• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

Homegrown Terror Plot Thwarted: Cleveland, Ohio — FBI Arrest Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts AKA Abdur Raheem Rafiq for “attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.”

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, United States of America

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Al Qaeda, Cleveland, counterterrorism, Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts arrest, FBI, Fourth of July, material support, news conference, Ohio, terrorism

Arrested: Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts AKA Abdur Raheem Rafiq , Cleveland, Ohio for “attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization”.  Pitts appears to have a related record online: http://www.bustedmugshots.com/ohio/columbus/demetrius-nathaniel-pitts/17357991.  A similar al-Qaeda related story broke in 2003 with the arrest of Ohio-based trucker Lyman Faris, then 34 years old, in New York City for the same thing — and with the same M.O.

–33–

FTAC – Yemen – A Note to Sunni Militia

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, conflict psychology, political psychology, Yemen raid

Clarifying the battlefields of the Islamic Small Wars (my term) has been an issue since I began reading the news and blogging.

With perhaps the ascent of the Far Right, the “crusader west” analogy may have a little more substance, but it really isn’t true.

What AQ-types do, especially in the way of cruelty, sadism, and subjugation, goes against the grain of a normal and healthy humanity, and, frankly, Muslims seem themselves ever first in the path of the “jisadists”.

A western organization would first secure their children away from the fighting and work not to confuse noncombatants with warriors. That’s not going to make life fair to warriors who draw western attention, but if the same focus instead on fending off Iranian aggression and the alignments with Hezbollah and such, that may change the perception of who is fighting and why.

As regards Syria, Moscow today continues to represent feudal political absolutism — dictatorship, police state, mafia state, all of that — but this time (and this 25 years after the dissolving of the Soviet Union) as an ultra-nationalist imperial project counting on barbarism and its nuclear threat to get its way in the world. As such, it has managed to abet the destruction of Syria, produce some arms sales out of the horror put on display, and otherwise run its economy and cash reserves down to where it can do little more than loom large and hold its positions.

Syria is an immense tragedy, and the historic credit for it will most certainly go to Assad as flanked by Putin and Khamenei.

Charges against the west are often more assumptive and rhetorical than observed and reasoned. In the political psychology involved, there’s often a measure of the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation” — the target may be accused of harboring the motivations actually intended by the one pointing the finger.

In politics, narcissism often serves to cover an injury to the psyche (terms of art: “narcissistic mortification”; “splitting”) and over time, the cover abetted by anger and resentment can become quite malign and in such a way as to come to serve none but the afflicted himself. Go down the lists of the world’s dictators, and one may see the process repeating itself beneath different banners across time (with regard to dictators: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”).

And the walk turns out for most reliably miserable.

Revisit Mugabe’s history.


The post was written in response to a plea for western attention to drone strikes in Yemen that allegedly were killing any number of noncombatants, including children.  Such “news” gets mixed up with post-operation battlefield assessments — but for a few hours to days, the propaganda is the thing.

Here’s what had happened.

Washington (CNN)Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of former al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in a joint American-UAE raid against the terror group Sunday, according to the girl’s family.

Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who directed attacks against the US, was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/politics/yemen-raid-daughter-al-qaeda-leader/ – 2/1/2017.

Search term for following graphic: “American, UAE, raid, Yemen”.

gsearch-yemen-raid-170206-1009

The Seal Team met resistance, fought back, called in reinforcements, and got out with the computers that had been the objective of the raid.

“The raid resulted in the seizure of materials and information that is yielding valuable intelligence to help partner nations deter and prevent future terror attacks in Yemen and across the world,” the statement continued.

The Pentagon said 14 al Qaeda fighters were killed in the battle. Central Command said an internal review team “concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed in the midst of a firefight” during the raid, adding that “casualties may include children.”

The statement said than an assessment was ongoing to determine the exact number of civilian casualties.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/us-raid-yemen/ – 1/1/2017.

Thomas said the footage was part of the large amount of data taken in the raid. He said the team collected more intelligence and data “than we’ve gotten at any one time on AQAP up to now.” It included videos, computer and communications equipment and data.

http://nypost.com/2017/02/03/pentagon-botches-release-of-video-seized-in-yemen-raid/ – 1/3/2017.

–33–

Link – Iran – Afghanistan – Al Qaeda (All Together Now)

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Links

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Iran, Taliban

The 2005–06 documents reveal that Iran offered bounties for the murder of NATO soldiers and members of the elected Afghan government. Later reports indicated that this policy continued into 2009, when Iran was working in tandem with al-Qaeda to spread the Taliban’s reach in southern Afghanistan. This should hardly come as a surprise: The 9/11 Commission reported that Iran began training al-Qaeda jihadists through Hezbollah in 1992 and collaborated with al-Qaeda on the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. To this day Iran maintains an al-Qaeda network on its territory, which supplies weapons, money, and fighters to Jabhat an-Nusra in Syria.

Orton, Kyle.  “The supposed rivals are working together — and working with the Taliban.”  National Review, August 26, 2015.

# # #

 

FNS – Israel – Of Rocket Squads and an Isolated Hamas

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Israel, political, politics

The Israeli military said a total of four rockets were fired Thursday from Gaza. Israeli officials previously refused to confirm any cease-fire deal was in place.

Rockets Strike Israel, Jeopardizing Truce Talk – ABC News

* * *

“Our mujahedeen responded to the Zionist aggression by firing tens of rockets,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement to the BBC.

“The rockets fired today came in response to the occupation aggression against us and does not mean the collapse of the ceasefire agreement [with Israel],” it said.

BBC News – Israeli planes hit Gaza in response to rocket strikes

______

End the brutal and senseless preoccupation with the Jews!

Because impotence and obsession are what Hamas and companies are all about: if only Israel didn’t exist; if only the Jews disappeared (after being plundered — let’s not be in too much of a hurry about this); if only the “occupation aggression” did not include trade throughput, medical assistance, basic utilities deliveries, employment, and so on, then the Arab mind (of the Islamic Jihad) might find itself at peace.

Last spring, scholar Mordechai Kedar noted in “An Open Letter to the Arab League”, “The way you relate to one another is so terrible that we are not sure that we want anything to do with you.”

If as much was true then, it’s certainly true now.  Hamas may value its post-Cast Lead (2009) truce with Israel, but it evidently cannot contain either itself or less encumbered — for being less governmental — Islamic Jihad movements on its own block.

Last night, Israel returned like fire in response to yesterday’s rocket and mortar barrage (the latest news reports four more rockets fired from Gaza today).  That tit-for-tat is an old show: curtain up, please, on the mindlessness, the essential empty thoughtlessness, of Islamic Jihad and the whole bogus mission that has proved convenient for shielding the destruction of other cultures and the theft of wealth (for Gaza, start with the UNRWA annual contribution intended to secure some benefits in qualities of living, and then move swiftly on to Arafat and funds never accounted).

Because of what it really represents, because of what it does to its own constituents and others, because of its self-serving and grandiose delusions, Hamas finds itself in trouble today.

An Egyptian court ruled on March 4 to forbid all activities in Egypt by Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas. The court ruling cuts off all official Hamas-Egyptian ties and closes all Hamas offices and infrastructure within Egypt.

Egypt Bans Hamas – theTrumpet.com

Special interest press bias?

Related: With the Egyptian blockade, is Hamas in deep financial trouble? Well, its employees are complaining about not being paid | Al Bawaba – 3/5/2014; Saudi Arabia declares Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group – McClatchy DC News – The Sacramento Bee – 3/7/2014; AP Interview: Jihadi head says Gaza groups growing – 3/9/2014; Al Qaida-inspired jihadi movement growing in Gaza, says group leader – Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 3/10/2014.

It would appear that when it comes to attacks against Israel, which it falls to Hamas to police, Hamas has found itself between a fiercely active and impossibly passive place: it either can’t or won’t stand up to or stall “Gaza’s secretive jihadist groups”; it won’t itself step out from beneath the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella; it won’t step forward to make peace with the Jewish State of Israel but it will allow itself to be cajoled and dragged into fairly begging Israel for incursion and real occupation on the turf it was supposed to govern (x suspect election followed by civil war with Fatah) independently.

In fact, Hamas has gotten itself so into trouble, so isolated between worlds, so caught between al-Qaeda, the Ayatollah, Egypt, and Israel, that I would not be surprised were it to look to the IDF to defend its interests from the local competitors that have infiltrated its writ and compromised whatever integrity and self-possession it once may have had.

Salafi groups have been suspected in the bombings of Internet cafes and music stores, intimidation of Gaza’s small Christian community, the kidnapping of a BBC journalist in 2007 and more recently, the death of an Italian activist in 2011. Salafi groups are also believed to cooperate with militants in the neighboring Sinai Peninsula in Egypt to attack Egyptian and Israeli targets.

Gaza’s Salafis support al-Qaida’s campaign of global jihad, but are not believed to have direct links with the global terror network. In contrast, Hamas says its struggle is solely against Israel.

Al Qaida-inspired jihadi movement growing in Gaza, says group leader – Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 3/10/2014.

______

Netanyahu Warns Gaza Militants Against Attack on Purim Holiday – SFGate

Oren: Why Gaza conflict risks wider war | News – Home

Israel fires on 29 ‘terror sites’ after rockets from Gaza hit towns – CNN.com – 3/12/2014 (updated).

Middle East and Terrorism: Mordechai Kedar: An Open Letter to the Arab League – 5/10/2013.

# # #

As Pearl Around a Grain of Sand

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, encapsulation, pearl, political, politics, religion, terrorism, terrorists

Video on how pearls are formed Naturally – YouTube – 1/3/2012.

” . . . a tapestry of light and color.”

Keep that in mind.

______

“With its actions and way of thinking, the ISIL proved to all Arabs and Muslims that it is just a collection of sick individuals who love murder and blood without thought or specific identity,” said political analyst Zuhair Abbas al-Anzi, professor at the University of Anbar in Ramadi.

Al-Qaeda brings suffering, hardship to Syrians and Iraqis: activists | Al-Shorfa – 1/14/2014.

Related: Fallujah residents set to return: Anbar governor | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

Today’s notice in al-Shorfa leaves much to be desired even if “clear, accurate, and complete”: it’s a little ahead of the story, perhaps as cocky as it may be encouraging.

Related: Al-Qaeda affiliate’s tactics in Syria reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

That last citation goes on to this contemporary sentiment:

The group’s statements distort Islam and alienate people from the religion, she said.

“With statements like these, ISIL is killing the revolution, for Islam is a religion of forgiveness, tolerance, amity, acceptance of others and respect for all religions,” Nawfal said. “It was never a religion of killing, intimidation or restriction of worshipers’ livelihoods and freedom, nor is it a religion of slaughter, hate or deception.

“It is a religion for all mankind, not a particular group,” she added.

I’ve chosen to respect the sentiment even though a host of anti-Jihad sites like Answering Muslims: The Islamoblog of Acts 17 Apologetics remain but a mouse-click distant in time.

The way one feels about a religion, especially one’s own, may differ from the expression in history of it, but the contemporary personal interpretation nonetheless would seem to express the attitude and beliefs possessed today and put to the test by Muslim security forces throughout the range of the Islamic Small Wars, essentially confirming the presence and strength of modern views.

Alternatively stated: the various flavors and strains of Islamic legacy have their sway if not in scripture and tradition as promoted or enforced by zealots then in the actual preferences in behavior and tastes embraced by greater Muslim societies according to other cultural legacies (like the Pashtunwali) or aesthetic or sentimental values (e.g., Sufism and the poetry of Persian theologian Rumi).

On this blog, I continue to endorse “shimmer“, the idea that the conflict table — the basis for moral entrepreneurship — may loom large, but the assembly developed on top of it is actually small, by comparison, and largely rejected, or most Muslim-majority states would be strict sharia states instead of confused amalgams of autocratic and archaic practices and contemporary make-do laws.  While the personifications of excessive pride and vanity in malignant leaders and their followers attempt to leverage the Qur’anic script (see this blogs comment on programming and scripting) for themselves, or, more accurately, use the template to deal themselves their own self-aggrandizing and glorious role in lives, those caught unluckily in their path struggle mightily to repulse or contain them.

Not the first time have I used this metaphor: as a grain of sand may be to an oyster, so “the terrorists”, so hard to define at times, so painfully present at times, may inspire their own worlds to work around them, envelope them, and vanish them in another more formidable, more beautiful, more radiant peace.

# # #

Social Grammar – Syria Style

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philology, Politics, Religion, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, child soldiers, Syria, training

My name is Abu Amr.  I am thirteen, from Bin Laden Front.  I studied the teachings in the book of Allah to defend the Muslims in Syria.  I pray to Allah that I am granted martyrdom (6:56)

Syria: Al-Qaeda’s New Home – YouTube – 21:56 – Vice News – 1/22/2014

“So many twisted minds . . . This leaves me speechless! :-/” said “SymbolX” in the comments section of the above video posted.

* * *

Syria||Darya||Assad barrel bombs 29-1-2014 – YouTube – 1/29/2014.

* * *

So many twisted minds, indeed!

Having to do with what you saw demonstrated (I can’t authenticate video without wider cooperation from media) in the above video:

Syrian government forces dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held districts of Aleppo Wednesday, killing 13 people as they pressed an assault southeast of the northern city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported more than 20 barrel bombs had been dropped on the town of Daraya, southwest of the capital Damascus.

Barrel bombs kill 13 in Syria’s Aleppo, says NGO – Al Arabiya News – 1/29/2014.

The video preceding this section’s quotation features one explosion.

Imagine nineteen more battering the same area.

______

In the romance of the west, aristocrat or pioneer, some grandfathers take their 13-year-old boys hunting, it’s true.  Age of Bar Mitzva, of passage into basic adulthood with some emotion and responsibility . . . it’s not bad.  You can still build model airplanes, go scouting, play Little League baseball, collect butterflies, snitch a smoke, and such; however, good or bad, we usually wait another four or five years before putting a boy in uniform, and then putting the boy in uniform in harm’s way.

______

However, what I’ve just described is life beside the presence of western humanism, its institutions, and its laws

Out of school, on the street, in the field, things might be different.

You’re Not Taking Him – Stand by Me (7/8) Movie CLIP (1986) HD – YouTube – posted 10/5/2012.

* * *

Syria – Side by Side – The Instructions – The Results

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, Christian massacre, conflict, intellectual programming, psychology, Russia, Syrian Civil War

▶ Al-Qaeda in Syrian School: Infidels Must Be Slaughtered; Obama, World Leaders Are Infidels – YouTube – Posted 12/16/2013 with the event noted as having taken place 11/26/2013.

* * *

▶ SYRIA: New Massacre in Sadad against Christians (Nov.2013, Homs countryside) – YouTube – Posted 11/5/2013.

______

The two videos are not in perfect chronological order or spatial relationship, but the approximation nonetheless makes its point.

The preying on the believing by attaching monotheist faith to messianic and grandiose delusion, a part of the signal of “civilizational narcissism”, “malignant narcissism”, narcissistic political sociopathy (reference “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”) leads to darkness.

The Jewish attitude toward others is very different, conservative and scaled down when hateful — so the Jewish people set themselves apart from what they believe isn’t so good, unless directly threatened, a defensive rather than crusading posture (reference: The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zionism: Robert Eisen: 9780199751471: Amazon.com: Books), and if wanting to elicit some change in others, Rabbi Kook’s advice might prevails:

“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.”

One may respect the “chosen” qualities of others.

One may also bring light to darkness.

The Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria, believing themselves possessed of all the answers, swiftly inhibit the freedom of thought among the ranks of children.

Perhaps as a rule, autocrats and autocratic societies drain and suffocate their subjugated constituencies, which afford “narcissistic supply” to those who then enrich and aggrandize themselves without limits.

______

Syria may have General Idris as one side, but the other two are on the same side even though opposed in battle.

The Assad Regime and the Al Qaeda affiliates are of the same mind — repeat: different content and rant but same psychopathology.  This abstract observation may be hard to see at first but over time and with the death and displacement of millions of souls who don’t share their outlooks, the source of the conflict in the mind becomes apparent.

What to do about it?

Well, the world is failing Syria, imho, but the development and sustaining of the Syrian Civil War represents chiefly the failures of different but psychologically similar external governments, Russia and Saudi Arabia and their related political complexes, who will now be seen as backing competing autocratic-totalitarians in the Syrian theater.

Israel has confined itself to responding to some urgent humanitarian needs; the United States has fumbled on the issues — somebody in State should be tracking this blog — and has been trying to back away from the association of the anti-Assad revolution with the developing presence and power of the al Qaeda affiliates.

# # #

Voice of the Copts — Morsi Cut a Deal with Al Qaeda

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Qaeda, Egypt, Morsi, Mubarak, trials

. . . judges dismissed by Morsi and now reinstated will be presented with tape recordings of Morsi’s discussions with Aymen Al Zawahiri of Al Qaeda.

These will show Morsi requesting the terrorist’s support. Morsi’s negotiation with the Al Qaeda leader delays application of the Iran and Taliban models for Egypt until a more receptive time and, in return for Al Zawahiri’s favor, the President agrees to immediately enforce Sharia law and release five thousand jailed terrorist-jihadists, including Aymen’s brother, Mohammed.

VoiceOfTheCopts.org – Egypt’s trial: true justice will reveal Morsi’s alliances – 11/2/2013.

Related: Egypt on high alert as Mohamed Morsi trial threatens to revive civil unrest | World news | theguardian.com – 11/3/2013: “Egypt’s former president Mohamed Morsi plans to reject the authority of a court due to try him on Monday, in what could be his first public appearance since being deposed and hidden in a secret location in July.”

Related: Trial resumes for Egyptian former President Hosni Mubarak – CNN.com – 10/20/2013.

Apparently, Egypt will have for news fodder two presidents on trial this month.

Ashraf Ramelah, writing for Voice of the Copts, suggests Mubarak’s trial will end sometime next week.

# # #

← Older posts
  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • A Few Keys Related to ‘East-West Rivalry’
  • Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State
  • FTAC: Russia’s One Big Step Backward-Why Ukraine Must Prevail to the Four Compass Points of Its Pre-Crimean Annexation
  • A Note on the Demise of the Medieval Rus
  • Victims of the German Democratic Republic: Brief Reflection on Germany’s Forgotten Internal Immigrants
  • FTAC: Big Picture Made Small: Moscow’s Narrative Arc from the End of the Cold War

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Qualities of Living (QOL)
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Guinea
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

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.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • BackChannels
    • Join 766 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar