11 Wednesday Jun 2014
Tags
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/06/10/The-Next-Great-Movement-Muslim-Womens-Liberation
Chair Ibn Warraq called for “an age of Enlightenment. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical, and intolerant, and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality, and truth.”
09 Monday Jun 2014
Related: U.S. Department of State. “Foreign Military Financing Account Summary.” Current
The United States has provided economic and military aid, respectively, to Jordan since 1951 and 1957. Total U.S. aid to Jordan through FY2013 amounted to approximately $13.83 billion. Levels of aid have fluctuated, increasing in response to threats faced by Jordan and decreasing during periods featuring political differences or reductions of aid worldwide. On September 22, 2008, the U.S. and Jordanian governments reached an agreement whereby the United States agreed to provide a total of $660 million in annual foreign assistance to Jordan over a five-year period, ending with FY2014. In the year ahead, both parties may try to reach a new five-year aid deal.
Under President Barack Obama-who seeks to expand PA paramilitary units-the United States has pledged to continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars a year into Abbas’ coffers, with large sums dedicated to the security forces. This is despite objections from Congress and appeals by Palestinian human rights organizations. Obama has exercised waivers to continue to fund the PA security forces.
Bedein, David. “On the Brink: Decline of U.S. trained Palestinian Security Forces.” January 9, 2013
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.” Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2012.
Coffman, Tamara. “The Obama Administration’s Middle East Policy.” Brookings, June 8, 2014.
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06 Friday Jun 2014
These are the pages banned by PTA in collaboration with FB.
BackChannel’s source.
I asked my source for a top half-dozen elements blocked (filtered out) by Pakistan’s government with the complicity of the common carrier Facebook — generally liberal progressive organizations or personalities and their pages. The following is what he reported.
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Laal (Red)
https://www.facebook.com/laalpak; https://www.youtube.com/user/Laalpakistan Breaking news: http://tribune.com.pk/story/718314/facebook-blocks-page-of-laal-rock-band-at-govt-request/ The screen capture posted below seems to indicate that whatever Pakistan’s GeoTV was carrying for “Laal”, it’s not available at the desktop.
Screen capture, Google search, Laal, Band.
Roshni (light/luminescence)
(May 9, 2013):
PTA bans Roshni – Pakistan’s most popular progressive Urdu FB page
;
Taliban Are Zaaliman (Tyrants)
Screen capture: Taliban is Zaliman post on PTA censorship. Read it and weep.
Bhensa (Buffalo)
“It is basically a satirical page which uses satire to hit religious orthodoxy and terrorist outfits,” says my source:
Saeen
Tip source: “OMG. Saeen has been taken down second time in 2 days.”
I reminded the source that the censorship may have blocked the site.
🙂
On trust, I’m leaving “Saeen” in even though I’m not certain what “Saeen” is may be, is, or was. It’s enough to know that something with a name, probably good, liberal, good natured, helpful, has been censored and intimidated by the State of Pakistan through the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority with the imprimatur of Dr. Syed Ismail Shah, who himself seems in “webpression” quite progressive himself (at the bottom of this post, you may see and hear him speak).
Zalaan
On Twitter as I type:
Lashkr e Bhangvi (a parody of LeJ)
https://www.facebook.com/LashkareBhangvi;
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“Ministerial Programme 2014 interview with Syed Ismail Shah, Chairman of Pakistan regulator PTA.”
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Nature abhors monocultures and encourages variance and adaptability all the way through. What is true in biology with regard to basic structures and their differentiation and elaboration in nature may be true also of the intellectual development of our gregarious species. I remind conversational partners often that our small planet supports an inventory of about 7,000 living languages, each one of them approaching, inventing, and seeing the world surrounding and the speaker speaking a little differently. With some trims for the survivability of the greater humanity, we should, imho, love and preserve as much of that thought as we may while with mind in mind also dancing and encouraging creativity, new invention, and altogether a more robust humanity.
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04 Wednesday Jun 2014
Many Saudis have stopped expressing their opinions in such public forums as Twitter and Facebook and have chosen instead more guarded options, such as Whatsapp, Telegram and Path. The stranglehold on expression of dissent makes the future of Saudi Arabia more difficult to read. Diminishing freedoms and security to publicly discuss issues facing the country has made the reality on the ground more volatile.
Al-Nafjan, Eman. “Saudi activists ‘hibernate’ after series of arrests.” Al Monitor, May 15, 2014.
Eman Al-Nafjan also edits Saudiwoman’s Blog, where the above quotation and the article that conveyed were found. In fact, I had been looking for something else: comment on the confinement and starvation of these two women, daughters of King Abdullah:
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The silence of the world is deafening, as they issued orders to starve us. We were prevented from going out to buy food and water on March 17th, our heavily guarded bimonthly outing. They prohibited home delivery as well; the person trying to deliver food and water was threatened to be jailed should he attempt to return. Food will soon run out. We are on one meal a day, surviving on some expired food and distilled seawater.
Related: Finley, JC. Saudi princesses held captive in royal compound for 13 years appeal for release.” UPI, March 13, 2014; Brown, Stacy. “‘We are hostages’: A Saudi princess reveals her life of hell.” New York Post, April 19, 2014; CAMERA. “Saudi Games of Throne, and Slaves.” June 3, 2014.
Eventually, of course, one wants to see the compound, the women, and the King in person. 🙂 The UPI story (March 13, 2014) begins with appropriate ascription: “The ex-wife of Saudi King Abdullah is claiming the king has imprisoned her four daughters — Saudi princesses — in a royal compound for the past 13 years.”
The ex-wife: Al-Anoud Daham Al-Bakheet Al-Fayez.
At the moment, the tweets are flying across the Twitterverse, and even though this post has been viewed from Saudi Arabia about 16 times since publication (update: June 5, 2014), one worries over the fate of the women involved. In fact, I’ve been asking myself, where are the (conservative, humanist, liberal, progressive) feminists? They should be all over this story.
Was the story ever true?
Is it not true now?
I can’t make that call from a remote computer; nor, perhaps, could the call be made where political life is influenced by show business, “political theater”, deception, put-ons, appearances.
As happens with blogs, there are many of these now on BackChannels, links disappear (“link rot”), and videos once useful become inaccessible. Accounts close. Somebody changes their privacy rules.
Feudalism gains sway riding the back of darkness.
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25 Sunday May 2014
Tags
Assad : al-Nusra, ISIS, etc. | Erdogan : DHKP-C ?
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Turkish police were forced to respond with rubber bullets and tear gas after coming under attack by extreme left-wing DHKP-C members in the Istanbul district of Okmeydani on Thursday.
Bystander Ugur Kurt and Ayhan Yilmaz died as a result of their injuries they sustained during the clashes, as DHKP-C members hurled grenades, Molotov cocktails and stones at police.
World Bulletin. “DHKP-C brandish guns in Istanbul riots.” May 24, 2014.
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It’s too soon — and yet never soon enough — to note the possibility of Prime Minister Erdogan’s using the surfacing of the long outlawed DHKP-C as a foil with which to ramp up the repression of more moderate democratic people’s resistance to both his potential and so far evident drift toward greater absolute authority.
As much has been accomplished by Bashar al-Assad’s uneven decisions about barrel bombing noncombatants while leaving, as author Aboud Dandachi has suggested, terrorist havens intact, the better to cast himself as the Hero of the Secular Engaged in Fighting Islamic Terrorists.
While the possible path — Putin : Assad : Syrian Resistance–> Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party – Front (DHKP/C) vs Erdogan / Turkey : NATO/US — may seem ironic in its mirrored facet, the effect may be to taint modest internal Turkish resistance to Erdogan’s authority with the vivid red brush of a faction of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left.
As regards the interests of the global human rights community, these games help no one; as regards the interests of dictators, letting the fox slip into the hen house may give the farmer the excuse he needs to pick up his shotgun and go in and shoot the place up.
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By April 2011, over 500 people had been taken into custody and nearly 300 formally charged with membership of what prosecutors described as “the Ergenekon terrorist organization”, which they claimed had been responsible for virtually every act of political violence—and controlled every militant group—in Turkey over the last 30 years.
Wikipedia. “Ergenekon (organization)”.
On the other hand, as regards Turkey’s deeply compartmentalized politics, the noise made in the streets — and occasional bombing — by the now and then visible DHKP/C may be just part of the chaos roiling the currents beneath the surface of comparatively calm waters.
If the reports are true, it might mean that the terrorist group, which some experts describe as long past its heyday, is seeing a revival now that the Syrian conflict has given the U.S. and Turkey new reason to cooperate on foreign policy.
Hurriyet Daily News. “DHKP/C claims responsibility for the attack on U.S. Embassy.” February 1, 2014.
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22 Thursday May 2014
The points of mutuality, as with the validation of the Torah, are also points of appropriation. The Jews, already hard forged in the crucible of history, rejected Muhammad in his day and Muhammad who had prayed toward Jerusalem turned about and prayed toward Mecca.
The central psychology, divinely blessed or crazed and gifted, places the “locus of control” in Muhammad, a presumptuous position from a Jewish perspective, an infallible stance from a Muslim point of view, for if Muhammad is the Prophet of God, then the defiant (rejectionist) Jews have erred. Pandered or true, the implicit political program — it hasn’t been much different with Christianity — places the Jews as backwards on the periphery of the Real Deal, and, whaddayaknow — the fighting begins.
I’d rather go back to being brothers, recast from Judaism after Hillel a neo-Judaism accessible to all (inclusive) and amenable to adaptation and favored labeling. Probably “ChriJewsLims” will not work but it would be good to get to about the same page without (!) getting to the apocalyptic end of each thread.
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It’s not hard living entirely offline.
It’s impossible.
We have to check our e-mail for business and domestic obligations, if nothing else.
Then we may check our blogs, Facebook presence, Twitter account.
We / I have followings.
We’re not going to disappear on our fans (if we can help it).
I thought yesterday’s observation up top worth repeating here.
It’s rich.
It certainly attacks the idea of one monotheist “true religion”, although it’s completely accurate and fair to note that without the Torah and the Jews, neither Christianity nor Islam have any other completely different and independent foundation.
As he did for Pharaoh, Moses proves unavoidable and powerful.
Today’s follow-up:
The power of poetry gives us our minds — many symbols, many arrangements, many perceptions, many interpretations x social grammar, normative language behavior . . . so ye poets 🙂 , let’s go and find the good together.
And with the help of God, nature, and the universe, build some things — a little at a time — for the mind more helpful, greater, wondrous.
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20 Tuesday May 2014
Institutional competition and the want of supremacy inducing wealth by subscription has brought to the world an immense grief. A system devised and parlayed as perfect for one both expresses and guarantees “all against all” where what we all need and must have is “all for all”.
Hillel around 0-CE may have inspired early Christianity — just my thought but his outlook fits that new religion — but while striving to explore the law — Torah — to produce a more embracing and inclusive Judaism, he could not have foreseen the development of General Constantine (272-306-CE) or General Muhammad (570-632-CE). The resulting supersessionary warfare, broad at times as with the Crusades, narrow as on the Iberian Peninsula, sometimes on the surface (perhaps Turkey and the Armenian population suit that description), sometimes burning underground and erupting like volcano (about where we are today) has been ugly in every century. This is where to stop it.
One cannot blame scripture — Jewish, Christian, or Muslim (or other) — for this state of affairs but rather perhaps the ascent to power of men whose ambitions combine venality with grandiose aspirations.
The Colossus of Constantine lays on the ground in Rome, a ruin, and the Brotherhood affiliates (is their another umbrella?) purport to be building new civilizations wherever they have their adventure, hold themselves together, and get away with their crimes. The secular dictators are no better — in fact, I suggest they are mirror images in personality and that whether language promotes a secular ideology or a religion, in the hands of such men, the results are the same. WE need to get them off the stage.
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I will distill all of that down to 140 characters.
It’s all about axis in power – dictators, dictatorships, and despotism vs listeners, open conversations, mutual constituent-leadership risk.
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19 Monday May 2014
As dictatorships inspire or motivate conflicts worldwide, it may be worth taking a moment to delve into the psychology involved. Getting a handle on “malignant narcissism”, “narcissistic supply”, “narcissistic mortification” and similar other terms may help open some windows and let in some insight into how cycles of despotism and subjugation come about, how they work, and why they are so difficult to diminish.
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In political psychology, one might find the principles simple enough but the machinery complex and difficult to take apart and rebuild.
As much may characterize the experiences of the states now collected under the rubric “Arab Spring” and those continuing to suffer along within systems of corruption, despotism, and patronage.
To readers even loosely in the field, whether in academe or, as I seem to be, in pseudo-academe, a model like, oh let’s just make one up, “dictatorship –> narcissism –> political and social control of others –> sadism” may beg a “so what else you got?” but what informs that apprehension may not be universal: do the subjugated know that those they have entrusted with their destiny are actually using them to abet their own aggrandizement and glorification?
Have those in the path of a Bashar al-Assad (there are many like him today) understand what echo in themselves facilitates his progress while compromising their own in their efforts to defend their people.
In the olden days, one could flee a troubled space, wander around lost for a while, perhaps create a more congenial environment for one’s own, but in a world compressed intellectually by the system on which you are reading this and physically by jets and supertankers and superhighways, where is the someplace else?
Well, there is a someplace else: the language of the mind, i.e., that which informs political concepts, including self-concept and ideas about others plus ideas about the world.
The Internet has brought about the appearance of a new global intelligentsia — with Facebook buddies from Riyadh to Islamabad, I think I can support that suggestion — and if we can take a firm step where the dynamics of dictatorship are concerned, we might allay, diminish, or eliminate much sorrow otherwise guaranteed by our ignorance with regard to a basic political and social psychology concept.
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