27 Saturday Sep 2014
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“Muslims have a role, too, by collaborating with authorities, by reassuring their neighbors, by being good community citizens, so that there is confidence restored that the vast majority of Muslims reject this totally and will participate in safeguarding our whole community,” Ahmed concluded.
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/09/27/radical-impact-what-causing-westerners-turn-radical-islam – 9/27/2014.
18 Thursday Sep 2014
Fahs emphasized that he backed the so-called Arab Spring from the very beginning: “I am human, I am Muslim, I am Lebanese and Arab, and I want reformation because our call for reformation includes liberation from tyrants, our call includes a renaissance which is free and not extremist in accordance with the framework of Islam.”
http://www.dailysabah.com/mideast/2014/09/17/shiite-scholar-claims-iran-behind-syrian-conflict – 9/17/2014.
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15 Monday Sep 2014
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From correspondence:
Yours Truly: Obama has given MB plenty of room for operating and for being observed. As he is not a President for Life, the stronger elements that comprise our government will survive him and probably be able to use the knowledge gained during his tenure. I would fear as much a flip toward the extreme Right in America. We really need a central, progressive, and prudent politics, and the zealots in politics have really skewed the conversation away from the middle ranks. That needs fixing, so I am becoming a Passionate Moderate Liberal.
Correspondent: Unfortunately, your fears aren’t baseless. After the communist revolution in Russia in 1917 and many other countries 1919, 1920 where it failed, extreme right came to power, including Nazis in most devastated Germany. That’s why from the very beginning the idea of European Union was not to go separate ways, to keep together, thereby not allowing a fascist regime to surface in a singly taken country. Still, fascists raise their head in Hungary, Greece… I think drastic economic changes bring drastic political changes and false expectations… Only the ability to realistically analyze them, or rather inability, can bring extreme regimes into power. Once installed they cannot be peacefully removed, that has to be remembered. The main lesson of WWII perhaps should be that many countries that could do something to prevent the appetites of the Nazi Germany did simply nothing for wanting to be left in peace. Want to be left in peace, from many lazy western countries, isn’t that what helps bring all sort of criminals to power nowadays? If the progressive world media would together denounce Hamas and ISIS, what chance of survival would they have? Close to none, I think.
My correspondent had started here:
http://conservativetribune.com/hillary-obama-terrorists/ —
The Muslim Brotherhood, who took power in Egypt following the Arab Spring, were recently ousted by the Egyptian military and declared a terrorist organization.
Even still, they have been embraced by President Obama, invited into his administration, placed on a “hands off” list protecting them, and are even setting up their own official political party here in the United States.
I leave room for the Obama Administration to have been adventurous, curious, experimental, observing in attempting to integrate into the democratic process such as Mohamed Elibiary, who has been enjoying this week his share of “right-side” press for tweeting remarks about the inevitability of the global Islamic caliphate, for example:
Mohamed Elibiary was until last week a senior member of DHS’ Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC). After years of controversy about his status at DHS, Elibiary announced his final day with the department on Twitter earlier this month and said he would remain close to the agency.
Media outlets have raised questions about the circumstances surrounding his departure, speculating that his provocative comments about the “inevitable” return of the Muslim “caliphate” may have played a role.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/controversial-dhs-adviser-let-go-amid-allegations-of-cover-up/ – 9/15/2014.
Although organizing Arab support in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria may amount to showbiz with an Administration and within an international political environment deeply invested in image — the wars for detectives and poets may turn out one day to have been wars for psychologists too, lol — the institutional memory Elibiary will leave behind will also inform this and successive governments in regard to the al-Qaeda-type assortment of Islamist challengers bent on acquiring power beneath the banners of Islam and with themselves conflated — by themselves — with God Almighty.
http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_36189.php – “OBAMA’S RADICAL MUSLIM AND PRO-MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR RESIGNS – 9/9/2014.
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14 Sunday Sep 2014
“X” appears here careful to avoid the misappropriation of the term “genocide”, which really refers to a categorical cultural-racial basis for the elimination of an entire people. In such a frame, the Tutsi of Rwanda were the target of genocidal Hutu mania. Similarly, the white Arab onslaughts brought against the black animists of Darfur similarly constitutes “genocide” —
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0714/p09s02-coop.html.
The perception of “war crime” cannot hinge on carnage alone, nor some whacked out ideas about fairness in the parity of death counts. The war against war entails the destruction of one party’s will to war, or, if failing that, ability to make war. If one were to suggest that WWII was excessive in every aspect by every party in every respect, one would have difficulty arguing against that and the necessity of having in place, at least, a United Nations and an International Criminal Court. Of course, neither have proven of much use in Syria or against ISIS in Iraq, but at least we have them, and in time, we may have each other in such a way as to forestall the empowerment of personalities who lead themselves, their nations, and all surrounding into immense destruction.
Notably, the forces massed against Berlin (at the end of WWII) — and with an immense Russian force doing the honors — may suggest what it has taken in the past to eliminate the grandiose messianic will driving such war. That will, fear, drive, motivation, etc. exceeds limits, does not reason, would seem to fight to and perhaps even beyond death — and then it may work against an energy equal to its challenge and, eventually, greater than itself.
If hate were shit, and it is, a lot of people would seem to be walking around with a load in their pants.
A part of the psychology addressed in the generation of bigoted rhetoric lays out within the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation“. How that becomes pattern in behavior and indicative of habits of mind, I wouldn’t hazard to guess but would suggest the language process associated with the same resides in childhood and a natural cowardice and imagination inclined to package fear borne by objects in such a way to push them away from the personal atmosphere.
I barely understand adults.
🙂
I don’t understand children.
However, to understand adults — to “get” an anti-Semite or other form of vociferous bigot — it might help to delve into the formation of language-sustained beliefs and attitudes adopted in childhood, and the coming into existence of some socially grammatical, rule-deriving, and later rule-based response to natural fears and emotional needs.
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11 Thursday Sep 2014
One may differentiate between casual audience comfortable with the world it knows and humanist-intellectual audience with amateur or professional background and buy-in with regard to shaping the next world.
If you are here, you are either between those broad classes or in the latter, and if there’s even just a tiny bit of appropriate education or training back there, then you may be trusted to read critically, to both demand and sift data, to argue about dimensions and variables with a subject of interest, to engage in introspection and reflection as well as judgment, and to think broadly about what would be helpful — anthropologically, ethnographically, evolutionary — in the creation of a greater, more peaceful, more progressive global commune.
The prompt was a piece in Honest Reporting about pandering.
Pandering is a form in lying predicated on the enforcement of loyalty by the panderer. The seminal fairy tale that is “The Emperor’s New Clothes” applies; it really is not a favor to be told how brave, glorious, and self-sacrificing one is by a personality inclined to sacrifice you in the interest of their own aggrandizement and unbridled glorification.
With the review of media coverage of the latest war in Gaza, the political skewing of the news devolves both to overt Hamas intimidation of the press and the reluctance of the same to either give up a story or taint the same with an acknowledgment of the compromise of their integrity.
Compromised journalism comprises its casual audience.
As suggested at the top of this post, not all audience is casual. In fact, while a vast global intelligentsia has come into being with the development of the World Wide Web — the numbers may be low but the distribution must certainly be global — a large analytical class has also been present in the world either with partisan loyalties or greater humanist and spiritual motives. From the “desk analysts” of national security bureaus to the latest in NGO do-gooders, there are plenty of readers who read for data and the arguably most accurate picture they may obtain from the same. While some things lend themselves to a technocratic objectivity, from conventional defense arrangements to road building coupled with economic development, other themes require a broadened vision of humanity — that “anthropolitical psychology” I’ve mentioned on this blog — and also a world of poetry and consideration for the remaining 7,000 or so living languages in the contemporary human inventory and the cultures and individuals suspended in them in time.
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10 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Political Psychology, Politics
“As you notice, I am wearing a Star of David. This necklace was given to me by a man during a book signing in Dallas, Texas. This necklace belonged to his wife who died in a tragic accident. He said to me crying, this necklace was his wife’s favorite. She died wearing it. ‘She considered your her hero for your work with the Jewish people. I want you to have it. Promise me you’ll wear it. I couldn’t find a more befitting time to honor her and her memory than now wearing this Star of David as a Lebanese giving a keynote speech at the United Nations in defense of the Jewish People.”
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10 Wednesday Sep 2014
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Under perhaps the pretext of defending Turkey from ISIS, Turkish Prime Minister, now President Recept Tayyip Erdogan appears to have methodically trounced basic western values in the maintenance of open responsible and responsive governance.
When this past June ISIS took control of Turkey’s embassy in Mosul, Iraq, which site it today uses for its headquarters, and kept hostages, then Prime Minister Erdogan ordered coverage of the matter kept out of the state’s news: whatever was to happen, Turks would not be able to follow it in a free press.
When ISIS then “offered” (or ordered, for this matter also appears dark) ISIS oil in exchange for Turkish cash, it appears then Prime Minister Erdogan accepted the offer (which perhaps he could not refuse, either for defensive purposes or patently offensive ones — i.e., perhaps nothing beats hiding a venal intent behind one’s own hostages).
In the matter of NATO radar defense arrangements in Turkey, then Prime Minister Erdogan whined across months that the same not be used to protect Israel (“the only democracy in the” yada-yada and once robust trading and defense partner with Turkey).
Finally, and with unmistakable reference to anti-Semitism, now President Erdogan has refused Israel an oil pipeline westward.
Back in May: “At least 10 firms bid for Israel-Turkey gas pipeline: Report.”
Yesterday: “Turkey nixes energy partnerships with Israel.”
While Turkey may wish to look strong as a Muslim-majority state and reliable as a NATO partner, anti-Semitism itself has a reputation as a great deflector of attention away from mediocrity and weakness.
Turkey’s discomfort with NATO and its pro-Semitic western stance comes through its lax border control, which it is now being asked to address, its battering relationship with the Jewish State, and its perhaps compliant position with the Islamic State — and saying it ain’t so won’t prove it ain’t so as now President Erdogan perhaps walks down both a familiar and increasingly lonely road. He may feel enlarged, as autocrats do, by the “narcissistic supply” arranged through deflection and cultivated with pandering, but as that story grows large too in the chaos and disruption it engenders, it never ends well for the host.
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When ISIS took Turkish photojournalist Bunyamin Aygun hostage in 2013, he said the militants repeatedly told him “Turkey is next.” After the first few weeks of his detainment, he was transferred to an ISIS brigade made up of mostly Turks. “They rained curses on Erdogan, and Davutoglu, saying they were ‘infidels,’” Aygun told al-Monitor. “They claimed that if Turkey sealed the border gates that were under IS control they would hit one Turkish village after the other and trigger a civil war inside Turkey.”
http://www.ibtimes.com/nato-coalition-against-isis-turkey-role-mostly-symbolic-1680708 – 9/7/2014.
Since Turkey’s 49 consulate staff and their family members were taken hostage in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on June 11, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has taken all measures to keep the public in the dark on the issue.
Mahmut Tanal, a lawmaker from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told The Daily Beast he was trying to get an official government comment on reports saying that ISIS was exporting up to 4,000 tons of fuel to Turkey every day and earning $15 million every month from the trade. “I am expecting some answers here,” he said.
“For energy projects to proceed, the human tragedy in Gaza will have to be stopped and Israel will have to instate a permanent peace there with all elements,” Yildiz told reporters in Ankara, referring to the recent counter-terror Operation Protective Edge.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184930#.VBBOQcJdV8E -“Turkey Refuses to Transfer ‘Inhumane’ Israeli Gas to Europe” – 9/9/2014.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/zaman-isis-turkeys-mosul-consulate-headquarter-iraq.html – 7/17/2014
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/turkey-tomb-suleiman-shah-syrian-territory-pretext-incursion.html# – 3/27/2014.
An 18-vehicle convoy was dispatched to the Tomb of Suleiman Shah to rotate the troops and resupply. The convoy entered Syria from the YPG-controlled Kobani and returned via ISIS-controlled Jarablus. A Syrian Kurdish source told Al-Monitor that, as per the accord reached with the officials of the “Kobani canton” who recently visited Turkey, the YPG provided security to the Turkish army convoy while passing through Kurdish-controlled area. According to this source, the convoy was stopped by ISIS in Cadde village, three kilometers [two miles] from the tomb, after it left the Kurdish area. Since official sources kept mum on what transpired at Cadde and along the way, speculation grew.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/turkey-usa-syria-iraq-isis-coalition.html##ixzz3CvAeBuNa – 9/8/2014.
Needless to say, if Obama would find an enthusiastic NATO ally in his quest to construct a coalition to deal with IS, his attitude toward his Turkish counterpart might be different. Yet, Turkey’s reluctance in taking part in the efforts led by the United States against IS is also confirmed by Turkey’s media outlets following the Erdogan-Obama meeting.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/15/us-nato-turkey-israel-idUSBREA0E0NZ20140115 – 1/15/2014.
(Reuters) – Turkey has accepted assurances a planned NATO missile defense system in which it is playing a part is not designed to protect Israel as well, the alliance’s deputy secretary-general said on Wednesday.
Alexander Vershbow said objections by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government had resulted in part from confusion about a Turkish-hosted NATO radar. Ankara had been further assuaged by alliance Patriot anti-missile batteries assigned to protect its territory from Syria.
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http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/08/04/nato-commander-u-s-radar-turkey-wont-used-help-israel/ – 8/4/2014.
Turkey has opposed Israel’s participation in NATO exercises. Officials said Ankara was abandoning plans to improve relations with Israel.
“Normalization with Israel is a fantasy,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/umut-ozkirimli/stoking-the-fire-antisemi_b_5779302.html – 9/8/2014.
Yet something was different this time around. Something to do with the intensity and audacity of displays of anti-semitism, and the not so covert official backing they received, which was one of the talking points of the recent meeting between U.S. President Obama and Turkish President Erdoğan who discussed, according to the statement by the NSC Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden “the importance of … combating the scourge of anti-Semitism,” among other things.
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http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703279704575335043894776482 – 6/29/2010.
Brothers in Arms
Some major Israeli arms contracts with Turkey
1997: $632 million order for Israel to outfit Turkish F4E Phantom aircraft with advanced avionics.
1998: $90 million order for Israel to provide AGM-1 and Popeye-1 missiles for the upgraded Phantoms.
2002: $687.5 million deal to upgrade Turkey’s M60-A1 tanks to Israeli Sabra-3 version, the last of which was delivered in April.
2005: $183 million deal to provide 10 Heron drones.
Note: All contracts completed except drones, which are being delivered. Source: Serdar Erdurmaz, Turkish Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies
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http://www.dailysabah.com/mideast/2014/09/10/over-40-states-combine-forces-against-isis – 9/10/2014.
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31 Sunday Aug 2014
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Politics
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I reckon every time Galloway opens his mouth, he does more for the pro-Israel cause than he would like to think. I mean he’s a Grade A loon and everyone apart from the leftist hordes that have nothing better to do with their Saturdays but sit in Hyde Park with a keffiyeh and a Hezbollah flag knows it.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/29/Wish-Galloway-A-Speedy-Recovery – 8/29/2014.
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