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Tag Archives: Jordan

Syrian Refugee Camp From the Air

27 Thursday Aug 2015

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blogging, Jordan, online journalism, Syria, Zaatari Refugee Camp

Note: Examination of the downloaded clip showed no EXIF (camera) or IPTC (author or editorial) data. Although Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has been noted as visiting the Zaatari Refugee Camp in northern Jordan on April 22, 2014, whether or not he’s the passenger on the above flight — a pretty good look at the establishment of a new town, at least for a while — could not be ascertained.


Many of the refugees were from middle-income families and communities in Syria.

Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are now selling fruit and vegetables at illegal stands in Zaatari or in communities around northern Jordan. Around five percent of Zaatari’s residents were university students in Syria before coming to the camp.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/26/a-lost-generation-where-have-4-million-syrians-fled/ – 8/26/2015 – In the lede, journalist Charlotte Florance reports, “According to United Nations figures, more than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland, with another 7 million displaced internally within Syria.”


http://observer.com/2015/07/is-saudi-prince-talal-going-to-israel/ – 7/14/2015


https://www.alwaleedphilanthropies.org/alwaleed-philanthropies-supported-300-syrian-refugees-bekaa –


Posted to YouTube 9/7/2013


Posted to YouTube 1/2/2014


Posted to YouTube 2/2/2014


Posted to YouTube 1/8/2015


Posted to YouTube 7/30/2015


I have found this blog a paste-up board for snapshots of time.  Visitors here see a part of a day that I have experienced online, and then longitudinally, over time, the series in events, places, and themes begins to tell the story of a desktop journey through time.


http://blog.worldvisionyouth.org/2014/03/12/syria-6-stories/ – 3/12/2014.

# # #

 

Jordan – Are We Going to End Up with “Hamasestine”?

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Jordan, Mudar Zahran, Palestinian

Posted 1/6/2014

“They want to keep the state of enemyhood with Israel, and they want the Palestinians to think ‘thank God, we’re going to go back some day'” (7:55)

Mudar Zahran may need to launch a fleet of leaflets, posters, and slogans after all:

Islamic State group militants gained a foothold on the Jordan-Iraq border Tuesday when they destroyed at least six Jordanian border control posts, according to reports from Jordanian activists and Islamic fighters associated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-destroys-least-six-border-control-stations-jordan-iraq-border-1759922 – 12/16/2014.

The jackal pack of greedheads and zealots driving the Islamic Small Wars respect no weakness and take heart with such wins.  Like it or not, by either advancing or losing, they force the hands of power to act and reach decision.  The news of raids on Jordanian border control stations follows by nine days King Abdullah’s likening the fight with ISIS to “a third world war”.


This coming Friday, January 9, will mark the tenth anniversary of his victory in the Palestinian Presidential election. Funnily enough, though, his term was supposed to end six years ago. It didn’t — mainly because he’s called off every election since. Which means that this Friday will mark not only the birth of Mahmoud Abbas’ Presidential rule, but the death of Palestinian democracy.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/01/06/the-ten-year-klepto-dictatorship-of-mahmoud-abbas/ – 1/6/2015


The multiple pun that would be “Hamasestine” may meet its match in “Fatahlism”, for the worse Fatah’s position in the middle east conflict, the more loud and pushy the rant of its old man, “Abu Mazen”, the father who has protected no one’s interests but his own and in terms of what he is: another dictator.

While the malignantly narcissistic might define Palestinian progress in terms of harm brought to Israelis — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim — a more normal psychology might wish to watch for measures of progress in human rights and qualities of living brought to the refugees of 1948 and their progeny wherever they are living today.  In that regard, Abbas and much of the Arab world beside have accomplished nothing more than bad mouthing the Jews, and next to that old and boring behavior, modern and progressive secular democrat Mudar Zahran looks pretty good: at the very least, he questions the integrity of the old guards, royal and so-called revolutionary, while he himself has room today to promote his own forthright ethics, honesty, and objectivity.

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudar_Zahran

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Mudar+Zahran

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/09/arab-political-refugee-mudar-zahran-on-temple-mount-we-arabs-and-muslims-are-harming-al-aqsa-not-israel-or-the-jews/ 12/9/2013.

# # #

Link – Journalism – Jordan – Vicious Duplicity – Highest Level

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Jordan, Journalism, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

democracy, free speech, jailbirds, Jordan, journalism, open societies

A button on the homepage of the JMI website links to a related website where the work-product of JMI’s own cadre of young journalists is published. Naturally, it’s in Arabic only; these contents are not meant for the Western sponsors and international partners. But intentionally or not, it is these pages – along with the invaluable help of Google Translate’s Arabic-to-English service – that shine a revealing light for non-Arabic speakers like us on what all that NGO money and European inspiration is enabling for this “unparalleled centre of excellence in the Middle East”.

If you visit it today, as we did, you will notice that on every page of the site, under the headline “Success Models”, a journalist called Tamimi is profiled. She is the murderer of my daughter Malki.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/by-their-role-models-shall-ye-know-them/#ixzz3LVVT9zaR – 12/10/2014


Duplicitous talk has been always thematic in the middle east where “sweet words” often mask evil intentions (or the Jews most certainly would not have left Gaza in 2005).

While past need not be prelude, and one hopes that one day it will not be so in the middle east, a bad rap sheet — as bad as it gets — does not pretty up without proof of sea change conversion, reformation, transformation.  Writers know the bad girl isn’t always bad and the good one not always good, but for purposes of the plot, the evil bitch is going to play out her script — the one programmed most deeply in her head — more likely than not.

Still, and beyond track records, there remains the matter of what is opined and reported today.

The accolade given a convicted terrorist, a mass murdering personality incapable of discerning innocents or noncombatants from military, may indicate detente, inclusion, or solidarity with a large force within Jordanian society.  The insight provided by Arnold Roth, the writer of the quotation presented at the top of this post, indeed may indicate how far Arab attitudes and beliefs about others and general contempt may be from global standards.

A few major difficult languages — Arabic, Chinese, Russian — have by being so defended their ethnolinguistic communities with a strength greater than mountains: democratic high-integrity ideas and news cannot obtain mass access without state-based approval, and despotic nefarious designs may be protected by the restriction of access to them by multilingual communities, often with vested interests either in business or defense.

That may change as the expansion of social relationships online necessarily add to machine translation human bilingual pairs and multilingual virtual communities.

Wildcard: within the context of a progressing open society, one that encourages freedom of expression, civic and civil responsibility, and an open discourse free of intimidation and one prizing “ethos, logos, and pathos” together in adversarial exchange, a community or state may start hearing what it does not wish to hear and either tolerate it and struggle with challenges presented, or, as has been true of Iran and Russia, it may revert to state-controlled media and the throttling of democracy.

The term “illiberal democracy” — there is no such thing — belies fascism beneath the banners of autocratic moral entrepreneurs, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood (who in Egypt made plain their agenda in that state and thereby inspired an extraordinary, deeply populated, and widespread revolt).  Wherever that kind of “putsch” takes place, reassertion of the military state may be welcomed, but over time, by and large, a good people, one inclined to promote the “humanity of humanity” and include themselves within rather than above it, may congregate and argue around central and familiar near universal ideals and values.

Additional Reference

Code of Ethics of the Jordan Media Community

http://www.jmijournalists.com/

# # #

Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ISIS, Islam, Jordan, religion

Loud and hysterical shouts of “Allah akbar”, “To Jihad”, “there is none save Allah and the Shiites are his foes”, “He who fights for Jihad is loved by Allah”, “The Sunnis are Allah’s beloved”, “Allah is our god and not theirs (the Shiites’)”, “The Shiite god is Satan”, “Death is better than humiliation”, “With blood and spirit will we redeem you, Islam”, “Jihad is our way”, “Jihad state forever”, “O Shiite rulers, we are coming for you”, were heard at the demonstration and to serve as proof of its serious intentions, shots were fired in the air.

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17392/next-goal-isis-jordan/#4LD4DctJ2PeE2CAj.99 – 7/1/2014.

Related: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17298/isis-one-step-closer-israel-jihadist-threat-looms/#BpZ7re2ZeZcegetz.97 6/29/2014.

# # #

Middle East Conflict – The Other Path Toward Peace – Glazov Interviews Zahran

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advocacy, Israel, Jamie Glazov, Jordan, Kerry Plan, Mudar Zahran, Palestinian, peace talks, politics, Zionism

An Hamas terrorist has more rights inside Israel than a Jordanian Palestinian citizen inside Jordan.

______

The Glazov Gang- Secular Palestinian Leader Denounces John Kerry’s Peace Plan. – YouTube – 18:44 – 2/8/2014.

______

Jamie Glazov Productions

Mudar Zahran :: Gatestone Institute

Jordanian Palestinian who writes for ‘Post’ indicted in Jordan for ‘inciting hatred’ | JPost | Israel News – 12/31/2013.

* * *

The sun doesn’t also rise.

In some parts of the world, it rises for the first time.

With time, and with the efforts of a courageous independent few, the hateful games played by spoilers against the Jewish people become more clear as to their true intents, and not only as regards Jews but as regards all others in their path.

Around 11:15:

This is all anti-Semitism 2.0 . . .  the problem for me as a leader of my people is we’re going to suffer because of this . . . as long as they push us into fighting against Israel and make the point that Israel is demonized and bad while we get killed and kill Israelis in the process . . . .  this is awful, and this is exactly what Mr. Kerry’s peace plan, actually King Abdullah’s peace plan, this is exactly what it’s going to bring . . . .

______

Muslim & Zionist! Kasim Hafeez: “Israel is the only liberal democracy in ME” – YouTube – 6/5/2012.

______

Arabs for Israel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islam in Israel and the Palestinian territories – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Muslim supporters of Israel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

* * *

“I’ve had a few instances even in Halifax when Muslims will say, look I may not agree with everything but its given me things to think about. That’s the start you know; its’ creating cracks in the lies they may have accepted as truth. So that’s one of the best feelings, when I do have Muslims and it’s made them think, challenged what they believe and their ready to take it further.”

Why a British Muslim of Pakistani Origin Defends Israel | United with Israel, n.d.

Related: The Muslim Zionist states his case | In The Paper | Comment and analysis | Mail & Guardian – 8/23/2013.

# # #

FTAC – Syria’s Agony and Related Misperception

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

commentary, Jordan, Lebanon, middle east, Palestinian refugees, political psychology, politics, relief, starvation, Syria, Yarmouk

No. It’s a mess. Back in 2007, by prior agreement with the Arab League, Lebanese Defense Forces were denied entry into the Nahr al-Bared camp to suppress the presence of an independent but al-Qaeda-minded force that had infiltrated the camp. Instead, it bombarded the camp with tank fire, corralled the entire residential population through the main gates, and the bused them to other camps. The LDF then razed Nahr al-Bared. Toward the very end, a handful of family members surrendered, and escaped, and the remnant fighters holed up in tunnels were, finally, bombed from the air.

My impression is the wealthy enjoy extraordinary wealth in the middle east and the equivalent of fellaheen live primarily at the mercy of the powerful. The common thread of “malignant narcissism” that binds both despot and mad revolutionaries into one recognizable category applies well to the tragedy unfolding in the Yarmouk camp. If anyone has ever been sickened by the historic photographs of starving Nazi concentration camp residents, the same outrage should apply in light of starvation in the Palestinian camp, even thought in their confined minds they may blame the Jews for what’s being done to them by Assad’s army and the infiltration and partial control of the opposed al-Qaeda affiliates. To the warring parties, the humanity trapped in the camp is but a useful poker chip. These kids may one day understand that it hasn’t been the Jews of the west that has been killing them but rather the divided powers most identified with them but equally callous toward them and careless of them.

The prompt for the comment had to do with the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp and its being made to starve between armies.

There has been some relief: Besieged Yarmouk camp in Syria finally gets some food – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 1/18/2014: “The delivery was made possible after an agreement was reached on Friday between representatives of Palestinian factions and Syrian rebels in the camp.”

One may imagine the leverage involved in those negotiations.

In the surface rhetoric, the rebels may claim having been merciful, but the public would do well to keep in mind that get to this point, they had had to have been unmerciful, and that neither better nor worse than Assad’s forces attempting to subdue the infiltration within the camp by starvation in the first place.

* * *

To another correspondent asking about the fate of Hamas in Gaza given the mixed ambitions and messages carried forward by its membership, some, I hear, who have joined the rebels against Assad, I suggested the perception of the axis needs to shift in the middle east, maintaining that the fighting-minded on several sides are more similar to one another in their ambitions and expectations — in their essential psychology — than those who have had the misfortune of being caught between armies or of having been trapped in time by regional powers who, indeed, manipulate and treat them primarily as servants unto themselves.

Related Reference

Iran cuts Hamas’ funding for backing Syrian opposition – Washington Times – 6/2/2013.

Egypt to Hamas: We’re Coming for You – Israel Today | Israel News – 1/19/2014.

# # #

Israel – Mudar Zahran – Jordan, A Palestinian State

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by commart in Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Israel, Jordan, Mudar Zahran, video

The Muslim Brotherhood if it takes control of Jordan will be much stronger than the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.

▶ ‫כנס שתי מדינות לשני עמים משני עברי הירדן (חלק 11)‬‎ – YouTube

Mudar Zahran promoted the above via social networks about 50 minutes ago: whom he addressed, where, and when was not provided.

Addendum: Mudar Zahran speaking at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, “Two States for Two Peoples on Two Banks of the Jordan River,” Dr. Arieh Eldad, Chair, Jerusalem, August 25, 2013.

Palestinian State in Jordan ‘Inevitable’ – Middle East – News – Israel National News – 8/26/2013.

______

In reference, I’ve provided links to Zahrans writings and related material as well as items focusing on Jordanian stability.

In addition, Zahran has noted the landing of a shell in Ramtha, Jordan within the past three hours.  Such mortar shell “spillover” (who knows with what intent it traveled?) has been a regular occurrence in Ramtha this past year.

Displaced Syrians in Jordan: ‘Syria Smells of Death’ – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 7/17/2012

Stray shells from Syria causing ‘sleepless nights’ for Ramtha residents | The Jordan Times – 4/30/2013.

Ramtha residents ‘on edge’ as Syria war rages | The Jordan Times – 8/26/2013.

Gov’t protests Syrian shell inside Jordan | The Jordan Times – 9/29/2013.

Additional Reference

By Mudar Zahran

Jordan Is Palestinian :: Middle East Quarterly – by Mudar Zahran – Winter 2012.

The Jewish Press » » Mudar Zahran – 8/29/2013.

The Jewish Press » » Mudar Zahran on why Jordan is Already a Palestinian State – 9/2/2013.

Writings by Mudar Zahran :: Gatestone Institute

Having to do with Jordan’s Stability

The Modern King in the Arab Spring – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic – 3/18/2013:

The king was flying himself to Karak, which is one of the poorer cities in a distressingly poor country, to have lunch with the leaders of Jordan’s largest tribes, which form the spine of Jordan’s military and political elite. More than half of all Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, with roots on the West Bank of the Jordan River, but the tribal leaders are from the East Bank, and the Hashemite kings have depended on East Bankers to defend the throne since the Hashemites first came to what was then called Transjordan from Mecca almost 100 years ago.

Jordan’s king, Assad and Iran | JPost | Israel News – 4/3/2013.

In A Rough Neighborhood, Jordan Clings To Its Stability : Parallels : NPR – 7/1/2013:

Jordan shares the region’s troubles: a faltering economy; rampant unemployment, especially among the young; and a popular demand for a say in how the country is governed.

“Jordan is stable, but you feel what is so unstable,” says Labib Kamhawi, describing the contradictions. He is the head of the National Front for Reform, a coalition of political groups and civil society organizations. “The decision-making process is without any input from the people.”

US military to boost Jordan defences amid Syria unrest – MIDDLE EAST – FRANCE 24 6/4/2013.

Jordan’s Stability Threatened by Syrian Refugee Crisis – US News and World Report – 7/16/2013:

Almost 2 million people have fled Syria since the civil war began in early 2011, according to U.N. numbers. By some estimates 800,000 of these poured into neighboring Jordan, a traditional safe haven for refugees from previously war-stricken regions such as Iraq and Palestine. This influx is taking a heavy toll on the Arab nation which by the end of the year may host as many as a million refugees.

Jordanian jihadists in Syria ‘could challenge Jordan’s stability’ | The Jordan Times – 9/10/2013:

Hassan Abu Hanieh, political analyst and expert on Islamic groups, said earlier this week that Jordanians are considered among the most prominent foreign nationalities fighting alongside Islamist forces in the anti-Assad rebellion, as hundreds have allegedly joined the radical and ultraconservative Salafist jihadist groups of Jabhat Al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, both Al Qaeda-affiliated, he said.

___

Rural poverty in Jordan – Rural Poverty Portal, n.d.

www.ifad.org/pub/other/jordan.pdf

___

Should Jordan Be a Palestinian State? :: Gatestone Institute – 3/19/2012.

Jordan is Palestine: Arieh Eldad’s Two-State Solution | FrontPage Magazine – 9/30/2011.

___

Other YouTube Clips Featuring Mudar Zahran

Interview by Michael Cohen – “Mudar Zahran – Peace Process Predictions – Posted to YouTube by ClipsNBlips, August 26, 2013.

“Mudar Zahran on Michael Coren” – Posted by JordanIsPalestine – April 27, 2012.

Conference Chair Aryeh Eldad

Related: “Professor Eldad: ‘There is a Third Way'”.  American for a Safe Israel, August 28, 2013.

# # #

Jordan’s Twinned Refugee Issue

13 Monday May 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

change, civil war, Jordan, Palestinians, refugees, Syria

The unspoken truth is that the Palestinians, the country’s largest ethnic group, have developed a profound hatred of the regime and view the Hashemites as occupiers of eastern Palestine—intruders rather than legitimate rulers. This, in turn, makes a regime change in Jordan more likely than ever. Such a change, however, would not only be confined to the toppling of yet another Arab despot but would also open the door to the only viable peace solution—and one that has effectively existed for quite some time: a Palestinian state in Jordan.

Zahran, Mudar.  “Jordan is Palestinian.” Pages 3-12, Middle East Quarterly, Wiinter 2012.

Posted to YouTube December 7, 2012, here’s a clip titled “Angelina Jolie Visits Syria, Jordan Border:

I’ll make it two clips with Ms. Jolie:

http://unhcr.org/v-505053a86 (also from winter 2012).

(Source page for the above: http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486566.html).

Current UNHCR page tallies “Total Persons of Concern” in Jordan as 431,799.

The displaced, whether from the 1948 war launched against Israel or from the latest horrors taking place today in Syria, carry with them their attitudes and beliefs about themselves (“self-concept”) and attitudes toward the greater world around them.  That’s something to think about as the Syria fled has been irrevocably altered by the methods of war chosen by the Assad regime — e.g., flying air strikes against whole communities; killing noncombatants (in one parlance) / innocents (in another) without distinction from armed or known challengers; and displacing millions without accommodation.

Whether the Assads stay or go, eventually, and in part or as a whole, the Syria that existed as the enthusiasms of the “Arab Spring” approached is gone: whatever may be there, it’s missing 3.4 million of its citizens, either internally displaced or refugee.

# # #

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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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