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Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

Link – Iraqi Theater – Iranian Disinformation

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, United States of America

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Tags

disinformation, Iranian regime, political manipulation

The idea that the United States is effectively arming the Islamic State is a popular rumor, particularly on Iranian State-run media, but the extent of individuals who believe that mistruth reaches to the highest echelons of Iranian society, according to Crytzer.

“The Iranian Quds Force commander absolutely believes we’re supplying Daesh,” Crytzer told Defense One. “He’s not trying to play on it. He actively believes it.”.

Tucker, Patrick.  “US Helicopter Shot at By Anti-ISIS Forces; Commander Blames Iran.”  Defense One, May 19, 2015.


Disinformation suits the feudal/medieval mode and its concentration of power and wealth in a very few “malignars” (malignant narcissists) devoted primarily to their own absolute power and breathtaking aggrandizement.

# # #

Link – Ramadi – The Way It Looks

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

political perception, Ramadi, sectarianism, Wictor

It’s obvious that the US did the bare minimum in the fight for Ramadi. The list of targets destroyed by American air strikes reads like satire or gallows humor.

“Near Ramadi, seven airstrikes struck one large and five small ISIL tactical units and an ISIL IED facility, destroying four ISIL resupply structures, three ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL buildings, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL VBIED and an ISIL motorcycle.”

No artillery positions were struck, even though they ringed the city. None of the ten trundling Islamic State armored bulldozers were struck. No waves of Islamic State assault infantry were struck. My guess is that President Obama wants to simply run out the clock and leave this mess to his successor. He’s pretending to help, but our contribution is often worthless.

Wictor, Thomas.  “Without Resolve, All is Lost”.  Thomas Wictor, May 18, 2015.


“Anybody who supported the government will probably be executed within the next 24 hours,” said Baer. “Their families will be driven out. It will be a bloodbath over the next couple of days. All the soldiers who were captured will be executed.”

A flood of residents has been pouring out of Ramadi toward safer parts of Anbar and Baghdad in recent days.

“We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis,” said Haimour, estimating that as many as 8,000 people had left the city Sunday.

Mullen, Jethro.  “ISIS seizes key Iraqi city of Ramadi: What happens next?”  CNN, May 18, 2015.

Related, same day: Hoft, Jim.  “ISIS Holds Massive Military Parade in West Anbar Celebrating Victory in Ramadi . . . (Where’s the Coalition?).  Gateway Pundit, May 18, 2015.


US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he was “absolutely confident” that the situation could be reversed within days.

Merthi, Karim Abou.  “Iraq forces eye swift Ramadi fightback before IS digs in.”  Yahoo News, May 19, 2015.


The way it looks for Ramadi, Sunnis, and Shiites in Iraq is not good.

The additional forces summoned by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi: Hashed al-Shaabi, Shiite “popular mobilization” units with a reputation for deeply seated Sunni-directed animus.  Merthi’s piece in Yahoo goes on to note, “Abadi and Washington had hoped to rely on regular forces and locally recruited Sunni tribal fighters newly incorporated into the Hashed al-Shaabi to fight IS in Anbar.”

In light of de facto black-and-white divisions in perception — for some (to many) in some spaces, one is either a this or a that, choose a label, and not to be noted for the better qualities of one’s more essential humanity — political habits may pit “all against all” (and some simply spoil for the Great Shiite vs Sunni War) when and where “all for all” is essential to forestall the march of the tyrannical.

# # #

Taiz, Yemen – Fighting, Pleading, Fighting

18 Monday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Yemen

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Taiz, Yemen

Meanwhile, the three-days of talks on Yemen’s future saw hundreds of politicians and tribal leaders gather in the Saudi capital. The meeting was boycotted by the rebels and their Iranian backers voiced objections to the venue of the talks.

Western countries accuse Shiite power Iran of backing the Houthi rebels, something the Islamic Republic and the rebels deny. The absence of the Houthis at the conference in Riyadh, which is to end Tuesday, means the dialogue is unlikely to end the violence.

AP.  “After truce, Saudi-led coalition resumes airstrikes in Yemen.”  Boston Herald.com, May 18, 2015.

Related:

Reuters. “At least 10 killed in overnight fighting in Yemen’s Taiz.”  May 17, 2015.


Posted to YouTube May 17, 2015.

Maria al-Masani: “I am a woman from Taiz, please save my family and loved ones, let the world know about the Houthi genocide of South and Middle Yemen and share this video.”


News24 – Posted to YouTube May 17, 2015.

Link rot inside of hours — the same footage may be seen by searching up “Taiz Battle: Heavy fighting erupts in Yemen streets”, and it should be found on RT’s YouTube channel.  Date of that posting: April 26, 2015.  😦

Update – 5/18/2015/1330 EDT

Al-Haj.  Ahmed.  “Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen resume after truce expires.”  Houston Chronicle, May 18, 2015.

As suggested by the now blank “News24” patch in this post, even “newsies” appear to lift material and label it new.  BackChannels avoids doing that but until “vetted trusted direct sources” feed up authentic reportage, the view from journalism’s “second row seat to history” may be skewed by what appears and can be accessed in open source online.

Update – 5/19/2015/1251 EDT

SANAA, Yemen — The Saudi-led coalition carried out the heaviest airstrikes near the Yemeni capital since the expiration of a five-day truce with Yemen’s Shiite rebels, hitting weapons depots in the mountains surrounding Sanaa and shaking several residential areas on Tuesday.

The bombardment began shortly after midnight Monday, with airstrikes targeting rebel-held military depots in the mountains of Fag Atan and Noqom, where missiles, tanks and artillery are kept, the residents said.

Al-Haj, Ahmed.  “Saudi-led coalition carries out some of the heaviest airstrikes on Yemeni capital after truce.”  Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 19, 2015.

# # #

If Doomed to Remember What the Pope Said About the PLO Leader

17 Sunday May 2015

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

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Tags

"angel of peace", Abbas, middle east conflict, Pope

"Guido Reni 031" by Guido Reni - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_031.jpg#/media/File:Guido_Reni_031.jpg

“Guido Reni 031” by Guido Reni – The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_031.jpg#/media/File:Guido_Reni_031.jpg


The scribes have only described the medallion — “an angel of peace destroying the spirit of war.”

I should have liked to have been treated to a photograph, for I do wonder how the “angel of peace” and the “spirit of war” look drawn, engraved, or stamped on that most precious of political keepsakes that is now an object of interest worldwide.

For working with the idea, the convenient web readily coughs up images (and artisanal medallions) featuring St. Michael slaying a dragon (you-know-who).

Close enough?


Bolded letters added by BackChannels.

“As is tradition with heads of State or of government, Francis presented presented a gift to the Palestinian leader, commenting: “May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: may you be an angel of peace.” Pope Francis had called Abu Mazen a “man of peace” when he visited Bethlehem in May 2014, just as he called the then Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, a “man of peace” during his subsequent visit to Jerusalem.”

Aye, that is as “Brian o’ London” transcribes it into his piece in Israellycool (May 17, 2015).

 


The problem: the pope did not call Abbas — aka the terrorist Abu Mazen — an “angel of peace.”

He did utter the words “angel of peace,” and he suggested that Abbas could or might be one. In the context of the pope’s complete statement about the meeting, the implication was that Abbas could be an angel of peace if he resumed direct negotiations with Israel.

Dyer, J. E.  “MSM fail: Pope did NOT call Mahmoud Abbas an ‘angel of peace’: UPDATE, with double-down.”  Liberty Unyielding, May 16, 2015.

Related: JTA.  “Pope Francis presents Abbas peace medallion at Vatican.”  May 17, 2015.

Unfortunately, the press screeches with AP parrots, and readers will find equivalents to this everywhere:

AP.  “Pope Francis calls Palestinian leader an ‘angel of peace'”.  New York Post, May 17, 2015.

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Link – Among those In the Endless Lists – Pakistan’s Ismaili Community

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Links, Pakistan, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

It was left to one of the wounded to drive the pink community bus full of the dead and dying to the nearest hospital.

Ismaelis are an international community of Muslims who, like other Shia, revere the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali but also the Imam Ismaeli, and ­believe in a more allegorical, mystical interpretation of the Koran.

Muslims of all sects benefit from the philanthropy of their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, whose charitable foundations ­finance schools, hospitals and the revival of classical Islamic culture and architecture throughout the Muslim world.

Hodge, Amanda.  “Ismaeli community in Pakistan mourns: For whom does bell toll?” The Australian, May 16, 2015.


Four days ago:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32717321 – “Pakistan gunmen kill 45 on Karachi Ismaili bus.”

Three days ago:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/14/opinions/moghul-bus-attack-pakistan/ – “Pakistan at turning point on terror?” — “Extremists have a modus operandi: They destroy any and every evidence of pluralism, tolerance, and openness — which is why they focus on minorities, history, and scholarship, saving a special ire for Muslims who disagree. In Karachi, they targeted a group of Muslims — Ismaili Shia — who played a critical role in Pakistan’s formation. Don’t think that wasn’t deliberate.”  (Op-ed by Haroon Mohgul).

Two days ago:

Pakistani police say they have arrested 145 people over an attack on a bus carrying Ismaili Shia Muslims that killed at least 45 in Karachi.

Those arrested are thought to include 90 students from a madrassa, or religious school.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32751457

Yesterday:

Sources further said it is expected that investigators will evaluate evidence regarding the connection of Indian spy agency ‘RAW’ in the attack.

There was no intelligence report present of such an attack, sources added.

http://www.geo.tv/article-184984-No-evidence-of-Daesh-involvement-in-Karachi-bus-attack-Sources

With reference to Geo’s non-reporting reportage: Huh?

Today:

The terrorists did not attack and fire randomly. They put in single bullets to the head — a hallmark of executions — as if the murder was in response to a conviction, a crime. And these enemies of the state made it clear that in their eyes our Ismaili brethren, among others, are guilty by virtue of their faith.

http://tns.thenews.com.pk/43-pakistanis-died-bus/#.VVieLblVhBc Op-ed in The Sunday News section of the The International News by Waqqas Mir.

Waqqas Mir, a lawyer, goes on in his condensed and lucid opinion to note the following:

No number of laws could have saved those 43 Pakistanis who died on that bus. No number of military courts will deter such murderous violence. But effective state action, driven by the political will to counter religious bigotry at its inception could have gone a long way. Groups like the ISIS and their partners are out to destroy our states as they exist. And the state must overcome its shortcomings. Religion is a constantly available sledgehammer that everyone can use in this country. Despite repeated failure, the state has been apologetic about coming up with a pluralist discourse. It is high time that this changes.


Pakistan is a country of ghosts. They are everywhere, the victims and the perpetrators both. On Wednesday morning, six gunmen wearing police uniforms stopped an Al Azhar Garden bus carrying 60 Ismaili Muslims in Karachi. The bus picked up Ismailies from the housing society dedicated to their community on the outskirts of the city and drove them to work. It was a journey the passengers made every day.

The gunmen boarded the bus. Sub ko mar dalo, one of them is reported to have said. Kill them all. By the time the gunmen got back on their motorcycles and fled, they had murdered 43 people.

Bhutto, Fatima.  “‘In Pakistan, anyone and everyone can be a target'”.  The Hindu, May 15, 2015.

# # #

Link – Iran – Kurdish Revolt

17 Sunday May 2015

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Iran, Kurdistan, revolt

The Iranian regime is known for its intolerance of anti-regime sentiment of any kind, and its anti-riot tactics include shutting off the Internet, wireless services and other means of communication in addition to banning reporters from the area. This means the Iranian Kurdish “revolution” has not yet been televised, but much like the uprisings in Syria and Egypt, it is being broadcasted on social media.

Masi, Alessandria.  “The Iranian Kurdish ‘Revolution’ The World Doesn’t Know is Happening.”  International Business Times, May 15, 2015.


Wikipedia maintains listings for Kurdish revolts in Iran for years 1967, 1979, and 1983:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Kurdish_revolt_in_Iran

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Kurdish_rebellion_in_Iran

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_rebellion_of_1983 (integrated with the Iran-Iraq War of the period).

Related: http://www.merip.org/mer/mer141/major-kurdish-organizations-iran (n.d.)

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A lesson in hypocrisy: the Egypt-Gaza security barrier

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin – Listening, Reflecting, Comprehending, Speaking

15 Friday May 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, political psychology, terrorism

As jihadi recruitment has grown even more severe, I believe it is because we have failed to factor in early childhood development. This is where the prologue to violence begins including radicalization and recruitment later on . . . .  

While a lot of money is being thrown at “de-radicalization,” reminiscent of the War on Poverty (and just think of where that has gotten us), we owe it to the public and to ourselves not to be terrified to address childrearing practices in these homes. They are different than in the West. Nevertheless, the Western converts who radicalized share a similar background of shame and troubled early childhoods.

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt.  “Ten Years Out – My Advice from “Listening” to Somalis in the Hennepin County Jail Minneapolis.”  Family Security Matters, May 15, 2015.

Related:

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt.  The Maternal Drama of the Chechen Jihadi.  IPI E-Books, FREE download.

Other titles by Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin:

The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing

Penetrating the Terrorist Psyche

Readers may finding themselves swimming in Kobrin’s sprawling style but with brights applied to sifting thematically while doing so will also develop insight into the building blocks of the “exploding iceberg”, i.e., enraged terrorist cool in personality.

Only once, I believe, has BackChannels addressed the formation of a psychologically teleological path from out of a simple childhood experience (with language): Guilt and Jealousy in Two Lines (September 26, 2013).

Generally speaking, children don’t — because they cannot frame their own case — write dissertations, and adults addressing adult displays of violence approach the same with the combines of hardware and legal tools known to military and paramilitary missions.

Message: quell it first; unravel the motivation afterward.


Posted to YouTube 2/7/2007 (views: about two million).


The mother has tremendous impact on a baby. These are women often isolated from the larger society. I always asked the prisoners about their mothers. Often their eyes would well up because they knew that I knew that they were Mama’s Boys, bullies. Yet these mothers should not be blamed because in a shame honor culture the female is at the eye of the storm. She is THE shock absorber of chronic emasculated male rage. If we do not deal with early childhood development, we will lose this war on radicalization.

Raising a child happens behind closed doors. Neighbors always say about the jihadi that he was such a nice boy without knowing what really went on. To air one’s dirty laundry in public is shaming for a clan culture. Nonetheless childhood development must be factored into a cohesive plan for “de-radicalization” if we want to foil the numerous ticking human bombs.

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt.  “Ten Years Out – My Advice from “Listening” to Somalis in the Hennepin County Jail Minneapolis.”  Family Security Matters, May 15, 2015.

While cultural and ethnolinguistic self-invention and experience correspond to the exigencies of living in some place with some people — really: about 7,000 living languages wrap the earth in its humanly conscious expression and reflection — the strength of combined analytical, creative, empathic, and scientific effort in the conflict and crime arenas resides in the promise of the universal applicability of hard won insight, for we are natural observers of ourselves, individually and communally, and, in some part, healers as well.

The crime that is theft — including the theft of life itself — needs no introduction anywhere on earth, but that which programs the criminal and scripts the crime — what gets into a really nasty “piece of work” — begs a good looking over life’s earliest formative experiences, and it needs that examination in a way that produced universally accessible and understood insight.  Kobrin, who in her works shares her own recollections of torment in this regard, lays out what might be called — so I may call it — “the terrorist’s tableaux”: despite the scatter in the writing, one finds in her explications about “exploding icebergs” and “maternal cameos” coherent narratives about the formation of criminal bullying and terrorizing behavior.


The oldest brother of the Toulouse scooter killer, Mohamed Merah, denounces the role of his own father, mother, sister and brother in spawning a “monster” in his new book.

Abdelghani Merah, 36, says the youngest of his four siblings was raised in an “atmosphere of racism and hatred” but also of violence and neglect. He has written the book – “Mon Frère, ce terroriste” (My brother the terrorist) – to try to counter the hero-worship of Mohamed, 23, among some young French Muslims. “I am the killer’s brother but I am on the side of his victims,” he says.

Lichfield, John.  “How my hate-filled family spawned Merah the monster.”  The Independent, May 15, 2015.


Tsarni told reporters assembled on his leafy street that day he had not seen his brother’s brood for years. “I wanted my family away from his family,” he said. It’s not hard to understand why he would distance himself from the two young men accused of engineering that murderous blast, but he insists the whole family is trouble—from welfare scams to bomb threats to jihad—and it all stems from their mother, who fled the United States and now lives in Dagestan.

Back on the phone, still thinking about his brother’s family, he apologizes for his outburst of profanity, and then launches into yet another condemnation of his sister-in-law. “That woman—she created evil spawn. Evil spawn from an evil woman.”

McPhee, Michele.  “Family Matters: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Women in His Life.”  Newsweek, October 16, 2014.

Appearing on the cover in which the above piece lives in the magnetosphere: “Twisted Sisters: As Dzhokhar Tsarnaev awaits trial for his alleged role in the Boston Marathon Bombing, many of the women in his life are still proclaiming his innocence . . . and pushing for jihad.”


Terrorism centers on the inability to mourn loss. It becomes obsessive about the inability to process the concept of death and dying— the persistent denial of death. Terrorists deny death and even claim to love it. In reality they are terrified and taunt death like bungee jumpers who taunt heights because they cannot accept their terror, their vulnerability, and their own mortality. The suicide bomber is the terrorists’ death-anxiety emollient. It is a bizarre kind of counterphobic activity. Terrorism becomes the celebration of death. Terrorists communicate their obsession with death to their children through peculiar rituals. Think of Hamas and Hizbollah and their death parades, dressing children in suicide bomber uniforms. Or selling little doll suicide bombers as toys, making the bizarre practice of killing off one’s own acceptable. Or consider the thousands of plastic keys that the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered from Taiwan to be placed around the necks of Iranian children who went to their death as human mine sweepers during the Iran– Iraq War. The “nice” Ayatollah slaughtered these innocents while telling them and their impotent, terrorized parents that this plastic key guaranteed their entry into paradise. The terrors of the terrorist’s “inner child” are literally and concretely projected into their own children. Terrorists feel dead and want others to feel what they feel. But they cannot put their feelings into words. In the world of terrorism everything is the opposite of what it should be.

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt (2013-11-12). Penetrating The Terrorist Psyche (Kindle Locations 482-493). Multieducator Inc. Kindle Edition.

Modern law enforcement may address terrorism as a physical process (e.g., sometimes involving “bombs on two legs”) and try to get in the way of it or forestall an act close to or at its commission.

The detachment, as it were, of contemporary psychoanalytic forces may delve back much, much farther into the beliefs and habits of cultures and families, what may be imparted through the infant’s period of language uptake, how children respond to abuse by way of the formation of “grammatical” or rule-based behaviors , and the ready political systems for culture-wide programming, intake, and operations that one finds with such as Hamas and Hezbollah.  In those forces, which I presume always around (or we wouldn’t have “Officer Krupke” and its inverted psychobabble for entertainment) and always new, Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin has produced the voice of the damaged and injured by terrorism in the family — the exercise of sadistic will in the realm of the intimate — and welled that out into the portion of the human experience now embroiled in related conflicts and the singular and senseless tragedies that come of political terrorism and its inversions.


Posted to YouTube 11/21/2011.

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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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