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Tag Archives: free press

Module: ABC’s Trump Interview on January 25, 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

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21st Century Feudalism, critical reading skill, democracy, free press, information integrity, interview, populism, President Trump

President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 1)
President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 2)
TRANSCRIPT: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews President Trump

Experience the interview first — no filters, no judgments, no intermediaries — just you, the media consumer, and President Trump and ABC anchor David Muir.


Not thirty seconds into the interview, Trump answers a question about being changed by becoming President: “I can be the most Presidential person ever other than possibly the great Abe Lincoln . . . but I may not be able to do the job nearly as well if I do that.”

Huh?

If the President does not intend to be the “most presidential” President ever — or at least up there with the finest and most fondly remembered of American Presidents — then what is that aspiration?

Ten days ago, chess champion and Kremlin critic Gary Kasparov posted on Facebook this excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 1855 “Letter to Joshua Speed”:

lincoln-quotation

There’s Russia again – and the mention of its frank despotism.

About eight years ago, Andie Brownlow writing for the conservative American Thinker (August 30, 2009) had this to note about Soviet-style ideological subversion:

The point of this “Ideological Subversion” was to weaken an enemy country, strip its culture and corrupt their values to a point of complete vulnerability. Mr. Schuman describes it as:

[An] overt…slow process…[to] change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.

The first step, Demoralization, has already been completed in America and continues to perpetuate itself. The Obama Administration policies are accelerating the second step of Destabilization and rapidly approaching the third phase of Crisis.

As you have read, Brownlow, opining in 2009, had taken aim at the Obama Administration!

The Trump Presidency has arrived, and the laudable and scrupulous Big Press, the majors, are hot with articles on the President’s ego and the Administration’s credibility and integrity in its discussion and presentation of information.

From historical experience, the business — it is a business, and one particularly loathsome and pernicious! — of messing up someone else’s “information space” may be characterized as part of Soviet KGB “Active Measures”.

Has that been happening here in the United States?

Has Moscow had a hand in it?

Have we through our own now immense and unfettered online press — and may it be always so! — been doing it to ourselves in the cause of being strident enough for obtaining notice?

Perhaps the answers don’t matter so much.

At base, the only issue having to do with the national experience of media involves the popular and professional assessment of the credibility and integrity of information encountered.

BackChannels could promote an opinion, and perhaps has, but would rather the BackChannels reader take patient time to look into the matter as well and form some new opinion about both the Marxist-Leninist mission of the former Soviet Union and, now one month more than 25 years later, the ultra-nationalist imperialist mission of today’s Russian State — and then ask where Trump has positioned, or may position, the United States of America in light of that well-remarked — and by no less than the great President Lincoln himself — habitual Russian despotism.

–33–

Also in Media: “Journalists as Witnesses at Hungarian Revolution” | RealClearHistory | Jefferson Flanders | November 4, 2016

23 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Free Speech, Hungary, Politics

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Cold War, free press, history, Hungarian Revolution, Hungary, journalism

The mass media coverage of the Hungarian Revolution offered an object lesson in the value of a free press. As the faltering Communist regime lost control of the borders, foreign correspondents were able to enter the country. Once there, the absence of government “minders” and censors allowed journalists to report what they saw, “without fear or favor of friend or foe.” The result: a balanced, independent, and accurate account of what was happening on the ground in Hungary.

Source: Journalists as Witnesses at Hungarian Revolution | RealClearHistory – 11/4/2016.

Link

http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/enemies-of-the-internet-2014-entities-at-the-heart-of-censorship-and-surveillance/

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by commart in Political Spychology

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free press, free speech, Internet, journalism, political spychology, report, RSF, security, spying

http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/enemies-of-the-internet-2014-entities-at-the-heart-of-censorship-and-surveillance/

Three of the government bodies designated by Reporters Without Borders as Enemies of the Internet are located in democracies that have traditionally claimed to respect fundamental freedoms: the Centre for Development of Telematics in India, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the United Kingdom, and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States.

The NSA and GCHQ have spied on the communications of millions of citizens including many journalists.

Related: How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware – The Intercept – 3/12/2014.

REF – “First they came for the journalist . . . .”

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Fast News Share, Free Speech, Journalism, Political Spychology, Referral

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campus spying, college spying, confidentiality, free press, intelligence, political spychology, spies, spying, Swofford

What is in my head is my intellectual property. There will be no flash drive, no research notes, nothing to find that is digital. I am done with digital archives. As an ethical journalist I must retain source confidentiality. But more importantly, I must quarantine information that is incomplete, of a sensitive nature, or simply not ready for redistribution to the general public. They are coming for the journalist…

First they came for the journalist… | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) – Tammy Swofford – 11/8/2013.

Web-based “open source” political analysis from the “second row seat to history” (mine) need not be either so paranoid or secretive: our sources are indeed out in the open.

For the journalist — the real journalist — on the street, however, and chasing diplomacy and war stories, or just the inside track on, say, the Muslim Brotherhood, the worry with what to do with the HUMINT equivalent of a powder keg of new information would seem worth consideration in association with all channels digital and vulnerable to prying robots.

The right-side of the American political psyche, that which has made a fetish of the demonizing of President Barrack Hussein Obama (oh my), has been scratching its collective head — at least the part of it that is not a part of Booz Allen and other Beltway Incognitos feeding at the annual $52 billion Black Budget trough — over the American capacity for snooping through the e-mail and such.

Reminder: Edward Snowden is now working for Vladimir Putin in a post-revolutionary Russia being driven back toward the familiars of authoritarian oligarchy and nascent Big Brother Government.

Putin’s Snowden strategy: three views | World | DW.DE | 12.11.2013

Never mind Uncle Sam.

Uncle Mao and Uncle Vlad and a lot of other uncles — even if fictitious like Uncle Bond — have their own share of questions, relevant technology, and college and graduate students (!) through which to answer them.

Foreign Spies Target U.S. Universities as FBI Seeks Campus Help: Surveillance – Bloomberg – 4/5/2012

_____

“Political Spychology” has become a rich field for mining from outside the fringe of the secret clearance-holding community.

I mentioned “college and graduate students” tongue-and-cheek before having a look-see on the web.  In fiction, of course, and common academic history, there’s often the beatnik handing out the socialist newspaper on the corner, and there’s no end to student agitprop for this cause and that.  Le Carré employs them regularly (in real space, I’m on the final wandering pages of A Perfect Spy).  Today’s student spies would seem beyond political agitation: in fact, it’s better not to agitate at all while quietly picking up the secrets of the technology universe and sending some home, perhaps, before their time.

From the above cited Bloomberg link:

Foreigners on temporary visas make up more than 40 percent of graduate students in science and engineering at leading universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology. China sent 76,830 graduate students to U.S. universities in 2010-11, more than any other country and up almost 16 percent from the prior year. While the vast majority of international students, researchers and professors come to the U.S. for legitimate reasons, a small number — voluntarily or under pressure — may be supplying information to intelligence services. In addition, more Americans are heading overseas for schooling, becoming potential targets for recruitment by foreign governments.

The Jihad obsessives stir the mud in the water some as they make their way upstream into the inner circles of Arab-Muslim and Islamofascist worldviews and for that may well have cause for worry as regards state tapping.  Be that as it may be, government at every level would seem out ahead of them, and that as perhaps it should be.

The Associated Press has revealed the New York City Police Department monitored Muslim college students at schools throughout the Northeast, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In one case, the NYPD sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Spying on Campus: New York Police Caught Monitoring Muslim Student Groups Throughout Northeast | Democracy Now! – 2/21/2012

* * *

When on October 1, 2013, Samantha Bowden crept unannounced into the classroom of University of Central Florida communications professor Jonathan Matusitz, she wasn’t hoping to advance her education on the sly. Rather, Bowden, the communication and outreach director for the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL), was doing something of which Campus Watch has been frequently accused, but has never done: spying on a professor in an effort to embarrass him and, with luck, even harm his career.

Spies in the Classroom: CAIR vs. Campus Watch | FrontPage Magazine – 10/28/2013.

Related Reference

The Department of Homeland Security Helped Itself to a Journalist’s Documents | VICE United States – 10/28/2013.

NZ Disputes Report That it Spied on Journalist | InHomelandSecurity.com – News & Analysis of Critical Issues in Terrorism & Homeland Defense – 7/29/2013: WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — “New Zealand on Monday disputed a newspaper report saying its military conspired with U.S. spy agencies to monitor a freelance journalist in Afghanistan, a report that has provoked concerns over how surveillance programs revealed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden might be used to spy on reporters.”

Department Of Homeland Security Schemed To Spy On Political Opponents – 2/18/2012.

Is Homeland Security Spying on You? | The Investigative Fund – 6/6/2013: “ITRR turned its attention to law-abiding activist groups including Tea Party protesters, pro-life activists, and anti-fracking environmental organizations. The bulletins included information about when and where local environmental groups would be meeting, upcoming protests, and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy.”

Homeland Security Given Green Light to Monitor American Journalists | TheBlaze.com – 1/9/2012:

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has writtenpermission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

* * *

U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show – Washington Post – 8/30/2013

* * *

Information Warfare: The New Russian Cyber War Force – 9/8/2013: “Noting what’s going on in China and the United States, the Russians have decided to catch up.”

US, Russia to install “cyber-hotline” to prevent accidental cyberwar | Ars Technica – 6/18/2013.

Category:Russian intelligence agencies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Category:Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Russian influence operations in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sergei Tretyakov (intelligence officer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

* * *

Cyberwarfare/Cyberintelligence thread – Military Current Events – tank-net.com – 3/28/2009

Chinese intelligence activity abroad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “The United States believes the Chinese military has been developing network technology in recent years in order to perform espionage on other nations. Several cases of computer intrusions suspected of Chinese involvement have been found in various countries including Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, India and the United States.”

* * *

Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing: Tim Shorrock, Dick Hill: 9781400157723: Amazon.com: Books

Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet – NYTimes.com – 10/28/2013.

[VIDEO] College students ask President Obama to spy on FOX NEWS employees – 6/17/2013.

# # #

Syria – Actionable

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

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

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Tags

chemical attack, conflict, democracy, free press, information, journalism, money, politics, press, propaganda, subjugation, Syria

Speaking after U.N. chemical weapons experts came under sniper fire on their way to investigate the scene of the attack, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the use of chemical weapons was undeniable and “there is very little doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime is culpable.”

Wroughton, Lesley and Erika Solomon.  “Syria chemical weapons attack: Kerry accuses Assad of ‘a moral obscenity’.”  Chicago Tribune, August 26, 2013.

Russia has no evidence of whether a chemical weapons attack has taken place in Syria or who is responsible, Russian President Vladimir Putin told British Prime Minister David Cameron in a telephone call, according to Cameron’s official website.

Tehran Times.  “Putin to Cameron: No evidence Syria chemical weapons attack occurred.”  August 27, 2013.

* * *

Syria stinks.

Not only does Syria stink for Syrians — keep in mind this latest imbecility takes place in a war zone that has killed more than 100,000 and displaced upwards of four million souls — but it envelopes everyone with a hand in it.

Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the US think tank the Heritage Foundation, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Monday that in response to an attack on their Syrian ally, Russia could “expand supply of dual use nuclear technology” to Iran as its nuclear energy company, Rosatom, is anxious to sell more reactors.

Solomon, Ariel Ben.  “Expert: US-led attack on Syria may lead to increased Russian cooperation with Iran.”  The Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2013.

Let’s do business, shall we?

* * *

Because that’s what Syria’s about.

I happen to have the audacity to think the west wants to earn back some part of its investment in oil; Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey would seem to want to expand the Sunni side of the Islamic enterprise in the middle east; Israel could do with a weakened Iran-Hezbollah-Syria structure on its flanks; and God bless him, truly, for Christian Russia, President Vladimir Putin wants to use Iran’s errant ambitions to keep an old Soviet Era cash machine (we could call it “Cash Mir”) chugging along, Ayatollah –> Assad and Associates –> Post-Soviet, Neo-Oligarch Russia.

It wasn’t a chemical warhead that took lives in the Damascus suburbs last week.

It was the money.

Follow it from Doha to Moscow on its twinned tracks and you will have the outline of the implosion I might just refer to hereafter as “Syria Dark Star”.

Two of the world’s three most powerful states have a business interest in their relationship with the Assad regime.

Analysts say both China and Russia have their reasons to maintain good relations with Syria.

Russia is one of Syria’s biggest arms suppliers. And China ranked as Syria’s third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission.

Yan, Holly.  “Why China, Russia won’t condemn Syrian regime.”  CNN, February 5, 2012.

What is the effect of that, information-wise?

In one video appearing in an alternative or dissenting context in World Net Daily (WND), you will see a frame referring to Saudi Arabia’s “Saudi Factory for Chlorine and Alkalais” (Sachlo) in relation to last week’s chemical attack — again: follow the money and do note, please, the production values — the addition of music and titles to what should be as straight as timely documentation gets — on two of the three videos promoted.

What’s true?

What’s not true?

The money is true — and the reportage may be consigned to following state presentations.

The sucker punch is NATO vs. Russia all over again but for no good reason apart from from the ginning of foreign trade receipts.

It’s business.

Conscience has no role in it.

With China perhaps fat, smiling, and unperturbed, that same money will loan out to the United States and others who will happily accommodate this absurd state of affairs between themselves.

As the chips make their way around the Grand and Global Poker Table, all that will be missing comes to (green shades on and lick the nub of the pen) about 355 souls permanently and about 3,245 incapacitated or traumatized souls.

BBC.  “MSF-backed hospitals treated Syria ‘chemical victims’.”  August 24, 2013.

* * *

One has to ask of conscience and desire: are the worlds now “imaged” by CNN and RT — presented to us with many questions left unasked — anything like a world in which one should want to live?

The early 2010 “Question More” advertising campaign created for RT in Britain by McCann Erickson was highly controversial.[33]One advertisement showed American President Barack Obama “morphing” into Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asked: “Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?” The ad was banned in American airports. Another shows a Western soldier “merging” into a Taliban fighter and asks: “Is terror only inflicted by terrorists?”[34] One of RT’s 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising “Ad of the Month.”[35]

Wikipedia.  “RT”.

CNNi’s pursuit of and reliance on revenue from Middle East regimes increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships. It thus pursued all-new, journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from governments around the world. Bahrain has been one of the most aggressive government exploiters of the opportunities presented by CNNi.

Greenwald, Glenn.  “CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news.”  The Guardian, September 4, 2012.

The human rights-oriented modifications that may come to autocratic states will neither bring to them nor emulate democracy.

That’s life.

However, bending and twisting it some in journalism to suit The Money — yes, you have just been dragged from chemical weapons reports into international trade and on to integrity in journalism (even from my Second Row Seat to History) — will erode and eventually destroy democracy.

American conservatives know the litany: “Without the First Amendment, all of the others are useless.”

Add to it: without a press free of all but ambitious good conscience and readers, there will be no freedom.

Only political programs and programmers — God give them all the money they want because on this most dismal, obscene, and tragic of today’s war stories, The Money would seem the hidden alpha-omega of all motivation, coverage, and presentation — and the feckless programmed, which would be everyone else.

Additional Reference

CBS/AP.  “Fearing a U.S. strike, Syria warns of global ‘chaos’.”  August 27, 2013.

Corsi, Jerome R.  “Evidence: Syria Gas Attack Work of U.S. Allies.”  WND, August 26, 2013.

CNN Press Room.  “CNN International’s Response to the Guardian — Update.”  September 5, 2012.

Whether with CNN or RT, we have journalists working in the vicinity of the wheels of history, which for this BackChannels post seems to be a Qatar-backed Sunni-NATO alliance helped into being by the need to address the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran that is in turn supported, in part, by Syria’s geopolitical view and Russian greed (we know for Putin that cooperation is not about the endorsement of Shiite Islam as laid down by Ayatollah Khamenei).   While that plays, the journalism story plays too, for whether in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere in the world authentically or nominally subscribed to open democracy, if one cannot trust the main run of journalists to report “accurately, clearly, and completely” — add “relentlessly” — on the stories of their day, then one returns to subjugation, and whether with such power cloaked in the name of God or for the cause of Gold makes not the least difference.

Eltsov, Peter.  “Putin Stumps for the Orthodox Church in a Film Celebrating the Kievan Rus Anniversary.”  The Atlantic, July 29, 2013.

Keath, Lee and Zeina Karam.  “Syria Chemical Weapons: UN Inspectors Probe Allegations of Nerve Gas Attack.”  Huffington Post, August 26, 2013.

Stack, Liam.  “Videos Show Aftermath of Possible Syrian Chemical Attack in March.”  The Lede, The New York Times, April 25, 2013.

Walker, Peter and Tom McCarthy.  “Syria: US secretary of state John Kerry calls chemical attack ‘cowardly crime’ – as it happened.”  The Guardian, August 26, 2013.

# # #

Iran Curtain Descends (Again)

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by commart in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Middle East, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

election, elections, free press, freedom, freedom of speech, Iran, speech

“By blocking websites and bringing Internet access to a crawl, Iranian authorities are saying their own citizens don’t deserve information about the election,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Coordinator. “What kind of an election is it when journalists are tossed into prison and voters are denied access to the news?”

Committee to Protect Journalists.  “In Iran, news coverage stifled amid election controversy.” May 21, 2013.

If it is as predictable as rain, is it news?

On Tuesday, that system tightened the screen once more, disqualifying the only two prominent candidates who dared to differ with the Supreme Leader. When Iranians go to the polls on June 14 to choose a successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the ballot will run from Khamenei’s former policy director to the man who married his daughter.

http://world.time.com/2013/05/22/irans-supreme-leader-tightens-grip-after-disqualifying-two-presidential-candidates/#ixzz2U94RSXSK

At least the news gets out, so perhaps the regime will prove an open “despotocracy” however narrowed its existing and potential politics.

# # #

FNS – Free Press (Not) — Syria

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by commart in Fast News Share

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free press, free speech, freedom of speech, journalism, Syria, war

Without the freedom to speak free of inhibition, there is no freedom.

One friend was kidnapped; five reporter friends were killed. In November, a car tried to force the vehicle she and her future husband were in off the road. She quit the next day, and has since left Syria for another Arab country.

“If you want freedom and say the regime is non-democratic and dictatorial, dudes, you are doing way worse by killing a journalist who is just doing his job,” she said in an interview Saturday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-journalists-20130106,0,7786035.story

Egyptian Authorities Arrest Alexandria Peace Activist and Blogger Ahmed Meligy

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Free Speech, Middle East

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ahmed Meligy, arrest, Egypt, free press, freedom of speech

“I am being arrested now, they took me from my house without telling me why . . .  I am at the police car now . . pray for me”  Ahmed Meligy, December 31, 2012.  [1]

A writer with a blog in a national newspaper online, also an affable personality with scads of Facebook friends, has today a presence in the world.  When news involving the same of a world, or a small portion of it, gone awry, of an errant arrest, an injustice and insult done to that person, word gets around.

At the moment, it looks like Egypt’s brand new egalitarian, liberal, modern, and peaceful and thriving democracy — do you need the two winks? — has arrested peace activist, brave blogger, and ever friendly Facebook personality Ahmed Meligy.

Here is how this brave good soul started a recent  blog post in The Jerusalem Post:

The main motivational belief that drives all the members and supporters of the Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists is that Allah (swt) is on their side. They all believe that the Arab spring was the reward from God for their patience and struggle over the years. After dominating the power now they feel and act invincible against the whole world. This is why Hamas had no problem escalating the conflict with Israel by firing at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. [2]

For as long as I’ve known of him, Meligy has worked for peace diligently, earnestly, honestly.  For that, he is somewhere in chains today in Egypt.

***

My add to a related Facebook post: “Ahmed climbed a new kind of hill, sent a new kind of message from it, and built a new kind of audience. His Facebook buddies want to know where he is and that he’s well.

# # #

Cited Reference

1. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=394140054008075&set=a.394140034008077.98511.393695887385825&type=3&theater and relative to public page  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Ahmed-Meligy/393695887385825

2. Meligy, Ahmed.  “Egypt: Divided we fall.”  Egypt’s Missing Peace, The Jerusalem Post, November 30, 2012.

Other Reference

El Dafrawi, Emad.  “Ahmed Meligy was arrested in Egypt for Supporting Peace with Israel.”  Children of Peace, December 31, 2012.

Meligy, Ahmed.  Egypt’s Missing Peace (Blog), The Jerusalem Post.

The Jerusalem Post.  “‘Post’ blogger in Egypt reportedly arrested.”  December 31, 2012.

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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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