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Category Archives: Ecuador

Ecuador Drowns in Chinese Loans, Prior Internal Corruption, and Resulting Unrest and Violence

13 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ecuador, South America

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Tags

Chinese Corruption in South America, Chinese Debt Burden, Ecuador, IMF and Ecuador, political corruption

An authentic Left / Far Left in Central and South America would place the highest emphasis on integrity in governance and work to produce the planning and engineering that would best fulfill the ideals contained in and signaled by the term “appropriate and sustainable development”. And there would be no need for IMF consideration and related examination. Instead, the “socialists” appear to invariably pursue criminal schemes.


Euronews, October 13, 2019.

President Lenín Moreno ordered the army on to the streets of Ecuador’s capital Quito after a week and a half of protests over fuel prices devolved into violent incidents, with masked protesters attacking a television station, newspaper and the national auditor’s office.

Moreno said the military enforced curfew would begin at 3pm local time in response to violence in areas previously untouched by the protests. Masked protesters broke into the national auditor’s office and set it ablaze, sending black smoke billowing across the central Quito park and cultural complex that have been the epicentre of the protests.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/army-deployed-in-ecuador-as-protests-descend-into-violence

October 2, 2019

The reforms announced yesterday by President Lenin Moreno aim to improve the resilience and sustainability of Ecuador’s economy and foster strong, and inclusive growth. The announcement included important measures to protect the poor and most vulnerable, as well as to generate jobs in a more competitive economy.

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2019/10/02/pr19362-ecuador-imf-statement-on-ecuador

Socialist Ecuador borrowed far beyond its means for years, predictably arriving at the doorstep of the IMF to address its debt situation. Just as predictably, the government and IMF took aim at cause — petrol subsidies — without the informational or structural preparation of the state. And whaddayaknow — calls for revolutionary action spilling into violence in the streets.

Mix in nominal “Communism”, the political cover for some of the most labor exploiting, imperialist, and wealthiest elites on earth.


Reporting from Quito, Ecuador, LAT, 2018 — 

Rafael Correa wanted to fast-track development projects when he was president of Ecuador, so he borrowed billions of dollars from China. But the loans have come back to haunt his successor, Lenin Moreno, who will go hat in hand to China this month to seek more flexible terms and breathing space.

A onetime ally and now bitter enemy of Correa, Moreno and his government are straining under a huge budget deficit caused partly by obligations to the Chinese, whose loans financed roads, dams, schools and office buildings during Correa’s time in office from 2007 to 2017.

https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-ecuador-loans-china-20181210-story.html

Read the rest of the LAT piece — no bid contracts; corrupt construction practices; an authentically pricey dam project now operating at half its capacity for the discovery of crack following the execution of the work:

The report also said the Chinese contractor ignored a stipulation of the construction contract, that the dam be built according to rigid standards set by the American Society Of Mechanical Engineers. “The Chinese used bad-quality steel and fired inspectors who said to change it, “ said ex-minister Santos.

https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-ecuador-loans-china-20181210-story.html

And yet Ecuador’s Left will characterize its current and responsible leadership as “imperialist and fascist” while the true imperialist fascists — the Chinese government and its industrial sector — get away with murderous theft, promising much, delivering much less, and provoking Ecuador’s poor — whom the Left claims to defend! — into greater desperation and the kind of actions that come of deeply misdirected anger, perceived political impotence, and true theft — socialist theft — from the People.


The net is tightening around former Ecuador president Rafael Correa after a new order for his arrest, underscoring the country’s determination to bring the once-popular leader to justice, along with his closest political allies.

https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/rafael-correa-absence-ecuador-closest-allies/ – 9/29/2019

An authentic Left / Far Left in Central and South America would place the highest emphasis on integrity in governance and work to produce the planning and engineering that would best fulfill the ideals contained in and signaled by the term “appropriate and sustainable development”. And there would be no need for IMF consideration and related examination. Instead, the “socialists” appear to invariably pursue criminal schemes.

From the same InSight Crime article cited: “This time, Ecuador’s Attorney General Diana Salazar has accused the former president of being behind a bribery scheme, which she described as a “well-structured criminal organization that received payments from government contractors,” according to a report by Ecuavisa.”

Ecuador’s latest request to add former president Rafael Correa to the INTERPOL roster of wanted criminals seems predictable too in light of the character of political life in the now debt-burdened and protest and violence-ridden state.


Ecuador’s violence — the bitter fruit of unchecked borrowing and state-level corruption and criminality. RT’s less incendiary title for the clip: “Protesters clash with police, set govt building on fire in Quito, Ecuador.” If the scene resembles those coming off the streets of so-called “liberation movement”, it may be because the same people instigated the violence.

Related Online: “Quito protests: Ecuador riot officer hit with petrol bomb.” Sky News, October 13, 2019.

–33–

Oh Troubles Keep Away from My Ecuador

19 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ecuador, International Development, Politics, South America

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Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, economic development, Ecuador, protests, unrest

“My Ecuador” is likely to remain virtual and experienced through Windows.

However, for my correspondent, Ecuador is home, and when he writes in relation to, ” . . . the soldiers try to occupy the strategic places, highways, bridges, airports, refineries, power generation stations, generating dams . . .” and says “we will close the office now and  . . . try to buy food in the supermarket, store, and black market . . . .” I’m inclined to believe him.

But he’s just one source.

The closest corroborations in the news:

Lee, Brianna.  “Ecuador’s Correa Withdraws Controversial Tax Bills After Days of Protests.”  International Business Times, June 16, 2015.

Morla, Rebeca.  “Down with Correa!  Ecuadorians Want Off the Socialist Train: Five Days of Street Protests, More to Come.”  The Canal: Blog of the Panama Post, June 15, 2015.

Scherffus, Liz.  “The opposition says they will continue protesting until the proposed inheritance tax is off the table.”  Telesur, June 17, 2015.

As has happened in other spaces in relation to the post-Soviet neo-feudalism, reliance on oil revenues and the tumble in wellhead rates has turned out a big kick in the seat of the pants.

It appears that what has brought Ecuadorans out into the streets en masse is not primal hunger and resentment of the capitalist yankee running dog pig — China’s deep into the state these days — but the fearsome will to bequeath hard-earned private gains to progeny without fear of plundering by the state!

According to my source, some military appears to have mobilized, but the arguments and resolution of economic issues to come may play behind the increasingly pale phantom of the bankrupt Soviet, the revanche neo-feudalism in place in Moscow today, and the teetering of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.  Clearly, the authoritarian experiments dressed up in socialist talk have failed their states.

The shame is the same: some affected states, Ecuador among them, are simply rich in cultural charm, labor, and natural resources but burdened by leadership that fails to grow the kind of internal economy that might make short work of living comfortably on the land while producing the craft-for-export industries certain to at least help fill in the shortfalls from the gross export of mineral wealth.

# # #

Correa Refuses Maduro Meeting, Source Says

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ecuador, International Development, Politics, South America, Venezuela

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economic piracy, feudalism, Maduro, nobility, Venezuela

Ecuador’s president Raphael Correa will not meet with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month, says a BackChannels source.

The decision, if true, follows on a rapid economic decline in Venezuela involving increasingly visible dictatorship and political repression and a kind of stink that devoted socialist leaders, either in heart or speech, may apparently wish to avoid.

Only three months ago, Maduro visited with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in Tehran and then in Saudi Arabia with then Crown Prince Salman (twelve days later, the same would become King Salman) to navigate some way between opposition to the west and cooperation with Iran’s opponents in exchange for loans:

“We’re finalizing a financial alliance with important banks from Qatar that will give us sufficient oxygen to help cover the fall in oil prices and give us the resources we need for the national foreign currency budget,” Maduro said, adding that the two nations had also “strengthened the ties of cooperation to open paths for cultural and touristic exchange.”

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11157 – 1/12/2015.


Recent related faux socialist grandstanding by President Correa:

. . . the US “Has ‘double standards’ and sustains good relations with absolute monarchies, without democracy” while Venezuela has to face the usual elites causing interference to see if they can destabilize the government. “When will they understand that Latin America has changed. Here you will find sovereignty, dignity, unity,” he said.

He called Washington’s position “a disgrace” and stressed that “Latin America must speak out in opposition to such arrogance, unilateralism and imperialism.”

http://www.pressenza.com/2015/03/president-of-ecuador-highlights-meeting-of-unsaur-in-quito-to-discuss-the-position-of-venezuela/ – 3/16/2015.


Bloomberg Business comments:

Correa, who has long allied himself with Chavez’s socialist ambitions and declared three days of mourning to mark his death, is now deviating from policies that saw him use Ecuador’s oil wealth to finance record spending. Maduro’s refusal to break with the currency controls and gasoline subsidies embraced by Chavez is deepening concern that Venezuela, which gets about 95 percent of its export revenue from oil, will run out of money as soon as this year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/bondholders-spurning-chavezs-venezuela-disciple-andes-credit – 1/14/2015.


Since late February, Maduro’s course in political repression has been making headlines: Washington Post – “Venezuela and Cuba: Partners in repression”; Yahoo! Maktoob News – “Venezuelan teen dies after being shot at anti-Maduro protest”; Wall Street Journal – “Venezuela Cracks Down on Dissent”; NPR – “Venezuela’s President Sees Only Plots as His Economy Crumbles”, etc.

From the NPR piece:

. . . in blaming the U.S. for nearly all his problems, Maduro is crying wolf, says Xabier Coscojuela, editor of the Caracas newspaper Tal Cual.

“I’ve lost count of the number of alleged plots to overthrow or kill the president,” Coscojuela says. “It’s something like ten over the past two years. But there is no credible evidence in any of these cases.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/03/08/391549844/venezuelas-maduro-sees-only-plots-as-his-economy-crumbles – 3/8/2015.

Several terms coined or simply put to use on this blog might apply: “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”; “Malignant Narcissism”; “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.

The politician as feudal lord, “state capitalist”, or incredibly privileged socialist (or nationalist) has to enjoy the psychological fruit of his own excesses — none of these presidents (for life) live in shacks (or pass time at spinning wheels) — and the results in real politics of a state-enforced magical economics that turns out entirely piratical.

This too comes from NPR:

Simon Nobile, 72, runs the Capri pasta factory in the capital Caracas, which was founded by his Italian-born father in 1940. Capri’s two plants crank out 11 million pounds of pasta per month.

They could produce nearly twice that much. However, Nobile says a government policy designed to help the poor forces him to sell half of his inventory for just five cents a pound.

“There is no incentive because price controls mean that you lose money. So the more you produce, the more money you lose,” he says.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/02/07/384331225/rich-in-oil-venezuela-is-now-poor-in-most-everything-else – 2/7/2015.


While “inclusion” numbers among the six primary global virtues promoted by this blog, it takes some careful planning to channel much needed cash to the floor of an economy and sustain that traffic across time.

It doesn’t happen by magic.

The process need not dehumanize, humiliate, or subjugate, but it may need to be responsive and responsible to labor involved and the many productive capacities and cultural and environmental boundaries of place.


The drop in oil prices was the deep voice of international capital speaking, which irrupted as if from nowhere and in counterpoint to the rhythms of local and visible Venezuelan politics. When international capital spoke, it dashed all the local plans, because the slow time-frame of the Bolivarian government’s plans for economic diversification and the turtle steps of the Venezuelan opposition’s march towards the upcoming elections suddenly were no longer viable.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11264 – 3/11/2015

Chris Gilbert’s mention of “economic diversification” plays up that will-o’-the-wisp — there is always talk of it, but when one goes to find it, it’s less there than it should be — facing at least several autocratic governments reliant on mineral proceeds for fueling their economies.


In 2012 it looked like the politician’s spectacular career was winding down. Suddenly, he was back on top. People With Money reports on Tuesday (March 17) that Maduro is the highest-paid politician in the world, pulling in an astonishing $96 million between February 2014 and February 2015, a nearly $60 million lead over his closest competition.

http://en.mediamass.net/people/nicolas-maduro/highest-paid.html – 3/18/2015.


Chavez’s family now reportedly owns 17 country estates totaling more than 100,000 acres in the western state of Barinas, as well as assets of $550 million stored in various international bank accounts. Residents in the same region wait as long as three hours for basic provisions at grocery stores.

National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello, a close confidant of Chavez and member of Maduro’s United Socialist Party, has allegedly amassed “a private fortune” through corruption and ties to regional drug traffickers. The Miami Herald reported accusations last week that Cabello received at least $50 million in bribes to overlook lucrative public contracts that were overpriced, according to a recent lawsuit.

Maduro said those who distort events in Venezuela are “on the side of the 1 percent.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nicolas-maduro-fact-check/ – 4/2/2014.


The politics of foreign despots at a glance . . . the reason I find what I do (with simple search terms like “Maduro, wealth”, and a click of the mouse) is because I know the anchors of the image — the image of post-socialist now neo-feudal dictators AKA “malignant narcissists” — have their record in yesterday’s news and the factual data conveyed through it.


A joint new study by three leading Venezuelan universities — Andres Bello Catholic University, Central University of Venezuela, and Simon Bolivar University — shows that 48.4 percent of Venezuelan households were below the poverty line in 2014, up from 45 percent of households in 1998, before late radical leftist President Hugo Chávez took office and benefited from nearly a decade of soaring world oil prices.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article9311450.html – 2/4/2015.


Venezuela has some of the world’s largest proven oil deposits as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, bauxite and gold.

Yet most Venezuelans live in poverty, many of them in shanty towns, some of which sprawl over the hillsides around the capital, Caracas.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19649648 – 3/11/2015


Poverty is no joke: no dignity; no freedom; no growth; no future.

Whether the “unit of analysis” is individual, family, or community makes no difference. The restraints and punishments (for political dissent) suffocate soul and spirit.

To redress grievance and repair requires some accurate — not paranoid — comprehension of involved economic, political, and psychological forces and variables, starting with the character of the leadership in place: as it stands today, the feudal-medieval principle continues to invite to its portals conflict and revolution, the differences between a 12th Century despot, a 19th Century czar, and a 21st Century dictator yielding the same result in economic and social modeling across geopolitical space and time.

However, social — and perhaps liberal, humanist, and socialist — expectations have changed markedly since medieval days, and people become simply more rapidly aware of their own potential — and the potential of where they live as a base for living and producing for themselves and others (at fair rates) — and equally apprised of real cultural, political, and social impediments to achievement, and those same may include a piratical nobility.


“We used to produce rice and we had excellent coffee; now we produce nothing. With the situation here people abandoned the fields,” says Jesús López, in reference to government-seized land that sits idle. “Empty shelves and no one to explain why a rich country has no food. It’s unacceptable,” adds the 90-year-old farmer from San Cristóbal, on the western state of Táchira, bordering Colombia.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/sep/26/venezuela-food-shortages-rich-country-cia – 9/26/2013.


The so-called “socialist” scapegoating of the west, the Jews, the capitalists, and so on simply runs into its own true common feudal Orwellian political reality: dens of thieves, after all.


According to this measure, the number of Venezuelans classified as poor shot up in the last year by 1.8 million people. Roughly 6 percent of all Venezuela’s 30 million people became poor in the last year alone. The situation is even direr when one looks at extreme poverty, i.e., the number of people whose income cannot even buy a representative basket of food and drink. In the last year alone, the number of extremely poor Venezuelans rose by 730,000. They now reach close to three million people, or roughly 10 percent of the population.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/04/poverty-shoots-up-in-venezuela – 6/4/2015 –i.e., published almost a year ago, and, for sure, things cannot have gotten better.

Related Reference

http://lainfo.es/en/2015/03/17/presidents-arrive-in-venezuela-for-alba-meeting/ – 3/17/2015

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/venezuelas-president-nicolas-maduro-center-addresses-leaders-during-photo-001757098.html – 3/17/2015.

# # #

Maduro “Wishes to Visit Ecuador”

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ecuador, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, South America, Venezuela

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dictatorship, neo-feudalism, post-Soviet politics, Red Brown Green

Waiting to pounce on me from my inbox this morning: “Please report that Nicolas Maduro wants to visit Ecuador to seek international support . . . .”

My correspondent alludes to a source within Ecuador’s government: ” . . . the visit will be in April or June . . . .”

Is this really such a good time — a good year even — for travel?

With a country, one cannot simply water the plants, check the faucets, lock the doors and leave, and this is not such a good time for Nicolas Maduro for doing even so little as that.

Reuters reported Tuesday, “A teenager was fatally shot at an anti-government protest in the western city of San Cristobal on Tuesday, state officials said, exacerbating tensions in Venezuela amid an economic crisis and crackdown on the political opposition.”

Kluiver Roa was 14 years old.  His father was reputed to be a member of opposition party Copei.  Although an arrest was made, Reuters reporters found cause to call the crime scene circumstances — what actually happened — “confusing”.

Currency devaluation, plunging oil revenues, shortages — no wonder violence has broken out on the streets.

Connection Red Brown Green

Camouflaged police smashed into the mayor’s office and carried him away . . . Mr Ledezma was on a list of people and foreign powers named by Mr Maduro last week as attempting to bring down his administration.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31545963 – 2/19/2015.

Related:

Reuters.  “Russia’s Putin, Venezuela’s Madura discuss oil markets: Interfax.”  January 15, 2015; Pitts, Pietro. “Venezuela’s Asia Tour Backfires as Crude Extends Slump.”  Bloomberg Business, January 16, 2015; Lee, Hailey. “Beijing still funds struggling Venezuela, for now.” CNBC, January 21, 2015.

Reliant on mineral wealth for wealth, the “Red Brown Green” arc of power’s extension into developing South American economies may be suffering from the same malady: the west’s intent to finish off the Soviet Empire.

It has been about 25 years since the Soviet dissolved without also dissolving the “perks” of the Party privileged and all of its direct associates, including associate leadership in distant states.

Is the Party over?

It appears the power mad — political species “Narcissus communist proto-fascist”  — were dependent on climbing oil revenues — the miraculous abundance of “black gold”, and all of it theirs for the taking — for sustaining and growing both the functional and symbolic elements of power within their spheres of control, from state’s military equipage to the payouts in patronage that created the “nomenklatura”, which along today’s neo-feudal path appears to be a “Newest Nobility”, now rapidly deflating while being urged toward productive development investment — including investment in human development — and (gasp!) rule of law.

Financially strangling, the politically dying may be expected to put their people in their own place first, i.e., the privileged may be counted on to make themselves the last to give up privilege.

End Games, New Games

In the Awesome Conversation on Facebook, I often remind that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe — another old Soviet tentacle — remains in power.  What he has done to Zimbabweans, including the reintroduction of cholera in relation to withholding from a rival funds for water sanitation chemicals, seems of no account: in the “one man, one vote, one time” democratic ways of much of Africa, Mugabe will celebrate turning 91 this Saturday.

Although no less than Vladimir Putin has called Mugabe a dictator (at least once and back in 2009), which is sayin’ somethin’, the point is the worst of national leaders, truly despots, have long demonstrated their possession of the means, wherewithal, and will for remaining in power to the natural end of their lives.

As our “malignant narcissists” appear to reject criticism, eliminate rivals, and cultivate a ceaseless “narcissistic supply“, one must expect politically geological aftershocks — or revanch birth pangs — basically kicking (whether leaving the world or coming into it) from the Fall of the Soviet Union and the latest squeeze on the oxygen supply that is cold hard cash at the wellhead.

Update – February 27, 2015

The regime’s favourite charge to level at hostile politicians is plotting to overthrow the government, often in conspiracy with the United States. But it is the president, Nicolás Maduro, who is staging a coup against the last vestiges of democracy. Venezuelans call it an autogolpe, or “self-coup”.

The Economist.  “Venezuela’s crackdown: A slow-motion coup: The authoritarian regime is becoming a naked dictatorship.  The region must react.”  February 28, 2015 (Print Edition).

Reference

BackChannels Library.  “Russian Section.”

BBC.  “Venezuela police raid arrests Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma.”  February 19, 2015.

Dawisha, Karen.  Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Donkin, Tom.  “Venezuela’s financial crisis – in 90 seconds.”  BBC Latin America & Caribbean, February 12, 2015.

Newsday.  “Big bash for Mugabe’s 91st — A feast of wild animals, he’ll get a lion too.” February 23, 2015.

Newzimbabwe.com.  “Putin rebukes ‘dictator’ Mugabe.  December 11, 2009.

Onslow, Sue.  “Robert Mugabe and Todor Zhivkov”.  Cold War International History Project, e-Dossier No. 35.

Ramirez, Carlos Eduardo.  “Venezuelan teen dies after being shot at anti-Maduro protest.”  Reuters, February 24, 2015.

Romero, Simon and Girish Gupta.  “Amid a slump, a crackdown for Venezuela.”  The New York Times, CNBC reprint, February 23, 2015.

Wikipedia.  Antonio Ledezma.

Wikipedia.  María Corina Machado.

Reference – Red Brown Green

“He is alive, as long as nations are alive and struggle for consolidating independence, justice and kindness. I have no doubt that he will come back, and along with Christ the Saviour, the heir to all saintly and perfect men, and will bring peace, justice and perfection for all.”

Dehghan, Saeed Kamali.  “Ahmadinejad’s claim that Chavez will be resurrected with Jesus ‘went too far'”.  The Guardian, March 7, 2013.


Investigative Project on Terrorism.  “Israel: Iran-Venezuela Axis Traffics in Terror, Uranium.”  May 28, 2009.

Mahjar-Barducci, Anna.  “Bolivia, Venezuela, Supply Uranium to Iran.”  Gatestone Institute, October 6, 2010.

Sofer, Roni.  “Israel: Ties to South America aiding Iran’s nuclear program.”  YNet News, May 25, 2009.


Posted to YouTube 2/11/2015.


Posted to YouTube 5/8/2014.

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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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