23 Monday Feb 2015
Posted in Links
We are on the same side, because it is criminal not to be on the side of truth,” says one of the students.
http://www.rferl.org/content/russian-students-ashamed-ukraine-video-response/26848769.html – 2/23/2015.
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17 Tuesday Feb 2015
Posted in Argentina, Links, Politics, South America
Nisman’s death was the tragic consequence of a corrupt, some would even say mafia-like, political system gone out of control. In her address to the Senate on February 11, Argentine literary critic Beatriz Sarlo said that while she saw sadness at the death of Perón, Alfonsín and Nestor Kirchner, the mourning at Nisman’s death is of another order:
People cried on my shoulder and they cried on each other’s shoulders. It is a people who feel their destiny is subordinated to forces they do not know; it is a people who do not know if these forces can be mastered and overcome.
Paradoxically, one of the strongest forces distorting and undermining Argentina’s integrity is an intense culture of loyalty.
http://theconversation.com/argentina-crisis-citizens-suffer-when-loyalty-means-more-than-truth-37557 – 2/17/2015.
Worldwide: despotic vs democratic; feudal vs modern; integrity before God vs loyalty to ruthless, sadistic, and unbridled power.
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17 Tuesday Feb 2015
Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ – March 2015.
While writer Graeme Wood disproves his own intent as regards ISIS not being a psychotic phenomenon in the above thorough exploration of the cult and its deeply archaic reasoning about its own “methodology”, he also hits all of the keys as regards the broad front of a revanchist Islam.
Related:
http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2015/02/why-obama-wont-talk-about-islamic-terrorism/105390/ – 2/16/2015.
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12 Thursday Feb 2015
Posted in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Links
It seems reasonably clear that any lunatic can appropriate a cause or provide a name as his inspiration, and that, when he does, we should neither regard that lunatic’s behavior as indicative of the whole nor worry too much about repeat attacks. As I have written before — in defense of Right and Left — words do not pull triggers.
Related comment (mine) From the Awesome Conversation (FTAC):
I worry about recognizing, modifying, and filtering a psychological type. The large label “malignant narcissist” (Putin-Assad-Khamenei) goes after the bad example setting leaders; the color code “Red Brown Green” signals the post-Soviet / neo-feudal and new nationalist and Islamist content leveraged against large constituencies.
My basis for some large boundaries: ethnolinguistic integrity. The Baloch, Hebrews, and Kurds have a strong legitimate basis and interest in cultural survival, the same that movements associated with Red Brown Green fascism seeks to annihilate.
Bad intellectual programs or poisoned ones — or poisoning programs — yield evil results, and today that’s on display in the regions of Daesh and Hamas and others like them. It’s a bad end for the greater humanity involved: however, the leaders (“different talk — same walk”) have made out like the bandits — piratical dictators — they they really are.
But is that why they do it? Is that what motivates men in hoods to publicly decapitate an individual with a knife, or pose smiling with the severed head of a woman, or put bullets into the heads of hundreds of captives and toss them into the river, or most recently throw a prisoner into a cage and light him on fire? Berman addresses the ideological part of the problem, but buried deeper is the psychological pull of sadomasochism—the thrill of violence, power, and control that comes from inflicting pain on others.
http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/188892/sadomasochism-islamist-death-cult – 2/11/2015.
Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/10/01/jisadists-an-update-on-westgate-mall-barbarity/ – 10/1/2013.
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10 Tuesday Feb 2015
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Islamic Small Wars, Links, Political Psychology
The most troubling part of the heretical substitution of Gentile lineage into foundational roles within the Jewish root of Christianity is that the Christian Palestinian leaders bring this message to so many churches – without ever being confronted by the leaders of these congregations.
http://juicyecumenism.com/2015/01/28/jesus-palestinian-false-narrative/ – 1/28/2015 – by Victor Styrsky
In the piece, Reverend Styrsky will go on to note the following:
Dr. Mitri Raheb: “Unfortunately, Palestine has been occupied for most of the time. Remember, the first people to occupy Palestine were the Assyrians -722, then we had the Babylonians – 587, then the Persian came, 538, all of this is BC – OK? Then the Greeks, then the Romans, then the Byzantines, then the Arabs, then the Crusaders, then a few others, then the Ottomans, then the British . . . and then Israel.”
TRUTH: This ridiculous historical summary reveals Raheb’s determination to use duplicity to obliterate the legitimate and historical Jewish bond to the land of Israel.
Bible believing Christians know that God first promised the land of Israel to Abraham around 2,000 – 1500-BC and history records his descendants have maintained ties to the Promised Land for more than 3,700 years.
The theme of cultural annihilation runs within and around Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Small Wars.
Reprinted from Oppenheim Arts & Letter (September 8, 2008):
“Not all Arabs are Muslim; not all Muslims are Arab. In fact, only 23 percent of the Arab population living in the United States of America is Muslim; 77 percent are Christian.
“Islam being the fastest growing faith in this country, as it is in the world today, the number of Muslims in American has soared in the last decade 14 fold. Only half a million in the early 70’s, the estimated number of Muslims living in America today is between 6 to 7 mmillion. 75 percent of them are non-Arabs.
“Currently, there are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world: in other words, one out of every five persons living on the fact of the earth are Muslim, a ratio that is projected to be one our of four by 2020.
“In view of such a significant number and a vast variety of races, nationalities, and cultures, in what sense if any can one speak of the typical Muslim, man or woman? Such a person has never existed–just as an Islam unified in its practices, policies, and goals has never existed.”
Source: Milani, Farzaneh and Abdulaziz Sachedina. “Imagining Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North America”. Online video. UVA Newsmakers, 2003.
With a recent note on the Taliban’s inhibition of the music trade in Mingora, Pakistan and its effects on the distribution, enjoyment, and preservation of indigenous Pashtun music, I thought I’d surf a few minutes for additional reference to the destruction of the cultural artifacts of others at the hands of militant Islam.
Such were not hard to find, starting, perhaps, with the Bamyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
However, I was surprised to find out of the Islamic theocracy of Iran the destruction of an ancient bridge and threatened or now evolving degradation of other structural artifacts of global significance (see Amil Imani’s reference).
There seem too complaints of underhanded reconstruction underwritten by the Saudi state. To address the repair of Balkan Islamic monuments, Jolyon Naegele suggests the wholesale bulldozing of the same has been to replace that heritage with architecture more favoring the Saudi Wahhabi vision.
For Israel and the Jews, Mark Ami-El notes the erasure of evidence of Jewish habitation beneath the Temple Mount through the construction of an underground mosque:
“After September 2000, the Muslim Waqf closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then, in order to complete new underground mosques at the site, it removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.
“The intention is to turn the entire 36-acre Temple Mount compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past, including the destruction of archeological findings that are proof of this past.”
On behalf of traditional Malaysian culture, Chris Prystay tells a tale of subtle erasure of ancient folk dance and theater at the hands of Islamic influence and party politics:
“A Mak Yon performance, which runs over two or three nights, tells one of a dozen stories of mythological royalty. They are typically morality tales about the perils of lust or pride. The story of Dewa Muda, who struggles with sadness because he can’t reach his princess, is the most popular.
“The performances are also therapeutic. Villagers seeking a cure for depression or other emotional ills don the same costume as the lead dancer and shadow her as she dances around the stage. By acting out Dewa Muda’s own struggle, they purge their own. At the end of the play, the shaman leads the villager into a trance dance, chanting verses to banish the illness.
“Rituals like this are now performed in secret by a handful of retirees . . . .”
Read ’em and weep.
For hope, watch the University of Virginia video featuring Farzaneh Milani and Abdulaziz Sachedina, the latter careful, I think, to compare facets of Islamic ethnic and religious identity with “Italian-ness, and Germaness” but not, no mention, of Jewishness.
Still, four hours down the pike and 3,000 miles across the continent and off to Hawaii or up to Alaska, Muslims, like everyone else, may do things a little differently in America. All welcome diverse and robust cultures, not one that would destroy all others.
Ami-El, Mark. “The Destruction of the Temple Mount Antiquities.” Jerusalem Letter / Viewpoints, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, August 1, 2002.
Anti-Wahhabi Blog (The). “Fanatics’ desparate effort to destroy pre-Islamic heritage.” Wednesday, September 12, 2007.
ArtsJournal.com. “Taliban Afghani Art Destruction.” Online Bibliography.
Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (The), CAIS. “Islamic Regime have Finally Destroyed 2200-year-old Parthian Bridge of Khoda-Afarid (Negin).” December 8, 2007.
Imani, Amil. “Culturecide of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” American Thinker, June 28, 2008.
Milani, Farzaneh and Abdulaziz Sachedina. “Imagining Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North America”. Online video. UVA Newsmakers, 2003
Prystay, Chris. “Bit of Malay Culture Is Now Vanishing Under Muslim Rules.” The Wall Street Journal, recast via YaleGlobal Online, April 21, 2006.
Sells, Michael A. “ERASING CULTURE: WAHHABISM, BUDDHISM, BALKAN MOSQUES; same location: Naegele, Jolyon. “Yugoslavia: Saudi Wahhabi Aid Workers Bulldoze Balkan Monuments”.
Wikipedia. “Buddhas of Bamyan.” Noted September 8, 2008.
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05 Thursday Feb 2015
Members of the Obama administration have insisted that the Taliban are not terrorists. Those responsible for the recent Paris killings are not radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam.” And “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” or “man-caused disaster” better describe radical Islamic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is just as likely caused by returning U.S. combat veterans, according to one report by a federal agency.
What is the point of such linguistic appeasement?
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8188 – 5/5/2015.
My response within The Awesome Conversation:
Not to nit, but the term “narcissist” belies a range of issues, some qutie normal and positive, or we should all be without Cadillacs, golf courses, and modern health care. “Malignant narcissism” may apply to the despotic, and in political psychology, that may have some basis in “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” (and a few other views of similar behavior) known to psychology proper. On the branch opposite that may be a “reparative narcissism”, the quality of a meaningful empathy returns.
While Obama’s de facto policy of “least war possible” may divert to other levers, e.g., energy independence, which card he’s playing now; continuing DoD-IDF cooperation and deliveries; and perhaps separation of the Muslim community from “the terrorists” to shear the moderate away from the lost (while a comparatively young fleet for leader emerges to “work the issues” with large religious cohort), the same brushes against old Jewish wisdom: He who is kind to the cruel will in the end become cruel to the kind.”
The Obama Administration’s foreign policy has been deeply opaque from the start but not necessarily in the manner proposed but certainly in a way that invites speculation. Less remarked in total has been the “Red Brown Green” cooperation defined by Putin-Assad-Khamenei, Putin-Orban, and Putin-Erdogan. It’s been much easier isolating conflicts, pointing at the President, and overlooking what amounts to a broad assault on North American power, NATO, and westward-looking alliances. Quiet incursions into government and intellectual assets have not been overlooked but have perhaps been less explored and the underplayed. That’s another subject, and I will stop here.
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04 Wednesday Feb 2015
Posted in Links
Posted to YouTube 12/2/2014.
Language reference – Ahlulbayt:
http://www.al-islam.org/shiite-encyclopedia-ahlul-bayt-dilp-team/who-are-ahlul-bayt-part-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahl_al-Bayt
Video host source:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ahlulbaytTV
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04 Wednesday Feb 2015
Posted in Links
The 26-page document, whose discovery was unveiled by an Argentine news organization in an open feud with Kirchner, is a flourish on a story already packed with intrigue. Nisman was found dead just hours before he was planning to deliver testimony against the Argentine government. Nisman claimed Kirchner had tried to strike a deal with Iranian officials to safeguard them from prosecution in the 1994 attack on a Jewish community center known as AMIA in Buenos Aires.
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