Tag Archives: conflict

Hamas – Bad Faith – No Ceasefire – Never Was – Will Not Be – Stop Dreaming

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

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

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According to Marc Schulman writing for Newsweek, it was the ceasefire that wasn’t:

It turns out that last night the representatives of the Palestinian Authority were putting forth a patently untrue story as to what Israeli and Hamas had agreed, when neither had. Unfortunately, all of the press (both Israeli and worldwide) reported the story as true.

Israel has recalled its negotiating team.

The latest at ABC reports more than 50 rockets fired on Israel this afternoon, some reaching as far as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Is the reader perhaps looking for the Hamas “off-button”?

Stop looking.

It doesn’t exist.

The Hamas program script plan vision has no curtain, no final act.

In fact, the doctrine is explicit:

. . . even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take.

Hear,  oh Israel (and all others): with Hamas and what drives it — that deeply malignant narcissism that lends to each his own indulged and grandiose center of the universe — there is nothing to negotiate.

So Hamas does not negotiate in good faith, neither for peace and prosperity to be shared by Gazans nor for considerations having much to do, after all, with The All.

Know the character of the commanders: Ayatollah Khamenei, Khaled Mashaal, Ismail Haniyeh, and others.

Why should Hamas or any other Jihad Joe group come equipped with an “off button”?

The enterprise clearly cons the public, makes a lot of money (which with “terror tunnels” and all would seem not to reach intended deserving recipients), and harms the principles not at all (although, perhaps, after all, Allah knows what they do — and, for now, has them getting away with it).

Related Reference

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/President-Peres-accuses-Qatar-for-financing-Hamas-terrorism-368579 – 7/23/2014.

http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/121018/hamass-biggest-backer-it-has-entire-westin-palm-its-hand – 7/31/2014.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arab-bank-trial-allegedly-financing-hamas-article-1.1904694 – 8/15/2014.

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Aside

15 Friday Aug 2014

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

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Jewish rejectionism — start with Pharaoh (what a lousy deal for everyone else!) — includes the rejection of Jesus and Muhammad as the representation or agent of God on earth. Them’s might be fightin’ words, as some say out in my backyard, but the sensibility may have begun (who knows?) with the idea of taking the power asserted by a deeply narcissistic monster — Pharaoh — and throwing it out into the universe and beyond to become the Almighty, the “King of the Universe”, a god immensely greater than what Pharaoh (today: Baghdaddi) would purport to represent. Not only do the Jews refuse Pharaoh’s legitimacy (and leave — with God’s help and under his aegis) but the “instructions” received refuse also to begin with mention or allusion to either mankind or power — and then the form of discussion invoked is that of vigorous inquiry and argument, a look-twice-and-think-about-it method of understanding one’s own humanity. Against that kind of a start, the Roman gods become decorative as well as instructive in other ways, or we should not speak of nor comprehend in Narcissus in the first place.

After Hillel (“the Elder” and the more obscure), Jesus-Paul-Constantine have the thorn of what to do with the Jews; Muhammad later wrestles the same question with perhaps Arab elan with the seduction ot surrender and subsequent easy slaughter of the Banu Qurayza.

And here we are and with a huge political problem.

If no one gets the story that yesterday imagined, then all are more free to get on to a new footing.

However, yesterday has its charms. Whether I pick up a fountain pen 🙂 or the young, mostly, dress up to “war” in societies of “creative anachronism” — http://www.sca.org/ — or primitives cling and some nutty alphas would be khalifas, the nostalgic affords the comfort of the fixed, known, and in terms of time, spacious. A man at a computer is busy — a man with a fountain pen and foolscap has time for dreaming.

Against this depiction of monotheist man and time, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah dwell in the romance of their own spacious, timeless experience. The technology of the progressive appears in their environment –or they would not be counting on fiber optic communications cables to abet their “defense” of southern Lebanon — but the mind remains locked in a yesterday becoming continuously more distant from the day that has developed around their enterprise.

Writing like that is like reaching back and trying to pull a brother out of a time hole.

“What are you doing back there?”

“Living as we’ve always lived.”

“Is that so good?”

“It’s worked for us a long time.  We have a deep investment in a promise yet to be fulfilled.”

“That’s some promise.”

“It’s the whole world.”

“The whole world isn’t your world.  Perhaps you should try something a little more modest.”

“We’ll think about it.”

“It’s a shame to see you keeping yourself down there.  Frankly, it’s not looking like much fun, rather bloody and self-defeating, but, hey, it’s your call, and trust the world to be around when you’re ready to join with it rather than fight to the end of your day.”

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Lisa Dafteri – “It’s Terrorists Against Humanists”

08 Friday Aug 2014

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

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“We are the generation that stays quiet about political corruption, favoring political correctness instead.  We pride ourselves in sticking up for the underdog while throwing our friends and allies to the dogs.”

(8/8/2014)

However you get the news . . . you get it.

Hamas hasn’t a human program or a prayer to offer anyone.  Its officers have made themselves millionaires (actually, Khaled Mashaal is a billionaire) on the way to dealing death to their own constituents, including 160 children recruited for the construction of their tunnels.

Of ISIS, one only finds worse things to mention — rape and rapine all the way to attempted genocide, Shiites, Christians, Yazidis, and anyone else just because and as it strikes BadDaddy’s fancy.

Talk about the “Hamaside” and “Muslim Botherhood” . . . .

WASHINGTON — U.S. warplanes made a second wave of airstrikes Friday in northern Iraq against the militants who have besieged a religious group and threatened the city of Irbil, a Pentagon official said.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, said the second wave of strikes used a drone to attack a mortar position while four FA-18 fighter-attack planes hit a seven-vehicle convoy outside Irbil.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/08/obama-iraq-airsgtrike/13767377/ – 8/8;/2014.

BBC Live (right now – 8/8/2014/1723 ET):

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28709792

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Iraq – Brief Comment – Three Conflict Themes Distilled

07 Thursday Aug 2014

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

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To suggest that the “field is confused” might understate the reality. However, distilled to structural themes, it might look a little bit like this:

1. Kingdom of God — >Sunni-Shiite rivalry : Saudi-Iranian rivalry
2. Contemporary Governance –> The Despotic vs The Democratic
3. Political and Social Psychology and Topology –> Extremists vs Moderates

Official Iranian hatred of the “Zionist entity” has has maintained a flow of war making machinery and materiel to Hamas from well before present hostilities. IDF interdicted at least one shipment and one may be sure analysts are reverse engineering back to sources the arming of Hamas.

How the above suggested themes are arranged in any given mind and heart seems to me as invisible a matter as it may be personal, and in the field as much account for mistrust and paranoia as related attitudes remain inaccessible to detection except out in battle space where the same becomes quite clear as to who has embraced what cause and with what attitude.

Addendum: As Regards Iran

As appears to happen with “Islamist-style” Islamic overlay, the society that existed prior to onset becomes suffocated and hidden (to greater or lesser extent). Despite the onslaughts of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Iran, so _____ frequently points out, retains many facets of its pre-revolutionary modernity, and what the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei have done is dealt themselves their own kingdom (see “Reuters, Khamenei, wealth” on that) with themselves at the center of its universe.

As long as the dictator can keep the engines of wealth in his state operating and pursue his dream of himself unmindful of the suffering he causes, that’s all that matters. Iranians may have a problem with this — the modern are the competing interest — but not the Ayatollah, not any more than Baghdaddi or Putin or Assad. They’re very different in their ambitions, but they are of the same personality, and that may be what bonds them albeit along the Shiite axis, loosely speaking.

While oil plays a mighty role in these politics, it may be much less important than the protection of the immense (and fragile) ego of the despot.

The weight of American interest in Israel’s survival probably should not be credited too greatly to the evangelical Christian community: all of the open democracies feature a majority culture, but they are all democracies in function as well as spirit, and Israel stands with them.

Brotherhood-style “democracy” as exhibited in Egypt and perhaps illustrated by Erdogan’s work in Turkey, is inherently anti-democratic and despotic primarily because the intellectual, political, and social machinery exploited is itself kleptocratic or piratical.

Human language programming and scripting get into this right about here: how is one to navigate so confused a world?  Adhering to instructions might seem a good idea, but when the same promote such as Baghdaddi the Butcher to star power, one might well question the validity of those charts as well as the functioning of that most perverted “moral compass”.

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Aside

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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Our “malignant narcissists” — self-aggrandizing, grandiose, messianic personalities who prize for themselves the absolute control of others (like that dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”) — work hard to script and limit the intellectual experience of their marks. They do that by producing with force (intimidation) and wealth a pervasive information environment around themselves and in foreign states an alternative press, which is really their press.

When next we see a “Gaza Flotilla” or an “Apartheid Week” demonstration, it’s worth giving some thought to the character in personality involved in the mounting of the same.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve seen coordination lists for the kind of “actions” that “make the news”.  There’s nothing spontaneous about them or actually mysterious as regards the motivations for involvement.  The argument is only about power, not actually doing anything for anyone, and just back of that argument are despots and fascists who through their rhetoric convey perhaps love and family (of a sort) to those who would and do follow them.

However, the history of the same follows a familiar program, and none should be surprised by either the accumulation of wealth or ruin brought to others attending the life of, say, a Mugabe, the junta in Burma, a Putin with a “mafia state”, a Khamenei, a Khaled Mashaal (worth billions of dollars today), and so on.

The despotic tend also to be demonic.

Assault videos posted by ISIS online become their own reflection: in essence, they put on display exactly what they look like.

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FTAC – A Different Kind of Synopsis for a Different Kind of War

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

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

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There’s a Syrian section in this piece — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/03/19/its-hard-helping-you-when-you-are-anti-semitic-among-other-things/ — that tells when I followed leads (online) toward the Facebook presence of the Syrian revolution, it didn’t take long to find what could be interpreted here as Sunni-based anti-Semitic cant about a step removed from the common browsing public, but I’m not sure I’m that common.

🙂

Sometimes I keep “clicking” around a problem.

The Syrian state view and opposition world view that have as a habit of mind ready and vicious (and vacuous) anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist rant haven’t a palatable program for the secular or humanist and post-Enlightenment drivers of the western mind.

The absence of a sympathetic modern human program for the state (Assad’s baggage) and the axis of power that represents political absolutism opposite NATO has tragically kept NATO in position to avoid nuclear Russia while also assigning permit for the disaster to Russia (which pledged $10 million for Syrian relief while spending $51 billion on Sochi).

At the end of each day, whatever our civilizational and religious affiliations may be and their related “self-concepts”, what the Jewish contingent and “Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian” civilization represents is the amassed historical weight of hard won western principles and values.

It’s not that a Jew is worth more than a Muslim, or vice versa, or that the Northern Hemisphere has ruthlessly enslaved the Southern Hemisphere or other such manipulative tripe. It — agape, love, the foundation of a good ethics and experience of a good life — is about dwelling on such an observation as, say, “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” (Hillel repeated by Muhammad) and dwelling on the meaning of that long enough to get it and develop some empathy and regard for other souls.

That empathy is not a given in nature: it’s cultivated.

These that get far astray do some damage — and then they do what they do under many ideological banners.

I’ll see how I feel about that on in the morning.

Maybe I’ll like it.

Maybe I won’t.

I don’t like the overuse of “dwelling” but will leave it as authentic verbal jazz.

A little more and I will drop the conversation.

Some social scientists believe that any attitude devolves to some set of beliefs having valence (good thing / bad thing) and intensity (not too bad . . . extremely bad) and primacy. Our legacies in culture and religion, in name and early acquired messages about ourselves (as early as “language uptake”) seem to me primary because we forget having learned such things and then we go an build on them throughout our lives. Our survival includes the perpetuation of these signifying elements of our existence. I think they’re important and believe in evolutionary cultural polyphony but a few have problems with that. Add greed, hormonal motivation, psychological problems, and so fascist dictators and followers are born, and when they grow up and become like BadDaddy with his Islamic Hate terrifying the neighborhood, they are hard to switch off.

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Link

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Regions

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The absurdity of Israel’s Gaza campaigns requires an entirely new terminology for the conduct of wars. “Enemy combatants,” “theater of war,” “innocent civilians,” “casualties of war” all have ambiguous meaning in Gaza. There is nothing casual about why so many Gazans die; these deaths are tragically predictable and predetermined. Hamas builds tunnels for terrorists and their rockets; bomb shelters for the people of Gaza never entered the Hamas leaders’ minds.

 

http://online.wsj.com/articles/thane-rosenbaum-civilian-casualties-in-gaza-1405970362 – 7/21/2014.

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Hamas vs Humanity – Egypt Proposes, Hamas Disposes – Fighting Resumes

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

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

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a. Israel shall cease all hostilities against the Gaza Strip via land, sea, and air, and shall commit to refrain from conducting any ground raids against Gaza and targeting civilians.

b. All Palestinian factions in Gaza shall cease all hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel via land, sea, air, and underground, and shall commit to refrain from firing all types of rockets, and from attacks on the borders or targeting civilians.

http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Full-text-of-Egyptian-proposal-for-a-ceasefire-362841 – 7/15/2014.

IDF_50MoreRocketsReceivedFromHamas-584x

The number of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip toward Israel had climbed to 76 by 9 a.m. when the IDF resumed operations.

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