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Tag Archives: fbps

A Short Note on The Dictator, The Mirror, and the Fragile Surface

16 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Zimbabwe

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dictator, dictatorship, evil, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, fbps, malignant narcissism, narcissism, political psychology, Robert Mugabe

When Robert Mugabe dies — I predict peacefully, in his sleep — he will go believing himself the most beneficent and magnanimous of leaders, the champion of his state, black and beautiful, bountiful and good.

If the children of Zimbabwe are starving or dying of the cholera he introduced to some parts, if the currency would seem to be forever foundering, if the cries of brutality, corruption, and injustice remain constant in the air and on the airwaves of either opposition or truthful radio, all of that would be no fault of his: he, Robert Mugabe, did what he could.

And he got away with it!

______

Do dictators know what they do?

I don’t think they do.

At least they may not be aware of their effects with a depth in any way anchored in a human and sentimental heart.

In the Great Halls of Mirrors, the brightest reflections are of heroic men, each dictator alpha among others, struggling on their own behalf, their families (not really but it’s made to look that way, for image matters), and their people for place of pride against a world that would otherwise undo and enslave them.

Theirs is a fight for every inch and measurable Nth of property, business, and resource, while every reflection — the stuff of “narcissistic supply” — by way of paid and patronized advisers and associates, fawning (or faking it) family, and permitted controlled media agree with that outlook.

In the contempt and disparagement of others, in the inability to connect with a common humanity, in the abuse and intimidation of others, in the callous disregard of deep injustice and tragedy suffered by others directly or indirectly at their hands, there seems a surface ever ready to shatter, ever uncertain of its own basis in being that has long gone missing.

______

I may slip from analysis to poetry to fiction here as the depth of what one witnesses in such figures eludes “observable-measurable” note making.  However, for this post, the following statement and the URLs accompanying it all report or reflect on what is known:

A power-sharing deal signed on September 15 aimed to bring together the current president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, signaled a moment of hope for the future of Zimbabwe. Instead, it marked the start of the country’s most recent descent into chaos: water and sanitation services shut down; inflation skyrocketed; food shortages spread across the country; hospitals and clinics closed their doors; outbreaks of cholera, anthrax, and possibly malaria threaten lives; and in a country where where AIDS kills over 400 Zimbabweans a day, care for HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections have lost priority. While innocent civilians fight for their lives the governing parties clash over the rule of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Health System Crisis, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, n.d.

______

▶ Robert Mugabe Denies Cholera Epidemic in Zimbabwe – YouTube 12/12/2008

______

Zimbabwe Economy

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Intensifying Government Bankruptcy (Page 1 of 2) 2/8/2013

Face up to reality and start talking to Robert Mugabe – FT.com 9/10/2013

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe Sails Close to Economic Rocks (Page 1 of 2) 8/28/2013:

According to Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Act of 2007, foreign-owned companies are forced to cede 51 percent of their shares to local people. But economists warn that the indigenisation policy is driving investors away.

“Foreign investors are obliged to bring in 100 percent of the capital, bear 100 percent of the risk, provide 100 percent of the technology, and in turn settle for 49 percent of the equity and pay taxes,” independent economist Kingston Nyakurukwa told IPS.

China, whose labor has been keeping me in sharp western-designed clothing for a while, may prove up to burden of keeping the ever dapper Robert Mugabe looking equally as good.

Zimbabwe Gets Computers to Track Epidemics, Diseases 12/20/2012 — Still, the United States lends a helping hand.  However, notes this article, such aid, which admittedly focuses on HIV/AIDS control and contributes to the American Center for Disease Control (CDC) data base, arrives within this context:

As a result of bankruptcy, President Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe is failing to meet the Abuja Declarations which recommends that African governments allocate 15 percent of their budgets towards health.

Saudi Gazette – Mugabe’s bankruptcy (near direct-to-print URL), n.d.

BBC News – Bitterness and unease in bankrupt Zimbabwe 3/6/2010

Zimbabwe Egalitarian and Equal Opportunity Measures

Robert Mugabe’s land reform comes under fresh scrutiny | World news | theguardian.com 5/10/2013

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa: Peter Godwin: 9780316018715: Amazon.com: Books (2007)

Mugabe and the White African | POV | PBS

Zimbabwe Food Security

Zimbabwe faces looming food crisis, says UN | World news | theguardian.com 9/4/2013:

Zimbabwe is facing a “looming food crisis” with one in four people in rural areas at risk of hunger early next year, the highest number in half a decade, the UN has warned.

The gloomy prediction was seen as a blow to analysts who have argued that Robert Mugabe’s widely condemned land reform programme is starting to pay dividends.

IRIN Africa | Army worm outbreak threatens Zimbabwe’s food security | Zimbabwe | Early Warning | Food Security 1/14/2013

Zimbabwe Health

IPS – Rebuilding Zimbabwe’s Health System | Inter Press Service 6/19/2013:

Every day, eight women and 100 children die from pregnancy- and delivery-related complications in Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Most of them die of easily preventable causes and illnesses.

Kubatana – Archive – A call to the new government of Zimbabwe to prioritize the right to health and clean water – ZADHR- Sep 12, 2013

Zimbabwe Media

Media group says Zimbabwe police ban on hand-cranked, solar radios illegal ahead of polling | Fox News 2/22/2013

In Zimbabwe’s Media, It’s All About Robert Mugabe : NPR 5/13/2012

Zimbabwe journalists worried: Mugabe cabinet includes ‘media hangman’ – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 9/13/2013

Zimbabwe – Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ’s main Zimbabwe page)

Q&A: Zenzele Ndebele promotes radio in Zimbabwe – Blog – Committee to Protect Journalists 7/29/2013

Zimbabwe Refugees

Zimbabwean refugees: Between haven and hell – Features – Al Jazeera English 8/1/2013

UNHCR – Zimbabwe – “2013 UNCHR regional operations profile – Southern Africa”:

At the end of 2011, there were some 449,000 people of concern to UNHCR in Southern Africa, including 145,000 refugees, 245,000 asylum-seekers, 55,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 4,000 returnees.

______

When the day after comes, as it comes to all survivors, how will Zimbabwe remember Robert Mugabe?

______

UNHCR Video: “Zimbabweans in South Africa”

# # #

Syria – Dictators Do Not Negotiate Internal Affairs

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by commart in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Zimbabwe

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Assad, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, fbps, Mugabe, narcissism, political, politics

The crack of gunfire keeps an irregular beat in this rugged mountainous region at the Lebanon-Syria border as a Lebanese militiaman, who goes by the name Abu Hamza, explains why he chose to fight in Syria.

France 24.  “Crossing into Syria with Lebanese pro-Assad militia.”  May 28, 2013.

Hezbollah’s unilateral entry from its power base in Lebanon into the fray in Syria may represent a more general principle about the possession of power in the region from Assad-Nasrallah perspective: either you got it or you don’t, and if you have got it, why talk?

* * *

Last night, I watched Mugabe and the White African, a documentary about the displacement of white farmers in Zimbabwe.  In that film, farm owner Mike Campbell  and his family challenged the Mugabe Administration’s invalidation of their title, this after the same had overseen the sale of the land to Campbell and had declared disinterest in acquiring it.

Campbell’s effort to defend his land through the courts grew long and convoluted before winding up in the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal, and while in the end he won his case in that court, which concluded that Mugabe’s efforts were racist, Mugabe rejected the finding, noting that Zimbabwe would not be subject to SADC decisions.

Dictators do not negotiate plunder within their own boundaries.

(The Campbell family may have seen some compensation by way of Zimbabwean government assets seized in Cape Town, South Africa in response to the SADC ruling).

* * *

News these days reports political maneuvering and posturing, not underlying attitudes, beliefs, and self-concepts.

Bashar Assad, having seen what has happened to Mubarak and Qaddafi in the course of the “Arab Spring”, right away took a hard line in response to challenges to his authority.  Brother Maher’s unbridled and sadistic unleashing of state military violence against Syrians in target areas, or not, merely adds emphasis to what such dictators are really about, which is absolute authority, control, and limitless glorification, love, obedience, and praise — i.e., in the coming political psychobabble (borrowed from more sophisticated chit-chat), “narcissistic supply” — all so that they may remain in power  while continuing to live in grim fairy tale all their own.

For Syria at the moment, that tale comes replete with 92,000 dead, predominantly civilians, and 3.5 million internally displaced and refugee.

* * *

Yet, in a remarkable interview this month with ABC’s Barbara Walters, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 1) denied the extent of violence in his beleaguered country; 2) disputed the evidence in a U.N. report charging him and his government with crimes against humanity, asking, “Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution?”; 3) claimed that the forces charged with cracking down too hard on protesters did not belong to him, but instead to the government; and 4) indicated that the Syrian people supported him — otherwise he would not be in his position.

Post, Jerrold M.  “Bashar al-Assad is Every Bit His Father’s Son.”  Foreign Policy, December 20, 2011.

As I write in the book, it was his Sally Field moment, like when she accepted her second Oscar. “They really love me!” he said. And I guess he was due some of that. He had an aquifer of support in Syria that was not insignificant. But I remember thinking to myself at that very moment that this was a different person — that he was going to be president for life.

This was someone who no longer was the reluctant leader. He had fully embraced the power and trappings of his position.

Horn, Heather.  “To Know a Tyrant: Inside Bashar al-Assad’s Transformation From ‘Reformer’ to Killer.”  Interview with author David Lesch.  The Atlantic, September 18, 2012.

* * *

From Mao to Stalin, Hitler to Putin, Thatcher to Blair, Bush to British royalty, the list of narcissistic personalities who assume leadership is endless. What distinguishes Assad from the crowd is his obvious weakness in having assumed the mantle of power in a hereditary fashion, rather than grasping it in from the hands of a foe.

Nikolas, Katerina.  “Op-Ed: President Assad has narcissistic personality, says psychologist.”  Digital Journal, January 15, 2013.

Nikolas with the above statement gets at the axis of an issue in transiting “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” out of the clinician’s office and on to the political street: how far off normal or normative political behavior is it, really?  My response would be to assess combined empathy expressed and responsibility taken for states of affairs surrounding the leader.  Such detection or measurement would play against the notion that the narcissist, as far as he’s concerned, is never wrong.

There may be other dimensions worth a gander, especially as regards the sense of containment and self-restraint in the person.  A truly unbridled personality expresses not the least quiver of conscience over that which may be done at his bidding.

Is that Assad al-Bashar today?

I don’t know.

Of course, I also wouldn’t so casually lump together Mao, Putin, Thatcher, and British royalty as each displays their own character in relationship to the overall improved lot and wellness of their constituents in their totality.  Mere egotism and nerve neither define nor set the bar.  “Grandiose and messianic delusion” better approach the syndrome, and then the negatives — lack of empathy, lack of feeling, — get in the sociopath element.

Wikipedia’s page on “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” seems to obtain regular updates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder DSM-IV has become DSM-V, from the looks of it and changes have been made.

It’s important to note here, repeat here, emphasis here, regularly, boringly, if needs be, transposing a clinical concept focused on individual psychopathology to a broader social context comes freighted with issues: what are we looking at and what are we trying to fix?

Answer, perhaps: autocrats and deeply autocratic societies.

Also, I would not regard NPD as a psychopathology for the sort, say as with addiction, that might lead the host to ruin; rather, it would seem an embedded complex in personality, and whether or not it works out may have something to do with context in which its lives and its impact on others.

By the king’s assessment, the king is generally okay with his role and remote from his qualities as a tyrant . . . but that’s rather the problem, isn’t it?

Mugabe loves Mugabe, and those Mugabe has patronized may love him too, and a show of love may do where the reality cannot be summoned, but what Mugabe has become by way of example has to do with the evil visited on others by way of his will, which historical reputation will be the one that haunts his death eternally.

* * *

Finally, as an aside, I’ve no reason to abandon “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” (see “Coins and Terms” on this blog) as a possible dimension in political psychology, for the world, whether the part autocratically governed or the other democratic and open, has had an ample experience with dictators, living and dead, and should at this point be able to see how things work with such personalities more clearly and, consequently, attend to the better defense of its own humanity collectively.

Additional Reference

Blair, David.  “Assad blames everyone but himself for Syria’s ‘chaos'”.  The Telegraph, September 21, 2012.

Dalrymple, Theodore.  “The sweet, and deadly, sides of President Assad.”  The Telegraph, March 15, 2012.

# # #

Recommended: “Postcolonial Insanity” – An Article by Abbas Zaidi on Pakistan’s Popular Uncontained Violence in the Name of Islam

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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Abbas Zaidi, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, fbps, Mobarak Haider, Pakistan, political, psychology

On 4 January 2011, Salman Taseer, a liberal human rights campaigner and the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest and most powerful province, was killed by Mumtaz Qadri, his bodyguard, for insulting Prophet Muhammad. Taseer‟s „crime‟ was that he had stood up for Aasia Bibi, a poor Christian woman, sentenced to death for insulting Prophet Muhammad. Taseer‟s murder fused the educated, the less educated, and the illiterate into an Islamistnationalist unity

Zaidi, Abbas.  “Postcolonial insanity.’  Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies, 2:4, December 2011.

Abbas Zaidi’s review of the motivations involved and license taken in the January 4, 2011 murder of Salman Taseer takes a fair look at Pakistan’s “God Mob” (my term) in its pervasive national aspect.

Just one paragraph before the conclusion, Zaidi makes this point that runs slantwise to my own interest in “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)”, a bastard mix of the clinical descriptions of bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder lifted out of psychology proper and into political psychology and sociology:

“Based on the preceding discussion, a point may be added to the definition of postcolonial insanity: Postcolonial insanity is enchantment with grand narratives which are held to be universal in their reach, inviolability, and truthfulness.”

Bipolar indulgence in grandiose and messianic delusion and manic expression; narcissistic resistance to criticism while obsessed with one’s own powers . . . and there they are doing their thing, system-wide, soaking Pakistan in blood accompanied (outside of the body of the state) by near universal condemnation.

Mobarak Haider’s 2008 (Urdu version; English version, 2010) Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg more broadly covers the role “civilizational narcissism” has played in developing and hardening within the common constituency Pakistan’s Islamist mission.  (Post available here: “Mobarak Haider’s Diagnosis — Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg”).

Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

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

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Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, fbps

The term I’ve coined and kicked around to characterize this area of interest in faith and politics as “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy“, and it derives from Bipolar Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder by way of common features having to do with grandiose delusion, messianic motivation, and resistance to criticism and clinical insight.  

For such a term to find favor, it has to work across many divisions.  Unfortunately, I think it does and flows into two parts: leaders and followers.  In politics, I think leaders — the “malignant narcissists” — have gotten more academic and analytic attention than those enthralled by them.  

In relation to “realpolitik”, blasphemy and similar laws are like the walls of a box — they’re there to keep a herd penned in, i.e., with humans, forbidden from speaking as may be genuinely felt — and dogma provides the leash of an attractive, convenient thought, a catechism, a few words by which to live and, repeated sufficiently, to block out other signal, including discomforting signal.

Inspired by The Awesome Conversation but posted only here, January 2, 2013.

I’ve played with the FBPS concept in my old blog but may take it up here, as it may contribute to grasping a part of the social psychology of conflict heavily dependent on unconstrained and perhaps unbounded self-aggrandizement.

Dissemination: Political Psychology: Focus on Narcissism

16 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan, Religion

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autocrats, dictators, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, fbps, Islam, malignant narcissism, Muslim, Muslims, narcissism, narcissistic sociopaths, Pakistan, political psychology, political science, politics

“Don’t surround yourself with yourself.”

Those who remember, know the band well and true name of the music: Yes and “I’ve Seen All Good People”.

Theirs was a part of the ethos of the English-borne 1970s.

And here, 2012, far from those halcyon days, their art for the ears continues to resonate.

“Don’t surround yourself with yourself” — I should take the advice and perhaps others should take it for themselves as well.

My interest in the narcissistic dimension of political psychology started off with the direct and real space experience of personalities exhibiting mild to severe bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder while in cyberspace I happened to be surfing conflicts  and discovering for myself any number of autocratic regimes and the mess and misery they were able to bring to their hapless constituents.

My two-plus-two equaled the invention of a convenient catch-all: “Facsimile Bipolar Narcissistic Sociopathy (FBPS)“, which section exists on the Typepad hosted old site.

(For this blog, the “Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology” category should suffice, as I hope the whole production will not be so all over the place as the other, which I had created to showcase some other things I could do).

With the FBPS concept articulated, a networked opportunity to post an op-ed in the  Daily Times (Pakistan)  — “Beware the Malignant Narcissist” — and Facebook-enabled international activity, I found online another personality engaged on a similar track, Pakistani scholar Mobarak Haider, the author of Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg.

(In science, it is generally taken as a good thing to arrive at similar observations and insights by way of separate tracks — remember: theories stand until disproved, always, but they may be strengthened too by the arrival of new data — and that appears to be what has happened).

To move on: politics draw a variety of social competitors — advisers, leaders, warriors — and among the same, some may carry within themselves the over-the-top, unconstrained, boundary-confused, and often sadistic egotism of the malignant narcissist, and these too full of themselves no one needs.

As I type this, the intelligence of the world moves quickly in tens upon tens of thousands of communications per hour, and so it is I happen to participate in the Facebook presence of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (the organizational site has been listed to the left).  One of my Facebook buddies, Lakhkar Khan Hoti,  posted there a statement by President Obama extolling the contributions made by Islam to humanity, which I interpret as part of the President’s promise to “extend the hand of peace” to Islam, and requested comment.

As professionals in a social-networking community may do, the original poster was asked to cite his source.

I had a source to something similar (having commented recently on Obama’s behavior in relation to Islam at Oppenheim Arts & Letters) and shared it this way:

“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html

There are some things humans — individually, in aggregate, without regard to legacy — may wish to entertain as twined language, technology, and trade capacities continue to contract and integrate lives and lifestyles across our ever gregarious species. Start with the meaning and significance of self-concept in relation to others and whether certain degrees of glorious narcissistic self-aggrandizement have a place in anyone’s better future, not least of all Pakistan’s.

My interest in political psychology and the dimension referred to as “narcissism” was inspired by encountering in my web-borne travels so many tawdry dictatorships — the junta in Burma; Robert Mugabe (thank him for reintroducing cholera to his people) in Zimbabwe; Paul Biya whose French connections and chateau keep him comfy while his people starve in Cameroon; etc. Copy and paste “African Dictator” into your browser, and you should come up with a blog titled and devoted to just that subject, quite colorful. And awful.

One might suggest there’s some difference too between overt religiosity and deep and rightly cherished spirituality.

There may be a good track in humanity enforced by our natural and overwhelming propensity to enjoy one another despite whatever hardships we may be enduring.

Where conditions have become untenable, whether by the hand of Pharaoh or through the failure of ambition as represented by the will to war — other ideas and policies proving bankrupt beneath the hands of lost autocrats and warmongers both — most people resign themselves to suffering or leave for what they hope will prove a healthier situation.

A bully anywhere — schoolyard, saloon, state, tribe, region — drives humanity away, and one may suggest that even God’s love goes with those who leave.

Time and again, and without understanding the sources of their own ruin, time reduces the malignant and all they have done to rags and relics, not to mention the diminishing of their reputation down into the class of assorted “bad examples” in lessons to new generations.

That day always comes.

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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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