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Tag Archives: medieval v modern

Ukraine, Russia, and NATO’s Prevarication

10 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

medieval v modern, Russian Autocracy & Barbarism, Ukraine & NATO Accession, Ukraine v Russia

ржд, 10.04.2021 pic.twitter.com/oj6DCHVC2B

— IgorGirkin (@GirkinGirkin) April 10, 2021
“Russian Railways, 04/10/2021”

.@SecBlinken: мав чудову розмову з міністром закордонних справ Німеччини @HeikoMaas. Ми повинні протистояти разом російським провокаціям щодо України. https://t.co/MvXuFjbuBj

— U.S. Embassy Kyiv (@USEmbassyKyiv) April 10, 2021

Given that Vladimir Putin continues to annoy the west with displays of feudal-medieval political methods, starting with disinformation and rumor mongering and putting a point on it with hybrid warfare and passportization, NATO would seem well advised to hasten Ukraine’s accession to its defense community.


Today’s Ukraine is not only a security recipient, but a security donor in its region. Ukraine has been successfully countering Russian aggression for almost seven years now, protecting not only itself but a wider region between the Baltic and Black Seas. Ukraine has gained invaluable experience deterring Russian aggression on the traditional military battlefield and in the realm of hybrid warfare, which extends from cyber to disinformation and beyond. These factors would appear to make Ukraine a strong candidate for NATO membership.

That is the rational side to answering President Zelenskyy’s question. However, there is also an emotional side to consider. Perhaps the best way to understand this dialectic is by adopting a neuroscientific approach and exploring both the rational and the emotional approaches to Ukraine’s future membership in NATO.

Kuleba, Dmytro. “Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?” Atlantic Council, February 16, 2021.

That emotional side accesses the same arguments the KGB has woven into the Palestinian narrative to see Fatah and Hamas elites — and all their cousins — at once loot the refugees of UN funds (and much else) while claiming their defense (see the rest of Dmytro Kuleba’s insightful essay as noted above and listed below). The arguments — essentially forms of “Accusation in a Mirror” — have been the same that have excused numerous vain and ruthless personalities on their way to establishing brutal dictatorships under cover of popular “revolutions” that bypass always those who believed they were going to get some attention at last.

In that Russian autocratic power from the Imperial Period through the Bolshevik Revolution with its imperious, omnipresent, and totalitarian Party, and right through to the rein of “Vertical of Power” Putin has long played this game against Russians, what makes Ukrainian Russians think the establishment of greater Russian military presence would actually defend either their economic or ethnic interests? Most would be dumb and duped to believe the malarkey passed along from Russia’s traumatized and trauma-producing and now perpetuated medieval political tradition.

Drawing from my impression of Euromaidan seven years ago, Ukrainians wish to be democratic, lawful, and modern — not fodder for barbaric medieval throwbacks inclined to threaten geopolitical space with massed forces or through incursion install corrupt elites inclined to be just as ruthless with Russian speakers as with Ukrainian ones.

I’m sure Alexei Navalny would have something to say about that were he in good health and free to speak.

Related Online

Al Jazeera. “Russia warns NATO against deploying troops to Ukraine.” April 2, 2021.

Kramer, Andrew E. “Russian Troop Movements and Talk of Intervention Cause Jitters in Ukraine.” The New York Times, April 9, 2021.

Holodomor 1932-33: Famine Genocide in Ukraine.

Khurshudyan, Isabelle, David L. Stern, Loveday Morris, and John Hudson. “On Ukraine’s doorstep, Russia boosts military and sends message of regional clout to Biden.” The Washington Post, April 10, 2021.

Kuleba, Dmytro. “Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?” Atlantic Council, February 16, 2021.

Macias, Amanda M. “U.S. concerned about Russian troop movements near Ukraine, discussing regional tensions with NATO allies.” CNBC, April 8, 2021.

NATO. “Relations with Ukraine.” November 11, 2020.

Sabbagh, Dan. “Ukraine urges NATO to hasten membership as Russian troops gather.” The Guardian, April 6, 2021.

Simmons, Ann M. “Russia Warns of Full-Scale War in Eastern Ukraine, Blames Kyiv.” The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2021.

YanukovychLeaks National Project.

Wikipedia. “Ukraine-NATO relations”.


Posted by A Whisper to a Roar, “I Am a Ukrainian”, February 10, 2014.

https://liveuamap.com/en/2021/9-april-military-echelon-filmed-in-rostovnadonu

“Military echolon filmed in Rostov-na-Donu”, April 9, 2021, 47°13′N 39°41′E.


–33–

FTAC: Medieval v Modern – An Observation

05 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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absolute power, Absolute Sovereignty, Democracy & Humanism, Freedom & Integrity, medieval v modern, Sino-Russo Compact, totalitarianism

I don’t want to spend too much time — or too much of your time — reinforcing what has become thematic on this blog: “Medieval v Modern”. However, there’s no evading forces backed by powerful wills intent on producing feudal power with extraordinary modern defense and intelligence technologies that lend themselves to the nightmares of totalitarian control.

Here’s the note.

From the Awesome Conversation


Both China and Russia practice and promote political absolutism in governance. More than convenience has been involved in their relationship — and in China’s stepping in to keep Tehran in the oil money it uses to fund its promotion of aggression by IRGC and proxies and further creation of chaos in the middle east. Regarding China’s threats to western power in this “hybrid warfare” age — so underhanded! — the smorgasbord is wide but not yet too strong.

A Short Note on China’s Contemporary Political Sins (11/27/2020)

In the process of blogging, I’ve found a convenient axis in “Medieval Absolutism v Modern Democratic Distribution of Power” (Medieval v Modern, essentially) and believe the New Nationalism and bents toward autocracy and authoritarianism (and corruption) run together. In that way, Xi, Putin, and Trump had been on similar pages in a rule book that doesn’t exist. The west for several hundred years has repeatedly turned away from Absolutism and the related admiration of singular and unquestionable authority. While I am much less familiar with China’s civilization than with Russia’s (and I may not get beyond tenderfoot with that), I would see the continued binding of Sino-Russo interests as inimical to the western path, its energies, and the greater spirituality that has made much of the bloc wondrously productive before the backsliding of some toward the feudal mode.


Feudal societies are never democratic, just, or humane. In Russia, the absolute power of the sovereign has covered the ownership — what else would you call it? — of persons and property as alike. When Russian air forces have bombed hospitals in Syria (and White Helmets who arrive to rescue the injured and retrieve the dead), it has been without regard to the humanity of the persons, helpless patients, caring visitors, the doctors, caught in that hell. The dismal character of that brand of leadership now paints its own horrifying portrait for viewing around the world daily.

China has sent is final message to the world with its own production of a panopticonic society that can view all of the people all the time through their phones (conversations, locations, purchases) without challenge or question. Great Britain with is public monitoring cameras and Snowden with his revelations regarding how far technology has come may suggest some worrisome potentials — and all gets hashed in freedom in the west through the open press — but China has gone the distance with its inherently paternal and degrading assessment of its human complement — and don’t let the Communist banner fool you: the state has become wealthy with global trade — and the western portion a large part of it — and it has been minting billionaires like no other state on earth while engaged in questionable international development and lending practices (see the above noted “contemporary political sins” post).

The “superpowers”, once defined by their nuclear capability, have on this one life-producing planet no choice but to compete or wrestle with one another over money, political philosophy, and both the character of power and the nature of our humanity. As an American, I promote an earnest freedom of conscience and moral agency and leave to pursue individual interests in what should be a competitive and meritocratic society even though it has its “feudalism” in the private sector in which family and social interests combine. Also as an American, one needs must endorse and support integrity and transparency in governance and protest, question, and resist efforts to install family interests and “great leaders” who may then (as Viktor Orban has done in Hungary, as Donald Trump appears to have attempted in the United States) choose to bend and twist their “democratic” states into private fiefs.

–33–

Blinken Speaks

03 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Politics

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Tags

American Issues, Antony Blinken, Biden Administration, Defining American Issues, medieval v modern, Modern America

Live at posting, March 3, 2021.

I may not agree with what Secretary of State Antony Blinken has to say, but I very much agree with his defining the issues (again, if not the Biden Administration’s stance) and his civility. America’s most powerful political machine — the White House — has returned to democracy, effort, and meaningful work.

Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/11/27/a-short-note-on-chinas-contemporary-political-sins/ .

–33–

FTAC Verbatim: American Laziness & Intellectual Poisoning

26 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Tags

American Anti-Intellectualism, medieval v modern, Moscow's Active Measures, Russian Mafia State

From the Awesome Conversation


https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/01/fbi-antifa-and-swamp-gas/
That something may be believed doesn’t mean it exists, at least not in a format known to investigators.
Re. BLM: of the three founders, Patrisse Cullors has — or has had — issues related to the Far Out Left’s group-think with the Palestinians and related BDS. BDS has been well debunked by representatives of the Far Left, i.e., i.e., at least Finkelstein and Chomsky — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/ (as much has been shared with Ms. Cullors, but where her hinge is in relation to the demystification of Palestinian myth, I don’t know). The Israel Action Network has an in-depth PDF on BLM: https://www.jcouncil.org/sites/default/files/documents/BLM%20and%20M4BL%20%28002%29%206.30%20.pdf For the most part, Blacks and Jews share minority status in the United States and may be regarded as equally worth lynching (more or less) by the White Supremacist faction of more the general Far White Right politics that drifted into the Republican quarter with the development of the Civil Rights and Great Society movements and programs of the mid-early 1960s.
The Far Out Left flows down from Russia’s Soviet Communist Era and remains likely to ignorantly fly and sport the image of “Che” — or Red-Green art. Look up Danish illustrator Rune Agerhus who may be in Yemen with the Houthis these days.
Where the center — moderate and reasoning — has not held in American politics, the drift toward OLD extremism has been distinct and polarizing.
Rx for the confused (or prepared to be bigoted): dive into real intellectual and political history.
Useful reference regarding our long-lived enmity with Stalinesque political psychology:
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/22/russian-active-measures-donald-trump-and-either-evil-or-gullible-americans-or-both/
Moscow’s “Active Measures” programs and other assaults — critical western cybersystems hacking — remain quite active.


Related Online

“The Party of Lincoln” Swapped Roles with the Invasion of the Dixiecrats

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dixiecrat | https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south

Accusation in a Mirror

Kenneth L. Marcus, Accusation in a Mirror, 43 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 357 (2012).
Available at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/luclj/vol43/iss2/5 (a good reminder of the adage, “He who points the finger has three pointing back at himself”).

Active Measures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Measures_Working_Group | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

While the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU) dissolved into history, more or less, on December 25, 1991, what emerged in the character of the Russian Federation could not be called “democratic” in any modern sense. The renewal of the Russian State under Vladimir Putin’s aegis has been regarded — by those who have looked! — as feudal as mafia and heartbreaking for Russians in the breadth and depth of related state-bound corruption. Putin challenger Navalny’s nationalism now lends itself to national pride but with the hurdle of overcoming Russia’s complex networks of undeniably criminal relationships.

Here is another form of “Active Measures” – whether or not by intention, a true “Manchurian Candidate” and President: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/07/22/russian-active-measures-donald-trump-and-either-evil-or-gullible-americans-or-both/

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

In which political realm do you wish to live — medieval with ignorance (and ignorant mobs) serving political absolutism? Or modern with democracy propelled by higher integrity and empirically reasoning souls?

Your choice.

Americans now floundering in the vicinity of the Far White Right have got to be some kind of anti-intellectual dumb and lazy to avoid substantial — and substantiated — tracts online related to broad cultural, intellectual, and political history. Exactly that, however, appears to have happened — and to be happening — with the continued defense of Trump’s largely miserably (politically) arrested and fixated “conservative” (in Self-Labeling Only [SLO]) and now self-distilling medieval base (for support of that assertion, watch the volunteered testimonials still arriving at the old “Republicans Voting Against Trump” cum “Republican Accountability Project” on YouTube).

–33–

FTAC: Dumb Americans and Racial Herding

24 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

far out left, Far White Right, medieval v modern, USA Historic Revisionism, USA Race Relations

Appearing earlier on this blog: “FTAC: The American Quilt, the Confederate Flag and Southern Pride, and The Soviet-Style Erasing of History” (June 13, 2020).

Inspiration for this relay: I had said, “We were doing just fine with North-South peace and firecracker sales and southern rock” when the meaning of the Confederate flag was revived as a symbol of southern bigotry and secession (and slavery). My conversational partner said, “That works if you’re a privileged WHITE MALE! If you’re a Black Male it’s FUCKED!”

From the Awesome Conversation


That’s only if the Black Male thinks he’s Fucked.

Let me show you something about North and South —

Black and White?

Posted to YouTube by US National Archives, September 6, 2013 and narrated by Carl T. Rowen who was in 1963 Director of the U.S. Information Agency.

History walks slowly, and while slavery may have been done after Lincoln’s handling of the matter and segregation finished by the Great Society and LBJ, it’s understood that some evil currents and ruthless bigots hold out a long time even while time grinds them down.

With black and white bigots still at play in OUR country and some foreign agent provocateur interested in watching the United States of America come apart — and possibly just some dumb people, political simpletons, really, swallowing intellectual poison, the Confederate Flag laid to rest for war — it was created to clarify who was who in General Lee’s engagements — and made into a generalized American symbol of a rebellious spirit — has been re-contextualized BACKWARD as a living symbol of hate.

What the hell are we doing back with the mentalities of the 1930s and the 1950s?

A little more that might be associated with the now thankfully passed “Trumpian Detour”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L._K._Smith

This guy was a bigot — and it turns out a lonely one too:

I think we’re being moved around by forces that would like to herd us back into malleable medieval mobs and somehow inclined to Think Black! Think White!

Yeah, well, Think Integrated, Multicultural, Rainbow — that’s far more our Real Cultural Politic.

Just say no to historical revisionism from Far Out Left spoilers and Far White Right idiots.


Related and Live at Posting

Russia’s Active Measures programming has turned out a serious matter as has disinformation driven by domestic financial and political interests in the United States — just have another look at Donald Trump and check out the company his company has kept over many years (some Craig Unger and H. B. Glushakow might be helpful for that).

Live at posting, February 24, 2021.

–33–

Bolton on Biden and Renewal of the JCPOA

19 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Iran, Philosophy, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

JCPOA, medieval v modern, Past-Present-Future, Western Civilizational Project

@POTUS Putin: 19th C.; Ali: 7th C.; Trumpsters: 1930s. Why would you want to march forward into the past as well?

Turn around.

We face implacable feudal enemies in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, and we're forward of where you were in 2016.

Muscle up.

Stand firm.

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) February 19, 2021
Bolton, John. “Boris Johnson holds the future of the fatally flawed Iran deal in his hands.” The Telegraph, February 18, 2021.

Political deja vu — The United States has been here before with its “arch conservatives” and cowardly isolationist and possibly related anti-Semitic and paranoid tendencies. For reference without much ado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L._K._Smith | https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/16/archives/gerald-lk-smith-dead-anticommunist-crusader.html |


Among the slashed and burnt of The Great Liar’s One-Term Presidency, John Bolton stands out for greater backbone, discretion, experience, and integrity.

I believe Bolton when he suggests he leveraged his experience in national security to participate in the Trump Administration in order to produce his — not Trump’s — brand of guidance. As Trump required greater sycophancy, Bolton would also leave the malignant narcissist’s den.


The Republican Party, once the Party of the visionary Abraham Lincoln, has in the 20th Century seen equally embarrassing and shamefully self-centered days. That has become something for critically reasoning and independent Americans to take into consideration as the West with its ideas about compassion, freedom, goodness, and real human productivity faces an anachronistic, feudal, and implacable enemy in Moscow and, in post-Cold War association with it, Beijing and Tehran as well.

Tehran, worn by its own conflict-promoting behaviors over time and by sanctions, has shown no signs of retreat in relation to its nuclear missile and warhead programs nor its will, repeated with dulling frequency, to see Israel and the west destroyed for its own marauding and politically absolute ends. Where has the Republican Party (with its increasingly familiar white supremacist attachments) really stood on the Moscow-Tehran relationship? Where has it stood with regard to the rise of the proto-fascist New Nationalism in the United States as well as within NATO (have a look into authoritarian and feudal urges in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey)?

Parochial and rapacious _reactionary_ conservatism were very much part of the past too. https://t.co/0zJrDyZEUG Roosevelt had to defeat the America First Party and related supporters (like Lindbergh) to align with Great Britain (https://t.co/xlfBpl6cxf).

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) February 19, 2021

Here is a junction in time in which the United States, once leader of the free world — the modern open democratic world, either stands firm against politically retrograde but technologically sophisticated states or slips backward itself into some system of immense power and wealth lording over a hapless constituency whose political voice becomes so much noise to those working the levers for their own enrichment according to class and degrees of ruthlessness.

–33–

Books: Reading Highly Recommended: What Americans Defend When Defending America

17 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

American Exceptionalism, American foreign policy, American History and Worldview, American International Relations, American Optimism, FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, medieval v modern, Westrern Realpolitik

For the American President’s navigation: the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain; the development of an expansionist imperial Japan; polarization in the United States between the forces of self-serving fascist sentiment related to business and popular interest in the Far Left answers to abuses generated in Far Right circles.

Add the global Great Depression.

I have not yet reached the middle of this eye-opening and insightful history, but the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “working the issues” rings clear and sound for this day.

I have made much and will continue to make much of the tensions between politically medieval and modern worlds, and my own energies and hopes are with the modern world, its potential great breadth in personal freedoms, and its obligations as steward of the earth and humanity.

Whoever you may be and wherever you are in the world — and whether you enjoy or have to make yourself do this kind of reading (smile) — this volume will set the benchmark for understanding the United States and the western civilizational project in the appreciation and defense of humanity.

–33–

FTAC: Yemen: Houthi: One Question

09 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Agents of Iran, Houthi Zeitgeist, medieval v modern, Post-Soviet Communism, Post-Soviet Dictatorship, Post-Soviet Socialism, Soviet-Style Tragedy, Tehran's Proxies, terrorism, Yemen

From the Awesome Conversation


— Subsidy backlash. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which had extended to Yemen a $550 million loan premised on promises of economic reforms, Hadi’s government lifted fuel subsidies in 2014. The Houthi movement, which had attracted support beyond its base with its criticisms of the UN transition, organized mass protests demanding lower fuel prices and a new government. Hadi’s supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated party, al-Islah, held counterrallies.

Houthi takeover. The Houthis captured much of Sanaa by late 2014. Reneging on a UN peace deal, they consolidated control of the capital and continued their southward advance. Hadi’s government resigned under pressure in January 2015 and Hadi later fled to Saudi Arabia. —

The Houthi act like post-Soviet Communists and appear aligned with the theocratic and thieving regime in Tehran.

Why President Biden would de-list the organization from the designated terrorist roster . . . please, tell me.


Related Online

Robinson, Kali. “Yemen’s Tragedy: War, Stalemate, and Suffering.” Council on Foreign Relations, last updated February 5, 2021.

Swofford, Tammy. “Yemen Revolution, September 21.” The Last English Prince, September 17, 2017.

–33–

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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."

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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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