflect on what is known:

A power-sharing deal signed on September 15 aimed to bring together the current president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, signaled a moment of hope for the future of Zimbabwe. Instead, it marked the start of the country’s most recent descent into chaos: water and sanitation services shut down; inflation skyrocketed; food shortages spread across the country; hospitals and clinics closed their doors; outbreaks of cholera, anthrax, and possibly malaria threaten lives; and in a country where where AIDS kills over 400 Zimbabweans a day, care for HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections have lost priority. While innocent civilians fight for their lives the governing parties clash over the rule of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Health System Crisis, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, n.d.

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▶ Robert Mugabe Denies Cholera Epidemic in Zimbabwe – YouTube 12/12/2008

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Zimbabwe Economy

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Intensifying Government Bankruptcy (Page 1 of 2) 2/8/2013

Face up to reality and start talking to Robert Mugabe – FT.com 9/10/2013

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe Sails Close to Economic Rocks (Page 1 of 2) 8/28/2013:

According to Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Act of 2007, foreign-owned companies are forced to cede 51 percent of their shares to local people. But economists warn that the indigenisation policy is driving investors away.

“Foreign investors are obliged to bring in 100 percent of the capital, bear 100 percent of the risk, provide 100 percent of the technology, and in turn settle for 49 percent of the equity and pay taxes,” independent economist Kingston Nyakurukwa told IPS.

China, whose labor has been keeping me in sharp western-designed clothing for a while, may prove up to burden of keeping the ever dapper Robert Mugabe looking equally as good.

Zimbabwe Gets Computers to Track Epidemics, Diseases 12/20/2012 — Still, the United States lends a helping hand.  However, notes this article, such aid, which admittedly focuses on HIV/AIDS control and contributes to the American Center for Disease Control (CDC) data base, arrives within this context:

As a result of bankruptcy, President Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe is failing to meet the Abuja Declarations which recommends that African governments allocate 15 percent of their budgets towards health.

Saudi Gazette – Mugabe’s bankruptcy (near direct-to-print URL), n.d.

BBC News – Bitterness and unease in bankrupt Zimbabwe 3/6/2010

Zimbabwe Egalitarian and Equal Opportunity Measures

Robert Mugabe’s land reform comes under fresh scrutiny | World news | theguardian.com 5/10/2013

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa: Peter Godwin: 9780316018715: Amazon.com: Books (2007)

Mugabe and the White African | POV | PBS

Zimbabwe Food Security

Zimbabwe faces looming food crisis, says UN | World news | theguardian.com 9/4/2013:

Zimbabwe is facing a “looming food crisis” with one in four people in rural areas at risk of hunger early next year, the highest number in half a decade, the UN has warned.

The gloomy prediction was seen as a blow to analysts who have argued that Robert Mugabe’s widely condemned land reform programme is starting to pay dividends.

IRIN Africa | Army worm outbreak threatens Zimbabwe’s food security | Zimbabwe | Early Warning | Food Security 1/14/2013

Zimbabwe Health

IPS – Rebuilding Zimbabwe’s Health System | Inter Press Service 6/19/2013:

Every day, eight women and 100 children die from pregnancy- and delivery-related complications in Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Most of them die of easily preventable causes and illnesses.

Kubatana – Archive – A call to the new government of Zimbabwe to prioritize the right to health and clean water – ZADHR- Sep 12, 2013

Zimbabwe Media

Media group says Zimbabwe police ban on hand-cranked, solar radios illegal ahead of polling | Fox News 2/22/2013

In Zimbabwe’s Media, It’s All About Robert Mugabe : NPR 5/13/2012

Zimbabwe journalists worried: Mugabe cabinet includes ‘media hangman’ – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 9/13/2013

Zimbabwe – Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ’s main Zimbabwe page)

Q&A: Zenzele Ndebele promotes radio in Zimbabwe – Blog – Committee to Protect Journalists 7/29/2013

Zimbabwe Refugees

Zimbabwean refugees: Between haven and hell – Features – Al Jazeera English 8/1/2013

UNHCR – Zimbabwe – “2013 UNCHR regional operations profile – Southern Africa”:

At the end of 2011, there were some 449,000 people of concern to UNHCR in Southern Africa, including 145,000 refugees, 245,000 asylum-seekers, 55,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 4,000 returnees.

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When the day after comes, as it comes to all survivors, how will Zimbabwe remember Robert Mugabe?

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UNHCR Video: “Zimbabweans in South Africa”

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Syria’s CW Whodunit

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Syria

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I trust the Jews to tell the truth.

When the IDF leaks an intercept that makes its way into Harriet Sherwood’s reporting for The Guardian, I believe it.

Not only has the IDF immense stakes in integrity — in concept, in embrace, and in practice — so does Harriet Sherwood, a career journalist writing for The Guardian and one not particularly noted for favoring anything Israel in her stories (see, for example, CiF Watch’s recent story, “Qalandiya “Martyrdom”: Harriet Sherwood Tweets fromt he Palestinian street,” August 26, 2013 as well as other pieces on the link).

So somebody overheard something — purely circumstantial guff is what that comes to.

So we’ll go on but with something like ‘preponderance of the evidence” for guidance.

* * *

With Maher al Assad well known and with a peerless reputation, some media have dragged out an old familiar (to policy wonks): Bandar bin Sultan.

Beneath the banner, “Saudi Arabia’s ‘Chemical Bandar’ behind the Syrian chemical attacks?”, RT came out shouting, “Nothing the US claims about what happened in Syria adds up. We are being asked to believe an illogical story, when it is much more likely that it was Israel and Saudi Arabia who enabled the Obama Administration to threaten Syria with war” about half a day ago.

Of course, those who may lie know it’s the first one that counts, so going on to say, “The Obama Administration’s intelligence report on Syria was a rehash of Iraq,” seems only fair.

Until one recalls Saddam Hussein to fond memory.

* * *

This finger pointing at the Saudi prince has been joined by, among others DigitalJournal, CounterPunch, OpEd News (from the video on the page and within its first 11 seconds, “It is growing increasingly possible that public outcry might make the imperial force of American exceptionalism with its humanitarian war sites set on Syria back down or at the very least delay”), PressTV, MintPress News, Larouche Pac, InfoWars, etc.

For InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson wraps up with something between a disclaimer and validation:

UPDATE: Associated Press contacted us to confirm that Dale Gavlak is an AP correspondent, but that her story was not published under the banner of the Associated Press. We didn’t claim this was the case, we merely pointed to Gavlak’s credentials to stress that she is a credible source, being not only an AP correspondent, but also having written for PBS, BBC and Salon.com.

Proving integrity may be as difficult — it certainly is a sensitive issue — as proving dishonesty in a dimension or region in behavior in which plans, good or evil, rife with brutality, deflection, dishonesty, and disingenuous speech or listening, searching, defensive, and protective — are put together out of range of public sight and oversight.

* * *

If rebel forces suffered a mortal oops, it would seem more characteristic in Arab language culture to point the finger at someone else.

If a brigade under Maher al Assad’s command done it, it would be mafia cool to do it — record it, leak it, plaster it across the web — as rebels.

Syria False Flag Caught On leaked Video Shows FSA Rebels Launch Chemical Attacks

Edited!

Underscored!

Produced!

* * *

Rebel weapons accident (as reported) or chemical weapons launch (as reported and “displayed”)?

Choose.

As long as it’s them.

Because if they didn’t do it . . . .

* * *

From the Wikipedia entry on Bandar:

According to Iran’s PressTV, Bandar was under house arrest for an attempted coup,[35][36] while opposition sources said he was in Dhaban Prison.[34] Some rumors alleged that his coup was exposed by Russian intelligence services because of his frequent trips to Moscow to encourage cooperation against Iran.[34]

Veteran journalist Bill Neely writing about Maher al al-Assad today:

A month ago rebels fired rockets at Bashar’s motorcade as he headed for a Mosque in the centre of Damascus. The attempt to kill the President failed but one of his bodyguards, said to have been a particular favourite of his children Hafez, Karim and Zein was killed.

Many inside and outside Syria believe this may have been the last straw for the hot-headed Maher. No assassination attempt of Bashar al-Assad could go unpunished, especially not one in the heart of the capital.

Neely, Bill.  “Maher al-Assad: The brutal enforcer of the family regime.”  ITV, September 5, 2013.

* * *

A War About Integrity.

Who would have ever thought of that?

A war about language.

The answer to “Syria’s CW Whodunit” may come to light if one intelligence industry or another turns up its cards and reveals its methods, capabilities, and limitations.

“So-and-so said” seems to be working to confuse rather than inform the public.

In addition to the challenge involving “Political Spychology” there is that other political psychology involving the character in personality associated with “malignant narcissism”, the features of which include delusions of grandeur, messianic complexes, paranoia, resistance to criticism, etc. (I’ll lay out a page on the language associated with that subject soon).

Through the lens that looks into dictatorship and across dictatorships, things may look a little different, for the want to control the subjugated by controlling a large information environment (“gaslighting” on a large scale) would seem inseparable from other behaviors having to do with hiding things while deeply controlling others.

Additional Reference

Gavlak, Dale and Yahya Ababneh.  “EXCLUSIVE: Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack.”  Mint Press News, August 29, 2013.

Larouche PAC.  “Did Saudi Prince Bandar Give Chemical Weapons to the Syrian Opposition?”  September 1, 2013.

Lee, Peter.  “We Need to Talk About Prince Bandar.”  Counterpunch, September 4, 2013.

Lopez, Ralph.  , “Syrians say Saudi intelligence gave chemical weapons to rebels,” DigitalJournal, September 2, 2013.

Murphy, Dan.  “Syrian chemical weapons claims: How strong is the evidence.”  The Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 2013.

Naureckas, Jim.  “Which Syrian Chemical Attack Account is More Credible.”  FAIR, September 1, 2013.  Of accounts that may be argued point by point, I would call this one the most balanced and conservative with its conclusion:

This humility about the difficulty of reporting on a covert, invisible attack in the midst of a chaotic civil war actually adds to the credibility of the Mint account. It’s those who are most certain about matters of which they clearly lack firsthand knowledge who should make us most skeptical.

PressTV.  “Saudi Prince Bandar behind chemical attack in Syria: Report.”  September 1, 2013.

PressTV.  “Syria gas attack to Saudi-Israeli benefit.”  August 30, 2013:

It’s not such a silly question. After all, the Americans are continually attacking everybody, aren’t they?

Then there’s the Israelis always doing a bit of assassinating, phosphorus spraying and creeping genocide in Palestine (although they’re never particular about confining their activities to Palestine).

The Guardian.  “Harriet Sherwood.”  Recent articles page.

Trainor, Dennis Jr.  “Syrian Rebels Claim Saudi Prince Bandar Responsible for Chemical Weapons Attack.”  OpEd News, September 2, 2013.

Watson, Paul Joseph.  “Rebels Admit Responsibility for Chemical Weapons Attack.”  InfoWars, August 30, 2013.

Related from BackChannels

“Syria – Chemical Warhead Launch Ascribed to 155th Brigade – 4th Armored Division – Syrian Army,” August 28, 2013.

“Syria – Define Your World,” September 2, 2013.

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