Category Archives: FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation

If — in my own head — I hit a universal note just about right in Facebook or other conversation, I may simply wrench it from context and publish it here in this category as a mix of observation and, I hope, a writer’s wisdom.

Aside

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Regions, Religion

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FTAC:

You know what, J. — I should not type with a glass or Rose next to me — I’ve become or am becoming more aware of the followers in these disasters than the leaders.

We know what Hamas is about.

The constituency of Gaza, whether endorsing or not, knows what Hamas is about.

But Hamas — not as an organization but as an event in the life of community — takes place anyway!

This is near to an historic day because out of the many hate-peace peace groups blathering all around the middle east conflict, we are all just one mouse-click away from chatyping with (what we may perceive as) enemy.

And I thought photography was an adventure . . . . ๐Ÿ˜€

And throw the calculus out the window because we know (from Vietnam we must know) that the numbers don’t mean nachas! What has meaning are basic principles and values _in the mutual defense of our own_).

What if “The Terrorists” had captured and murder three young men from Alexandria. Virginia. What if?

That’s the only question on the table.

Hamas has a big problem with Arabic. Hanniyah, in video, gets his pecker up exclaiming how “We believe in death as they believe in life!”

Well, bullshit.

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israeli-hospital-treats-Hamas-PM-Haniyehs-granddaughter-332193

Hamas believes in life!

Too.

Dictators, like the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” defend political absolutism in their own right (AKA “unlimited narcissistic supply”) — http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1 (such a gentle looking soul . . .but don’t overlook Evin Prison or its population).

That’s where we are.

Wherever.

Now we can talk.

Who else is going to talk?

Talk with me.

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Aside

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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FTAC.

I normally indent these but wanted to make it easy to preview/view the YouTube clips.

 

It’s a 30-minute clip (there’s your warning) that echoes what I’ve viewed from the Belfer Center (e.g.,

).

The great democratic concept is that it should be able to integrate and reconcile or enable faith in peace as long as people argue and compromise about issues in which they’re invested. ย With Islam, perhaps more specifically whatever portion has invested in political absolutism, the power of the democratic process stumbles: it meets an opposition disinterested in “trying it out”.

So the drones fly.

Shadi Hamid seems to me to find the next best position, i.e., a democratic Islamism — or one accepting democracy — but loaded with an illiberal drive.

Well, okay.

You decide.

(I’m switching over to reading Hemingway, watching the thunderstorms develop, that sort of thing).

Oh: http://www.brookings.edu/experts/hamids

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/man-found-tortured-to-death-in-gaza-1.1262788 — “If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?”

When: Syria? When: Iraq? When: Gaza?

While Israel may grow against a barbarian foe — because the barbarian, despite the massive whining, can never win the sympathy of a decent heart anywhere, not even in his own yard — one may wonder at what point the same needs to be removed from power.

Done.

Finished.

Never Again.

This is not only about Jews or Israelis (who are Jewish and Christian and Muslim and from many, many points of origin, including in the modern population continuously from the land itself), but about a class of refugees cynically abused by their Arab handlers and their thugs.

“Reading” keeps taking place at the computer . . . .

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Aside

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Asides, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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I don’t worry about God or godlessness but rather appreciate that most humans have some kind of sentiment as regards divinity and that atheism is more the exception than rule.

The other concern, would that I would settle down, has to do with the way we organize ourselves in language and within language cultures. As boundaries shift or become transparent, differences become apparent temporally as well as spatially: we are simply not going to accept or tolerate anywhere a deeply feudal future, moats, and closed portcullis and all.

One thing changing, so I hope, is our propensity for judging the whole by a part — as when some talk about “those people”, who could be any — should be deeply degraded by far ranging conversation and greater knowledge, and that to the point where we can look at who and what specifically account for violent criminal and political adventures in this day.

In that vein, one may see that Bashar al-Assad and al-Nusra, for example, form a dark Janus: different talk – same walk. They’re not good people, and they are very similar in how they work as personalities. Knowing that, you would think the crushed middle would fight back with instant resolve, but it’s taking time for that middle to form its own robust defenses.

I’m going off to read for a while.

Gather.

Refresh.

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Aside

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Religion

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What does not bear its cross?

When God has mercy, it’s through human agency, except for that first instance: thanks for sewing the skins, also the gifts of consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience, and we’ll make our way, getting a little better with practice; so maybe we’ll see you again in 7,000 years.

Sound good?

By then, we’ll be talking with the elephant, and the elephant will be teaching us, and, who knows but that the elephant will be different too.

We’d rather not have the suffering, but even more, we’d rather not have it go on if we can do something about it, even late but not too late.

One tries to be careful with anthropomorphism, keeping the elephant the elephant and the human the human, but as we grow our intellectual capacity and ability to comprehend others, including elephants and other members of the animal kingdom exhibiting highly developed sentience, it’s inevitable that we will find our intersections and mutual interests and perhaps another chamber in the world’s greater soul.

The prompt, rightly, had to do with the inerasable suffering already experienced by Raju.

http://www.eonline.com/news/557548/elephant-cries-tears-of-joy-after-being-rescued-after-50-years-of-suffering-and-abuse – 7/7/2014.

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Aside

07 Monday Jul 2014

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I know you don’t condone them.

ISIS and others nonetheless believe themselves Muslim, the tip of the spear of Islam, and reference related lore and literature to justify what they do, and there is no gray about what they do. We are all — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish and everyone else, including Chinese nonbeliever oligarchs ๐Ÿ™‚ — are looking for ways to shut them down, and that needs must include addressing their intellectual engines as well as arms supply, financing, organization, outreach, etc.

Pakistan’s military has been hard at work on this: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Taliban-fighters-cut-hair-and-beards-to-flee-Pakistan-army-assault-in-North-Waziristan/articleshow/37894679.cms

These “Islamic Small Wars”, as I call them, will not end in the field. They have to end in the minds of those who most propel them, and those soulsย cannot be reached with drones and tanks and infantry.

News from the Pakistani theater.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters rushed to disguise themselves with new haircuts in the weeks before a Pakistani army assault, it has emerged, as refugees revealed details of life under the militants โ€” and their taste for imported luxuries.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Taliban-fighters-cut-hair-and-beards-to-flee-Pakistan-army-assault-in-North-Waziristan/articleshow/37894679.cms – 7/6/2014.

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Aside

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Religion

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Hebrew culture has place x calendar and customs x language x religion and because of traditional tribal transmission, it’s generations may be schooled in “the old ways” with not much discomfort. However, large groups have converted, and in modern times the Abuydaya — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abayudaya — converted as a whole people and continue in the path.

Dispersion (into the “Diaspora”) alters land and language relationships, and, indeed, Jewish identity has suffered recession through intermarriage and national identification in other lands. Nonetheless, as may Shia, Jews worldwide have long taken measures to remain Jews, rejecting conversions en masse, maintaining language knowledge and customs, and sustaining identification with the Land of Israel.

As such affiliations go down to the bone, part of the genocidier’s motivation wants sheer sadistic control and humiliation, i.e., more than eliminating the presence of this “other”, the murderer has in mind the theft of the humanity and dignity of the same.

Some thoughts — probably most of mine — just get too long for Facebook. ย A thread wants for a few words, not whole essays. ย The above was on the way toward discussing the Islamic overlay over many distinctive cultures across feudal-to-modern history.

Fitra-65fitra-66

Source: Philips, Abu Ameenah Bilal. ย The Fundamentals of Tawheed (Islamic Monotheism). ย Pp. 65, 66. Second Edition. Riyadh: International Islamic Publishing House, 2005.

My parents did not make me a Jew.

God did.

Imagine, however, the insecure parent obsessed with power and control over progeny. ย Trust is given, but dependence must be cultivated, and in the trust-me voice of the father, the child is told ” . . . the child is not strong enough in the early stages of its life to resist or oppose its parents”, which presumptuously impugns the authority of other parents, but the writer being a parent too, either in fact or in spirit, may not be immune from his own declaration.

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Aside

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Religion

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“Secular” does not exclude religion or considerations related to religion: what it does is contain all with policy appropriate to predominant population while in fact endorsing all to the limits possible.

The effect of this “all for all” thought in contemporary western theological communities has been to foster a host in variety of ecumenical dialogues and related scholarly research. The fruits of that research, in turn, inform the educated that care, dip into so much material, or run into the same over the course of a lifetime. In the famed “melting pot”, we are all a little bit of one another, starting with the influence of the indigenous before the first landing. Perhaps that goes on — e.g., reading _The Masks of God_ or William James and _The Variety of Religious Experiences_ — to relax our grip on any single religious basis for the creation of law.

Fans of America may be reminded that some of our colonialists also burned “witches” at the stake in their day. In this age, we have a few who play with rattlesnakes to prove their relationship with God. Sadly, some die that way (and perhaps are thought less deserving, sigh, for not having been truly protected . . . or they’re on their way to heaven).

Imho, we’re a wild species possessed of great intelligence, language, and imagination, and perhaps more of all three than is good for us, but that’s the condition. We’re not all alike. Sometimes cultures, sometimes persons become destructive in nature as their boundaries collapse or as they seek to expand themselves much against others, and they confuse the space they get into and make a mess of everything they touch. Those we need to recognize sooner and deal with in various ways.

Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.

I may have to settle down with fiction.

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