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Category Archives: Politics

Link – Along the Arc of the Malignant Narcissist’s Narrative – Erdogan vs Gulen

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by commart in Political Psychology, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

autocracy, despotism, political psychology, politics

Millions of dollars stashed in shoe boxes, bribes delivered to their recipients in chocolate packages, a gigantic gold smuggling scheme conducted through an Iranian “businessman,” the arrest of ministers’ sons, the resignation and dismissal of ministers and shameful corruption conversations wiretapped legally and illegally are some of the episodes of the probes now engraved in public memory.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/turkey-gulen-akp-anniversary-corruption-probes.html – 12/16/2014: “Gulenists defeated on first anniversary of corruption probes.”


Take note of the other headlines on the Al Monitor page: “Erdogan Defense Brotherhood’s Qaradawi After Arrest Warrant”; “Energy Deals May Make Turkey Irreversibly Reliant on Moscow”; “Shadow Government Set up in Erdogan’s White Palace”.

Don’t say BackChannels didn’t warn you about this politically malignant backbone: Putin-Assad-Khamenei / Putin-(Yanukovych) / Putin-Orban / Putin-Erdogan.

Bent on glory, the Club of Bad Little Boys appears to have formed a confederacy of different interests bonded in state-based kleptomania.

The Pyramid Conundrum

Considering what had to have taken place to build the Great Pyramids of Egypt, plus what we my know and what they Jews have to say about it, the public may scratch its collective international head today over the building of the Great Palaces of the Politically Criminal, which I hope have been built already well enough for move-in, for I would not want to see the compounds or palatial estates of these wealthy left unfinished for the public to absorb when they’re gone.

Leaving completed works — that’s just being polite, as such “gentlemen” should be, well affording the same on the apparent misappropriation of national wealth.

Nonetheless, local, state, and global intelligentsia and empowered or struggling policy makers may indeed weigh the benefits of despotic rogue self-aggrandizement in creating magnificence from gain miserably obtained against the implied costs in freedom, human rights, and general rule of law.

“The Pyramid Conundrum”?

The pyramid does not get built without Pharaoh’s absolute power and related sociopathy.

A government may build some sturdy buildings — or a national Interstate highway system, which in the United States may be considered another wonder of the world — but they’re generally not monstrous residences.

Or mausoleums.

Related Reference

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.


Cosmaciuc, Calin.  “Ceausescu tour”. Romania plans to attract foreign visitors interested in “dictatorship tourism”.  Romanian Journalist, February 13, 2013.


Not to be too hypocritical and uppity here, a reminder of how it was in the west (with family and friends of a highly privileged sort) may be found here: http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophilia/top-11-stately-homes-in-england-best-english-manor-houses/ (11/9/2010).

# # #

Persia – A Gentle Reminder

12 Friday Dec 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cultural exchange, Iran, Israel, peace



Path: Facebook Group “Iran-Loves-Israel” (34,000+ members) –> YouTube Account

Alternative on Facebook: “Israel-Loves-Iran” (approaching 125,000 members).

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Goodbye Potemkin – Quotation – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin –

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

capitalism, Putin, rhetoric, Russia, western values

Dear colleagues, health care, education, social support, social security must become issues of true public good, true public value. They need to serve our entire society.

We cannot imitate education.

We cannot imitate health care or social security.

We cannot imitate caring for people.

We need to learn to respect ourselves.

We need to look at this important notion such as reputation and that reputation of a specific hospital, school, institution, or social office is a building stone in the overall reputation of our country . . . .”

Video Source of Transcription: YouTube: “Putin’s 2014 Federal Assembly Address in Full.”  Posted December 4, 2014.

Official Transcript: Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, December 4, 2014.

Official Transcript Passage:

Education, healthcare, and the social welfare system should become a true public benefit and serve all citizens of the country. Attention to the people cannot be faked. You cannot simulate teaching, medical assistance or social care. We have to learn to feel respect for ourselves and honour reputation. It’s the reputation of individual hospitals, schools, universities and social institutions that form the country’s overall reputation.

Mama NATO may withstand some kvetching as and if President Putin makes good on this pivotal gambit to now transform around his “vertical of power” a breathtaking neo-feudal oligarchy into a rule-of-law abiding and meritocratic capitalist social democratic society.

Are the wealthy up to this challenge?

You decide.

Related:

http://www.euronews.com/2014/12/10/russian-oligarch-usmanov-to-return-watson-s-auctioned-nobel-medal/ – 12/10/2014.

That’s pretty good advertising for $4.8 million, but there’s a long way to go on establishing a right way, and that way might include revisiting the politics attending 1) more than nine million Syrian refugees in a “show” (not really) designed to transform a modest revolution into a viciously polarized civil war, 2) the creation of a deeply anti-Semitic and nearly nuclear armed Iran, 3) a spiteful incursion into Crimea, Ukraine presenting itself as Russian nationalist fascism, and 4) perhaps some still post-Soviet meddling in the middle east (no one watching has missed Mikhail Bogdanov’s chat with the PFLP – nor missed the related murderous assault in a Jerusalem synagogue) as well as in Hungary where Viktor Orban has pursued an increasingly despotic course aligned with Putin’s outlook.

Still, whether “imitate” or “simulate” was the verb invoked, the want of integrity, of observable-measurable progress, and the want of a good reputation (on top of the bad assed one) seems to have found a place at the top on Russia’s public agenda.


Referenced video (1:09:46):


 Reference on BackChannels

“Putin in the Mirror – Shards from the World Wide Web.”  December 4, 2014.

“Quote – Manipulation – About the PLO Leader – Pacepa and Rychlak (2013).

Additional Reference

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/11/06/hungary-is-helping-putin-keep-his-chokehold-on-europes-energy/ – 11/6/2014.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/why-putin-says-crimea-is-russias-temple-mount/ – 12/4/2014


The Russian government strives to paint the current Ukrainian government as fascist, to justify their aggression in Ukraine. In fact, when synagogues in Odessa were covered with Nazi graffiti, it was the leader of the Right Sector who joined the Rabbi in painting over the offensive marks.

Also during his lecture, English showed a photo of a man with a swastika on a sign and a flag, to show how many Nazis are in Ukraine. But the flag was not a Ukrainian flag, it was the flag of the pro-Russian separatists of Donetsk.

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/lecture-on-ukraine-full-of-russian-propaganda/article_e2869a24-fae5-51ae-9662-e96211cfdaab.html – 12/9/2014.

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Link – Journalism – Jordan – Vicious Duplicity – Highest Level

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Jordan, Journalism, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

democracy, free speech, jailbirds, Jordan, journalism, open societies

A button on the homepage of the JMI website links to a related website where the work-product of JMI’s own cadre of young journalists is published. Naturally, it’s in Arabic only; these contents are not meant for the Western sponsors and international partners. But intentionally or not, it is these pages – along with the invaluable help of Google Translate’s Arabic-to-English service – that shine a revealing light for non-Arabic speakers like us on what all that NGO money and European inspiration is enabling for this “unparalleled centre of excellence in the Middle East”.

If you visit it today, as we did, you will notice that on every page of the site, under the headline “Success Models”, a journalist called Tamimi is profiled. She is the murderer of my daughter Malki.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/by-their-role-models-shall-ye-know-them/#ixzz3LVVT9zaR – 12/10/2014


Duplicitous talk has been always thematic in the middle east where “sweet words” often mask evil intentions (or the Jews most certainly would not have left Gaza in 2005).

While past need not be prelude, and one hopes that one day it will not be so in the middle east, a bad rap sheet — as bad as it gets — does not pretty up without proof of sea change conversion, reformation, transformation.  Writers know the bad girl isn’t always bad and the good one not always good, but for purposes of the plot, the evil bitch is going to play out her script — the one programmed most deeply in her head — more likely than not.

Still, and beyond track records, there remains the matter of what is opined and reported today.

The accolade given a convicted terrorist, a mass murdering personality incapable of discerning innocents or noncombatants from military, may indicate detente, inclusion, or solidarity with a large force within Jordanian society.  The insight provided by Arnold Roth, the writer of the quotation presented at the top of this post, indeed may indicate how far Arab attitudes and beliefs about others and general contempt may be from global standards.

A few major difficult languages — Arabic, Chinese, Russian — have by being so defended their ethnolinguistic communities with a strength greater than mountains: democratic high-integrity ideas and news cannot obtain mass access without state-based approval, and despotic nefarious designs may be protected by the restriction of access to them by multilingual communities, often with vested interests either in business or defense.

That may change as the expansion of social relationships online necessarily add to machine translation human bilingual pairs and multilingual virtual communities.

Wildcard: within the context of a progressing open society, one that encourages freedom of expression, civic and civil responsibility, and an open discourse free of intimidation and one prizing “ethos, logos, and pathos” together in adversarial exchange, a community or state may start hearing what it does not wish to hear and either tolerate it and struggle with challenges presented, or, as has been true of Iran and Russia, it may revert to state-controlled media and the throttling of democracy.

The term “illiberal democracy” — there is no such thing — belies fascism beneath the banners of autocratic moral entrepreneurs, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood (who in Egypt made plain their agenda in that state and thereby inspired an extraordinary, deeply populated, and widespread revolt).  Wherever that kind of “putsch” takes place, reassertion of the military state may be welcomed, but over time, by and large, a good people, one inclined to promote the “humanity of humanity” and include themselves within rather than above it, may congregate and argue around central and familiar near universal ideals and values.

Additional Reference

Code of Ethics of the Jordan Media Community

http://www.jmijournalists.com/

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FTAC – Malignant Leaders – Anti-Semites – Fascists

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, dictatorship, fascism, Putin, Russian Orthodox Church

Each malign leadership personality — Assad, Erdogan, Khamenei, Orban, Mobarak, Morsi, Putin, Yanukovych, etc. — makes himself also an independent actor in his own right as well as one bickering or cooperating with fellow dictators in the context of pursuing or sustaining “political absolutism”, i.e., themselves as the sole power of their feudal estates. In place of a decent politics, which cannot be had with any playing out this kind of script in personality (all are emperors), come only a limited practical politics — carrots, sticks, and horse swaps.

Internally, “patronage” fits in infantilization and dependency inducing behavior that is itself a part of a defeating spectrum of controls – blackmail, intimidation, incarceration, and murder on one hand, and kind approvals of the powerful, financial patronage, sweet and seductive lying — which in the dark mirrors of the evil includes the promotion of anti-Semitic libel and promise of violence against the Jews — on the other. All such leaders regardless of “nominal affiliation”: thieves. They mask what they really do — and what they are really all about (power over others without limit) — beneath their various banners, but they are also much the same person.


To be fair, Putin, who has been pro-Semitic in public, and whose state has some relations with Israel, should not be considered anti-Semitic despite the inherent anti-Semitic legacies of the old Soviet communism and the Russian Orthodox Church or portions of the same (untangling Russian history after what the Soviets did to it, lol, at least according to Pacepa and Rychlak, will take some time — in the meantime, I feel like I’ve just glimpsed a conciliatory Russian Orthodox Church by way of first encounter with a few voices associated with it).

As I type (and gather from the web as I do), this article may have some clues as to how modern new modern Russians may be as Putin continues on a revanchist neo-feudal path:

Benevitch, Gregory.  “The Jewish Question in the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Some wake up knowing we are all “in it” together.

🙂

Related:

According to Oleg Usenkov, press secretary of the Sophia association of Russian Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land, there are about 70,000-100,000 Russian Orthodox Israelis, and perhaps “the real figures are even higher.”1The number is significant, as the “Greek Orthodox Patriarchy of Jerusalem was informed by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption that approximately 10 percent of the total Aliya from the former Soviet Union are of the Christian Orthodox faith.”2 This makes the Orthodox Church by far the largest among the past several decades of Israeli immigrants.3 It is also the largest among Palestinian Christians, of whom there are about 400,000 worldwide, and through whom it traces itself to the first Christian community.4

Smith, Hal.  “Is the Orthodox Church ‘Supersessionist'”? Orthodoxy Today, October 17, 2013.

Even while positioning Russia as anti-western, Putin nonetheless and recently laid out toward the end of his most recent Federation speech a familiar western cant:

Transcribed:

Dear colleagues, health care, education, social support, social security must become issues of true public good, true public value. They need to serve our entire society.

We cannot imitate education.

We cannot imitate health care or social security.

We cannot imitate caring for people.

We need to learn to respect ourselves.

We need to look at this important notion such as reputation and that reputation of a specific hospital, school, institution, or social office is a building stone in the overall reputation of our country . . . .”

If that ain’t modern and “western” — how about civilized? — what is?

The World Wide Web is the largest lens and mirror ever devised for having a look at other cultures and nations and for seeing how one’s own culture and nation looks in return.

The combines of old communist and fascist puppet masters should not fare well online, but as regards gravitational effects on “information space” and “intellectual resources” worldwide, some are trying like mad to get the world and have the world back as they would wish it to be.

As a guy with a library — and a “19th Century Modern” attitude — I’ve much enjoyed looking over the palaces of the obscenely enriched by politics, but one might look forward to an other than revolutionary reversion to rule of law and redistribution of wealth as capital driven back down to the floors of economies where cash is needed and a new engineering may come into view on a global stage.

The age of creating and sustaining breathtaking deceits?

Let it end.

# # #

FNS – Abu Dubai – Burqa-Aided Murder at the Mall – Case Solved

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Abu Dubai, burqa, mall shopping, terrorism


The woman was wearing a burka when she allegedly stabbed 47-year-old mother-of-two Ibolya Ryan, who once lived in Colorado, in a mall restroom on Reem Island on Monday.

An hour after the stabbing, the suspect then planted a home-made bomb outside the house of a Muslim Egyptian-American doctor, Sheikh Saif said. But the device, which was made of small gas cylinders, a lighter, glue and nails, was successfully dismantled after one of the man’s sons found it.
Sheikh Saif added that the woman targeted her victims based solely on their nationality and did not know either of them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2860702/Police-arrest-killer-burqaPICTURED-American-woman-stabbed-death-burqa-attacker-Abu-Dhabi-named-47-year-old-mom-Colorado-emerges-teachers-warned-Jihadi-targets.html – 12/4/2014


I’m finishing the Pacepa and Rychlak book Disinformation (which mighty tome I highly recommend to all interested in the Islamic Small Wars, foreign affairs, and political psychology), and the above tipped by Shoebat came together too quickly and neatly to leave laying around on the desktop screen.

Happy Helliday shopping, says I.

The incident will probably spark renewed talk about public dress and security as well as about manipulated vacuous zombie terrorists, including those of the “black widow” strain, which historic metaphor I now apply in more generic visual terms.

Update: December 5, 2014

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/woman-held-abu-dhabi-killing-american-teacher-ibolya-ryan-n261356:

Born in Romania to Hungarian parents, Ryan was living with twin 11-year-old sons in Abu Dhabi, the fourth country where she had taught in 15 years.

“She was a great person,” said Karen Ryan, whose husband is the victim’s brother-in-law. “She was so committed to her teaching.”

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FTAC – Theater of War – Iran Bombs ISIS

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Iraq, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Iran, ISIS, narcissistic projection, NATO, Neo-Feudal Russia

There may be a lot of theater in the theater.

Doha-Washington may be competing with Tehran-Moscow (with Damascus between them), and the point of both would seem to be to have a scourge, accidentally or deliberately, worth elimination and the claim of rescue.

Assad managed to turn an “Arab Spring” revolution toward democracy and modernity into a deeply medieval and polarized civil war pitting his “secular” regime against Islamic extremists. It didn’t start out that way — and missing from the fields of battle: about nine million displaced Syrians.

On the Sunni side of this geopolitical knot (a knot because the Soviet Union was not finished off but merely transferred to the KGB, which has pursued a deeply feudal and equally thieving — internally and externally — course) stands an apparently duplicitous alliance that started out intending to knock Iran out of Syria (taking care of Hezbollah on the way) and produce an updated Islamic.

Things are just not working out the way they seem to have been planned — and much of that planning may have been to promote one appearance or another of a version of political reality. Again: there’s too much of theater in the combat.


The tail isn’t wagging the dog.

The whole dog is wagging the dog, from the tip o’ the nose to the end o’ the tail, U.S.-NATO and perhaps a Sunni-aligned alliance on one side while on the other: Neo-Feudal Russia, today a KGB/FSB Dictatorship, and its familiar “Axis of Evil” partners, Khamenei-Setad, Bashar the Butcher, and assorted anti-American and national socialist whatnot worldwide.

And hanging over every inch of the latest lightning in this storm: the immense and darker cloud of a nuclear umbrella.

Reference

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/iran-bombs-isis-in-iraq-says-us – 12/3/2014 (published about an hour ago):

In Tehran, the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brigadier-General Massoud Jazayeri also denied any collaboration. Iran considered the US responsible for Iraq’s “unrest and problems”, he said, adding that the US would “definitely not have a place in the future of that country”.


http://www.businessinsider.com/us-believes-iran-is-carrying-out-airstrikes-against-isis-in-iraq–tehran-denies-2014-12 – 12/3/2014 (earlier today)

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Link – Iran and Israel – Expressions of Courage Against the Installation of Fear

27 Thursday Nov 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

despotism, Iran, repression, unfreedom

These days in our country, news is not good: to be a communist, to be a Christian (especially a Moslem converted to Christianity), to be a Zoroastrian or a Jew, to be a liberal or a secular … they are all castaway.

Even Moslems don’t have much security. The only accepted Moslems are those who are not reformist, not followers of Interuniversalism, not a Gonabadi Sufi, not an independent journalist, not a Moslem wanting separation of religion and politics, not an independent lawyer, and not anyone critical of state policies…

Indeed, with these designations, is there any Iranian who is safe from being detained for sure?

http://iranpresswatch.org/post/11197/ – 11/25/2014.


KGB/FSB –> VEVAK?

If it looks, walks, and talks like  . . . and jails, tortures, and murders . . . .

For reference on this blog, see the “Russian Section“.


What binds the courageous?

Quite possibly, the rejection of the bannered anti-Semitism of the piratical bastards who have infantilized, intellectually poisoned, suffocated and subjugated millions of their own constituents by lying — by way of deception and pandering — and by applying mafia methods in service to their own breathtaking criminal aggrandizement.


The world’s unrelenting focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an injustice to tens of millions of victims of tyranny and terrorism in the Middle East. As we speak, Yazidis, Bahai, Kurds, Christians and Muslims are being executed and expelled by radical extremists at a rate of 1,000 people per month.

How many resolutions did you pass last week to address this crisis?

http://www.factualisrael.com/full-transcript-video-israeli-ambassador-statement-unga-question-palestine/ – 11/26/2014.


The bond of the free?

Compassion | Empathy | Justice | Humility | Inclusion | Integrity

Perhaps a little courage helps as well, for today’s enemy of humanity has set out to destroy justice and hope.

Additional Reference

“One agents [STET] tortuous path throws light on VEVAK methods”.  Iran Focus, May 22, 2005.

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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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