• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: political psychology

FTAC: Beijing, Moscow, Tehran & The Great Leap Into Stone

30 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Political Psychology, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

east-west competition, malignant narcissism, Old Illiberal Power, political psychology

With two critical Iranian leaders assassinated — Qasem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — and an American President determined to blunt the tip of the spear aimed against the west, the prospect for “fireworks” appears that much closer. Ever big on packing the Big Picture into a small space, I’ve done that here with ramble and signal but not chaos. Old Communist and Islamist politics persist in the latest states of affairs although the old Communists have produced breathtakingly wealthy elites and the chief among Islamists has been long known as a thief enriched by the plundering of ordinary Iranians.

From the Awesome Conversation


Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran represent an anti-western alliance committed to political absolutism by all and any means necessary. At least two of the three, Moscow and Tehran, represent also kleptocracy (see Reuters’ “Assets of the Ayatollah”) or mafia-type power (reference Ben Judah or Luke Harding), and together they keep the west bothered. Tehran, in malign narcissistic fashion, has covered its own crimes with deflections and dogma–it’s not strength that propels its fantasies of nuclear annihilation but regime weakness expressed through medieval fantasy. The clinical, dispassionate, and modern and prudent west may be building down Tehran’s capability, confidence, and coordination for aggression.

The old “Red-Green Alliance” is in the mix too with some persistent communist cant woven into the Houthi challenge in Yemen. The World Peace Council persists — as do graduates of Patrice Lamumba University — and the pack may view Tehran as an alley in thuggish political fashion. More important than political dogma: an heroic image to be created by marching forward into glorious past while holding each fantasy in place by main force.

Stated by Trita Parsi in 2017 (yes, just a quick look-see on my part): “Another emerging threat comes from Iran’s domestic politics. Presidential elections next month may put Iran’s foreign policy back into the hands of the country’s hard-liners, who, much like Mr. Trump, define their country in opposition to the world” (“The Coming Crisis With Iran”, The New York Times, April 20, 2017).

“Malignant Narcissism” begins with “Narcissistic Mortification”, i.e., the humiliation of the “Great Leader” (somewhere in childhood). Why everyone else has to be made a part of the compensation (measured by the Great One’s estimation of his own “Narcissistic Supply”), I’ve no idea but that the worst of the worst needs must have both an adoring audience and a horrified one.


Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran have bent themselves on feudal and medieval lusts for the conquest or control of their targets by any means necessary and all available, and then some, and each has demonstrated a remarkable political anomie in the handling of those affected by their strategies. Beijing has been making a name for itself as a culturally and politically predatory lender; Moscow: live fire “demonstrations” all over Syria to goose its defense industry sales; and Iran — just have a look at how it has treated the places in which it has chosen to facilitate aggression, especially in Yemen and Syria.

What to call the present Sino-Russo-Iranian cooperation against the west?

Tripartite Imperialism.

###

FTAC: Riff on the Sensitivity of the Malign Narcissist to Cartoons – Basics

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

malignant narcissism, Narcissistic Process, political power, political psychology, psychology of dictatorship

Inspiration for the Post

The other party’s recollection of the assassination of political cartoonists.

From the Awesome Conversation


Despots — malignant narcissists — live for “unlimited narcissistic supply”, i.e., the adoration of the public as if a god.

Here’s a portal from my blog:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/

Generally speaking, I believe that excessive and malignant narcissistic process takes off with damage early in life, and there’s a term for that: “Narcissistic Mortification”. The humiliation of the child, negative response to what is good, etc., will do it, and if it’s really bad, the personality will cover the damage (hiding the shame) and split an heroic image for self-concept that may be built with boasts, brags, lies, and the deep and tireless manipulation of others around himself.

Pause: narcissism is natural — most of us take pride in our internal motivations, our appearance, the things we do, and some of the things we acquire. Narcissism is not a bad thing but part of a healthy life. Moreover, not all narcissists are evil; many are reparative — we’re natural do-gooders, lovers, husbands, wives, shepherds, and stewards of what comes into our separate domains. We care, and goodness, integrity, and truth matter.

The malignant — the despotic — put on a show.

The fireman sets the fire, so he may show up to put it out and obtain admiration for his heroism.

Related look-up: “Moscow Apartment Bombings”.

“Gas lighting” goes with a malign narcissism as may “messianic delusions of grandeur” — also loss of those boundaries and limits that account for respectful privacy and natural and normal legal and social tendencies. The malignant lose a good part of their humanity on their way to “greatness” — and their greatness is in their heroic image.

After all these years, I don’t know who else has been mining this seam in relation to political psychology.

I had started with a book by a former CIA profiler — Post, Jerrold M. Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behavior. Forward by Alexander L. George. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

We may today know more about dictators — how they tick — than we do their followers, but some of the mechanics are known too, and much of the existence of each distills to force, leverage, and money that provides for measures of bribery, induction of dependency, intimidation, and patronage. The inner circles and close followers of dictators would seem generally in on the game with the greater public bought off, fooled, impressed, mollified, and patronized.

Most hated by the dictator: a free press that more accurately conveys his reflection and does so broadly, publicly, universally.


Related Online

Burke, Jason. “The murder that shattered Holland’s liberal dream.” The Guardian, November 7, 2004.

Gathara, Patrick. “The death of the political cartoon: A pillar of journalism is being destroyed by oppressive government, online mobs and profit-oriented media moguls.” Al Jazeera, July 2, 2019.

Hart, Benjamin. “4 Cartoonists Killed in Attack on Charlie Hebdo Newspaper.” HuffPost, December 6, 2017.

Rowson, Martin. “The New York Times political cartoon ban is a sinister and dangerous over-reaction.” The Guardian, June 12, 2019.

Stack, Liam. “London Police Reopen Investigation Into 1987 Killing of Palestinian Cartoonist.” The New York Times, August 29, 2017.

Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” H.C. Anderson Centret.

Wikipedia. “Naji al-Ali”.

–33–

FTAC: Despots – Different Talks –> Same Walk!

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

absolute power, authoritarianism, despotism, dictatorship, dignity, freedom, humanism, malignant narcissism, political psychology

Different talks — same walk! When it comes to dictators, all are malignant narcissists.

Many want to keep repeating old arguments, especially, yawn, “communism v capitalism” but the truth is more like “sweet words — foul deeds”.

Add incitement, the role played by anti-Semitic cant and libel by despots through the ages.

In the eastern tradition too — I have in mind the Golden Horde — there appears to have been no difference in treatment between persons and property, and, in fact, for some (reference Richard Pipes books on Russian history) proof of sovereignty might be made to lie in the senseless destruction of either with impunity. And I would cite as another characteristic of the “authoritarian” breed the ability to visit suffering on others at will and with impunity.

On the street, they’re bullies; in office, presidents for life.


–33–

FTAC: A Note on President Trump and the Prospect of a Feudal Modernity

11 Monday Jun 2018

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

authoritarianism, democracy, fascism, leadership, malignant narcissism, malignarc, malignarcs, medieval vs modern, medieval worldview, New Nationalism, political psychology

Trump’s support of Israel is about respect for tribal identification and the narcissism related to it. It matches Putin’s views of a renewed and sustained feudal world — a feudal modernity — featuring absolute authority, fated and unquestionable, placed in the future rather than left to history.

Accompanying that vision: a low-intensity war of re-conquest in Crimea, Ukraine and the tragic obscenity that has been made of Syria.

Most of us carry what we value of our pasts with us through life, but we try also to leave our futures open for good things to come.

These “malignarcs” (malignant narcissists), by comparison, wish to force the future forward into the past. Their personal visions — and behavior — have been dreadful, myopic, selfish as have been the habits, in lesser and greater measures, of caliphs, dictators, emperors, and feudal lords through time: for the mafia-type power and wealth, their methods, willful and thuggish, have been more known to history than those of democracy.  However, our Mr. Trump has a powerful employer and a job defining his position, and whether he personally likes it or not, he is duty-bound to promote democracy — the systems of checked and distributed power — against the political absolutism known to dictators.


As has been my habit with BackChannels, the titles promise greater and lengthier articles while format and inclination keep the verbiage down to a paragraph bloc.

Related on this blog —

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/04/04/ftac-reinforcement-reflexive-control-islamic-terrorism-and-perceived-threat-newest-nationalism-and-renewed-feudal-conflict/

With the public focused on the air assault of “9/11” (see the gems placed in reference) and numerous “Allahu Abkar” attacks worldwide across many years, the patriotic reaction has permanently altered the west’s political and security societies — and yet we wish to defend authentic democracies against the potential for the rise of the Orwellian police state and with it, indeed, a “new nobility”, an invisible, unimpeachable, unquestionable (“military-industrial”) aristocracy.

Reference: Related on the Web

http://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6 – 6/10/2014

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/02/security-brief-russia-providing-arms-to-taliban-chinas-global-kidnapping-campaign/ – 4/2/2018

–33–

FTAC: The Wisdom of Holocaust Remembrance

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by commart in A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dictatorship, genocide, Holocaust Remembrance, political psychology, wisdom

We remember Pharaoh. We remember Haman. We should remember what Hitler did and with the greater wisdom that should come of traumatic experience. We have something today that earlier generations could not have imagined grasping and incorporating in their survival: we have ventured into the psychology attending evil; we have made ourselves deeply cognizant of the nuts and bolts associated with dictatorships and anti-Semitism (and we know how those two travel together — and are traveling together now). We are aware of dangers and done with denial. We should have greater foresight. If that’s not a blessing, I don’t what is.


–33–

FTAC: Essential Truth and the Palestinians

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dictatorship, magical thinking, malignant narcissism, middle east conflict, Palestinians, political absolutism, political psychology

Prompt: the host had assigned a loose title about “ethnic cleansing” to historian Benny Morris.  “Thought leaders” on the web will either traffic in earnest speech (when earnest) or make themselves worthless with disingenuous and false claims.


Cultures engage in “magical thinking” in their fairy tales, legends, and myths. They are part of the spirit of the place. Engaging in the same in the context of study produces only “revisionism” favorable either to the narcissist in the mirror or the one in power. Differentiation between what is true — and what a joy it would be for Palestinians to know what is true! — and what seems (!) flattering and patronizing plays a major part in the installation and maintenance of the world’s dictatorships. Among the _malign_, the narcissist can never be wrong.


From other and prior portions of the same conversation:

_The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine_ was authored by Ilan Pappe — this represents his reputation today:

https://newrepublic.com/article/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian

***

Benny Morris, by comparison, has been a tough “New Historian”. This is his page on Amazon (USA): https://www.amazon.com/Benny-Morris/e/B001IQX8V8/

I have been through _1948_, not the others, but even so it mentions the Jewish neighbors who begged Arabs to stay home while Arab forces encouraged flight before their own onslaught.

Efraim Karsh — _Palestine Betrayed_ — may be worth a mention as well.

Again, the Russo-Arabian “framing” of the conflict would seem after 70 years of insistent repetition on the way to being . . . found out.


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

In the same ballpark

” . . . to hate and resist occupation and occupiers . . .” would be to hate and resist Fatah and Hamas who insist on their own power while depriving Palestinians of their vote, their right to assemble in opposition to either, and of their right to speak freely, openly, without fear.

–33–

FTAC: BackChannels Comments on Video, “The Greatest Revenge of All Times”

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cultural psychology, jealousy, locus of control, mass murder, Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, political psychology, psychopathology, revenge, self-concept, self-esteem, suicide terrorism

Posted on Facebook by “Brotality” about six months ago:


The pilot’s success in becoming a pilot should have been Gabriel Pasternak’s revenge.

All else: common murder.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/05/15/nancy-hartevelt-kobrin-listening-reflecting-comprehending-speaking/

Fair for lookup: “maternal cameo”.

Kobrin’s a little challenging for reading, but the manner of taking others into one’s own suicide in suicide terrorism has been well documented and explored.

Everyone has complaints: perhaps the pilot in the above video should have asked himself for greater insight into his own behavioral repertoire, so as not to have alienated so many others — and then blamed them for his continuing his own unhappiness.

Of course some parts of the world grind against us, but our souls battle back with constructive ends and ideals.

While the pilot had found fault with everyone on that plane, the same passengers may have missed the pilot who could just as well have gone on to tweak his “ugly duckling” music into a beautiful swan — then too, with the money he must have been making as a pilot, imagine if he had used his new wealth to attend to more children like himself, how amazing the things they may have gone on to do.

Instead, he took himself out of the picture and drew the hate and want of revenge from all of the families and friends associated with all of the passengers on board his flight.


Regarding the pilot’s “awful music” —

http://www.georgecrumb.net/about/


“Brotality” promotes itself on facebook as an entertainment organization.

BackChannels readers are welcome to look them up and drawn their own conclusions.

The Urban Dictionary offers two or three definitions today of the term “brotality“, among them this gem — “When a real hard ass bro kills someone, mortal kombat style. ‘Bro’ being the prefix and ‘tality’ being the suffix.”

–33–

 

 

FTAC: Poli-Sci / Poli-Psy / Poli-Phi: Evolution

09 Tuesday Jan 2018

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

evolution, political philosophy, political psychology, self-reliant human community

Inspiration: the argument that we are as we are, and we are ferocious and savage in our appetites, desires, and jealousies.  For proof: have a glance at the “Middle East Conflict”.

My response —


I’m more hopeful.

Civilizational establishment and change involve unique conditions and experiences in place and in time. While we’re fond of saying, “The more things change, the more things remain as they were”, we’re really not happy dragging our yesterdays into our tomorrow’s if and when we’re aware of other and better possibilities.

Whatever the impediments have been in addressing nature, including our own, experience and biological evolution works through us as well: as a species, we may more incline toward conscience and empathy over time despite the demonstrated savagery of earlier eras.

On another day, I may have said such things were to be left to God,l nature, and the universe.  On this one: perhaps we are in some ways responsible for how we manage ourselves and our conditions as a species dependent on the health of the earth itself and on ourselves for the qualities experienced in living.


Alive in the background: Aesop’s wisdom having to do with the character of the dangerous organism, scorpion or snake; however, there’s also Thomas Berry’s emerging earth spirituality: with the power to destroy our species-wide platform for existence, we may have also the obligation and ability — very adult thing that ability with science and technology shaped by concern — to be careful with Mother Earth as well.

Regarding “Qualities of Living (QOL)”

Dimensions

Biological / Physical

Economic / Distributed Degree of Freedom and Security

Psychological / Spiritual

The “QOL” concept needs a build-out to meet up with both the Freedom House audience and those who read article with titles like “Best Countries in Which to Retire”.

Still: let QOL stand x Area Defined, from community to region, and what takes place within the same over some measure of time.

Civil services and reporters naturally look into the “negatives” of space — crime rates, for example — while the development and planning communities also consider the architecture and engineering of environments for habitation.  The end of so much effort — and widespread across time — should be improvements in good and secure living for all, not decay back down into greater anomie, conflict, crime, dictatorship, and living hell itself.

–33–

← Older posts
  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • A Note on the Demise of the Medieval Rus
  • Victims of the German Democratic Republic: Brief Reflection on Germany’s Forgotten Internal Immigrants
  • FTAC: Big Picture Made Small: Moscow’s Narrative Arc from the End of the Cold War
  • A Note on Russia’s Criminal President and the Long Effort to Destroy Western Political Coherence, Cohesion, and Will
  • Two Twitter Spears
  • A Note on Putin’s Unbridled War on Integrity

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Qualities of Living (QOL)
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Guinea
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

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.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • BackChannels
    • Join 761 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar