Aside

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics

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ftac

Reminder: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300127270 & http://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine The easy story that makes thugs of Jews and victims of innocent Palestinian, may not be the true story — and it’s not: “The Palestinians who were forced out of their homes . . . .”  What about the Palestinians who fled their homes in advance of Arab columns and the promised destruction of Israel and the Jews?  How is it that Arab Muslims and Christians came to comprise 20 percent of Israel’s fully enfranchised citizenry?  What does one make of the camps of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria (yesterday’s Syria) in which Arab states have penned and manipulated and diminished the very people their armies abandoned in the field?

The prompt was the opening sentence of a bit of advice to the Palestinian leadership.

Around thugs, I suppose, it’s easier to live with a loyal lie — and attempt to live out that lie — than it is to wrestle with an uncomfortable but reliable truth.

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Link

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Iraq, Politics, Regions

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There are, however, a number of rash conclusions being arrived at in the wake of the bad news. One does not have to read very far to find a series of assumptions being made about Iraq’s future—that Baghdad is about to fall, that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s days are numbered, that Kurdistan’s independence is imminent and that oil production is at risk. None of these are certain and some are extremely unlikely. Let’s cover them one by one.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/why-iraq-is-more-stable-than-you-think-108708.html#ixzz377CboVTx

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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FTAC

In retrospect, the optimism is testament to human resilience, which we may feel good about, but the work within a conflict-and-development context is to get in the way of malignant and dangerous social movements –whether behavioral, ideological, or religious — and stem their costs before they exact an awful price.

If that view is shared, it’s very modern and somewhat writerly (I can create a good story out of a bad situation in script, but I can’t actually fix a bad reality except by offering a few thoughts with hopes some might be relevant and useful). It asks that those involved in something happening see themselves in something happening as if it were taking place outside of themselves and they were looking in– and then return to circumstance to make changes and evolve.

My positions about to get hit by a storm or dramatic winds off the same, so I’m going to take a break here.

The prompt (“FTAC” — “From the Awesome Conversation” — on Facebook”) came with the note that Hitler was a problem too, and he was defeated.

Sigh.

Would any Englishman or German today, descendant, not wish the whole thing hadn’t happened?

Perhaps the Jews.  Zionism actually took off in the 19th Century, long before WWI and WWII, and the Jews were resident already on the land (please visit http://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine – 2003), but in the influx from the Holocaust and (800,000+) from the persecution in surroundingArab states certainly helped put Jewry back in Eretz Israel.

I have a trope about Hitler and the Jews:

To the Jew, the Nazi is a problem.  However, the Nazi’s problem is not the Jew’s problem.

And that’s the way it is, Nazis or Hamas, Syrians (in general) and Bashar al-Assad.

President al-Assad has a problem he cannot fix, or so far has failed to fix.

Coming up: my Facebook address — join me — and some of the resources I find absolutely fascinating.

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Aside

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Regions, Religion

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FTAC:

You know what, J. — I should not type with a glass or Rose next to me — I’ve become or am becoming more aware of the followers in these disasters than the leaders.

We know what Hamas is about.

The constituency of Gaza, whether endorsing or not, knows what Hamas is about.

But Hamas — not as an organization but as an event in the life of community — takes place anyway!

This is near to an historic day because out of the many hate-peace peace groups blathering all around the middle east conflict, we are all just one mouse-click away from chatyping with (what we may perceive as) enemy.

And I thought photography was an adventure . . . . 😀

And throw the calculus out the window because we know (from Vietnam we must know) that the numbers don’t mean nachas! What has meaning are basic principles and values _in the mutual defense of our own_).

What if “The Terrorists” had captured and murder three young men from Alexandria. Virginia. What if?

That’s the only question on the table.

Hamas has a big problem with Arabic. Hanniyah, in video, gets his pecker up exclaiming how “We believe in death as they believe in life!”

Well, bullshit.

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israeli-hospital-treats-Hamas-PM-Haniyehs-granddaughter-332193

Hamas believes in life!

Too.

Dictators, like the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” defend political absolutism in their own right (AKA “unlimited narcissistic supply”) — http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1 (such a gentle looking soul . . .but don’t overlook Evin Prison or its population).

That’s where we are.

Wherever.

Now we can talk.

Who else is going to talk?

Talk with me.

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Aside

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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FTAC.

I normally indent these but wanted to make it easy to preview/view the YouTube clips.

 

It’s a 30-minute clip (there’s your warning) that echoes what I’ve viewed from the Belfer Center (e.g.,

).

The great democratic concept is that it should be able to integrate and reconcile or enable faith in peace as long as people argue and compromise about issues in which they’re invested.  With Islam, perhaps more specifically whatever portion has invested in political absolutism, the power of the democratic process stumbles: it meets an opposition disinterested in “trying it out”.

So the drones fly.

Shadi Hamid seems to me to find the next best position, i.e., a democratic Islamism — or one accepting democracy — but loaded with an illiberal drive.

Well, okay.

You decide.

(I’m switching over to reading Hemingway, watching the thunderstorms develop, that sort of thing).

Oh: http://www.brookings.edu/experts/hamids

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars

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http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/man-found-tortured-to-death-in-gaza-1.1262788 — “If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?”

When: Syria? When: Iraq? When: Gaza?

While Israel may grow against a barbarian foe — because the barbarian, despite the massive whining, can never win the sympathy of a decent heart anywhere, not even in his own yard — one may wonder at what point the same needs to be removed from power.

Done.

Finished.

Never Again.

This is not only about Jews or Israelis (who are Jewish and Christian and Muslim and from many, many points of origin, including in the modern population continuously from the land itself), but about a class of refugees cynically abused by their Arab handlers and their thugs.

“Reading” keeps taking place at the computer . . . .

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