Tag Archives: politics

Rhetorical Objects – Anti- Anti-Semitism & Anti-Semitism

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Political Psychology

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In the wake of last week’s Eastern Ukrainian flyer imbroglio — briefly: a flyer bearing the “symbols of both Russia and the People’s Republic of Donetsk”and distributed outside a synagogue by men wearing balaclavas had asked the region’s Jews to register with the government and declare their property — I was tempted to compose a piece titled “Is Putin Playing for Jerusalem?”, as the Russian President may be accused of many things but never anti-Semitism.

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Above: posted to YouTube by JewishLife, June 26, 2012.

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“As you know, Judaism is one of the four traditional religions in our nation . . . .” (0:25).

So, hate the haters, political anti- anti-Semitism has become the symbol of virtue, and the other: that’s the tar with which to spatter one’s enemies.

However, in our convoluted topsy-turvy atmosphere complicated by facsimile bipolar political sociopathy and the license taken to exploit deceit in the cause of an immense but fragile “egotism”, it’s hard saying who, actually, is the anti-Semite and whom the anti- anti-Semite.

Or the call might be easy: neither – no one (normal) at heart.

The truth is as regards all but an emotionally arrested and purple political fringe — one that should stop holding its collective breath for validation of (choose any combination) white / black / Muslim / Aryan / Internationalist / (simpleton) / etc. supremacy — the Jews are off the examining table for any majority of concern and have been since Auschwitz reopened as a museum.

Nonetheless, the higher one climbs on the ladder of power, the more valuable the “anti- anti-Semite” and “anti-Semite” chips become.

The two political rhetorical objects — one claiming (“I am an anti- anti-Semite”), the other accusing (“You are an anti-Semite”) — may have nothing to do with modern Jewry, Judaism, Jewish culture and life, Jews, or Jewish anything else — but these two objects in social currency have power in service to the will to control others,  and for a certain kind of political personality and temperament, that’s all that matters.

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Crisis of Conscience: Anti-Semite Learns He’s a Jew – Posted August 7, 2013.

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An excerpt From The Awesome Conversation (FTAC)

The possibilities:

1. Donetsk could have published the flyer earnestly and backpedaled, possibly with a rebuke from Moscow. That would be the simplest explanation.

2. Ukrainian nationalists masquerading as Russians distributed the flyer to make break-away Russian nationalists look bad.

Now it gets interesting.

3. Putin may have suggested creating and distributing the flyer in Russian incognito to suggest just how low Ukrainian nationals would go in overturning the Moscow-aligned Yanukovych government.

Notably, and much to the credit of the Jewish community in Ukraine, Jews receiving the flyers asked the men distributing them to take off their face masks.

Guess who ran away?

The possession of integrity should not be so difficult.

However, comfort, defense, and refuge may be taken in lying given a certain kind of leader and leadership plus follower and following.

Update!

As JewishPress.com pointed out, it’s not going to stop at threatening letters. At 2 AM, Saturday morning, the Nikolayev synagogue in Ukraine was firebombed multiple times, as the anti-Semitism escalates.

“Ukrainian Synagogue Firebombed (Video).”  The Jewish Press, April 20, 2014.

Unfortunately, it appears the flyer and the emphasis on political rhetoric has not sufficed for either amusement or manipulation.

Posted to YouTube April 20, 2014.

However, I have a problem with the video: the weather in south Ukraine appears to have been above freezing last night: where has the snow come from?  The looks of another synagogue firebombed in February look quite different from the building of interest, and the building of interest appears on the web elsewhere as a single story unit, not the two required for camera placement as the video would suggest.

Should anyone with a smart phone care to report in on the story, which has made the rounds on the Jewish press, please do.

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“It is part Soviet theme park, part wacky anti-western wonderland.”

Harding, Luke.  “Inside the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’: balaclavas, Stalin flags and razaorwire.”  The Observer, April 19, 2014; The Guardian.

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“I’m asking those behind this not to make us tools in this game,” he said. Anti-Semitic incidents in the Russian-speaking east were “rare, unlike in Kiev and western Ukraine,” he said.

Reuters.  “Ukraine rabbi calls anti-Semitic leaflet a political hoax.”  April 20, 2014.

More From the Awesome Conversation

I used to call the “Islamic Small Wars” wars for detectives and poets — everything that happens has been planned in private and the motivation is all in the head suspended there by language.  It’s disturbing seeing the same mode become ascendant in eastern Europe.  Without claim for the crime, there’s no known criminal, and the finger-pointing goes in every direction.

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The traditional political cultivation of an anti-Jewish animus in services to institutional development and greed has been at least socially explicable. One understand the poison and its applications. The application of “anti- anti-Semitism” and “anti-Semitism” in Ukraine may signal a brand of cynicism and manipulation that has less to do with hating Jews than with tarring one’s political enemies.

However . . . Russian desk expert Luke Harding published this gem yesterday: http://www.theguardian.com/…/ukraine-donetsk-pro-russia… It could be the “kiddies” after all, and, God help them, if they’re demonstrably anti-Semitic, Putin will jettison them.

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FTAC – Sawing On — and On and On — (Malignant, Political, Civilizational) Narcissism

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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In Egypt, the government that “came to power in a fair election” represented the only party with a program at the time, such had been the character of Mubarak’s suppression of all political competition, and, indeed, it proved its identity in values by immediate rewriting the state’s constitution to serve its own most undemocratic ends. Notably, it not only maintained Mubarak’s torture chambers but made them its own.

While “the problem” may be labeled “authoritarianism” and attention deflected away from Islam thereby, the primary driver in both unconstrained military and theocratic ambition has been “malignant narcissism” AKA “political narcissism” AKA “civilizational narcissism”. In individuals diagnosed with “narcissistic personality disorder” the signal that is “grandiose messianic delusion” may be quite distinct; in politicians, the same in personality may be recognized too late or — as happens with dictators, secular or religious — abetted by the “gonna get something” mentality of their followers plus the naturally strident and normal narcissism of youth.

Result: ih conflict, the same mentality playing on both sides of the table (“different talk; same walk”).

Against both, the middle in humanity — sometimes I call that the “humanity of humanity” — needs to assert or reassert its interests, and that would seem to involve a unique struggle but one familiar to many of many religions: the revolution on the outside may need to be matched by another within the heart.

Inspiration for the above note: Rodrik, Dani.  “The Problem is Authoritarianism, Not Islam.”  World Affairs, August 12, 2013.

Q: Why narcissism?

A: Narcissistic mortification.

Causes and encouragements are more probably multivariate regarding contributing factors in producing, say, an actor-producer-director of a personality and a contemporary monster like the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei, which is not to suggest that all of their counterparts opposite their position in Syria are honky dory either.

In any case, Dani Rocrick’s essay well covers the “all-for-all” character of the open democracies, the Musketeer quality of my paraphrase extending easily from “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”   However, as if with a sharp plane, he criticizes the authoritarianism on the surface of governance associated with the Muslim-majority states.

It may be noted of BackChannels that while I give portion of the “Islamic Small Wars” attention, such as the junta in Burma, Paul Biya in Cameroon, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe are never far from mind either, nor for that matter at this time is Russia’s President Putin, who appears to have been hastened along his predictable track by his commitment to Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War.  “Washington” as if it had a mind rather than contained a collection of such, may have thought that Putin representing Russia’s interests in the middle east would have no investment in Ayatollah Khamenei’s client state and platform for Hezbollah, but it turns out that what Putin, Assad, and Khamenei value most are their respective positions as absolute authorities, achieved or in ambition, in each of their states.  That quality also provides a political basis for greater cooperation between China and Russia.

Where fits Muhammad in this?

Approaching the eve of Passover today, some may be reminded that, “So We took retribution from them, and We drowned them in the sea because they denied Our signs and were heedless of them” (Quran 7:136).

Who is “We”?

The Jewish mythos acknowledges God alone as having parted the Red Sea with Moses as merely a leader: “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided . . . . ” (Exodus 14:21).

Repeat: ” . . . all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind . . . .”

Moses, recruited by God in the first place, speaking to Pharaoh as intermediary for God (for it would not do for God to speak to Pharaoh, Pharaoh having confused himself with God), and, by God’s will, leading the Jewish People and a “mixed multitude” down to the sea, may have in “Abracadabra” fashion reached out a foot or two over the lapping tide, but the language doesn’t change as regards who’s Boss, from beginning to the end, alpha-omega, and Who, exactly, “turned it into dry land”.

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FTAC – Just a Word On Imperial Russia v.2.0

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Political Psychology

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The Kremlin has returned to the criminal abuse of language in its effort to renew animus with the west and line its oligarch’s pockets with the proceeds attending conflict and contemplated conquest. Basically, the “Vertical of Power” has resuscitated Russian Imperialism.

Inspiration for the comment: an article on Chinese-Russian energy cooperation, which would seem out of left field given plenty of motivation by way of news out of Ukraine and Syria; however, in the back channel behind the back channel (are back channels recursive?), stands the unexplored thesis that the two great superpower dictatorships, Russia and China, understand one another better than they do their treacherous democratic open society partner on the Security Council.

Of course, the two mobsters are going to cut deals to cut out the nice guy.

This BackChannels blog signal travels to at least 112 nations, which provides me with a unique opportunity to pose a challenging question in development and with interest in improvement in the qualities of living across geopolitical space: choose, oh distant reader, how you wish to live: subjugated to economic and political elites whose judgment is capricious and powers strong enough to bend laws to suit their acquisitive, controlling, and unhealthily narcissistic wills?  Or as constituent participants in governments possessed of greater integrity and capable of open public policy and law formulation subject to public or citizen’s audit?

With now state-controlled media and lots of propaganda money spread through the New Old Now Old and Far Out Left, Putin’s Russia will attempt to exploit language to produce renewed anti-American, anti-“western” (i.e., specifically pro-dictatorship) animus and xenophobia.

For the record here, the author of this blog enjoys zero (zilch, nada) political funding, and the only funding I may really want — not that I don’t need money — would be open online journalism or research grant money.  In the universe of institutions, genuinely independent writers, research analysts, and scholars may be made to suffer — I know of no roof today beneath which to seek shelter — but the charm that comes with that fragility is intellectual freedom, a prize without price considering what media mercenaries have demonstrated do for the most tainted of paychecks.

I’ll go a little further to note than I am not the happiest of Americans in acknowledging the role Big Money plays in lobbying for laws and influencing Federal policy, but if, when, and where I may have specific complaint, I have confidence in my being able to research and write about the matter beholden to none and otherwise unfettered.

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FTAC – On Political Correctness in An Elite English Boarding School

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Politics

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The teacher apologized forthrightly, promptly.  Why persecute?  How small should one wish to be?  How limited a freedom (over arch and dark humor) in speech should we want?  It would be hard criticizing Muslims, some of whom heralded the muzzling of Ayaan Hirsi Ali via a Brandeis executive decision last week, for touchiness if Jews (or some) were to be as miserably passive-aggressive and absent of the wherewithal to joust and riposte.

Inspiration for the observation: “‘I’ll send you to one of your gas chambers’, teacher tells Jewish student.”  Metro, April 13, 2014.

One Facebooker wrote, “she should be fired!”

No, the teacher should not be fired.

The English language needs her right where she is.

I’d rather parry with a sharp tongue than weather the company of a humorless smiling always “PC” eduzombie.

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Why Is Iran Shipping Arm to Hamas and Hezbollah?

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Middle East, Regions

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Why Is Iran Shipping Arm to Hamas and Hezbollah?

On March 20, 2014, the U.S and the U.K. called on the United Nations to investigate Israel’s latest claim that it seized an Iranian arms shipment that amounts to an Iranian violation of Security Council sanctions.

This development compels renewed scrutiny of Iran’s intention behind its weapons shipments to Hamas and Hezbollah, particularly since Israel thwarted several prior Iranian arms shipments, among them the Karine A (January 2002), the Francorp (November 2009), and the Victoria (March 2011). Other countries, such as Turkey, and Cyprus and Italy have also intercepted Iranian arms shipments to the region.”

 

The piece is short but points out how cynically Ayatollah Khamenei uses language with what might be observed as “talk over talk” — two levels: the lower consisting of intention, e.g., ” Iran’s Army and Revolutionary Guard “will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world” — and that would be “God’s law” according to the despotic Iranian regime; and the upper level consists of the masking of intention: “. . . Iran will “scrupulously refrain[ing] from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the just struggles of the oppressed against the tyrants in every corner of the globe.”

Is there an Orwell in the house?

🙂

Those who would be clever often prove most talented at making themselves transparent.

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Never Again – the World’s Most Despicable Lie

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

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

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Never Again – the World’s Most Despicable Lie

However, as has always been the case even in the darkest chapters of human history, there have been the noble few to whom “never again” was a promise to be kept regardless of the cost, and who have risen above the prevalent apathy and helped those in most need. Despite having their resources and capabilities stretched to the breaking point, for three years neither Jordan nor Lebanon ever closed their borders to the multitude of Syrian refugees. Refugees who managed to reach Turkey found a country and people whose hospitality and generosity knew no limits.
And despite having every reason to hunker down behind a big fence or wall, Israel did no such thing when it came to helping Syrians in need, and thousands of Syrian lives were saved by Israeli medical assistance on the Golan.

My two cents on global sluggishness and resistance to settling the Syrian Civil War with an influx of weapons and manpower sufficient to defeat both Bashar al-Assad and the Al-Qaeda affiliates now operating throughout the battlespace.

  1. Endemic Syrian anti-westernism bolstered by a present if not embraced expanding “Islamism” (Islamic Jihad) may dampen enthusiasm for long-term adversary that needs immediate assistance.

  2. Arab and Arab-Syrian anti-Semitism, of which this blog has taken note, would seem to prove that the revolution would rather fail and die then alter its alignment against the “criminal genocidal imperial colonialist Zionazi entity”.

  3. The Great Dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei lies, misleads, steals (from its own people) and a third of it is a known nuclear power.

My advice to the “moderate” Syrian revolutionary leadership: lose the anti-Semitic, anti-Western contempt and hate, so that I may remove the quotation marks around “moderate” and others may reevaluate how to meet Russian President Putin’s gambit in Syria and the Middle East for re-founding and sustaining a Greater Russian Empire.

FTAC Inspired – A Rant On Religious Authoritarianism in Light of Legal and Social Structure Secular Democracies

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

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It’s a bit Yankee Doodle, also long for Facebook (so I did not post it there), but it discerns the difference, which is critical to freedom, between 1) dependence on the grace of an autocratic state and 2) the assurance of mutual regard and the defense of all by all by way of a studied secular democracy.

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Every state supports an ethnic or religious majority whose beliefs, calendar, customs, are supported in the construction of the laws of the state that then acknowledge, permit, or secure that identification to greater or lesser extent.

In Christian (majority) North America, laws corresponding with secular-humanist values derive their strength — frankly, their popularity and utility — from protecting all against all, including the tyranny of the majority: The occurrence of the Christmas celebration on December 25 shutters most businesses, but none private are compelled to close and no one who is not Christian is compelled to worship involving Jesus.

The principle: religion by individual volition at private expense.

By way of a constitutional and studied secularism, we keep everyone’s church, mosque, and temple doors open.

Kings and their like in autocratic political leaders may or may not choose to favor or protect all as befits their ambitions, desires, and their self-aggrandizing personal self-concept. The constituents of a genuine secular democracy will not — not ever — permit such leaders to power except through subterfuge or, as appears to have happened in Germany, the leveraging of their own venal supremacist ambitions.

In essence, a democratically free people do not leave to the grace of power their own interests in faith or the treatment of minorities.

Equality is assumed; matters involving human rights are presumed even while argued in the legislatures representative of constituent sensibilities overall (local laws, for example, address the death penalty plus a host of laws, from prohibitions about drugs to sentences for crime, that lend themselves to local or state — as opposed to Federal — standards).

Greater liberalism and grace within a theocratic mode in governance, whether explicit or implied, may be appreciated but there is less insurance against one enterprise in faith dominating all others, removing also the motivation for all to defend all against the overreaching ambitions of each.

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I have spoken, lol.

🙂

I believe most Americans would say about the same thing in regard to the virtues of the legal history, theses, and laws propelling “Out of Many, One” in the living constitution of my great and good national state.

All autocratic states — no exceptions — leave power to fate by way of who ascends to the position of a supreme human authority.  The king or president-for-life may turn out a good man, or not, but either way, the state’s constituents have been transformed into the leader’s subjects and must then live with the leader’s caprice and temperament a long time, unless or until driven to revolt.

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Putin Today – Reassembly

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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Bloomberg: “Ukraine Accuses Russia as Protests Seize Offices in East.” 4/7/2014.

Bloomberg: “Putin Stirs Azeri Angst That Russia Is Set to Extend Sway.”  4/6/2014.

International Business Times: “Pro-Russian Protesters Clash With Police and Seize Buildings in  Eastern Ukraine.”  4/6/2014.

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President Vladimir Putin, condemned by NATO for annexing Crimea, is now defying the U.S. in Syria by sending more and deadlier arms to help Bashar al-Assad score a string of advances against insurgents, military experts say.

Bloomberg.  “Putin Defies Obama in Syria as Arms Fuel Assad Resurgence.”  4/3/2014.

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In the middle east, I have for a while characterized the western opposition as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”; for eastern Europe, I now may blurt “Putin-Napoleon” (in lieu of “Putin-Yanukovych”), for the “vertical of power” appears to be spreading horizontally and quickly using predictably feudal (one almost hears, “Deploy the thugs”) methods.

Putin behind the curtain in Syria has reportedly improved the qualities of arms reaching the Assad regime with the intention of discouraging continued resistance in a convincing way.  In Ukraine, The Bear has squatted on Crimea and made camp sufficient to throw around some weight:

A new, leaner and meaner Russian Army has been on display in Crimea and war-gaming on the Ukrainian border over the past month or so. Its vanguard is now made up of just a few elite divisions of highly-motivated, well trained, and fully equipped volunteer soldiers, capable of deploying swiftly anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the Kremlin’s command.

Christian Science Monitor.  “Russia debuts new, sleek force in Crimea, rattling NATO.”  4/3/2014.

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