27 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in Iran, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, United States of America
Tags
American, folk music, Iran, Persia, political, politics, United States
Iran – mohamad noori – YouTube
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OH SHENANDOAH – (Across the Wide Missouri) A Cappella Version – YouTube
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A little extra . . . .
America The Beautiful – YouTube
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14 Friday Feb 2014
She examined my passport again, “Do know any Palestinians?” she asked.
I smirked and lied, “No.”
I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ | Ferrari Sheppard – 2/10/2014; also posted: I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ – Stop Being Famous – 1/24/2014.
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Carter taught Christian students in Plains Georgia that Judaism teaches Jews to feel superior to non-Jews, that Jewish religious practices are tricks to enhance wealth, and that current Israeli policy toward Palestinians is based on these “Jewish” values and practices.
Carter at Cardozo: It’s Not the “New-Anti-Semitism” — It’s the Older Kind | FrontPage Magazine – 4/10/2013.
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How would you characterize from a Jew’s point of view the uncircumcised?
Non believer?
And what?
Unclean, what?
They called them DOGS! That’s true.
Jimmy Carter’s Bible Class as Transcribed and Commented Upon by Michael Miller, 8/15/07 | Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors – 8/15/2007; posted 4/1//2013.
That was a long time ago, Mr. Carter.
Related: Is Bible Teacher Jimmy Carter an Old-Fashioned Jew-Hater?: But How Can a True Christian… :: The Phyllis Chesler Organization – 11/15/2007.
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The history of Palestinians was something I was familiar with as well, only because in high school, my friend’s parents were Moroccan Jews with staunch right-wing Zionist views. They’d go on about how Palestinians were worth shit and how they were sucking off the land they stole, and how they were not from Palestine, but Jordan. Truth be told, my friend’s parents’ passion about their ‘homeland’ made me sick. As a black person living in the United States, I could not relate to their love for their proclaimed homeland because I never had one. My ancestors were captured from various regions of Africa and forced onto ships bound for the Americas. Therefore, when questioned about the geographic origins of my ancestors, my answers were as vague as Africa is big.
I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ | Ferrari Sheppard – 2/10/2014.
It appears the young celebrity creating his celebrity flew to Israel on The Carter Center’s dime (“In the weeks preceding my departure from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Tel Aviv, I received travel warnings from The Carter Center, the organization responsible for sponsoring my trip”) with a reactive and retributive attitude forged in self-righteous alienation, never mind that, for example, about 1.7 million Israelis live in the same funky poverty for which he would claim to stand in the interest of social justice.
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Crying Isn’t a Weakness: StyleLikeU’s Closet Profile on Ferrari Sheppard – YouTube – 11/19/2013.
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The Genius Of The Crowd: Charles Bukowski – YouTube – Posted 12/19/2007. Related text: The Genius Of The Crowd by Charles Bukowski — Hello Poetry
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Related on this blog (a whole section): Anthropolitical Psychology | BackChannels
Our worlds are as small or as large as the information we acquire about them, and they are also as false or honest as the methods we use to comprehend whole issues and the integrity and curiosity with which we pursue them.
I get a little “Jewed out” myself, sometimes, and somewhere between the ever present clouds of the Holocaust and constant distributed cheerleading (deserved) and defense (also deserved) of Israel. Nonetheless, riding beside my own brand of international humanism (thanks, Felix Adler and Abraham Maslow — two more Jews), Judaism itself and its call to conscience (yo, Jimmuh: Jesus was Jewish!) remains for me an integral part of seeking social justice and what is good in living individually and communally.
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Despite months of lobbying by anti-Israel activists and a desperate last minute petition drive, the 141st APHA annual meeting and exposition held in Boston. defeated an anti-Israel resolution by 74 to 36 votes. The resolution was discussed by the association’s Joint Policy Committee. The anti-Israel campaign was led by activists of BDS, the global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, which was initiated by Palestinians in 2005 and is coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee established two years later.
Pro-Israeli activists defeat anti-Israel resolution on Palestinian health issues | JPost | Israel News – 11/10/2013
The forces of Jew Hate, a term earthier and less sanitized than “anti-Semitism”, have created on-campus and political bubble environments sufficient to enclose the “open-minded”, who may not be as much so as presumed, nor more cagey than vulnerable.
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As I stood in line at JFK waiting to be interrogated by security agents prior to boarding a flight to Tel Aviv last January, I thought of all the reasons why I didn’t belong there. I’m only half Jewish, for starters – and it’s the wrong half. I only know a couple of Hebrew words. I have a lot of what an Un-Jewish Activities Committee might call “Palestinian sympathies.”
Learning from Israeli Secularism | The Humanist Community Project – 5/29/2013.
Jewish ethnicity and the embrace and expression of faith may vary quite within the Jewish community, but it may not be possible these days to escape the influence of the wisdom of Hillel the Elder, himself quite possibly the elder contemporary of Jesus, from any contemporary stance. One might also go back a little farther in time to “The Akedah” and the undefined test given Abraham, a test either of obedience, which children believe without question, or of conscience, which adults may perceive with penetration – and perceive as Abraham failing (God never speaks to him again; an emissary in the form of an angel has to intercede in the murder; a substitute ram is made to appear for the knife Abraham would have too willingly used on Isaac: had he only spoken up, or, in the modern vernacular, spoken truth to power on behalf of Isaac and Sarah).
Israel provides a broad suite of basic services, including the training of Abbas’s police force, to the generations of refugees who remained on the land after the Arab war of annihilation in 1948. When the hate recedes, when the threat of violence against Jews fades on to the pages of history, the Jews and other Israelis — Christians, Muslims, and others — will prove as helpful as can be, but those days seem always set farther away by smears.
American Task Force on Palestine
Annual report shows 1.7 million Israelis living below poverty line | JPost | Israel News – 12/17/2013.
Hillel: If Not Now, When? (Jewish Encounters): Joseph Telushkin: 9780805242812: Amazon.com: Books
Hillel – Israel & Judaism Studies
Increase in Palestinians Treated in Israeli Hospitals | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com – 8/2/2013.
Is Bible Teacher Jimmy Carter an Old-Fashioned Jew-Hater?: But How Can a True Christian… :: The Phyllis Chesler Organization – 11/15/2007.
International Solidarity Movement | Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.
International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – NGO Monitor – 2/27/2012. Related: CAMERA: Whitewashing ISM – 9/1/2004.
Israel – Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)
I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ – Stop Being Famous – 1/24/2014; I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ | Ferrari Sheppard – 2/10/2014.
Jimmy Carter’s Bible Class as Transcribed and Commented Upon by Michael Miller, 8/15/07 | Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors – 8/15/2007; excerpt re-posted to present site 4/11/2013.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/jimmy_carters_human_rights_dis.html – 8/26/2007 (added here 10/9/2014).
Learning from Israeli Secularism | The Humanist Community Project – 5/29/2013.
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2013 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel Since the Declaration of Principles (Sept 1993) – List: 1994 – 2012 – Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Carter Center: Advancing Human Rights and Alleviating Suffering
The Genius Of The Crowd by Charles Bukowski — Hello Poetry – n.d.
Which crowd?
Since posting the above blog, this gem has been published in the New York Observer: Boteach, Rabbi Shmuley. “The Moral Disintegration of Jimmy Carter.” August 11, 2014:
Mr. Carter’s underdog obsession is what motivated him to legitimize Fidel Castro and take his side in a bio-weapons dispute with the United States and to praise North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung with the words: “I find him to be vigorous, intelligent,…and in charge of the decisions about this country.” This is the Korean dictator who, together with the tyrannical son who succeeded him, starved to death about 3 million of their own people. Carter added absurdly, “I don’t see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation.” He also hailed Marshal Joseph Tito as “a man who believes in human rights,” and said of murderous Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, “Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights.” Carter told Haitian dictator Raul Cédras that he was “ashamed of what my country has done to your country,” which made most Americans ashamed of Jimmy Carter.
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23 Monday Dec 2013
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Russia, United States of America
Tags
19th Century Modern, aristocracy, NATO, Obama, politics, Putin, Russia, Syria
Nineteenth-century radicals loathed Russia above all other states because it had a quasi-religious mission to preserve autocracy at home and promote reactionary regimes abroad. To true believers, the “Third Rome” of Christian tsarism defended the divinely ordained old order against the threats of liberalism, socialism, nationalism and modernity.
Vladimir Putin is outflanking the west at every turn | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer – by Nick Cohen – 12/21/2013
After reading Nick Cohen’s relay of Pat Buchanan’s words about Vladimir Putin, it turns out that I am a part of a movement characterized as the “militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”
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Ya ha!
I have found my place.
You know my lowest common denominator standards:
— Compassion | Humility | INCLUSION | Integrity —
Buchanan, if he’s now enamored of Putinism, and Putin, who would seem by the show of affection proffered in weapons deliveries and benevolent shadowing, remains committed to Bashar (The Butcher) Assad may be counted on for the grossest callousness, pride, exclusion, and — no secret where so many secret and nepotist arrangements would seem to be involved — corruption.
The same as (gasp!) Al Qaeda.
OUR problem, me hearties, me droogies, me Facebook best buddies from Riyadh to Islamabad, is that whether having to do with Assad vs. the Islamist Edge or Putin vs. Obama, it would seem similar mentalities wish to occupy the same space or shine in the same lights — not exactly atypical of “malignant narcissists” — while driving everyone else into misery or just plain out of their mirrored spheres!
THEIR problem, Mr. Obama, Mr. Putin, may have to do with escaping their own glorious selves. Of the two, Obama, being of the Christian compassionate honest humble and generously inclusive democratic and open society west, may lay claim to having done less harm in the short term than his superpower counterweight; Putin, however, would do well to look over the Assad combat doctrine and its effects on once disinterested Syrians who have by the effects of extensive bombing and indiscriminate fire been turned out of their homes or cheated of their lives while the Al Qaeda affiliates’ advance seems to have remained out of range and sight of the same.
Post-Soviet Syria was post-Soviet Putin’s to influence and transform.
Well, some, I suppose, both milk the cow and starve it until it keels over.
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In Putin, the past fights mightily with the future.
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In my own recurring themes, Putin and I might share the appreciation of what I call “19th Century Modern”, an aristocratic and noble notion reinforced by the appearance of affluence and wealth. Living in the 19th Century with 21st Century appointments and appliances seems to me pretty cool, although I’ve had to stuff my mansion into a cabin (or cottage) based in about 1,000-sq.ft. of garden apartment walk-up, and things are not looking so good for drives in the country and claret before one or another of the ever glowing electronic hearths.
Still, the situation here is 19th Century (Modern), and it’s pretty good but for the worry.
For the narcissist, reparative or malignant (guilty, I confess, of one or the other or a bit of both), there’s much to recommend it and one may bet on the intelligentsia’s buy-in, Georgian brick, ivy, tweed, and elbow patches and all.
So is the fighting about castle and keep?
It could be so, at least symbolically.
It takes a castle, a manor, a very many of them to create and sustain a great language and culture. If perhaps in his mind, his peacock charm, ambition, dreams at night, and hail fellow well met — and now and then stabbed! — President Putin has had to step back a century, the same may serve to remind of the magic of that era as well.
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It’s almost Christmas.
Winter returns tonight to my home in western Maryland — ice and snow, wool blankets and sweaters, steaming pots of tea (someone else in the family got the samovar) — so I may offer this bit of in-solidarity to my unknown Muscovy doppelganger, reasonably appointed and of good temper: let’s enjoy the show because, sooner or later, for Christianity or fashion designers, for the Jews who work harder for humanity than anyone else, and for humanity served, we’re going to have to do something about Syria and soon, and we don’t want it to be either of the two pariahs busying themselves this evening with the other’s destruction.
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From Saint Petersburg — and the 19th Century.
▶ Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker – Mariinsky Theatre Gergiev – YouTube – Posted 10/18/2013.
Related: The Mariinsky theatre: Goldfingered Gergiev | The Economist – 5/11/2013.
Putinism – An Ideology? | – 2/20/2013.
What English words employ the Spanish suffix ‘-ista’? – English Language & Usage Stack Exchange – I generally like my clevers but am not happy with the overtones, so I’m unlikely to employ “Putinista” again.
What WILL they talk about? Vladimir Putin buys £15m Marbella mansion, with Rod Stewart as a neighbour | Mail Online – 10/18/2012. I would live there. 🙂 And jam with Rod. It would be awesome.
From Pussy Riot to Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Putin has been underrated | Geoffrey Wheatcroft | Comment is free | The Guardian – 12/20/2013.
Russian President Vladimir Putin effectively cancels Christmas in Sochi ahead of 2014 Olympics | National Post – 11/29/2013
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Photos: Fighting intensifies in Aleppo, Syria | Al Jazeera America – 12/23/2013.
Syria: Refugee Babies In ‘Terrible’ Conditions – 12/23/2013.
Syrian civil war creating refugee crisis in Lebanon – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 12/23/2013.
BBC News – Syria war: Many dead as Assad helicopters pound Aleppo – 12/22/2013.
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19th Century Modern | A blend of 19th Century interests in a Modern Day life
Oppenheim Arts & Letters: 19th Century Modern & 19th Century Modern | J. S. Oppenheim — All Together 😉
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10 Tuesday Dec 2013
The event in the year 1358 was a counterattack. Our courageous and religious youth attacked the U.S. embassy and discovered the truth and identity of this embassy, which was the Den of Espionage, and presented this fact to people throughout the world.
In those days, our youth called the U.S. embassy the “Den of Espionage”. Today, after the passage of 30-plus years since that day, the name of U.S. embassies in countries which have the closest relationship with America – that is to say, European countries – has become the den of espionage. This means that our youth are 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. This event was related to America as well. These three events were related, in different ways, to the government of the United States of America and its relations with Iran. Therefore, the 13th of Aban – which is tomorrow – was named “Day of Fighting Against Arrogance”.
The Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei – 11/3/2013
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This same regime supplies its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with thousands of rockets, rockets that are aimed at Israeli civilians, rockets that are precision-guided munitions that are increasingly lethal and deadly. This is a regime committed to our destruction. And I believe there must be an unequivocal demand alongside the negotiations in Geneva for a change in Iranian policy. This must be part and parcel of the negotiations. In other words, I’m saying that what is required is not merely a shift and a diminution of Iran’s capability and elimination of its capability to produce nuclear weapons, but also a demand to change its genocidal policy. That is the minimal thing that the international community must do when it’s negotiating with Iran.
PM Netanyahu’s address to the Saban Forum 8 ec 2013
For once, the bold section is a part of the copy at the source — i.e., not mine.
This form in conflict isn’t about wealth or resources: it’s about the character of the next generation’s humanity.
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And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.
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The Jews and all who would travel with them have been defying the “malignant narcissist” from the first pages.
Even before Exodus, God himself in Genesis arranges for Eve to partake of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, share it with Adam, and become the two of them — this I regard as the most important part — aware, self-aware, and possessed of conscience.
Whatever animals may be left to do, the First Couple have ascended from that base existence, covered and signaled consideration for the other, and been prepared — read carefully: God himself sews the first protective clothing — to live like human beings.
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In contemporary political life there seem to be a thousand pharaohs holding captive and suffocating millions of souls. In their own heads, the lives of others pale before their own, and the control of others in the cause of their own adoration takes precedence over every other consideration.
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▶ Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Khamenei : Israeli regime shaky, doomed to collapse – YouTube – Posted by PressTV 11/20/2013.
Related from this blog: Paranoid Delusional Narcissist Reflection of Motivation
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▶ Mordechai Kedar: Rouhani threat? Is Obama setting-up Israel to confront Iran on nukes? [46] – YouTube – Posted 10/3/2013.
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In the next breath, however, the ayatollah spoke harshly of France’s stand with the United States in opposition of much of the nuclear deal being forged in Geneva, vowing that Iran would “slap aggressors in the face in such a way they will never forget it,” Ynet News reported.
The militia members, in response, chanted “Death to America.”
Iran’s ayatollah: Israel’s ‘doomed to extinction’ – Washington Times – 11/20/2013.
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“Iran’s policy of constructive interaction with the world states has forced the world to see the realities of Iran’s capabilities,” Rouhani said during a meeting with Bushehr’s MPs on Monday.
“You see that those powers which were thinking of destroying Iran’s enrichment capability, have now admitted that they cannot stop Iran’s industrial progress and enrichment due to the indigenization of this industry and its expansion,” he added.
President Rouhani: World powers admit failure in stopping Iran’s N. progress – 12/9/2013.
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“In our region there’s been a wound for years on the body of the Muslim world under the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the beloved al-Quds (Jerusalem),” Rouhani said, according to a translation by the Reuters news agency.
The earlier quote, which came from ISNA, was most notable for its inclusion of the call for the “wound” to be “removed”:
“The Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed,” ISNA quoted Rouhani as saying.
New Iran president Hasan Rouhani calls Israel an “old wound” – CBS News – 8/2/2013.
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In the Iranian regime’s relationship with the greater world, the encouragement of trust by way of sweet words would seem matched by an idée fixe — Islamic succession, perhaps — accompanied by a reputation for treachery.
As with others of similar mien, what the public knows and is told leaves the swallowing black shadow of things less divulged or not divulged at all.
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Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion (£59 billion) – a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation’s current annual petroleum exports, a six-month Reuters investigation shows.
The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader’s enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming.
Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei revealed to run £60 BILLION business empire covering everything from oil to ostrich farming | Mail Online – 11/11/2013; first source: Exclusive: Reuters investigates business empire of Iran’s supreme leader | Reuters – 11/11/2013.
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The 82-year-old Iranian woman keeps the documents that upended her life in an old suitcase near her bed. She removes them carefully and peers at the tiny Persian script.
There’s the court order authorizing the takeover of her children’s three Tehran apartments in a multi-story building the family had owned for years. There’s the letter announcing the sale of one of the units. And there’s the notice demanding she pay rent on her own apartment on the top floor
Reuters Investigates – Assets of the Ayatollah: “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures“: – 11/11/2013.
There is an old saw regarding the mentality of the power behind a medieval narrative: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law!”
The malignant create laws to exclude, persecute, and thieve from others, and oh my the things that may be taken from any person subject to a monster: family, identity, labor, property, reputation, and wealth.
And life.
If Ayatollah Khamenei’s ambition and methods as an empire builder seem grandiose and rife with injustice to outsiders, there is nothing delusional about them: what you have read, what you have seen, what you have heard in relation to the aims of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, all of that is true as well.
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24 Sunday Nov 2013
Demonstrators at the Palestinian school paraded in paramilitary gear, with massed black flags, mock assault weapons, and arms extended in Nazi-style salutes. There were banners lionizing suicide bombers, and hand-drawn Israeli flags on which students trod. Islamic Jihad — long identified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union — posted photos of the rally on its website. In one, students representing dead Israelis sprawl on the ground as black-clad jihadists brandishing weapons stride past.
Rally shows pervasive Palestinian anti-Semitism – Opinion – The Boston Globe – 11/24/2013.
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“Even universities like Al Quds university are established especially in Jerusalem, in order to show that Arabs and Muslims are the masters of this place and not the Jews, because in their view, if Judaism will control Jerusalem it will mean that Judaism came back to life after Islam came to replace it.
“This is why the basis of the struggle over Jerusalem and over the whole land of Israel is a religious struggle – not between Israel and the Arabs but between Judaism and Islam. This is the essence of th struggle, and everything stems from this archimedic point of the struggle.”
The speaker is the well-known scholar Mordechai Kedar and the source this one: Footage: More Nazi-Style Rallies at Al-Quds U. – Middle East – News – Israel National News – 11/28/2013.
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During his press conference in Jerusalem today on the “peace process,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized Israel again, but did not place any emphasis at all on the fact that the Palestinian Authority tolerates (and in many cases actively encourages) incitement to kill Jews.
Mideast Dispatch Archive: Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” Palestinian university – 11/6/2013
Related: Mideast Dispatch Archive: Update: Al-Quds photos receive attention from Netanyahu through to Al Jazeera (Tom Gross Media) – 11/11/2013; Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News: 11/07 Links Pt1: Fascist Rally at Al Quds Uni, Iranian Nobel Laureate – Rouhani is no Moderate – 11/7/2013; The Jewish Chronicle – Palestinian university partnership with Brandeis under fire after fascist style rally – 11/14/2013; Al Quds University « Commentary Magazine – 11/20/2013; Brandeis University suspends its partnership with Al-Quds University effective immediately | BrandeisNOW – 11/18/2013; Brandeis University Criticized for Nazi-Style Rally | Washington Free Beacon – 11/11/2013; Al-Quds president says Brandeis counterpart ‘gone overboard’ in row over rally | The Times of Israel – 11/22/2013.
In the final reference of the above block, Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University may have through the subtext of his response made it clear how difficult it was — and remains — to stand up to and condemn the anti-Semitic bigotry and hate paraded by Islamic Jihad on campus. While defending his actions on the matter, which I believe he did well, he appears (in words) not to have gone so far as to lead his campus in recognizing and condemning with certainty its own deeply fascist elements and tendencies.
The Jewish press at once defensive and active –in this instance David Horovitz writing for the Times of Israel — hammers home the telling nail: “In his statement issued to al-Quds students Sunday, Nusseibeh had said that “Jewish extremists” were using the demonstration to “capitalize on events in ways that misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies.”
No extremists, Jewish or otherwise, would seem needed to recognize the deeper structure in argument having to do with choosing between a loyalty that pacifies, placates, and patronizes its children when they are wrong, and an integrity in matters that risks upsetting their malign narcissistic souls.
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“We are very disappointed and saddened to have learned of these recent events at Al-Quds University,” said Kevin Quinn, Syracuse’s senior vice president for public affairs, in an email to The Jerusalem Post.
He said Syracuse’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism would end its ties with Al-Quds. The decision by Syracuse came three days after Brandeis University severed its relationship.
Syracuse follows Brandeis in halting ties with Al-Quds | JPost | Israel News – 11/22/2013.
When something stinks, people who don’t stink back away from it.
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DEARBORN — Dozens of Arab Americans across southeast Michigan converged on Dearborn Friday to mark National Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, condemning Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands.
The protest was held at Dearborn City Hall, the designated “free speech zone” in the city.
Muslims Mark Al-Quds Day in Support of Palestinians – Around Town – Dearborn, MI Patch – 8/4/2013.
Should you click on the Dearborn Patch link, you will see a photo of a young lady holding a post with blocked and black letters on a white field: “Israel: No Right To Exist.”
Scroll down some and learn that “Abir Safa of Dearborn read a poem during the rally, and said that the event serves as a wake up call for all Muslims to take a stand against global Zionism and global hegemony and aggression regardless of race, religion or creed.”
Good idea — start with the saluting black shirts of al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Israel.
But wait — that would be off the point, which might fit a little more with observations similar to this one by Andrew Kirell writing for Mediaite:
It’s a match made in hate-filled heaven: former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Louisiana legislator David Duke endorsed, via video, Charles Barron, the controversial anti-Israel Democrat from Brooklyn, New York, who currently seeks the party’s nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Former Black Panther Barron has a long history of controversial remarks, some of which have been interpreted as anti-Semitic. He once called Israel the “biggest terrorist in the world,” and likened the Gaza Strip to “a virtual death camp, the same kind of conditions the Nazis imposed on the Jews.” At one point, he praised the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi as a “freedom fighter.”
United In Hate? Fmr. KKK Leader David Duke Endorses Black Anti-Zionist For Congress | Mediaite – 6/22/2012.
Readers of this blog should by now well recognize the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” involved in the concoction, unconsciously or by way of deliberate and venal conceit, of “against global Zionaism . . . hegemony . . . aggression” especially when it links directly back to jack-booted, black shirt wearing, rigidly parading and Nazi-emulating thugs associating themselves with other Palestinians, among them some or many — who knows absent of free speech and unblemished elections? — who may finally wish to think twice — independently and off their own research and reflection — about who it is, or what it is, that has been purporting to represent them.
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A little bit of “Never Forget!” by way of the 1930s, Facebook, and Harry’s Place (reference provided).
Harry’s Place » Old Hatred In New Words? – 9/2/2008.
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While before a person had to be personally exposed, through people or perhaps a book, to vile characterizations of Jews, today anti-Semitism is prominently available everywhere anytime — to those seeking it out or to the innocent person just looking for information. Typing “Jew” into Google or Bing returns a top site (sometimes No. 2) called JewWatch, which is a vast emporium of anti-Semitic accusations and hatred claiming 1.5 billion pages in support of its mission to defame and eliminate Jews and their supposed power. This is but one of tens of thousands of anti-Semitic hate sites, which include a growing alternative to Wikipedia, called Metapedia, which seeks to create (currently in 18 languages) an anti-Semitic informational universe.
Opinion: How the Web spreads anti-Semitism – CNN.com – 10/18/2013.
With the democratic open society concept, a lot of people write and publish — and a lot more read and respond through the manner in which they conduct their lives — but to create a pervasive information atmosphere, one infused with anti-Semitic vitriol, takes some pile of sleazy cash: one wonders about who has been putting up the Big Bucks to inflame and incite yet another generation to wanton murder.
Brandeis president will reach out to Al-Quds University | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California – 11/27/2013.
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15 Friday Nov 2013
Scholastic Deletes Israel from New Textbook — Retracts . . . .
Scholastic Magazine — http://magazines.scholastic.com/ — left or removed the entire State of Israel on a an American publication gone to press.
Biggest children’s book publisher erases Israel from map | The Times of Israel – 11/13/2013.
I wonder how that happened.
To the publisher’s credit, the run was retrieved and corrected.
Both following and defying what I’ll call “Black Swan Theory”, one really does wish to know how Scholastic’s graphic artists and proofreaders missed this egregious error.
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24 Thursday Oct 2013
Tags
detective work, domestic security, equal application of the law, freedom of speech, hate groups, intelligence, religion, social tolerance
My correspondent in Pakistan sent me the link to an anti-Semitic (anti-Black, anti-Muslim, etc.) hate page and asked “How do you deal with these white supremists?
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Nice people . . . .
We let them talk all they want.
The timbre of the surrounding culture is such that when they’re found out, individually, their business and social prospects may be minimized by natural normative social processes. They’re sickness — and that’s most American, not only Jews but most Christians as well, view it — is such that they’re liable to gravitate to their own intellectual kind.
If the group has any history in crime or violence, the police will monitor minimally through ex-con or probation relationships with individuals (not with the group), and if more attention is needed, the old joke about FBI COINTELPRO applies: “How do you get to meet an FBI agent?” — “Attend a KKK meeting!”
If the organization commits a crime, the whole law enforcement community will be up its ass pretty damn quick to make arrests on the crime and conspiracy to commit it.
If the organization has developed a criminal history, then even reformed, it’s probably infiltrated and tracked. The old “COINTELPRO” — a term that may be looked up — involved some dirty tricks bordering on entrapment but always inspiring mistrust and paranoia within the targeted group.
Oddly enough and relevant here, it’s unknown to what extent the still new Federal intelligence and security communities have going on with the Muslim Brotherhood in America (incidentally, there are no holds reading Chechnya’s Kavkaz Center or Al Qaeda’s Inspire feeds). On the surface, it appears that the Administration has hired and integrated into its departments key Brotherhood figures like Mohamed Elibiary — http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/09/muslim-brotherhood-supporter-gets-homeland-security-promotion.html — and given out promotions. I think the intent was to elevate, integrate, and surround with the greater polygot American culture the mentality involved. That too seems not to be going so well and the conservative right press harps on these Obama decisions quite a bit.
I’ve been convinced for a while that the Obama Administration has been playing a deeply deceptive politics abroad and at home, so it hasn’t endorsed the Saudis — and their being upset about that has been in the news this week — nor has it abandoned Israel, but we are worried about Iran’s steps toward failproof defense of its nuclear war making capability, which it may do by acquiring a civilian reactor too dangerous when active for destruction or dismantling. The workaround, since Russia wants to sell the Ayatollah on its part of the nuclear business, Chernobyl notwithstanding, has been to mess with the intellectual capacity in human talent and machinery involved in the pursuit of those aims. There Israel and the U.S. may diverge, for the Israelis feel that an endless policy of half measures will lead to their own destruction.
Back to other hate groups, Islamic Jihad in America, and “homeland security” — I think the aim of responsible government, such as it may be (some voters believe it absent and the country already “sold down the river”, a colloquial phrase having to do with shipping slaves from pleasant Kentucky to the markets of New Orleans) — is to treat political threat and violence engineered by Muslims no differently than it does Christian ideologues and any number of cults and gangs similarly involved with their own weird tribal politics and the posture taken against the rest of the world. If there’s a problem with that, it may be that the Muslim Brotherhood is latched to a major religion, has decades of organizational history behind it, and has a vision for mankind to rival the Nazis in its supremacist aspect.
Shimmer applies. If the scale and tempo of violence — any group or cause — American politicians and the government will ramp up the pressure to suppress that form of political exuberance. Apparently, an annual atrocity or two may not produce sufficient cause to, for example, revisit laws on sedition. The concern remains that what we do for one mob and its cause, we must do for all. For the most part, instead of criminalizing the politics, we wait for the politics to become criminal, and then we take apart the organizations.
In national religious politics: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2013/10/17/richardson-texas-imam-leaves-dallas-central-mosque-quietly/ The imam has been noted as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world, so there’s an intelligence story in there that I’m unlikely to pry apart. Maybe the crackdown on the Brotherhood in Egypt involved information that impugned the imam; maybe the Wahhabi thrust in the politics unseated the stance he represented, and he was forced from power; perhaps some other aspect in politics or state needs, including Erdogan’s interest in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, call him back to Istanbul; perhaps he really did take an early and quiet retirement, all the better to avoid hoopla and the long crediting in speech in public of mentors and associates along the way.
The true topic is a combine of national mission — egalitarian secular democracy here — and national security, so whether white dudes in basements talking about The Jew over their beer or the leader of the largest mosque in Texas, we’re trying to look at them the same way, guaranty the freedom of the law abiding, including the most hateful of the law abiding or the most contemptuous of others, if that, and keep our radars hot, as it were, for criminal activity.
And that’s how we deal with all of that! 🙂
Whew.
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I credit the same correspondent with awakening me to the politics 101 phrase “behind the curtains,” and with that in mind and much impression garnered from years of blogging feel confident about President Obama’s dividing political surface from political real story.
I’m equally confident about the conservative right’s beyond-the-pale demonizing of the American President and note that not with an overabundance of respect for the office — that would be other than American too — but with numerous second looks into the rationale for moving figures like Elibiary into the Administration’s ranks. The far right cries “Infiltration!” I happen to think such moves make for closer looks and for a look at administrative integration as a potentially culturally transforming process.
What doesn’t work only teaches us more than we knew when we started.
Were it not for greed — and that may be a subject for other writing on this blog — the American political system would be a greater joy for working, but even so, it’s very good at what it does, and what it does, by and large, is produce an Awesome Discourse (a little more important than merely the Awesome Conversation, lol) sustaining a productive domestic tranquility.
In America, so far and far past the Civil War, we’re still much inclined to reach for our quills rather than our quivers when it comes to domestic politics.
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09 Monday Sep 2013
Kerry also said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August, saying that only three people are responsible for the chemical weapons inside Syria – Assad, one of his brothers and a senior general. He said the entire US intelligence community was united in believing Assad was responsible.
John Kerry calls Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad “a man without credibility”
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Syria: Syrian President Bashar al Assad Charlie Rose Interview September 9, 2013
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In state-level affairs, the sovereign or government-in-power may be held accountable for what takes place within its purview. So right off the bat this week, the nit of The Guardian headline, “Assad did not order Syria chemical weapons attack, says German press” has a disingenuous cant to it.
If not Bashar, what about Maher?
If not Maher, what about an officer in charge under his command?
Note Simon Tisdall and Josie Le Blond in Berlin in writing for The Guardian:
The German intelligence findings concerning Assad’s personal role may complicate US-led efforts to persuade the international community that punitive military action is justified. They could also strengthen suspicions that Assad no longer fully controls the country’s security apparatus.
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I’m not making the call, but the single case for pointing to a rebel false flags seems to stand on an accident involving the mishandling of chemical weapons stocks.
Or a recording — edited, underscored, produced, disseminated — showing a successful launch of a “blue bonnet” style rocket (using what looks like a launch vehicle matched to the purpose).
One case: two stories . . . .
That leaves the public with a spy story in a world waiting for the journalists to get into what I’m going to call “Political Spychology” — the massive, multinational industry devoted to capturing, listening, sniffing, stealing, interpreting signal for military as well as industrial purposes.
By vicinity x chatter x who x impact:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/28/israeli-intelligence-intercepted-syria-chemical-talk
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I am of the mind that the Syrian Civil War has degraded the central power of the Assad regime but neither installed nor shifted the same toward any coherent and responsible party: instead, it has drawn the state toward gross political anarchy and with a look in many places not dissimilar to Mogadishu’s: hard destruction around and through which shifting tides of suffering humanity amid armed gangs, loosely aligned at best, state or rebel, make their way.
Their situation will worsen as the lack of honesty and integrity across the field and the presence of grandiose ambitions in some ensures greater anarchy, brutality, and political dissolution.
To get the chemical weapons off the field is not to solve the war: it’s to make it a little more discerning (at least between combatant and noncombatant targets), humane, and secure because while other weapons projectiles explode or hit something with finite effect, poisonous gasses drift and are indiscriminate even on the gentlest of their lethal breezes.
To solve the war is to address the poetry of the mind of the warrior romantics involved in imagining themselves “God’s darlings” — Haider Mobarak’s phrase related to the narcissism involved — and striving to prove as much so through the intimidation, murder, and subjugation of all presumably less admirable and beloved-by-God others.
Assad did not order Syria chemical weapons attack, says German press | World news | The Guardian 9/9/2013
Obama, his team sharpen Syria pitch as Congress prepares to vote | Fox News 9/9/2013
Obama’s Syrian chemical attack “proof” relies solely on Israeli intelligence | Intrepid Report.com 9/3/2013
Syria chemical attack analysis — CNN 9/7/2013
Syria | The White House (viewed: 9/9/2013)
Live today at 12:30 PM ET, White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice. Ambassador Rice will discuss the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, the longstanding international norm against the use of chemical weapons, and the need for action to deter the Assad regime from future use of chemical weapons.
Time isn’t on the White House’s side on Syria resolution 9/9/2013
What if Syria’s Assad didn’t personally order the chemical weapons attack? – The Week 9/9/2013
White House Intensifies Efforts to Make the Case for Syria Military Strikes – ABC News 9/8/2013
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