Tag Archives: politics

Link – Erdogan’s Turkey – Israel’s Image

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Turkey

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A large number of the citizens of Turkey, a NATO member, see Israel and the United States as enemies.

A survey conducted recently in Turkey found that nearly half the country’s citizens (42.6%) see Israel as the biggest security threat, followed by the United States (35.5%), and only then Syria (22.1%).

How do they visualize Israel, a country with which they have made several military and trade agreements, as being a security threat? Do they think Israel would ever invade Turkey? Bomb Turkey? Nuke Turkey? This view seems to be based on either religion-induced paranoia caused by Islamic anti-Semitism, or else their understanding of reality has been distorted Nazi-style by Turkish leaders and the media.

Bulut, Uzay.  “Turkish Journalist Uzay Bulut — Turkey’s View of Israel.”  IsraelSeen.com, June 10, 2015.

Turkey was the first – and for decades the only – Islamic country to recognize the Jewish state, opening diplomatic relations in 1949. While Turkey became a member of NATO in 1952, and Israel served during the Cold War as a Western ally to counter Soviet alliances in the Arab world, relations between the two states were low-key through the decades of wars fought between Israel and the Arabs. Yet Turkey never severed the relationship despite Arab pressure to do so. With the end of the Cold War, Israel and Turkey emerged as the most democratic and economically dynamic states in the region. Their foreign pro-Western orientation and their self-perception as bastions of democratic and free market values in an unruly neighbourhood placed them, as was the case during the Cold War years, in the same strategic boat.

Inbar, Efraim.  “The Resilience of Israeli-Turkish Relations”.  11:4 (591-607) Israel Affairs, October 2005; reprinted by The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 63; posted as a PDF online.

Given the neo-feudal and fascist will of Syndicate Red Brown Green, the resilience of Israeli-Turkish relations has not looked good for some years.

What may be looking forward, however, is how well humanity-adverse and anti-Semitic drives and manipulations may be overviewed on the World Wide Web.  Not only may pro-democracy true progressives in the west do the homework on the Putin-Erdogan relationship, brave and independent souls in Turkey (and elsewhere worldwide) may search up “Putin, Erdogan, Democracy”.

Other cool related searches: “Putin, palaces”; “Erdogan, white palace”.

After a while, in the same fashion as the Reuter’s piece on Khamenei, these reports that develop online — and they do add up thematically — create a certain impression and, perhaps, also leave a lasting impression.

Additional Reference

Martel, Frances.  “Erdogan’s Putin-Style Internet Trolls Blamed for Turkish AKP’s Election Losses.”  Breitbart, June 10, 2015.

Sadar, Claire.  “Dreaming of Russia in Ankara: Is Erdogan Following in Putin’s Footsteps?”  Foreign Affairs, February 12, 2015.

Tisdall, Simon.  “Erdogan plan for super-presidency puts Turkey’s democracy at stake.” The Guardian, March 25, 2015.

Relevant on BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology“

I fear to see the term “anthropolitical” take off, but it could happen: in a New Age Strange Way, we’re all going to be part of distinct and meaningful legacy (and ethnolinguistic) cultures, but any will have the option at all times to overview the same rapidly — to see their world mirrored in real time — and inquire into its intellectual arrangements.  From that may come greater discrimination in preferences in values plus an active delineation of “desirable universals” and “critical positive” cultural and intellectual assets.

The English x persons x language shall not rule the world: the worlds of the world must rule themselves differentially even if and while wrapped in a unifying global communications environment.

Addendum – June 15, 2015

Efraim Inbar, a professor of political studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), is not optimistic about AKP’s imminent political downfall and does not expect a change in Turkey’s attitude toward Western nations and Israel.

“The struggle over the soul and identity of Turkey continues,” Inbar told JNS.org, explaining that while “the election is definitely a blow to the AKP, [the party] still remains the major political force in Turkey.”

JNS.org via The Algemeiner.  “Will Erdogan’s Election Setback Mean Improved Relations With Israel?”  June 14, 2015.

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Sadegh Zibakalam – Challenging “Death to Israel” in Tehran

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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Posted to YouTube June 10, 2015.

The event took place on February 25, 2015.

Toward the end of the clip, Dr. Zibakalam says to hecklers in the audience, “You are so tyrannical and dictatorial that you even disrupt this debate!”

An American, European, or Israeli could not have said what needed to be said any better than that.

Zibakalam asks also, “Who on earth has given this responsibility to Iran to annihilate Israel?”

First suggested answer to that rhetorical challenge: Ayatollah Khamenei, of course.

Second answer: no less than charges of heresy in medieval churches, anti-Semitism has proven across time a cheap tool for leveraging political power to deflect attention away from mediocre and piratical leaders while enriching the same by way of thieving from the children of Moses — all of them.

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FTAC – New Boundaries – Normative Adaptation

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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International trade and the Internet have altered the world’s boundaries in many ways, and with associated processes irreversible — some things cannot be turned backward — change in how we think about ourselves and others and our social and spiritual perception may be due.

“Google” has turned out a pretty good name for the past two decades of democratized intellectual exploration.

I’ve been calling “Time the New Space”.

We know what has been bothering (and bloodying) the world from the past: what lies ahead? What can be put ahead, i.e., developed now and placed in the future?

This whole conversation is a miracle.

The New Global Intelligentsia is going to be “new” for a while longer. It may be fragile too — too few where needed most — but perhaps growing peace is what time is for.

Time is the New Space.

When one can call in a pizza, Skype with a Facebook buddy 9,000 miles away, build a library, and fill a closet with one click (often enough), “space” — real space, earth space, physical space — becomes a little bit more recreational space and separate from common intellectual and social operations, including social and political projects.

No matter where one lives on this planet, very practically so, one may have a Great Conversation with countless others.

When the conversation turns to culture and conflict (for fun: add “language and psychology”) and the more callous mudslinging subsides or may be eluded by way of our aggregated and collective choices in conversational partners, watch out: change would seem to be in the offing.

Timeline for transiting from where we are (take a bearing) to where things are “a little bit better”?

Unknown.

Perhaps unknowable.

Nonetheless, whatever the differences may be in our sources of laughter and moans, those with whom we “chatype” online or, perhaps, who stumble across this blog, are traveling together on one blue pearl of a planet now thoroughly wrapped in talk.

Loose Additional Reference

Tetterner, Stuart James.  “Norms Perspective”.  Confluence, Cornell University.  Last updated September 5, 2007.

DiMaggio, Paul and Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson.  “Social Implications of the Internet.”  27:307-36.  Annual Review of Sociology, 2001 (PDF).

. . . we believe that the internet activism of today is best perceived as informed by the spirit of the EZLN, the ‘Battle of Seattle’, and the diverse amalgams of social movements and subcultures that have matured along with the new media over the last five years. This is the internet as a living, historical force and one of the keys to understanding and shaping the political and cultural life of the present age.

Kahn, Richard and Douglas Kellner.  “New media and internet activism: from the “Battle of Seattle’ to blogging.”  New Media and Society, Sage Publications, 2004.  PDF may be found online.

Before the revolution, the Tsar in Russia had a system of internal passports. The people hated this system. These passports marked the estate from which you came, and this marking determined the places you could go, with whom you could associate, what you could be. The passports were badges that granted access, or barred access. They controlled what in the Russian state Russians could come to know.

The Bolsheviks promised to change all this. They promised to abolish the internal passports. And soon upon their rise to power, they did just that. Russians were again free to travel where they wished. Where they could go was not determined by some document that they were required to carry with them. The abolition of the internal passport symbolized freedom for the Russian people — a democratization of citizenship in Russia.

Lessig, Lawrence.  The Laws of Cyberspace.  Draft 3.  Essay presented at Taiwan Net ’98 Conference, Tapei, March 1998.

Because you may have heard this in the background of the video clip on the Family of Man exhibit (a related hardcover became my first book about photography).

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Link – Criticism of Patrick Cockburn Also Tells About A Post-Soviet “Theater of the Real”

28 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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By contrast, Cockburn takes a generous view of the regime’s belated and brief confrontation with ISIS. He has pronounced Assad’s army its “main military opponent,” deserving of Western support. But facts tell a different story. According to a Carter Center study, the regime has spared ISIS in 90 percent of its attacks; and an IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center (JTIC) study finds that in 2014, the regime targeted ISIS in only 6 percent of its attacks. (ISIS in turn directed its fire on the regime in only 13 percent its operations.)

Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees.  “Who’s Lying About Syria’s Christian Massacre?”  The Daily Beast, May 27, 2015.

Since Aboud Dandachi laid out the shaping of the battle by Assad forces in his refreshingly honest and entertaining history and polemic, The Doctor, The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between the World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict (2014), the feudal perversion of a modest pro-democracy protest in 2011 into a brutal epic one might title “Assad vs The Terrorists” has been apparent but the statistics on how it was done never so well relayed.

BackChannels (oh the bias!) commonly invokes the term “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” in place of Bashar al-Assad alone to play up the axis, its Russo-Iranian core, and define the conflict in Syria as other and greater than “civil war”, a mere internal dispute, the greater dispute being that between medieval absolute power and modern democratic distributed or popular power.

Additional Reference

Amazon.com: The Doctor,The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between The World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict.  eBook: Aboud Dandachi: Kindle Store – Kindle Edition, 94-101, 2/17/2014.

BackChannels.  “From Syria – The Doctor, the Eye Doctor, and Me – A Damning Statement.”  February 28, 2014.

Pulse.  “Syria: Beyond the Red Line” — “An important discussion on Syria, hosted by the Frontline Club, featuring Jonathan Littell, Orwa Nyrabia, Laila Alodaat, and Nerma Jelacic.”  Video featured.  May 28, 2015.

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2012 Report – Watching the Horror Born

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Politics, Syria

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From recent correspondence — so recent, it hasn’t even been sent!

You may wish to wonder at the goodness of your country in its domestic ideals. China and Russia work differently, and what they do has probably long “leaked” into our own analyses and options.

With Iran, “War by Proxy” is obvious everywhere the regime sows chaos, death, and sorrow. This week: Yemen.

With Russia, those criminals make war and lie about it. As much has been the story of the invasion of Crimea from the start.

The Chinese: they have built islands on the sly!

Darned Earthworkers!

🙂

This news appeared on Fox nine days ago:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/18/military-intel-predicted-rise-isis-in-2012-detailed-arms-shipments/

Who OWNS that monster Out There in Syria-Iraq (“Syriaque”?*).

That it has served Putin-Assad-Khamenei, that person that has managed to pervert a a popular people’s protest into an ineffable tragedy one might title, “Assad vs The Terrorists” (mission accomplished), points to the forbearing of barrel bombing old terrorists positions when the districts of Homs proved so much more convenient and harmless and helpless for doing so.

This month (merry one of May) has brought an example of active observation but passive response to a challenge that has morphed from a negligible horror into a military and political scourge calling to mind the possibly more gentle manners of Attila the Hun.

The story released by Fox has been picked up on the Blogosphere, and the report itself may be located and downloaded as a PDF.

Additional Reference

Always on Watch.  “The DIA: ISIS “A Strategic Asset”?  May 26, 2015.

Hoff, Brad.  “2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”.  Levant Report, May 19, 2015.

Judicial Watch.  “Pgs. 287-293 (291) JW v DOD and State 14-812”.  Download site for the report pdf file (uploaded May 18, 2015).

*“Syriac” is a language and “Syriaque” it’s French spelling.

While on the subject of the dismantling of Syria-Iraq boundary points, BackChannels has taken note of the strength of “nominal affiliation” and “sectarian teleology” in producing and sustaining brutal conflict in the region.  The gamble on the favor of God and related glory appears to overmatch the promise of social cooperation and cohesion across sectarian lines that would produce a more sound freedom, peace, and prosperity while intellectual and social habits related to the experiences of fear and security prevail: Our People vs Those People, Sunni vs Shiite, appears to remain primary across population to some extent.

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Garland, Qanta Ahmed, and Freedom of Speech

06 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Posted to YouTube 5/5/2015.

If there are any regular readers of BackChannels, it should go without saying that “Shimmer” always applies.

Beyond the Islamist’s “jihad” and everyone else’s struggle with living authentically good lives — not saintly lives, just good ones 🙂 — the basis in Torah that becomes the source material for the transformation of Rome and of the Arab Peninsula may call for revisiting in the cause of greater Christian-Jewish-Muslim accommodation or melding.

With regard to the American Freedom of Speech concept, this ascribed to Patrick Henry and slipped to young minds early in their American education (at least for my generation) tells of both attitude and behavior set before ALL Americans: ” “I may not like what a man says, but I shall defend to the death his right to say it!”

The current demonizing and framing of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and the democratic Left’s handling of the conservative voice reminds me of two Soviet Era fixtures: the KGB disinformation campaigns (reference Pacepa and Rychlak in the Russian Section of this blog’s library) and, as a philosophy, Hegelian dialectic, which, stating this offhand and without scholarship, would nonetheless seem to suggest that the branding takes place before a public possessed of its own independence and mind and inclined or stimulated to respond to the demonizing in a manner opposite the effort.  Basically, Americans (who follow the news; who read independently; who argue around the dinner table or chat at the bar; and who have ready access to the Internet through computers, phones, and pads) are a deeply literate and informed people inclined toward freedom in the making up of their own minds.

Related

A mighty global community of humanist activists and public intellectuals has taken on the corrective updating of the medieval world.  As much was probably not laid out in those terms, but whether out of outrage with “honor killing” or the horrors brought to the modern world by the al-Qaeda affiliates,  they’re “in it” or engaged in producing greater coherence in global worldview.

AHA Foundation

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

British Muslims for Secular Democracy (Facebook Page)

Moral Courage Project

New Age Islam

Qanta Ahmed

Tarek Fatah – Toronto Sun

“Locus of Control” may be thematic in the workout of motivation within the “Islamic Small Wars” and the resettling of attitudes and beliefs derived from cultural speech and texts, but there may be some way to go before understanding that variable.  In the conservative ranks of the west, the reaction to Islamist ambition and Islamic teleology as presently set has been robust in a right-back-at-ya manner.

American Freedom Defense Initiative

Eric Allen Bell

Jihad Watch and Robert Spencer

Pamela Geller

Some are saying I provoked this attack. But to kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.

Sunday in Garland, Texas, a police officer was wounded in a battle that is part of a longstanding war: the war against the freedom of speech. Some people are blaming me for the Garland shooting — so I want to address that here.

Geller, Pamela.  “Pamela Geller: A Response to My Critics—This Is a War.”  Time Magazine, May 6, 2015.

Steven Emerson

United West — for those who might like to visit the art show with Tom Trento, this piece tops the United West web site: “MUHAMMAD ART EXHIBIT & CONTEST
Live Streaming now, Sunday May 3rd, 6pm-8pm Eastern,” and it features a three-hour YouTube video of the event.

I may copy the links to this blog’s “Alpha-Zulu” page — a catchall index of nouns relevant to BackChannels and linked to external sources — but suffice it to suggest that if one wanted to overview the intellectual drifts around a conflict area — and do it as a private citizen! — this online research capability plus social media provides for exactly that plus distillation.

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Baltimore – Recognizing “Shut it down!” And Shutting It Off

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

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When the Ferguson riots broke August 9, 2014, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left got busy churning out “false flag” accusations involving New Establishment elements for incitement.  In related search, “DHS Is Employing Agent Provocateurs and are Behind the . . .”; “Ferguson Witness: Government is Planting Provocateurs in . . .”; “Busted! ‘Agent Provocateur’ Caught Red Handed in Ferguson!”  With such as those, BackChannels would happily invoke its mouthy “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” and remind that the old KGB proved adept at “false flag” manipulation of the Russian constituency with, among other episodes, the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”, today relentlessly examined and rehashed by Miami University scholar Karen Dawisha in her book Putin’s Kleptocracy (listed in the “Russian Section”).

The injury and death of Freddie Gray will receive — is receiving — the scrutiny deserved regardless of the public press “for justice” (without injustice proven but certainly suspected) and the spillover into violence.

This is what promotes that violence:

Malik Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based group that called for the demonstration and advertised it on social media, told the crowd that he would release them in an hour, adding: “Shut it down if you want to! Shut it down!”

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay and Stephen Babcock.  “Scenes of Chaos in Baltimore as Thousands Protest Freddie Gray’s Death.”  International New York Times, April 25, 2015.

Shut what down?

Shut “it” down!

A city, a society, a long fought quest for equality and justice frequently achieved.

Yesterday in WND, conservative journalist Aaron Klein noted of Shabazz, “Not a single news media outlet quoted above informed its readers of that which a simple Google search of “Malik Shabazz” reveals. As highlighted on his Wikipedia page, until October 2013, Shabazz notoriously served as the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party.”

Klein goes on to note in relation to Shabazz episodes involving voter intimidation (“using such phrases as ‘white devil’ and ‘You’re about to be ruled by the black man, cracker'”), anti-Semitic invective, and incitement.

Earlier today, The Baltimore Sun noted the notables in attendance at Freddie Gray’s funeral, and BackChannels would suggest all of a different mein — and with Dick Gregory present, some of a different era — than Shabazz.

Shut “It” down?

Violence and looting overtook much of West Baltimore on Monday, seriously injuring several police officers and leaving a store and several vehicles in flames.

Dance, Scott.  “Riots erupt across West Baltimore, downtown.”  The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015.

Shutting Not Much Down, But Some appears to be continuing into the evening.

With generations of of the Left to Far Left in town, one’s ears may tune to the rhetoric to come: will it be accusing, ad hominem, venomous?  Will it be responsible, encouraging inquiry, open observation, and discussion?  In what part either?

Shut it down?

That kind of talk, yes.

Cited and Other Reference

Dance, Scott.  “Riots erupt across West Baltimore, downtown.”  The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015.

Klein, Aaron.  “Media Fail to Identity Leader of Baltimore Riots: Ex-New Black Panther chairman a notorious racist.”  WND, April 26, 2015.

Marbella, Jean and Jonathan Pitts.  “Friends, family bid farewell to Freddie Gray.” Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2015.

Schwartzman, Paul and Dana Hedgpeth.  “‘Another life gone’: Hundreds gather for Freddie Gray funeral in Baltimore.”  The Washington Post, April 27, 2015.

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay and Stephen Babcock.  “Scenes of Chaos in Baltimore as Thousands Protest Freddie Gray’s Death.”  International New York Times, April 25, 2015.

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