FTAC – Gaza, Hamas, Any Subject Search

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Fast News Share, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

FTAC

Hamas has embraced a genocidal mission based in the theft of religious precepts and related successionary ambition. It’s very flattering to itself, and while it has gotten fat and built mansions on skimming funds and collecting tunnel tolls and various forms of taxation, it has demonstrated its love of people by making sure to put noncombatants between its operations and “blast and battle”.

The New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left (see “International Solidarity Movement” for example) has been getting money from somewhere and puffing itself up for just this kind of glorious man-the-barricades moment. It too doesn’t offer much beyond the grandstanding.

As I have read that Allah favors those who restrain themselves, I may do just that and refrain a while from posting my own opinion from elsewhere, which practice has just gotten weird.

I have a blog, for pete’s sake!

My prayers to Gaza noncombatants, non-Hamas residents who have asked for jobs, built businesses, taken care of their homes, and lived peacefully and would go on doing so were it not for the fire starters among them who literally bring war into their homes.

Recommended Search Strings

Gaza, Hamas, Governance

Gaza, Hamas, Human Rights

Gaza, Hamas, Human Shields

Gaza, Hamas, Mansions

Gaza, Hamas, Millionaires

Gaza, Hamas, Weapons

Assorted Previews

Warning tactics used by the Israel Defense Forces to apparently avoid civilian casualties in Gaza have been captured on camera. In a video published on LiveLeak, an IDF aircraft fires a loud, nonlethal bomb on a building to alert residents that they’re in the area of a target, allowing them to leave quickly.

http://www.newsweek.com/video-shows-gaza-residents-acting-human-shields-israeli-forces-258223 – 7/10/2014.

. . . as Israel has stepped up its efforts to try and spare civilians even as it seeks to silence the terrorist fire, Hamas has also increased its efforts to ensure that as many inhabitants of Gaza as possible are hurt in the fighting.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/07/10/hamas-human-shield-war-gaza-israel-missiles/ – 7/10/2014

Smuggled Syrian-made rockets based on a Chinese design have boosted Hamas’ 10,000-strong arsenal which is dominated by crude homemade devices, officials and experts say.

A surface-to-surface weapon that struck the coastal town Hadera – 30 miles north of Tel Aviv and 70 miles from the Gaza Strip – is an “M-302 type rocket” similar to a shipment of rockets Israel intercepted at sea in March, the Israeli Defense Forces said Wednesday.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-firing-china-designed-syria-made-m-302-rockets-israel-n152461 – 7/10/2014.

Hamas faces an unprecedented economic and political crisis. The Egyptian government regards it as an enemy, has clamped down on smuggling activity, and kept the Rafah border crossing mostly closed. It has lost its Syrian base and Iranian support as a result of the Syrian civil war. Now its authority is weakening inside Gaza: it is on the point of bankruptcy and has been challenged by jihadist groups buoyed up by the success of Isis.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/10/gaza-air-strikes-necessary-force-israel-hamas-bankrupt – 7/10/2014.

# # #

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

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.

# # #

Link

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Iraq, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

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

≈ Leave a comment

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.

# # #

 

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

≈ Leave a comment

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.

# # #

Aside

10 Thursday Jul 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

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