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BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: political theater

FTAC – ‘It’s Not Islam – It’s Moscow’

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iraq, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syria

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

foreign affairs, malignant narcissism, Moscow, political manipulation, political psychology, political theater, politics, Putin, Putin-Khamenei, theater of politics and war

https://youtu.be/XQ-VVa2x_w4

Posted to YouTube February 14, 2012.

The response-sparking comment had to do with yesterday’s attack in Nice, France: “Qaddafi was right.”

From the BackChannels side of the awesome conversation:

It’s not Islam — it’s Putin (he who has brought the Russian Orthodox Church back into state favor). Playing ends — Far Right and Far Left — against the middle, he has a special relationship with Islamic extremists. http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

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

The last piece posted in October 2015, and it may need an update. However: having incubated ISIS to blackmail and goad the west, Putin has now the option of demonstrating “revived” Russian military prowess by eating ISIS alive but not too much at a time. Khamenei-favoring Shiite militia in Iraq, long hosting Revolutionary Guard advisors, have also their convenient foil.

As regards Europe, Moscow-(Tehran) favors resurgent nationalism — le Pen or Orban (and Jobbik), which is exactly what terrorism compels or encourages in the states it targets.

It’s hard to imagine the kind of narcissism / malignant narcissism (and cowardice and — what sets off the narcissism — “narcissistic mortification”) that would build such a theater of politics and war as Syria-Iraq and a troubled Europe, but go back to the Cold War, which was supposed to have ended 25 years ago, and drag forward the Soviet / KGB Era methods in manipulating whole “chess boards” — both sides of any conflict to advantage.

Then look again at Moscow.


How has Moscow played both sides of a conflict?

There’s a related history lesson in this gem of a BBC video interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 – 4/7/2016 “The Ogaden War”.

Fast Related Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union – excerpt as viewed August 8, 2016:

Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as “the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide.”[4][5][6] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”[7] He also claimed that “Airplane hijacking is my own invention” and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[7]

Lt. General Pacepa described operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States. According to Pacepa, the following organizations received assistance from the KGB and other Eastern Bloc intelligence services: PLO, National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara), the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, and the Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975.[8]

http://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-russia-crimea-putin-money-bank-national-front-seeks-russian-cash-for-election-fight/ – 2/19/2016;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11515835/Russia-bought-Marine-Le-Pens-support-over-Crimea.html – 4/4/2015.  There may be in these stories the KGB-style “framing” of Le Pen, but the “9 million euro” loan from First Czech-Russian Bank” seems uncontested, so one may ask what such loan approval buys, if anything.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/russia-europe-right-putin-front-national-eu – 12/8/2014 – “We should beware Russia’s links with Europe’s right” (by Luke Harding in The Guardian).

*

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4112/hungarian_neo_nazis_court_russia_as_inspiration_for_attacks_on_gays – 9/5/2013;

https://www.thenation.com/article/decrying-ukraines-fascists-putin-allying-europes-far-right/ – 5/21/2014

https://eu.boell.org/en/2015/05/05/i-am-eurasian-kremlin-connections-hungarian-far-right – 5/5/2015

http://hungarianspectrum.org/2016/01/20/is-the-hungarian-far-right-jobbik-party-financed-by-russia/ – 1/20/2016

*

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016 – Note: ISIS has also served Moscow as a target to which to channel its own Islamists.  In effect, ISIS by existing in numbers in Syria provides a “KZ” or “kill zone” in which to concentrate fighters for later warfare.  HOW such fighters may then come to launch actions against NATO members forms a question beyond the means of this blog to address.

*

The last word on this post goes to Stratfor’s Scott Stewart:

In an earlier column, I briefly addressed the similarities between the utopian ideology of the Islamic State and that of the global communist movement. I have also compared the counterinsurgency efforts used against the two movements in the past. But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/what-cold-war-can-teach-us-about-jihadism – 7/14/2016.

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FTAC – Sideways on Brexit and Putin’s Medieval Theater

27 Monday Jun 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Cold Struggle, political manipulation, political theater, post-Cold War, Russia

🙂

A fair part of the world is now The World x multinational business x communication x shipping x transportation, and while sovereign states must control their borders, few are able to ignore their neighbors, their neighbors’ ambitions, or bad habits and bad sectors. Probably the way to think about criminality, as determined by familiar western and modern precepts is to attach it to “filtration” — catch the “bad apples” — and osmosis from ungoverned conditions and space to governed.

At the moment, there’s a feudal-criminal world (psst: Moscow and its assortment of Far Right and Far Left helpers) continuing to drive chaos into the more civil, more “rule-of-law” west. While the west should (must!) push back, it should do so with other than reversion to its own feudal tendencies.

What Moscow / Putin promotes has been on full display between Sochi and Syria — immense accumulations of wealth and power beside the most inhuman of practices and the most thoughtless and provocative real behavior in foreign policy. I know I can’t keep going over how Damascus incubated ISIS, or, in Russia, (or Iran), how criminality / kleptocracy leak down through the justice systems and corrode their entire societies, but all of that is what is actually represented by ISIS and so many Syrian refugees.

I know as an editor (of possibly the world’s most obscure political blog) that similar specialists or academics “get” the post-Cold War “big picture” but for most with more parochial interests, it’s “ISIS” and what Putin’s sayin’ sounds about right — lower the portcullis!


BackChannels has developed a whole image of the “Post-Cold War – Cold Struggle” environment anchored yet in Moscow and Washington.  In getting to this point, it has learned that “research analyst” (self-assigned, autodidact) knowledge and public impression and perception diverge often and quite, which fact of life may suit the treatment of the public as “the masses”, for as much fits with Moscow’s philosophy regarding information, “information space”, and political manipulation via, as with the handling of Syria, political theater writ large.

Related and Highly Recommended Summer Reading

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev, 2014.

Vovochka: The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin’s Best Friend and Confidant by Alexander J. Motyl, 2015.

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All For Show – Russia’s Comeback – High Culture and Lowest Barbarism

31 Tuesday May 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Assad, foreign affairs, political theater, Putin, Russia, Syria, Syrian Tragedy

https://youtu.be/bs6ZNo3kTj8

Posted to YouTube 2/8/2014

Posted to YouTube 1/1/2015

While Bashar al-Assad in Damascus must take responsibility for the casualties of 2014 and the shaping of the war to that date, it would seem Vladimir Putin in Moscow — or in Sochi — during that same winter has only sustained in that season the legacy of the Soviet alignment.

Posted to YouTube 5/7/2016

Posted to YouTube 5/6/2016

Related

Ellis, Ralph and Holly Yan.  “Airstrike at Syrian refugee camp kills at least 28.”  CNN, May 6, 2016:

At least 28 people were killed when warplanes struck a refugee camp Thursday in Syria, the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, with many of the dead women and children.

Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the London-based group, told CNN it was not immediately clear whether Syrian or Russian planes conducted the airstrike.


BackChannels — and so BackChannels feels — has been wrong about cozy relationships between dictators, perhaps, but probably right about their colluding in their own practical interests as regards sustaining feudal absolute power.

Kleptocrats, apparently (this inspired by the pieces in the reference section) need not be in love but only realistic about their mutual dependencies.

By incubating the al-Qaeda types in Syria, especially ISIS, by selecting other targets for bombing earlier in the Syrian Tragedy (see in reference BackChannels 2015), Assad and Putin may have developed an unrealistic plan for both blackmailing and goading the west, which appears to be taking refugees, filtering criminals (over time), and fighting ISIS separately.  With “Assad vs The Terrorists” backfiring, the two, Assad and Putin, are stuck with one another and Assad needs Putin to get to an endgame that makes sense.

Frederic C. Hof, whose essay for the Atlantic Council has appeared in Newsweek winds through an excellent and most clinical analysis of the options at hand.  Here’s a little part of that:

Secretary of State John Kerry nevertheless seeks common ground with Russia on political transition involving a non-Assad, negotiated Syrian consensus.

Is common ground achievable when Moscow sees Assad as personifying a state to save, while Washington sees him as a war criminal and ISIS’s top recruiting asset in the region?

Read Hof — for the boys who made the mess, who produced “Assad vs The Terrorists”, there may be no good exits yet in sight.

The slogan “Assad or We Burn It” has won the day, for now much of Syria has been burned, and Assad has only more to answer for and much, much less to claim.

For Mr. Putin’s part in the Syrian Tragedy, the Russian President may not have been able to direct Assad as regards so many “barrel bombs”, but he has control of Russian air power in the space, and perhaps he should use it to spare noncombatants from assaults, Syrian and Russian, that have built antipathy worldwide for the post-Soviet Moscow-to-Tehran arc of power.

Additional, Cited, and Related Reference

AFP.  “Chief Syria opposition negotiator quits over failed peace talks.”  ABC News, May 30, 2016.

BackChannels.  “Syria — “Assad vs The Terrorists” — How ISIS Defends Assad.”  October 2, 2015.

Hof, Frederic C.  “We Must Reject Putin’s Shabby Deal to Work with Assad.”  Newsweek, May 30, 2016.

Miller, James.  “Putin’s Attack Helicopters and Mercenaries Are Winning the War for Assad.”  Foreign Policy, March 30, 2016.

Petrou, Michael.  “For Canada, standing up to Russia means standing up for a united EU.”  Open Canada, May 31, 2016.

Snyder, Timothy.  “The Wars of Vladimir Putin.”  Three book reviews.  The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016:

When Pieniążek arrived in Kiev in November 2013 as a young man of twenty-four, he was observing the latest, and perhaps the last, attempt to mobilize the idea of “Europe” in order to reform a state. Ukrainians had been led to expect that their government would sign an association agreement with the European Union. Frustrated by endemic corruption, many Ukrainians saw the accord as an instrument to strengthen the rule of law. Moscow, meanwhile, was demanding that Ukraine not sign the agreement with the EU but instead become a part of its new “Eurasian” trade zone of authoritarian regimes.

At the last moment, Russian President Vladimir Putin dissuaded the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, from signing the EU association agreement.

Tilghman, Andrew.  “No U.S. combat advisers for Fallujah invasion.”  Military Times, May 23, 2016.

Trofimov, Yaroslav.  “Russia’s Long Road to the Middle East.”  Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2016:

“The Middle East is a way to showcase that the period of Russia’s absence from the international scene as a first-rate state has ended,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow, which advises the Kremlin and other government institutions.

# # #

Putin, Assad, Khamenei + Baghdadi — Collusion

03 Tuesday May 2016

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

absolute power, feudal tableaux, political theater, politics

The revelations come from new letters added to the 22,000 internal ISIS documents Sky News leaked in March. Before the Syrian troops regained control of the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this year, the Syrian government arranged a deal to allow ISIS to “withdraw all heavy artillery and anti-aircraft machine guns from in and around Palmyra to [the] Raqqa province.

Bojesson, Jacob.  “Leaked ISIS Docs Show Close Cooperation Between ISIS and Assad.”  The Daily Caller, May 3, 2016.

Earlier on BackChannels

“Syria — “Assad vs The Terrorists” — How ISIS Defends Assad.”  October 2, 2015.

“Ali Khamenei and the Letter from Near Mosul — A Speculation.”  January 16, 2015.

Earlier in Other Media

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

On Corroborating Stories — Multiple Independent Sources

Tweet: “Putin, Assad, Khamenei — Together They Are Defending Absolute Power.”

Add Baghdadi.

BackChannels has been supporting the idea that malign and medieval leaders work together, whether directly or indirectly makes no difference, in supporting the feudal image and theater that in turn justifies they stay in political absolute power.  As evidence mounts as regards the incubation of al-Qaeda-type forces and ISIS through the selective bombing of other targets, and as new reportage surfaces with news of collusion between Russian air power and ISIS ground forces, it starts to look like BackChannels got it right in the first place.  From the above cited Daily Caller piece: “ISIS gets a detailed warning of when a strike is scheduled to take place, which allows it to withdraw to an agreed evacuation point.”

Addendum – Additional Reference

Bender, Jeremy.  “Russia’s war against terrorism isn’t what it seems.”  Business Insider, August 24, 2015.

Goble, Paul A.  “FSB helps Russian Islamists go fight in Syria, prosecutes ones who come back, ‘Novaya Gazeta’ says.”  Euromaidan Press, July 31, 2015.

Gomez, Christian.  “Russian FSB Defector Reveals Kremlin Supports ISIS.”  New American, December 9, 2015:

Anatoliy Golitsyn, a high-ranking KGB defector who served in the KGB’s ultra secretive long-range disinformation Department D, explained in his book New Lies For Old (1984) the then-Soviet Union’s reason for sponsoring terrorism:

The objective of violence is to create chaos and anarchy, to impose additional strains on ruling democratic parties, to eliminate their ablest leaders, to force them to resort to undemocratic measures, and to demonstrate to the public their inability to maintain law and order, leaving the field open to the legal communist party to present itself as the only effective alternative force.

Human Rights Watch.  “Russia: Investigative Journalist Facing Death Threats: Assaulted in Past Over Chechnya Reporting.”  Report on journalist Elena Milashina who broke the story of Russia’s channeling of Chechen jihadis to ISIS.  June 10, 2015.

Nemtsova, Anna and Thomas Seibert.  “Russia’s ISIS Money Men Exposed.”  The Daily Beast, December 4, 2015.

Orton, Kyle.  “How Russia Manipulates Islamic Terrorism.”  The Syrian Intifada, September 8, 2015.

Reuters.  “Putin Ally: Chechen Spies Infiltrate ISIS.”  Newsweek, February 8, 2016:

“An extensive spy network has been set up inside Islamic State,” Kadyrov’s office quoted him on Monday as telling Russia’s state-controlled Russia 1 channel.

“Thanks to their work as agents the Russian air force is successfully destroying terrorist bases in Syria.”

Weiss, Michael.  “Russia is Sending Jihadis to Join ISIS.”  The Daily Beast, August 23, 2015:

Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions.

Wikipedia: “Anatoliy Golitsyn”.

Addendum – On the Russian Spy Angle

From the Awesome Conversation —

While the Kremlin channels jihadis to ISIS, it may also embed spies, so it rids itself of at least a few potential terrorists — or thousands of them — in Russia and sets them up in easily targeted (because it may have also sent in spies) “kill zones” in Syria. Politically, it can promote, vicariously, say, the symphony while “barrel bombing” noncombatant Syrians while making its case for “Assad OR The Terrorists”, and through the Baathist generals who have become ISIS generals, it can display a convenient foil for Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guard, reported as embedded in the more “fiery” Shiite militia, for Tehran’s expansion of influence in Iraq. By doing all of the above, which I believe it has, the familiar post-Soviet axis has reproduced the image of the feudal world that each despotic leader needs to remain legitimate (in the eyes of their followers) in power.

Reports of ISIS beheading Russian spies surfaced in several news reports in December 2015, and similar reportage continued into April 2016.

Search-Russia-ISIS-SpyStories.JPG

Apparently, Russian spies inserted into ISIS may have both signaled ISIS positions to Russian air power as well as warned ISIS troops of impending strikes.

# # #

“Clock Boy” – Don’t Call It “Exile”

21 Wednesday Oct 2015

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ahmed Mohamed, hoax bomb, medieval mind, political presentation, political theater

“I built a clock to impress my teacher but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her,” Ahmed told reporters Wednesday. “It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it.”

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/ 9/16/2015


Mohamed said, “I made a clock.” But to a police officer who questioned Mohamed at the school said, “It looks like a movie bomb to me,” according to DMN.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ahmed-mohamed-irving-texas-clock – 9/16/2015.


(a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use the hoax bomb to:
(1) make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or
(2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/txstatutes/PE/10/46/46.08#sthash.NXnS9Syw.dpuf – Texas Penal Code Annotated, Section 46.08.


Published on Sep 18, 2015
This video shows that the supposed clock invention by a 14 year old is in fact not an invention. The ‘clock’ is a commercial bedside alarm clock removed from its casing. There is nothing to indicate that the clock was even assembled by the child. I suspect this was brought into school to create an alarmed reaction.

So, Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. President, Make Magazine (which should know better), and others: You’ve been duped. Please do recognize youths of all backgrounds who create wonderful inventions with electronics. The kid making press around the world did not invent or build a clock.


The Sudan leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Darfur, which he denies.

Ahmed said he was pleased to meet the president and vowed to return one day with a new invention, according to the radio broadcast.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34551890 – 10/16/2015.


Though White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested that President Obama wouldn’t have time for a meeting, on Monday night the president briefly chatted with 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed during an “Astronomy Night” for kids — though the teen was too busy to pick up the “cool clock” that landed him an invitation to the White House.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/ahmed-mohamed-meets-obama-leaves-clock-at-home.html – 10/19/2015.


Meanwhile, Ahmed has become a villain—dubbed “Clock Boy”—on right wing websites that claim the family has Islamist ties and plotted his celebrity. There’s been zero evidence shown for those conspiracy theories, though Ahmed probably didn’t help his optics by meeting last week with Omar al-Bashir, dictator of the country he was born in and an accused war criminal.

“We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn and all of them being accepted by that country,” said Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, before he got off the phone and stepped onto the airplane.

http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/10/ahmed-mohamed-will-move-to-qatar.html/ – 10/20/2015.


Perception is not reality.

An investigated observation might be reality — at least potential hypotheses and theories will have been methodically tested.

Reality is not political.

From the most clinical perspective, God, nature, and the universe could care less.  Such news may not be pleasing to the narcissistic, who most believe God cares about them, often exclusively — and, if malignant, to the detriment of others (this is very personal stuff) — but the attempt to create an impression of reality is nothing other than political.

On the Monday involved, Ahmed Mohamed’s clock in the box was shown / shown off to more than one teacher, and early on, his science teacher suggested he not show it to anyone else.  Of course, the clock sounded — beeped — during a last period class, was confiscated, authorities were called, and the rest is now bottom-of-the-birdcage history.

Through it all, whether opinion flew in as a “Clock Boy” story from the conservative press or as a “life’s unfair” (and Americans are just bigoted Islamophobes) left-side leaners, Irving, Texas officials — teachers, police, and mayor — issued no apologies over Ahmed Mohamed’s brief detention.


Posted to YouTube 9/18/2015.


In BackChannel’s memory, the last time a leading Muslim family left the Dallas area in a hurry — after about 23 years of mosque leadership — it led to this story: “Richardson, Texas – Imam Leaves Dallas Central Mosque, Quietly” (October 17, 2013).  The Turkish imam, Yusuf Kavakci, among the 500 most powerful scholars in Islam, was out, and a Saudi trained imam was installed — “Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku To Serve as Imam for the Islamic Association of North Texas” (May 12, 2014) — “Link rot” has taken place on the page noted, but a statement about Shaykh Nadzaku may yet be found on the Al-Maghrib Institute Watch blog at this address: https://sunni1.wordpress.com/al-maghrib-institute-exposed/ .

As the Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed family move to Qatar in the wake of the clock-in-a-box incident in Irving, Texas, one might make note of the effort involved in trying to put a medieval past somewhere up ahead in North America’s continuing democratic, humanist, and secular governance.

# # #

Link – Palestinians Slaughtered by the Great Hate

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syria

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

feudalism, medievalism, political theater, Syria, Yarmouk Camp

The Palestinians in Yarmouk are unlucky, mainly because they are being attacked and killed by Muslims, and not by Israel. An Israeli attack on the camp would have drawn worldwide condemnation and protests, with Palestinian and Arab leaders rushing to seek the intervention of the UN Security Council and the international community.

The Palestinians in Yarmouk are unlucky because their leaders in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are still busy fighting each other over power and money. This is a power struggle that has been going on since Hamas drove the PA out of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “Why Palestinians in Yarmouk Are Unlucky.”  Gatestone Institute, April 10, 2015.


Setting aside the fine points of Islamist rivalry that may exist between Daesh and Hamas, the absurdity and obscenity of the destruction of the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp may serve to highlight the sociopathic character of the despots who brought it about: Putin, Assad, Khamenei.

Aboud Dandachi’s observations regarding the perverting of Syria’s Arab Spring into an extremist’s civil war are borne out by the advance of the al-Qaeda spin-off that is Daesh and the more than equal measure of punishment meted to Yarmouk by the Assad (“Or Burn It”) regime.  All of the Arab accusation and handwringing on behalf of the (descendants of) refugees of 1948 have been betrayed as convenient loud mouthiness.  In the pinch, not one militant or military Arab hand stood to defend — to hold dear and keep safe — the larger population of Yarmouk.

If the reader should happen to be thinking like a healthy human being, this might be a good time to put on the mantle of any of a number of malign narcissistic sociopaths and start to think like a ringleader, a showman, a producer of conflict to be delivered, described, and framed in the cause of one’s own self-aggrandizing political theater.

Related Reference

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the mayhem has turned Yarmouk into “the deepest circle of hell.”

“A refugee camp is beginning to resemble a death camp,” Ban told reporters at the U.N., adding that the residents, including 3,500 children, are being used as human shields by armed elements inside Yarmouk and government forces outside it.

Aji, Albert.  “PLO says it won’t be drawn into battle to oust IS from embattled Palestinian camp in Syria.”  U.S. News & World Report, April 10, 2015.


You cannot understand the Islamic State’s assault on the camp or what it means unless you also consider how Bashar al-Assad, as a gift to the Palestinian people, turned a thriving neighborhood of hundreds of thousands of people into a desperate population of 18,000 waiting to die. We cannot stop what happened in Yarmouk from repeating itself elsewhere unless we save the 600,000 besieged civilians whom Assad is starving to death.

Zakarya, Qusai.  “The Starving of Yarmouk, Then the Capture: The Islamic State’s attack on the besieged Palestinian refugee camp outside Damascus is highly suspicious.  It could only have happened with Assad’s complicity.”  Foreign Policy, April 9, 2015.


At the time, the full scale of the group’s collusion with the Assad regime was not yet well known, and it was perceived as an independent Al-Qaeda group with dreams of a 21st century caliphate, which they started to impose on Raqqa.

Dandachi, Aboud.  “After Conquering Raqqa, ISIS Enters Mosul.  Are the Obamanite Isolationists Happy Now?”  From Homs to Istanbul, June 10, 2014.


In mid-2012, Hezbollah entered Syria, ostensibly to safeguard a regime that was vital in supporting its operations in the region. Once thought of as the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel, their intervention, coupled with their ally’s brutal siege on Yarmouk, has damaged the movement’s popularity among Palestinians from Syria.

El-Shammah, Hugo.  “Inside the Middle East: Palestinians in Syria lose respect for Hezbollah.”  The Media Line in The Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2015.


Published about a year ago, this piece seems practically quaint by the standards of horror being visited today by Daesh on the beleaguered Palestinians.

Chulov, Martin.  “Besieged and terrified . . . and the food is about to run out for Damascus refugees.”  The Guardian, April 19, 2014.


Reports also say that several Palestinians including an imam have been beheaded by Isis. Grisly pictures posted on social media shows severed heads hung on spikes inside the refugee camps.

Varghese, Johnlee.  “Isis Posts Grisly Pictures of Beheaded Palestinians in Yarmouk Camp (Graphic Images).  International Business Times, April 5, 2015.

# # #

Cryptic – Integrity | Loyalty

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by commart in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

disingenuous speech, idealism, integrity, lying, malignant narcissism, political exploitation, political theater, propaganda, theft

You may have your integrity before God; your adversary does not; he has loyalty leveraged by fear, greed, or need: the father can be a very bad father — and in that is the fighting.

Quote – From the Soviet Way of Thinking – #JeSuisCharlie

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

malignant narcissism, manipulation, political psychology, political theater, Soviet, terrorism

“We must execute not only the guilty,” Lenin’s commissar of justice, Nikolai Krylenko, said.  “Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”

Remnick, David.  Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire.  P. 506. New York: Random House, 1993.


In light of today’s heinous attack in Paris, it may do (and with Putin’s neo-feudal and piratical Russian oligarchy in mind) to think back on the “red” part of the “red-green alliance” and its contribution to the manner of terrorism witnessed today.


Posted 1/7/2015.


http://freebeacon.com/national-security/a-tribute-to-charlie-hebdo/ 1/7/2015.


http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamson – 1/7/2015.  (“Reform Jewish Extremism”?  I want in!  I want to hear what ten million people singing Kumbaya in tune together sounds like).  😉  Back on the serious note, no pun intended:

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found itself the subject of an unkind Broadway lampoon, The Book of Mormon, its leaders did not bomb the theater or even try to force the show to be shut down as “hate speech.” Instead, they decided — in a brilliant stroke — to offer theatergoers copies of their scripture through an advertisement in the show’s playbill: “You’ve seen the play, now read the book.”


http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/french-police-identify-3-suspects-in-attack-on-newspaper-office-that-killed-12-1.2177723#ixzz3OAwQp8Fy – 1/7/2015.


http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-islamic-state-and-the-%E2%80%9Carmy-in-being%E2%80%9D – 1/7/2015.


http://www.rand.org/blog/2015/01/terror-in-paris-answers-from-rand-experts.html – 1/7/2015.


http://gawker.com/what-is-charlie-hebdo-and-why-a-mostly-complete-histo-1677959168 – 1/7/2015.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30710545 – 1/7/2015.


There are numerous calls to violent jihad in the Quran. But the Quran is hardly alone. In too much of Islam, jihad is a thoroughly modern concept. The 20th-century jihad “bible,” and an animating work for many Islamist groups today, is “The Quranic Concept of War,” a book written in the mid-1970s by Pakistani Gen. S.K. Malik. He argues that because God, Allah, himself authored every word of the Quran, the rules of war contained in the Quran are of a higher caliber than the rules developed by mere mortals.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-how-to-answer-the-paris-terror-attack-1420672114 – 1/7/2015

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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