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Tag Archives: Burma

Politicial Perception: Myanmar, Rohingya, Terrorist Provocateur

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Asia, Burma, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Myanmar, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Burma, Islamic extremism, Islamist victimization of Muslims, Islamists, Myanmar, political infiltration, political theater, Rohingya, terrorism

But not everyone wants to be sacrificed. When vigilante mobs and Myanmar’s soldiers burned down his village, Noor Kamal, 18, tried to flee with his 6-year-old brother, Noor Faruq. Both were hacked in the head by ethnic Rakhine armed with machetes and scythes.

At a bleak government hospital in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Noor Kamal shivered with outrage at the ARSA insurgents from his village in northern Maungdaw Township, who attacked a local police post last month. “We are the ones who are suffering because of Al Yaqin,” he said. “They disappeared after the attack. We were the ones left behind for the military to kill.”

Beech, Hannah.  “Rohingya Militants Vow to Fight Myanmar Despite Disastrous Cost.”  The New York Times, September 17, 2017.

The Rohingya, marginalized in Burma / Myanmar and ripe for agitation by Islamist organizations have been forced into conflict by way of the agitation and provocations produced by the latter.

As you read through the excerpts chosen by BackChannels for display and continue following the story, the image of the “poor Rohingyans” being placed at the mercy of Myanmar military may need to be modified by the barbaric criminality produced by those who have infiltrated their numbers.

Still, what compels Myanmar to use so much force against the Rohingya?

BackChannels would venture that earlier border insecurity and inability to defend informants and detect the Islamists for arrest have contributed to the wholesale response.

In essence, the Ummah is especially being “played” — manipulated! — by Islamic extremists who have learned how to abuse the innocent among Muslims to turn them into the victims of larger but also legitimate forces.  This is the same model that Hamas has used in its rapacious abuse of the Palestinians to create the showcase of victimization while the leadership and patronage system make off with billions in loot wrung from global sympathy.


https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/283-myanmar-new-muslim-insurgency-rakhine-state – 12/15/2016:

The insurgent group, which refers to itself as Harakah al-Yaqin (Faith Movement, HaY), is led by a committee of Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingya with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics. It benefits from the legitimacy provided by local and international fatwas (religious judicial opinions) in support of its cause and enjoys considerable sympathy and backing from Muslims in northern Rakhine State, including several hundred locally trained recruits.

The emergence of this well-organised, apparently well-funded group is a game-changer in the Myanmar government’s efforts to address the complex challenges in Rakhine State, which include longstanding discrimination against its Muslim population, denial of rights and lack of citizenship. The current use of disproportionate military force in response to the attacks, which fails to adequately distinguish militants from civilians, together with denial of humanitarian assistance to an extremely vulnerable population and the lack of an overarching political strategy that would offer them some hope for the future, is unlikely to dislodge the group and risks generating a spiral of violence and potential mass displacement.


http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/12/asia/arsa-rohingya-militants-who-are-they/index.html – 9/12/2017


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-14/al-qaeda-urges-muslims-globally-to-aid-rohingya-in-myanmar/8946390 – 9/14/2017

Al Qaeda has warned Myanmar will face punishment for its “crimes against the Rohingyas”.

“The savage treatment meted out to our Muslim brothers … shall not pass without punishment,” Al Qaeda said in a statement, according to the SITE monitoring group.

“The Government of Myanmar shall be made to taste what our Muslim brothers have tasted.”


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/at-least-71-killed-in-myanmar-as-rohingya-insurgents-stage-major-attack-idUSKCN1B507K – 8/24/2017

*

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/myanmar-rohingya-crisis-islamic-terror-groups-may-take-advantage.html – 9/13/2017


But not everyone wants to be sacrificed. When vigilante mobs and Myanmar’s soldiers burned down his village, Noor Kamal, 18, tried to flee with his 6-year-old brother, Noor Faruq. Both were hacked in the head by ethnic Rakhine armed with machetes and scythes.

At a bleak government hospital in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Noor Kamal shivered with outrage at the ARSA insurgents from his village in northern Maungdaw Township, who attacked a local police post last month. “We are the ones who are suffering because of Al Yaqin,” he said. “They disappeared after the attack. We were the ones left behind for the military to kill.”


http://www.mizzima.com/news-domestic/uehrd-begins-reconstruction-houses-rakhine-state

Myanmar has launched a project of re-construction of destroyed houses in conflict-torn areas in northern Rakhine state under a mechanism of the Union Enterprises for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development (UEHRD), Xinhua reported quoting the Myanmar News Agency.

Someone always has to pick up the pieces — and the terrorists never do.


https://www.timesofisrael.com/mounting-evidence-of-genocide-in-myanmar-watchdogs-warn/ – 11/16/2017. Related: BBC – “Tillerson Calls for Myanmar Rohingya Investigation” – 11/15/2017; CNN – “Tillerson refuses to label Rohingya crisis ‘ethnic cleansing,’ calls for investigation” – 11/15/2017; Sky News – “Tillerson: Scenes of Rohingya suffering ‘just horrific’” – 11/15/2017.

–33–

 

 

 

FNS – Fast Scan

16 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Afghanistan, Burma, Central African Republic, conflict, fast look, Iraq, news, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe

Brief

What to say to Pandora: “Don’t open the box!  Don’t look!”

The “fast scan” takes about an hour at human speed, ignores specific situations, and gets an “ah hah!” moment when one realizes that for causes that are often neither meaningful nor justifiable by those blowing themselves up, pulling triggers, and waving knives (is that still done?), conflict would seem just another natural cause of death.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, people just plain don’t like other people.

Dress up the hate with poetry or scripture, crude talk, politico talk, lies, or a whole lot of truth, somebody’s got it in for somebody else by clan, class, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion — no need to get personal: just box it, label it, and tear it apart!

Afghanistan

Afghanistan frees suspected Taliban prisoners over U.S. objections – The Washington Post – 2/13/2014.

Afghan forces have proved surprisingly effective – 2/15/2014.

Burma

The truth is, as Phuketwan first revealed on October 21, that Thai authorities pretend to deport the Rohingya, taking their names and fingerprints for the record, then actually deliver them into the arms of people traffickers.

Sordid Deception Fails to Hide Truth – Phuket Wan – 2/14/2014.

I don’t know what the sordid truth is out of Burma, but I know it’s bad and should be — now has — a place on the open source conflict overview circuit.

Central African Republic

Christian threats force Muslim convoy to turn back in CAR exodus | World news | theguardian.com – 2/14/2014.

* * *

“If you want to disarm the anti-balaka, it is better to first disarm the Seleka,” said resident Ngaro Nadine. “It is the Seleka who have been massacring and killing. Now it is the anti-balaka who are strong.”

Foreign troops round up 10 in crackdown on CAR militias – UPI.com – 2/16/2014.

Egypt

Brig. Gen. Alaa Mahmoud said 33 tourists from South Korea were on the bus and had visited the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine’s, in the Sinai Peninsula. The bus was headed to Israel and was waiting in line near a border crossing, he said.

Tourist bus blast kills 4, wounds 14 in Egypt – CNN.com – 2/16/2014.

Taba, Sinai, was the location of the bombing of a Hilton in 2004.

Related: Egypt bomb attack kills four on tourist bus – 1/17/2014.

Iraq – Fallujah and Anbar Province

UN envoy concerned about Fallujah deteriorating situation : Aswat Al Iraq – 2/14/2014.

Iraq PM makes historic visit to Anbar « ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 2/16/2014.

Pakistan

Clashes over Valentine’s Day celebration in Pakistan leaves 4 injured – Khaama Press (KP) | Afghan News Agency – 2/14/2014.

Militancy and politics in the shadow of a ceasefire – Daily Times – 2/17/2014.

* * *

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A faction of the Pakistani Taliban said Sunday that it executed 23 paramilitary soldiers who have been held captive since 2010, even as other elements of the militant group continue preliminary peace talks with the country’s government.

Pakistani Taliban says it executed 23 captured Pakistani soldiers – The Washington Post – 2/16/2014.

Syria

“They can’t have it both ways,” the senior official said of the Russians. “They can’t say they’re in favor of negotiations in Geneva and a transitional governing body with full executive authority and humanitarian access and have a happy Olympics, and then be part and parcel of supporting this regime as it kills people in the most brutal way.”

U.S. official takes Russia to task for its role in Syrian conflict – The Washington Post – 2/15/2014.

Can negotiations resolve the Syrian conflict? – Inside Syria – Al Jazeera English – 2/16/2014.

Syrian rebels or international terrorists? – The Hindu – 2/17/2014.

Tunisia

The ministry said a National Guard patrol was sent to investigate reports that a civilian and a prison warden had been shot dead at a roadblock set up by armed men in Jendouba.

“Upon their arrival, terrorist elements opened fire,” killing two policemen and wounding another two, it said.

Ministry: Jihadists kill 4 in Tunisia – Al Arabiya News – 2/16/2014.

Turkey

Turkey has spent at least $2.5 billion on serving these guests since the war began and hosts around 600,000 Syrian refugees – around a quarter of all Syrian refugees. While many reside in the camps, a little over half have opted to settle in urban settlers and make their own living.

Turkish refugee camp ‘nicest’ in the world | General | Worldbulletin News – 2/14/2014.

Earlier this month, the Turkish army opened fire on a convoy of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – a jihadist group active in Iraq and Syria. This was in retaliation for a series of cross-border strikes that hit Turkish soil. Turkey has also warned of possible terrorist attacks in Istanbul after receiving intelligence that al-Qaeda-linked jihadists were planning to disrupt the Syrian peace talks.

Why Turkey needs to stand up against al-Qaeda | neurope.eu – 2/16/2014.

Ukraine

Ukraine protesters end two-month occupation – 2/17/2014.

Venezuela

Venezuela split by pro- and anti-Maduro protests — The Tico Times – 2/16/2014.

Venezuela Anti-Government Protests: Security Forces Search For Opposition Leader | Fox News Latino – 2/16/2014.

* * *

RAW VIDEO OUT OF VENEZUELA PROTEST MARCH AND SHOOTING AT PROTESTERS —- 2-16 – YouTube – 2/16/2014.

Yemen

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but Yemen is grappling with a growing threat from one of al Qaeda’s most active wings, which has killed hundreds of people in assaults on state and military facilities in the past two years.

Attack on prison in Yemeni capital kills 11 | Reuters – 2/14/2014.

Zimbabwe

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Violence Rocks MDC-T Harare Meeting – 2/15/2014.

# # #

Burma – Hanging Children

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Asia, Burma, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

atrocity, Burma, genocide, Rohingya, small war, tribal warfare

Old wisdom (Hillel the Elder): “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?  If not now, when?”

______

 

Reference Image: LiveLeak.com – Myanmar Muslim mutilations alarm world: Analyst (comments) – 1/21/2014.

Note 5/8/2014: after so many months with this post live, I’ve elected to remove the image of two children hanging from rafters allegedly victims of the persecution of of the Muslim Rohingya in Burma.  As agitprop or testament, the picture had a visceral impact in real time and space — i.e., it was not bounded in the long ago of historical artifact — and in part because they are someone’s children, nephew and niece, cousins, playmates, and so on, I thought it time to leave the picture at its central vector.

There are some other pictures published on BackChannels that I would regard as “war porn” — the artifacts of conflict-linked violence, from bombing to stoning to firing squad to beheading: how much do you need to see?  How much do I need to inadvertently promote in relation to commentary?

For visual impact, there’s plenty for finding online, but here I hope to generate insight beside observation in politics and political psychology.

______

I fear to tread.

As noted (ftac) to the Pakistani friend who shared the image in a forum:

I’ll share this image. Although it seems natural for Muslims to view what is happening in Burma as a Buddhist-on-Muslim genocide, the state itself remains a military junta (with cosmetic reforms, if that much) hostile to Buddhist political power — its suppression of its own “Orange Revolution” was brutal — and otherwise cultivating through neglect the fears and resentments attending primitive tribalism. The Burmese leadership is holed up in its own paradise, basically, and the country as a country and culture have been left to go to hell, which is where they are today.

Parlayed in the way of other special interest religious press that plead their own victimization in the world, the above obscenity has at least as much to do with the global reserve of primitivism and tribalism as it does with Buddhist aggression, not that Buddhists and much of the rest of the world have not been pissed off by the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas (and only Buddhists would have the discipline to take that kind of aggression in stride).  However, this is not to suggest that whatever is working within some portion of the Burmese Rakhine People does not conflate with their religious identity.

Dark Space

The photograph as downloaded from Live Leak seems to have no EXIF or IPTC data.  Somebody made the recording somewhere, and it can neither be authenticated nor denied as recent or valid.

Remarks on Burma from the Committee to Protect Journalists: Burmese journalist jailed for three months – Committee to Protect Journalists – 12/20/2013; Burma falters, backtracks on press freedom – Reports – Committee to Protect Journalists – 6/13/2013.

Dark space — censorious, cordoned, private — abets autocrats, dictators, malignant narcissists.  Whether geographically convenient — distant from airports, communication centers, and roads — or enforced in back rooms in the mafia way, informationally “dark space” hides evil.

President Obama may come away from Burma with the pasted on rictus telling nothing about what he’s thinking, apart from choosing his battles carefully and disengaging from most, but, lately, it seems that was has been happening in Burma isn’t staying in Burma.

Local people and senior police officers, speaking off the record, told us the southern section of this beautiful island is gangster territory – the hood of human traffickers, who run a number of secret prisons from the jungle floor.

Nightmare island where traffickers imprison Burma’s Rohingya – Channel 4 News – 8/8/2013.

Harrowing stuff.

Secret prisons.  Human trafficking.  Slave labor.

And not really out of the “back of beyond.”

In fact: Thailand.

However, one may call the true region Thailand’s dark space and, perhaps, corrupt edges.

It’s hard to tell.

While “The Majors” in the news business dip their toes in the bloody waters, for the most part, there seems to be some up-to-the-minute coverage in the blogosphere (I’ve been working with this post for a couple of hours and am surprised that it took the search string “Burmese military Royhinga genocide” to find it: Rohingya Blogger

* * *

Since the second Rohingya massacre in October, the Burmese people have watched the world ignore or misrepresent what many experts are calling a genocide. President Thien Sein has been on a world tour, where he has been met with open arms, receiving a 21-gun salute in Australia and getting $5.9 billion of international debt canceled. Canada has opened its first-ever Burmese embassy, and multinational resource corporations are queuing for contracts. No one is in the mood to bring up genocide, even when a third massacre was openly planned for this month.

The Rohingya Movement, as Seen by a Journalist in Burma | VICE United States – 3/27/2013.


▶ Bangladesh: Rohingya Refugees – YouTube – 4/9/2013.

Related (50 minutes): ▶ ROHINGYA in Arakan, Burma! Al Jazeera Investigates – The Hidden Genocide – YouTube – 12/9/2012.


The initial enthusiasm surrounding recent political reform in Burma has recently given way to reminders of the dark legacy of the nation’s past. Among the most notable of these expositions was a July 2013 cover story published by Time Magazine in which journalist Hannah Beech showed that the specter of past crimes against humanity, including genocide, have resurfaced in Burma and that extremist forces in the country have focused their attention upon the Muslim minority within the Buddhist-majority state.

New report: High risk of genocide in Burma – 9/9/2013.

In Relation to Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today happens to be the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day, which I have been following via Facebook, but while it’s rightly a day for the Jews, my people, to honor the memory of the dead, to reflect on unimaginable suffering, to rejoice in life and statehood in the possession of the Land of Israel, it is also perhaps not the day to leave the next day to rest on the laurels of the last one.

This day, while reflecting on the murder of six million Jews and the miraculous survival and recovery of Jewry worldwide and the jewels that are Israel and Jerusalem that have stood symbolically and in real space and time against despotism for thousands of years,perhaps we should look again and with dogged persistence into the inhumanity displayed in the despicable photo that tops this post and the mentality in Burma, its government, and then in southeast Asia that has so brutalized and demeaned the Rohingya.

Additional Reference

Thai police rescue hundreds of Rohingya in raid on suspected traffickers’ camp | Reuters – 1/27/2014.


The UN had “credible information” that 48 Rohingya Muslims had been killed in violence in early January.

BBC News – Burma violence: UN calls for Rohingya deaths inquiry – 1/24/2014.


Burma: Investigate New Killings of Rohingya | Human Rights Watch – 1/23/2014.


It is estimated that there are currently 800,000 to 1 million Rohingya living in Burma. Since the 1970’s the regime in Burma has been trying to drive out or restrict the Rohingya.[5] This sentiment was put into law in 1982 when it created a Citizenship Law, which mandates that a person must prove their Burmese ancestry dating back to 1823 in order to have freedom of movement and access to other basic rights such as education in the country.[6] (Recall: Armenian Genocide and Nazi Germany). This law is one of the prime reasons why the Rohingya have become “stateless.”

The ICC: Protection for the Rohingya? | – 1/6/2013.


Rohingya Arakanese faces genocide in Burma, n.d.


Burma — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum


Rakhine people – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


BBC News – Rohingya Muslims feared killed in new Burma Rakhine violence – 1/17/2014; Myanmar frustrated by U.N. criticism of Rakhine violence – World Report – World – Dalje.com – 1/24/2014; Violence in Northern Rakhine State – Financial and Business News – MENAFN – 1/24/2014; Violence in Northern Rakhine State – U.S. Department of State – 1/24/2014.


Genocide Emergency – Myanmar: The Rohingya


Wood, Graeme.  “A Countryside of Concentration Camps.”  New Republic, January 21, 2014.

#

FTAC – Burma – Royhinga – Persecution – No Response

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Burma, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burma, commentary, global, humanitarian interest, political, politics, Royhinga, security coordination, war

Burma is fascist more than Buddhist — it’s an odd twist but due in light of the crushing of the “Orange Revolution” led by Buddhist monks — and as such remains, despite dog-and-pony-show elections, an unconscionable dictatorship. The persecution of minority Muslims than fits the familiar pattern of nationalism in poor states: minorities are on the outs, no less than Roma or Jews in eastern Europe, and only the expression and scale of the hate differ.

The Rohingya have been left to fight or flee.

“Dark Space” would be sweeter in science fiction, but around the world it refers to informationally secluded areas — could be a mafia back room or a valley remote from a capital and difficult to police — and they are in all effects wild and ruled largely by fear in the face of ruthless force.

As regards political rhetoric, it hasn’t helped Islam to have credit for the destruction of Buddhas of Bamiyan. That criminal act may be ascribed to the Taliban, of course, but it reflects on Muslims in general where the discourse is pursued on general terms. To get anywhere with any of this, we have to dive beneath whatever impressions have been made by our separable ethnic, national, and religious labels and then approach each troubled region x area x population x political themes as an interesting challenge. While the UN may provide a platform for as much, it / we have no common experience, much less way, of coordinating force beyond “peace keepers” that would seem to work only in well organized situations, e.g., the defense of the airport at Mogadishu, the watch for border activity in southern Lebanon. The world has no police and Uncle Sam, who has done his share, wants to work of some war-related debt (and get back to watching television, I suppose).

Peeve of the moment: how come Buddhists are committing genocide against Muslims in Burma and no one says a thing?

It’s not true that no one says a thing: Rohingya may face another wave of genocide | Islam | World Bulletin – 1/23/2014.

However, as suggested, the UN plus China, Russia, and the United States, plus the Ummah in its largest aspect, and whoever’s left share no common conscience and few common humanitarian interests to the extent than any may care to band to depose the junta and impose contemporary open democratic civilization and harmonious relations or any vertical of power in Burma.

* * *

The situation is little different within Syria where the caring outside world has proven itself at providing food and tents and assorted other humanitarian aid outside the combat arena.

Within: you’re on your own!

* * *

It’s odds-even as to whether Iraqis will wake up this week and back the government regardless of clan, family, or sectarian allegiances to ensure the ejection of ISIS from Fallujah.  There it’s open war.  State forces have ringed the city.  Supplies have been moved in.  But Kerry says its not America’s fight — it’s Iraq’s.

Fallujah Has Fallen to Al-Qaeda | Video – ABC News – 1/23/2014.

Ditto, I’d say, for the Royhinga of Burma.

# # #

FTAC – Response To An Adverse Claim About Muslims in Burma

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burma, disingenuous speech, propaganda, Rohingya

When a writer has “done the homework” but withheld information in order to throw mud on a human target for entertainment and manipulation of even less informed minds, that’s evil.  When a writer has not done the homework, has packed together the same mudball for the same audience, that’s not only evil, it’s cosmically pernicious.

At least that how I feel about propaganda and ignorance both.

* * *

Background on Burma: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20083287

The government’s awful; the monks have a dark side; this particular Muslim sect has been caught a long time between its inhospitable “landing zone” and the sea — and then comes to this, so it seems, the AQ complex of deeply fragile, equally narcissistic and sociopathic ideation. What seems like a very dark space in cultural psychology may be less so in anthropological views.

“The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority living in northern Rakhine state in Western Myanmar. They face religious and ethnic discrimination by Myanmar’s military regime, which refuses to recognize the Rohingya as Myanmar citizens. The Rohingya people are not considered one of 135 legally recognized ethnic minority groups in Myanmar. Myanmar considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, but they have lived in Myanmar for centuries, and Bangladesh will not accept them as its citizens.”

http://www.genocidewatch.org/myanmar.html

* * *

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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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