Tag Archives: political theater

Dagestan Terrorism, Russian Power, and Potential False Presentations

24 Monday Jun 2024

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

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Here is the plain text version of the above X-pression:

Dagestan #RussianStyle

Reference: Journalist, Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm In Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings

Who can anyone trust to tell the truth?

FalseFlagOperations MoscowApartmentBombings RussianPoliticalTheater

The terror attacks in #Dagestan create not only the detective’s questions, “Who done it, motivated how, and supported by whom?” but also the question as to whether #RussianStateAuthority hasn’t rigged the entire scene itself through its #SecretPoliceState machinery. The lying has already been distributed with finger-pointing: . . . Given ’s delusional and deranged narcissistic sickness (#MalignantNarcissism) and long established #Criminal and #PoliticallyCriminal habits, here’s what may be expected:

-Baseless Accusations, Defamations, Slanders
-Claims Without Merit
-Deflections of Attention In Relation to Crimes
-Denials of Culpability
-Disinformation
-Disingenuous and Fallacious Arguments
-Fabrications and False Flag Actions and Operations
-Sins of Omission

Is there among the natural political flora of the modern world a #RadicalIslam? Of course. We have all seen the host over decades. However, there has been also a deeply #ManipulatedRadicalIslam that has involved in its arms-smuggling, behind-the-curtains, and dark under-the-table support.

Related on BackChannels

Detecting Post-Soviet Russia’s Black Narrative of Revenge for ’89 and ’91

Authentic modern and vibrant societies meet their challenges with an objective responsive and responsible integrity. Shit happens, indeed, and fire or flood, the better governments and services of the world respond with each their best programs. As much is to be–and must be!–expected of the senior executives, managers, and political leaders throughout that catch-all for the greatest, most civilized, cooperative, and wealth creating and distributing machinery known to history: The West.

–33–

A Last Note About The Malignarc

20 Monday May 2024

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology

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In the varied telling of the myth, Narcissus plays the very flower of youth in its most self-admiring phase . . . except the young man cannot look away from himself, and so in admiration of his own reflection drowns, starves, or suicides his way to death and becomes the flower whose name we know.

The Malignant Narcissist — “the malignarc” hereafter — differs within with the memory of a full-on assault on his own good regard and self-concept, an episode referred to in the literature at “Narcissistic Mortification“. For health, the same covers or denies the memory and moves on with the invention of an undamaged and unassailable courageous-heroic self. As such, the narcissist–so motivated–can never be imperfect or wrong. To prove himself–or defend against a repeat of his own initial humiliation–he then embarks on the manipulation of the perception of others, either to do damage–as with “gaslighting“–or to otherwise deride his competitors and critics while elevating himself to a stature beyond the reach of others seen as imperfect, ordinary, and weak. And so the “Malignant Narcissist“ becomes for himself and the seduction of others plainly villainous to those who can see him as he is while for those captive by force, fraud, compulsion, intimidation, or the promise of patronage, he’s one big daddy–and only he alone may raise them to glory.

On what is today old Twitter’s unbridled cesspool “X” operated by billionaire Elon Musk, I’ve tried to produce in abbreviated form a few cogent observations.

Malignant Narcissistic Signal

As a trope: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience“–as much has been my distillation of behavior and speech of what I have seen of Messrs. Trump and Putin–and if they are not “Malignant Narcissists”, the category does not exist.

The “Malignarc” Elevated by Crime and Shielded by Lies

As nature covers injuries with repairs, so the malignarc covers painful memory with denials matched by the invention of normal experiences (that may not have been so normal in real life) and the emergence of a person of heroic quality, i.e., an invented undamaged self. The damage that had been done cannot be discussed, has been dismissed and erased from everyday memory, and if press, the malignarc cannot be honest about it.

Don’t expect confessions.

Do expect crimes (fraud, especially) and lies: baseless accusations; defamations, falsehoods, and frames to deride others; deflections and denials of culpability; fabrications of reality to make events or persons appear as preferred rather than as they may be–or may have been (related: “historical revisionism”; “political theater”; “Potemkinism”); omissions or revisions of discordant facts and histories; projection of the malignarc’s own evil intentions to his targets (related to “baseless accusations”).

As leaders, expect from malignarcs efforts to control casual or popular perception locally, at least, or internationally if that stature has been reached. Expect also as part of Mass Perceptual Control censorship; discrediting operations; dismissal, jailing, or elimination of critics, all commencing beneath a darkening clouds of severe political repression.

The Drowning

In the mirroring pond’s surface, the malignarc sees not only himself but the world around and above himself in reflection, and in the effort to join that world, one perceived as better than the one that did him some damage early in life–perhaps this will become part of a new and modern mythos–he will choose to drown in its cold dark inversion of personal, political, and social reality. He enters his own imagined world, one he wishes to make real, and everything he believes and says may be taken as true–and everything he’s been shown or told has been a lie!

And if you don’t believe him, get lost . . . move on . . . before the same takes an interest in your destruction.

And if you do believe him–better: believe in him–well then, there’s work to be done, but first . . . your pledge of absolute obedience and respect.

An observer would note an excessive adoration and validation given the Great Leader by his minions.

A psychologist would call the same “Narcissistic Supply“.

A grounded and responsible citizen, police, or politician would express concern, warning or alarm.

Related Online

Cartwright, Mark. “Narcissus”. World History Encyclopedia. March 2023.

Greek Mythology. “Narcissus: The Self-Lover”.

Lewis, Tanya. “The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists.” Scientific American, January 11, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “A Dark Mirror in Language.” BackChannels, June 28, 2023.

Oppenheim, James S. “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled.” BackChannels, July 10, 2023.

Wikipedia. “Gaslighting”.

Wikipedia. “Malignant Narcissism”.

Wikipedia. “Narcissus (mythology).

Wikipedia. “Narcissus (plant).

Wikipedia. “Narcissistic Mortification”.

Wikipedia. “Narcissistic Supply”.

Hashed on X

#CriminalDelusionalParanoidMalignantNarcissist, #FeloniousTrump, , #MedievalVModern, , #PiratesMurderersThieves, ,

–33–

Politicial Perception: Myanmar, Rohingya, Terrorist Provocateur

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Asia, Burma, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Myanmar, Political Psychology, Politics

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But not everyone wants to be sacrificed. When vigilante mobs and Myanmar’s soldiers burned down his village, Noor Kamal, 18, tried to flee with his 6-year-old brother, Noor Faruq. Both were hacked in the head by ethnic Rakhine armed with machetes and scythes.

At a bleak government hospital in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Noor Kamal shivered with outrage at the ARSA insurgents from his village in northern Maungdaw Township, who attacked a local police post last month. “We are the ones who are suffering because of Al Yaqin,” he said. “They disappeared after the attack. We were the ones left behind for the military to kill.”

Beech, Hannah.  “Rohingya Militants Vow to Fight Myanmar Despite Disastrous Cost.”  The New York Times, September 17, 2017.

The Rohingya, marginalized in Burma / Myanmar and ripe for agitation by Islamist organizations have been forced into conflict by way of the agitation and provocations produced by the latter.

As you read through the excerpts chosen by BackChannels for display and continue following the story, the image of the “poor Rohingyans” being placed at the mercy of Myanmar military may need to be modified by the barbaric criminality produced by those who have infiltrated their numbers.

Still, what compels Myanmar to use so much force against the Rohingya?

BackChannels would venture that earlier border insecurity and inability to defend informants and detect the Islamists for arrest have contributed to the wholesale response.

In essence, the Ummah is especially being “played” — manipulated! — by Islamic extremists who have learned how to abuse the innocent among Muslims to turn them into the victims of larger but also legitimate forces.  This is the same model that Hamas has used in its rapacious abuse of the Palestinians to create the showcase of victimization while the leadership and patronage system make off with billions in loot wrung from global sympathy.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/283-myanmar-new-muslim-insurgency-rakhine-state – 12/15/2016:

The insurgent group, which refers to itself as Harakah al-Yaqin (Faith Movement, HaY), is led by a committee of Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingya with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics. It benefits from the legitimacy provided by local and international fatwas (religious judicial opinions) in support of its cause and enjoys considerable sympathy and backing from Muslims in northern Rakhine State, including several hundred locally trained recruits.

The emergence of this well-organised, apparently well-funded group is a game-changer in the Myanmar government’s efforts to address the complex challenges in Rakhine State, which include longstanding discrimination against its Muslim population, denial of rights and lack of citizenship. The current use of disproportionate military force in response to the attacks, which fails to adequately distinguish militants from civilians, together with denial of humanitarian assistance to an extremely vulnerable population and the lack of an overarching political strategy that would offer them some hope for the future, is unlikely to dislodge the group and risks generating a spiral of violence and potential mass displacement.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/12/asia/arsa-rohingya-militants-who-are-they/index.html – 9/12/2017

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-14/al-qaeda-urges-muslims-globally-to-aid-rohingya-in-myanmar/8946390 – 9/14/2017

Al Qaeda has warned Myanmar will face punishment for its “crimes against the Rohingyas”.

“The savage treatment meted out to our Muslim brothers … shall not pass without punishment,” Al Qaeda said in a statement, according to the SITE monitoring group.

“The Government of Myanmar shall be made to taste what our Muslim brothers have tasted.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/at-least-71-killed-in-myanmar-as-rohingya-insurgents-stage-major-attack-idUSKCN1B507K – 8/24/2017

*

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/myanmar-rohingya-crisis-islamic-terror-groups-may-take-advantage.html – 9/13/2017

But not everyone wants to be sacrificed. When vigilante mobs and Myanmar’s soldiers burned down his village, Noor Kamal, 18, tried to flee with his 6-year-old brother, Noor Faruq. Both were hacked in the head by ethnic Rakhine armed with machetes and scythes.

At a bleak government hospital in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Noor Kamal shivered with outrage at the ARSA insurgents from his village in northern Maungdaw Township, who attacked a local police post last month. “We are the ones who are suffering because of Al Yaqin,” he said. “They disappeared after the attack. We were the ones left behind for the military to kill.”

http://www.mizzima.com/news-domestic/uehrd-begins-reconstruction-houses-rakhine-state

Myanmar has launched a project of re-construction of destroyed houses in conflict-torn areas in northern Rakhine state under a mechanism of the Union Enterprises for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development (UEHRD), Xinhua reported quoting the Myanmar News Agency.

Someone always has to pick up the pieces — and the terrorists never do.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/mounting-evidence-of-genocide-in-myanmar-watchdogs-warn/ – 11/16/2017. Related: BBC – “Tillerson Calls for Myanmar Rohingya Investigation” – 11/15/2017; CNN – “Tillerson refuses to label Rohingya crisis ‘ethnic cleansing,’ calls for investigation” – 11/15/2017; Sky News – “Tillerson: Scenes of Rohingya suffering ‘just horrific’” – 11/15/2017.

–33–

 

 

 

Reflexive Control Process: “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” -> New Nationalism –> Neo-Feudalism

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Political Psychology, Russia, United States of America

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The prize of science: prediction with increasing certainty AKA “predictive validity”.

Why should models in the social sciences, much including political science, differ from those proven useful in biology or physics?

And what if apparent terrorism — the act as defined by the most immediate actor — were to mask another design altogether?

When the Fireman Sets the Fire

In 1999, the KGB appears to have been caught close to the elements involved in rigging an explosion to bring down an apartment building, an event that would have matched similar attacks blamed on Chechen rebels and that provided the causus belli for the Second Chechen War.  Candidate for president Putin then praised those alert enough to notice the dead-of-night activity but eluded suspicion.  Over time, the persistent of the press and academe combed back through the event and developed independent conclusions adverse to Moscow’s telling.

Journalist David Satter has recounted the event well in The National Review (“The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror that Brought Putin to Power”, August 17, 2016).

Miami University scholar Karen Dawisha, author of Putin’s Kleptocracy (Simon and Schuster, 2014) and others have weighed similarly on the subject of the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”, and although the attempted bombing may never be dragged before a jury in Moscow, the sleuths of academe and the press have submitted their public versions of amicus curiae.

What is one to make of the fireman who sets the fire — or the candidate whose probably true false flag operation sets up the greatest national protection racket ever witnessed?

And why stop there?

In 2015, journalist Kyle Orton published “How Russia Manipulates Islamic Terrorism” (September 8).  In that piece, Orton focused on Assad’s exploiting terrorism to manipulate greater public perception in his own favor:

Last year I wrote about the murky role Russia was playing in the Syrian war, bolstering the Assad tyranny while facilitating the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and other Salafi-jihadists as a means of dividing and discrediting the Syrian opposition. Moscow’s action were in line with the strategy it had used to defeat the separatist movement in Chechnya, infiltrating the insurgency, driving it into extremism, and facilitating the arrival of al-Qaeda jihadists who displaced the Chechen nationalists. In Syria, Russia’s actions accord with the strategy adopted by the regime and its Iranian masters to present Assad as the last line of defence against a terrorist takeover of Syria and a genocide against the minorities. New evidence has emerged to underline these points.

BackChannels has also long noted Assad’s incubating of ISIL, e.g., “Syria – Assad – ISIL – Background” (December 9, 2016), and the use of the same as a tool for blackmailing and goading the west (forced mass migration works in much the same way).

At the time, so focused seemed the western public on “Allahu Akbar Terrorism”, then Syria — and President Putin’s own return to what President Obama referred to as the “KGB Playbook” — and then Ukraine, that it may have missed Moscow’s ends or purposes in bringing barbarism back to the front pages.

Application of Reflexive Control – The Inspiring of Renewed Patriotism (and Nationalist Fervor)

None who ran off to fight jihad with al-Baghdadi could have imagined the same drawn into existence by being allowed to express itself under the watch of the more powerful, but that may have been what happened, for along with the development of ISIS accompanied by a healthy network of “jihad portals” or “jihad media”, the west has been made to respond repeatedly to “Allahu Akbar Attacks” and in part with predictable authoritarian, patriotic, and xenophobic nationalism.

Those pro-BREXIT and anti-NATO may commence with feeling duped not only by Moscow but by the projection of Islamic Terrorism as the Great Bogie — not that it isn’t an issue — on the part of conservative authoritarian leaders certain to justify the kind of defenses to be launched in transitioning the world’s most open democracies into the more distinct Feudal Estates preferred by Moscow: seal the borders; eject the foreigners; end broad cooperation with the stupid (and liberal) neighbors (if there are any left [after having been colonized by Islam]); pull up the national portcullis, such as it may be, and commence with renewed national “competition” for world domination.

There’s a rub: the knowledgeable of the open democracies and NATO and elsewhere (as in Ukraine) may well comprehend Moscow’s game and gotten just ahead of it, enough so to contain Moscow’s military flexing while it continues drawing down its cash reserves in the self-destructing limbo in which it has gotten itself in both Ukraine and Syria.

Still, Navalny’s most recent revelations tell about how Moscow works, and what it wants in the world and from it, i.e., an Orwellian politics designed for the support of excessive privilege and wealth through the expanded ownership of key assets in other states.

Moscow’s display and approval of brutality on two fronts — Syria and Ukraine — and the developing spirals of poverty in Russia itself tell how the regime regards “the masses” — ordinary people — as being of little account.

Wealthy of the World: Unite!

No need to shout — private global business competition and cooperation are today fait accomplis as regards the deals of the wealthy made while their nations appear at peace.

As has been apparent with transnational corporation for decades, the money goes where it is best suited, i.e., most productive (profitable), most safe (best parked), best entertained, and best enjoyed.  In the condition of peace, there would seem no cause to keep an ambitious neighbor from investing in one nation’s own uranium mine or another’s vineyard.

MedvVineyard-802x

Interpretation: screen capture from Navalny’s documentary on Medvedev’s reach and control of expensive personal assets within Russia and beyond.  Source server for capture: UAZMI citation listed in reference.  Image edited for color by BackChannels.

How should an American president (sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America) respond to the challenges posted by the reinvigorated upstart of a 19th Century imperial aristocracy?

Better still: how should the American public respond to the prospect of the development of a “post-constitutional” feudal state in which private business dominates government and a small cabal of wealthy dictates to the public what its interests are and will be?

All kinds of things spin through our minds with but a little information — or too little information.  “The rich rub each other’s backs” or “The rich look out for one another” or “The rich make sure they remain so as a class” — true?  Let’s not be so certain.  What BackChannels may suggest is that Moscow’s “political absolutism” and related architecture — secret police state | centralized control | aristocracy and its systems of patronage — requires keeping cemented in place the feudal worldview: wealth is beautiful; people may be treated as a cheap commodity without intrinsic worth, much less inherent dignity or rights.

As so often mentioned here on BackChannels, the proofs of those assertions appear on display in Syria (undeniable barbarism) and Ukraine (continuous and “hybrid warfare”) — and often as well in old communist aligned states (Zimbabwe, South Africa) whose governments remain ever kleptocratic and for the leadership personally self-aggrandizing beneath the banner of one or another messianic cause (BackChannels trope regarding dictators: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”).

The American writ in governance has been (so far) very different from the feudal path, and so it may behoove America’s own transnational wealthy to keep in mind the ideals, values, and ends of their home nation’s modern democratic and ultimately humanist ends.

Additional Reference

Bershidsky, Leonid.  “There’s No Separating Wealth and Power in Russia.”  Bloomberg, March 3, 2017.

Dewan, Angela.  “Russia: The problem Trump can’t escape.”  CNN Politics, March 3, 2017.

Goodman, Ryan.  “How to Connect the Dots Between Trump and Russia.”  Newsweek, March 11, 2017.

Higgens, Andrew.  “New Commerce Secretary Was No Friend to Russians at Cyprus Bank.”  The New York Times, March 6, 2017. 

Maddow, Rachel.  “New Commerce Secretary at nexus of lucrative Trump Russian deal.”  MSNBC, February 27, 2017.

Nechepurenko, Ivan.  “Kremlin Critic Says Russian Premier, Dmitri Medvedev, Built Property Empire on Graft.”  The New York Times, March 2, 2017.

UAZMI.  “Palaces, yachts, vineyards of Russian PM, – Navalny issues report on Medvedev’s secret empire. PHOTOS+VIDEO (in Russian)”.  March 2, 2017.

Weiss, Michael D.  “Russia’s Long History of Messing With Americans Minds Before the DNC Hack.”  The Daily Beast, July 26, 2016.

–33–

 

Syria – Assad – ISIL – Background

09 Friday Dec 2016

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

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Imagine turning one economically challenged and environmentally troubled middle eastern state into a complete theater of politics and war.

Imagine producing every element in that state and managing the same for political gains in the world beyond its borders.

Then put a label on the production:

Assad vs The Terrorists
&
Assad OR The Terrorists

Why put on such a show?

  • To assert the power of absolute power and demonstrate the maniacal ability to visit suffering on innocents with impunity.
  • To produce a terrorism center that helps goad the west toward patriotic but autocratic and xenophobic nationalism in a way that divides states and encourages the abandonment of core values, especially cultural pluralism and religious tolerance.
  • To blackmail the west toward choosing to having in power a tyrant as opposed to an equally criminal and tyrannical movement.
  • To threaten the west — the European Union and NATO — with the monetary, security, and social costs associated with mass migration infused with criminal elements.
  • To produce a useful tool — “The Terrorists” / ISIL and other al-Qaeda type bands and organizations — with which to demonstrate military prowess in line with a fascist state script.

Herewith, a brief listing of citations building up to the image, quite correctly, of a murderous totalitarian mentality in action in Syria.

BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/isil-groomed-for-a-role-in-assad-vs-the-terrorists/

International Business Times

The regime continued losing ground over the summer of 2015, provoking a direct Russian intervention in September 2015 that was explained, quite falsely, as an effort to destroy IS. Moscow trained its firepower on the mainstream armed opposition, systematically targeting the parts of the opposition supported by the West, which actually opened space for IS to expand. In July 2016, Russia even attacked US-supported forces that only fight IS.

Rather than counterterrorism, the actual Russian intention was to secure Assad militarily and then extinguish all workable alternatives, thereby rehabilitating Assad politically. To disguise this fact and rewrite the narrative of the intervention as one of anti-extremism, Russia’s ruler, Vladimir Putin, sought to end the major offensive phase of the intervention in March 2016 by pushing IS out of Palmyra.

Orton, Kyle W.  “We should not be shocked that Isis took Palmyra – Assad and Putin cannot hold back the jihadi hordes.”  IBTimes, December 12, 2016.

Newsweek

Bennetts, Marc.  “Putin’s War in Syria: Why Russians Don’t Seem to Care About It.”  Newsweek, October 10, 2016.

Cordall, Simon Speakman.  “How Syria’s Assad Helped Forge ISIS.”  Newsweek, June 21, 2014.

Hebbo, Mahmoud.  “U.S. Accuses Assad of Aiding ISIS Through Airstrikes.”  Newsweek, June 2, 2015.

Moore, Jack.  “ISIS’s Multimillion-Dollar Deals with Assad Regime Uncovered in U.S. Special Forces Raid.”  Newsweek, April 26, 2016.

The Daily Beast

Gutman, Roy.  “Assad Henchman: Here’s How We Built ISIS.”  The Daily Beast, December 1, 2016.  Part II: “How Assad Staged al Qaeda Bombings.”  The Daily Beast, December 2, 2016.   Part III: “How ISIS Returned to Syria”, The Daily Beast, December 5, 2016.

Weiss, Michael.  “Russia’s Double Game with Islamic Terror.” The Daily Beast, August 23, 2015

The National

Sands, Phil, Justin Vela, and Suha Maayeh.  “Assad regime set free extremists from prison to fire up trouble during peaceful uprising.”  The National, January 22, 2014.

The Tower

Decker, Benjamin T.  “Iran is More Deeply Tied to ISIS Than You Think.”  The Tower, December 2015.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks

Miscellaneous

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2016/06/21/al-tanf-bombing-russia-assisted-isis-attacking-us-backed-fsa-group-cluster-bombs/ – 6/21/2016.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/01/politics/john-mccain-cia-russia-airstrikes/ – 10/1/2015

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-strikes-more-u-s-backed-rebels-in-syria/ – 10/21/2015

Twitter

YouTube

Update on Orwell’s (Putin-Assad-Khamenei’s) Regressives

Orton, Kyle.  “The Coalition isn’t Defeating the Islamic State — But It’s Empowering Iran.”  The Henry Jackson Society, October 6, 2017.

Orton, Kyle.  “The Syrian Regime’s Funding of the Islamic State.” The Henry Jackson Society, October 28, 2017.

–33–

FTAC – A Compressed Note about “Assad OR The Terrorists”

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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Keep in mind that “Daesh” was incubated (manipulated into existence) by Bashar al-Assad to serve for political blackmail (“Assad OR The Terrorists”), as a goad to the west (a nice present to pack along with refugees bound for NATO states), as a foil (for Russian, Syrian, and Iranian forces), and for target practice (Russia has been showing off). https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

BackChannels readers are more than welcome to independently research and review each claim.

BackChannels believes that the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” represents a complete theater of politics and war put on display by Putin, Assad, Khamenei and with Baghdadi’s organization their most useful villain.

Moscow’s own approach to terrorism, generally speaking, may be reflected in its hosting PFLP in Moscow (Nov. 2014) and refusing to designate either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.  Although its state interests may differ from those of Tehran, its relationship has proven friendly enough for flying sorties into Syria from out of an Iranian base.

BackChannels way of addressing this relationship between “political absolutists”: “Different Talks – Same Walk.”

–33–

FTAC – Syrian Wrap

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Russia, Syria

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The “Syrian Knot” binds to itself two kinds of power in the world:

Political Absolutism (Moscow) v Democratic Distribution of Power (Washington)

Behind that contest:

–Syria’s drought and declining agriculture (leading to protests in 2011), which in a good world would be less important, but for a dictatorship, getting rid of people one doesn’t really care about or care for in the first place seems pretty convenient.

–Dissolving of the Soviet 25 years ago (December 26, 1991), for which the Soviet had prepared in the 1980s, and which Putin has effectively dropped the communist ideology but sustained the architecture of the earlier organization of the state, i.e., secret police (FSB), central leader (himself), and a privileged class (the “Oligarchs”). Possibly (probably), Russian barbarism predates the czars, and the combination of very dirty deeds (like bombing refugee camps) and high culture (like the concert in Palmyra) have centuries of historical precedent (that assertion is something I want to research and better anchor).

In 2011, and in a quick exchange about positions, Obama and Putin played what in chess would be an opening gambit. Obama had offered the potentially democratic Russian state a “reset” and Putin handily declined in favor of producing a neo-imperial update on the Soviet model. The KGB became the FSB. The invention of the PLO became the continuation of relationships with Hamas, Hezbollah, PFLP, and others.

***

The cultivating and promoting of anti-Semitism in the world is a feudal-medieval ruse to deflect fault on the part of leadership toward the Jews.

Why the Jews?

The Jews have been doing battle with “political absolutism” since the humbling of Pharaoh — thanks to God — and their turning their backs on the same with a “mixed multitude”, i.e., others who shared the Jewish abhorrence of the tyrant. What follows about 4,000 years later is “uptake” by others, i.e., the Romans who turn to Judaism and later differentiation and expansion of subscription (which brings wealth) as Christians. Several hundreds years after that, Muhammad borrows from the Jews, makes himself central in access to God or the Idea of God, and we arrive about here with a long sorry history of medieval warring over “political absolutism” and the basis for it (e.g., “divine right”; “dictatorship of the proletariat”; etc.)

With dictators, you know my rule: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”

Now the “digest” version of the Jews and Russia —

Once Rome had burned, raped, and sacked Jerusalem, the Jews became everybody’s “guests” . . . so come forward a thousand-plus years and find the Jews, a People laden with laws from the time of Moses, a “problem” (more of an opportunity) — an alien enterprise, strangers in a strange land — to Russian Christians who could and would leverage anti-Semitism into the customary theft and murder.

Look into the history of the Cossacks and the Pale of Settlement.

Then go forward again into the Soviet enterprise and its repression of religion (“the opiate of the people,” said Karl Marx). Russian Jews found themselves trapped for decades in Russia by the forces of Soviet exploitation and possession. When it became possible to leave that atmosphere en masse, they did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Jews_in_Israel

Along comes Putin, and Putin makes it his mission to “defend” the speakers of Russian — “Russophones” — wherever they may be found. The ploy excuses aggression (as in Ukraine). With hundreds of thousands of the Jews of Russia repaired to Israel, he knows also to become modern in this fashion and stand against anti-Semitism!

Post-Holocaust, post-Hitler, what Russian leader would not do the same?

Let’s add back ISIS — Assad’s incubated horror — and “Islamic Terrorism” in general and its effects: when a mosquito pricks the skin, the skin swells. The body responds to in the insult. Of course, the hand slaps or slaps away the mosquito (or the bee or wasp), and it starts repairs against infection and against any poisons delivered.

So it is that each terrorist act encourages resurgent nationalism where it takes place.
Migration has similar effects: people want to close their doors seal their boundaries, and fend off those most in need.

It could be said that nature is cruel — or here with political nature that Putin, Assad, and Khamenei are cruel, but like the cowardly fireman who sets the fire and later offers to put it out (!), these have created a condition and perception in many of the west that they can handle ISIS — and they may, having incubated that enterprise to glorify themselves in battle against the same.

Oh brother oh sister — Israel is a precious jewel of a small state representing the character of a people who turned their backs on the idea that any man, including Moses, could represent God on earth. For the Jews, God is indeed greater, and while Moses gets recognition, prayer is always to God, not to Moses. That separation changes the politics, and when Titus of Rome destroys Jerusalem, the priests take the hit (because they failed!) and the scholars and teachers rise in the esteem of the community and the great conversation about ethics and morality comes to represent the Jews. Old Jewish wisdom . . . that’s just my opinion and not very good scholarship but something that might hold up to scrutiny.

Putin has melded many modern ideas into his own medieval atmosphere and the surface of related political theater — “Assad vs The Terrorists” — works for most who simply haven’t the time to examine (as I have) the complexity of the conflicts displayed or experienced.

Israelis don’t like being murdered by incited teenagers creeping into their children’s bedrooms — and there is Putin the Strong fending off Chechnya rebels and applying Russia’s most advanced weapons to the same once they have been channeled to ISIS in Syria.

The “west” has moved around Syria in its responding to post-Soviet neo-Imperial Russia in Syria and Crimea and elsewhere, but, give the devil his due, Putin has worked to weaken the European Union (the British vote on BREXIT seems to me an example of success with that) and NATO (Erdogan’s own embrace of despotism in Turkey accompanied by a go-ahead from Russia on the the “Turkish Stream” pipeline project seems also to affirm Putin’s influence and power) — and he has succeeded in partially renewing — or affirming — our world hosts immensely powerful financial and political elites — medievalism in the modern world.

Post-Soviet Russia saw two old clients — Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi — swept away into history, but with Assad in Syria and the way to Iran potentially laid bare, the dictators have taken their stands.

Would nature have forced mass (economic) migration from Syria?

Possibly.

But nature would not have incubated ISIS (by selecting other targets for bombing and combat earlier in the war) to later aggrandize and glorify the “abilities” of the “strong men”.

The conversation continued, always a few more words, a little more distillation of old observations and new ideas.

In the Garden of Eden story in the Torah, God introduces to Adam and Eve human awareness, self-awareness, and conscience.

It’s all right there at the beginning, i.e., a statement about our own nature — and it’s a good statement.

It’s not the Christian statement; it’s not Muhammad’s statement.

It’s a mysterious statement about the two that God will send off into human life and they will have to work to eat and wrestle with some thorny realities in the way of their own survival.

The dictators — caliphs, emperors, kings, sultans down through the ages — often bend the Divine to their own will, and then they use that power that comes from similar words and technologies in the worst imaginable ways.

The good seem either not powerful enough, proactive enough, or smart enough, frankly, to unmake the tyrant before he has got his hands on a serous treasury and a willing military.

Some could argue that the evil is as much our nature too.

I don’t know the answer to that.

I know that Syria represents perhaps the darkest tragedy of our time, as I believe it has been fashioned by Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran as a complete theater of politics and war.

______

BackChannels had a Muslim conversational partner for this post and one who advocated for Israel against anti-Semitic anti-Zionist smears launched in an advocacy site for the Syrian Revolution.  Questions were raised about Israel’s nationalist politics, links with Russia, and associated anti-Islamism.  Over the years, BackChannels has come to see Moscow promoting the amplification of political sentiment into internal conflicts beyond its borders.  Color codes “Red”, “Red-Green”, “Red-Black” apply to the reinvigorating of “old comrade networks” and the Islamic and Black Power politics that feed Black Lives Matter, Palestinian Solidarity, International Solidarity, Code Pink, and so many others nourished by the still moving inertia of old Soviet disinformation and related inspiration.

As Putin and Russo-Iranian politics have also promoted Far Right politics (Marie Le Pen in France, Jobbik in Hungary), the political color code “Brown” for nationalists and national socialists also applies.  It’s perfectly sensible that any space attacked by an alien force, conveniently “Islamist” these days, including “Islamist” against Muslims worldwide, will rally around its flag, and that whether it be in London or Islamabad.

A third force — i.e., a Moscow — helping to make that attack happen (by incubating ISIS; by using war to create conditions for mass migration irksome to one’s more true target regions and states) is something else: call it “diplomacy by other means” — and means generally beyond the public ken, for the public rarely has time and space for doing more than adjusting its perceptions according to major headlines.

Fast Link Reference

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/15/cold-war-cold-struggle/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/02/09/ftac-on-why-the-jews/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/06/ftac-russias-not-so-appealing-turn-in-syria/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_Post-Soviet_aliyah

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-in-syria-russia-s-rustbucket-military-delivers-a-hi-tech-shock-to-west-and-israel-a6842711.html – 1/29/2016

https://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/en/news/erdogan-turkey-russia-agree-jointly-implement-turkish-stream – 8/15/2016

http://vladimirets.org/pale_of_settlement.htm

http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

https://yannayspitzer.net/2012/07/22/a-new-map-of-jewish-communities-in-the-russian-empire/

 

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FTAC – Regarding Candidate Trump and Islamic Extremism

01 Monday Aug 2016

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

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I am certain that Donald J. Trump doesn’t know the region between Islamism and Islamic Reform as he should, but he knows how to be thorough in assessing and working through a challenge, and he’ll come up to speed on an issue that is essentially about extremism and incitement PLUS the amplification of similar qualities in others, i.e., with every “Allahu Akbar” attack, a portion of the recipients elevate their response — and Putin, who has set out to destabilize the west, loves it!

You know what . . . let’s keep in mind that the greater framework for Islamic extremism and terrorism is in fact the Cold War and its shadows — the Phantom of the Soviet, state sponsor of terrorism and proxy wars, lives on in structure in a revanchist neo-imperial Russia. The sooner everyone sees that, the sooner we’ll get through this together and come out with still modern, secular, pluralist, humanist, and amazingly free democracies that work.

Related Reference

BackChannels.  https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/31/also-in-media-retrospective-look-at-american-policy-and-language-associated-with-islamic-extremism/ – 7/31/2016.

Ahmed-Ullah, Noreen S., Sam Roe and Laurie Cohen.  “A rare look at secretive Brotherhood in America.”  Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2004.

Continuation

I think the demonizing slung from both sides in this ugly election season skews our perception, but of the two, I prefer his straight talk, and I think he knows he’s a tenderfoot among politicians and needs to come up to speed, fast!

Also, again, the framework for the “islamic Small Wars” — we’ve all seen a lot of change — Arab Springs to the failed coup in Turkey — in the past decade, but it takes reading and research to see the same wrapped in the themes of the Cold War.

We’re going to be voting character plus the character of the party associated with the election’s winner.

This bothers me:

http://www.blackforpalestine.com/

it doesn’t bother because there are black people struggling to make lives for themselves and there are refugees whose families were caught and abandoned between armies in 1948. It bothers me because it links back to the Soviet Era and the mentality of Russia’s Communist Party and hypocrisy in promising paradise and brutalizing millions for the privileges of party apparatchik.

Here’s the reminder of the relationship between Moscow and the formation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/quote-manipulation…/

Tell me, after 68 years, how much the leaders of the PLO / PA and Hamas shown compassion or empathy with regard to the lives of the refugees of 1948?

Clinton / Trump – Washington Insider / Washington Outsider — it’s not going to make any difference if WE don’t find our way back to the center of the aisle — “Moderate Conservatives / Moderate Liberals”.

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