Tag Archives: rhetoric

FTAC – Israel – Response to Remarks Delegitmizing Israel

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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“Arabs were made to pay for the crimes of the Europeans by the creation of Israel.”

I know that is what has been heard and the fiction constructed around it total, but Zionism predates WWII, and thousands of Arabs were drawn before it to the agricultural fields of the nascent Jewish state.

If you believe statehood in the name of religion must go, then Rome must go, as must Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — well, actually all Islamic kingdoms and dictatorships — as the same have become “real headaches for the entire civilized world, completely engulfed in injustice and violence.”

The only “inescapable issue” in the reconstruction that is the modern State of Israel is the 5,000+ year existence of Jews and Jewish culture — beliefs, calendar, customs, language, religion — on the land and continuously. Ancient Israel, the Roman “Palestine”, and modern Israel have never been “Judenrein” (as some might wish).

Jews don’t “deserve a homeland” — Jews have a homeland.

Regarding terrorism, have a look independently into war and low-intensity conflict across 2,000 years.

Regarding genocide, let’s keep these two buddies in mind: http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/…/2-mufti2_jpg… (Hussaini-Hitler handshake).

Also, you may want to look into how Ben Gurion crushed the terrorist Irgun at the earliest opportunity.

Your emphasis tells where you want to go (anti-Semitic / anti- Ziionist, actually, anti-justice) but the deeply poisonous programming and scripting that got you there has to this hour stayed out of the picture.

I beg you for patient new introspection and scholarship, for fresh ears and eyes, for skepticism in regard to a destructive loyalty.

I ask no less of myself and do read, say, Ma’an and look into issues having to do with the refugees of 1948 and their humanity, which one may believe better than that of their leaders who build and disseminate libels for a living.

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The response was to a writer in India who ran through the common anti-Semites screen, from declaring the State of Israel a colonial project directly and only corresponding to the destruction of the Jews of Europe in the Holocaust of World War II to suggesting the entire state should have been constructed elsewhere.

What a load of fictional crapola one wakes to if participating the “middle east conflict”, which has weirdly become the signifier for Israel’s conflict with the Arab world while the same Arab world melts down in conflicts within its portion of the Islamic Small Wars (e.g., signaled by political violence in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria).

Nowhere is the “Religion of Peace”, nor the states founded on it, at peace, and not even within themselves, the Muslim Brotherhood gangs ever threatening established state power, the same state power incompletely in control of powerful families willing to back al-Qaeda and its affiliates and likenesses.

Additional Reference

Amin Al Husseini: Nazi Father of Jihad, Al Qaeda, Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the Muslim Brotherhood – Tell The Children The Truth – Homepage

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Guilt and Jealousy in Two Lines

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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Finish your supper. Don’t you know there are children starving in Africa?”

* * *

“If you don’t finish what’s on your plate, I shall give it to your brother.

Guilt has always to do with others, some perception of their suffering, and the role we may play in aiding, alleviating, or appreciating the same in light of our own perceived better-off capabilities, luck, and comparative wellbeing.

Jealousy has primarily to do with ourselves, doubts about our grasp and power, and our worried perception of cheat and theft by assorted and presumably conspiring others.

For the most part, grammar in language refers to structural properties and rules guiding the management of the written and spoken word; however, grammar may also refer to basic sets of social and psychological instructions — count the mother’s inventions for encouraging an economical approach and value to eating (waste not — want not) among such — that once interiorized may be forgotten but quite elaborated, for in both examples, food on the child’s plate may serve as a convenient subject for an integrated cluster of ideas involving the properties of other things:

“Take care of your things because . . . ” (you are lucky to have them . . . they’re expensive . . . somebody sacrificed something else for you to have them . . . etc.) and “If you don’t take care of your things . . . ” (somebody will steal them . . . they may be ruined . . . you’ll lose the use of them . . . you’ll be found out as incompetent or defenseless or both, and so on).

I wouldn’t presume to say with authority that the two lines offered here demonstrate precisely how a binary rule may be planted in the mind.

On the other hand, I would suggest tabula rasa applies only up to the moment a child first 1) hears an adult speak and with some accuracy interpolates the meaning of adult utterance and 2) subsequently discovers surfacing in language themes that embed socially reinforced rules that will go on to influence the development of attitudes, the recognition and interpretation of emotions, and perception itself with social perception — how to perceive others; how to behave among others — a crucial part of the psychology.

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Swofford – Shabaab – Westgate Massacre – Their Words

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars

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The anti-Semitic nature of the statement below is also noted with the phrase “Kenya government of the Jews”. And the hate toward Christians is evident with “worshippers of the cross”. The term “cross worshippers” is a favorite for Muslims bent on killing Christians. AQ used this term in their magazines, prior to the creation of the “Inspire” magazine. Across the globe, Christians are being targeted by Muslims. Jews are being targeted by Muslims. We send up a yawn when a church is bombed in Peshawar. It seems so far removed from the U.S. We barely notice the war against Western civilization.

tammy swofford: OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF AL-SHABAAB REGARDING THE WESTGATE MALL ATTACK 9/25/2013

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Russia – Syria — Prelude To The End of Lies

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Politics, Psychology, Russia, Syria

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Will the report by the UN inspectors, the conclusion of whose work Russia, at a minimum, proposes waiting for, help to resolve the dispute between Putin and that portion of the international community that supports him, on the one hand, and, on the other, the leaders of a number of Western countries, including several regional powers, who have been certain from the outset that the use of chemical weapons was the work of the Syrian president and that he therefore needs to be dealt a retaliatory strike?

The Alchemy of Syria’s Conflict For US, Russia – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East 9/12/2013

The whole world is watching, also judging, thinking, weighing, and a greater percentage of its citizens, from Riyadh to Islamabad, have today the intellectual tools for separating substance from bullshit.

In the above cited piece, Vitaly Naumkin pitches the Putin line — no surprise there — even while knowing that view also may be subject to dissection.

From whence came this:

Who held the camera, edited the recording, produced the music?

Who manufactured the projectile, the rocket engine, the launch platform?

If the production represented a rebel false flag, why is the launch team not in Syrian uniforms?

Would that not have been more authentic?

Or would it have been too much?

Also, who has the reputation for lying baldly?

How did that come about?

When is it going to stop?

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“We don’t know if Syria will accept the offer, but if imposing international control over chemical weapons stored in the country can help to avoid military strikes, we are immediately going to start working with Damascus,” explained Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday.

Russian Diplomacy Transforms Debate on Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East 9/10/2012

So far, with the Russian navy at least temporarily absent from Tartus and several hundred Russian civilians evacuated from Syria, Bashar al-Assad appears to be driving for advantage with this latest (no pun intended) breathing space formed by the gap between the American and Russian ways of doing business.

American discredit in the region seems to relate primarily to Bush’s dumb lie over Iraq WMDs, but the removal of one of the world’s most vicious dictators and his army plus the restoration of the Marsh Arabs and the securing of the Kurdish Community against Saddam Hussein’s depredations, which  included gassing, would seem to make for a bright side.  Add in the possibility of modern open democracy (MOD, lol), access to international news, and modern education, global in breadth and concerns — perhaps those are worth something too.

While remnants of the still leftward Arab finger in Iraq often points to America for subsequent bloodletting, it really has to point back to itself for the internecine and sectarian bloodshed that continues by way of its own hands.

Russian discredit starts with the accusing and contemptuous language of the old propaganda and drifts off into the cesspool of known banditry, corruption, dictatorship, and culture-permeating mafia technique.

Even so, Russia has become a modern state.

Perhaps it faces a primarily medieval post-modern question: if “information is power” how much power may one (man, organization) have over information and its effects in influence, intimidation, and perception?

It’s the question of the day.

The post-KGB KGB-infused (at minimum by Putin) FSB and post-Soviet new oligarch Russia has still in place old business, intellectual, and state political architecture, and while it has demonstrated its power to transfer wealth to its own, perhaps, and drive a Far Out Left propaganda press, perhaps, Syria continues to come down, day by day, hour by hour, and within miles of Bashar al-Assad’s own feet, and there is no one, including Russia,  who wants to fiddle with it other than to let it burn a little more safely — without chemical weapons, if Putin is sincere in this matter — and toward a secular path, as no one between NATO and Russia wants Al Qaeda or Chechnya II either, and the cultural results of apparent if superficial convergent evolution by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar toward the west — neither of those official Al Qaeda or Muslim Brotherhood buddies either — remain to be seen.

Assorted Reference

Direct link between Assad and gas attack elusive for U.S. | Reuters 9/7/2013

‘IDF intercepted Syrian regime chatter on chemical attack’ | The Times of Israel 8/26/2013

Listing Demands, Assad Uses Crisis to His Advantage – NYTimes.com 9/12/2013

Russian Diplomacy Transforms Debate on Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East 9/10/2013

Bouthaina Shaaban, Senior Assad Spokeswoman, Blames Al Qaeda For Syria Chemical Attack (VIDEO) 9/4/2013

mafia state luke harding | Mafia State by Luke Harding | The Guardian

Why Saying No to Syria Matters (It’s Not About Syria) | Alternet 9/1/2/2013

And Recently Encountered

13 Objectively True Statements From The Vladimir Putin Op-Ed – Business Insider 9/13/2013

Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op-ed, annotated and fact-checked 9/12/2013. Excerpt:

But what rankles many analysts about this paragraph is that it ignores Putin’s own role in enabling the already quite awful violence, as well as the extremism it’s inspired. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime has killed so freely and so wantonly in part because it knows Putin will protect it from international action. Putin has also been supplying Assad with heavy weapons. It’s a bit rich for him to decry violence or outside involvement at this point.

Conversations with John le Carré – FT.com 9/6/2013

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Care and Integrity in Language – and Syria

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Politics, Psychology

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The lie never serves the listener.

The lie always serves the liar in two ways: to conceal discomforting information or though — material that would be embarrassing, impolite, or shameful if expressed — or to manipulate the listener for gain, emotional or monetary, directly or indirectly.

Perhaps fiction serves for exception, but that entails literary invention in service to the emotional, political, social, and structural truth of a thing in aspects beyond the purview of journalism (for the journalist cannot record, for example, interior monologue).

* * *

A Jew may suggest, and possibly should, that each time the religion was hijacked, more or less, it may have been done with less concern for those inveigled in and by the New Power (two majors and lots of lesser camps in that category).  One gets a lesson, say, about snakes and devils, a fall from grace, but go back and read Genesis 2 and 3 and “The Fall” is not there — and what is there is an awakening in awareness, self-awareness, and conscience, each an aspect of consciousness and knowledge.

And while our Original Couple may “cover” with the fig leaves, it’s God who sews them clothes of skin — and clothed and conscious of their lives as human beings, out into the world they go.

What happened to that telling?

* * *

From Adam and Eve and the charming story of their creation and birth as human beings to Bashar and Maher al-Assad would seem a stretch, but it’s not.  The former emblematically tells a truth about the truth: indeed, humankind is conscious, self-conscious, and possessed of conscience; the latter symbolically tell a story about exceptional evil and how brazen, unconscious, uncaring, unconscionable, and sadistic a human or comparative handful of the same can be.

The initial mismatch involved in flying jets against neighborhoods in response to a guerrilla challenge at the low intensity level signals the delusion of grandeur in which the Assad brothers had been knocking about all of their lives.  Theirs was a kingdom, never mind the exploitation, hunger, and suffering of some fair portion of their constituency.

Damascus, 30 October 2007 (IRIN) – Syria is struggling to reform unsustainable and inequitable subsidies, despite warnings from leading economists that delays increase the likelihood of drastic economic shocks and possible social unrest.

 The question is how to do so without provoking sharp price increases in a country where the average state wage remains little over US$120 a month.

IRIN.  “SYRIA: Economic reforms threaten social unrest.”  October 30, 2007.

Ah, the good old days.

Syrians know how they lived.

Like kings, some.

Like peasants, most.

That is the way of kingdoms — and dictatorships — and they are all happy, are they not?

A more recent article in Al Monitor (“Failure of Economic Reform in Syria,” December 28, 2012) goes more deeply into the from-there-to-here aspect, but suffice it to say: all were not happy and however helped along or joined by fanatics or mercenaries, the seeds for insurrection would seem to have been homegrown.

As much, the Assad brothers would deny.

* * *

Remember: it’s never the narcissist.

* * *

Andrew Tabler: One of the ways the Syrian government defends itself is by obscuring everything that happens inside the country. Right now there’s a huge question about whether or not to intervene. The government can dispute whatever argument pro-interventionists have. This isn’t unusual for these kinds of regimes. Assad is a master at manipulating the press. Often times hardly anyone is even paying attention to Syria, though that’s changed now. At the time they could snow job us, but now it’s a lot harder, especially when so much violence is being captured on YouTube.

Totten, Michael J.  “An American in the Den of Assad.”  Interview with Andrew Tabler.  World Affairs, March 10, 2012.

A false false-flag in which troops dress down to look like rebels and a disinformation industry gins it up to look like “the other guy” tells the character of the primary actor, and it never changes: bullies are cowards and cowards are liars always.

* * *

This may be the last I write about language, integrity, narcissism, and political psychology for a while.  It may take funding or it may be for others to do, but with so much behavioral and cognitive machinery visible, one may pursue curiosity down into the nuts and bolts of child rearing, social grammar, the drama of, say, narcissistic mortification, and experiments with and development of criminal power as the basis for political and social power across large constituencies that will pay a high price for having allowed as much to happen to them.

The civil war in Syria provides the drama of the day; violence in Islam associated with mixed ambitions provides a convenient theme: however, observations proposed or stated here may have more universal qualities.

For certain, for example, Robert Mugabe has held on to power for decades, reintroduced cholera to Zimbabwe, displaced the white farmers, destroyed the nation’s agricultural prowess, watched as adults crawled across borders for work and children sank to eating bugs, and yet, probably, he will pass away peacefully in his sleep, fulfilling the dream of every dictator who ever believed he had actually defended and saved his country, accumulated his wealth legitimately, and arrived on his death bed with as good a conscience as any.

Additional Reference

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

BackChannels.  “Syria – Dictators Do Not Negotiate Internal Affairs.”  May 28, 2013.

Debka File.  “Reported Syrian gas attack killing hundreds after first US-trained rebel incursion from Jordan.”  August 21, 2013.

Debka File.  “The sarin shells fired on Damascus – by Syrian 4th Division’s 155th Brigade – were followed by rockets on Israel and car bombings in Lebanon.”  August 24, 2013.

Dow, Nicole.  “Getting to know Syria’s first family.”  CNN, July 18, 2012.

Kahn, Laura H.  “Who would use chemical weapons?”  Bulleting of the Atomic Scientists.”  April 16, 2013.

McIntyre, Douglas A.  “As War risk Falters: Syria’s Economy by the Numbers.”  24/7 Wall Street, September 1, 2013.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Chomsky Think.”  May 17, 2010.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Guilt and Jealousy in Two Lines.”  February 27, 2012.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Israel and the Dark Mirror.”  June 25, 2010.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Not Tolerance: Trust — Cordoba Initiative, Imam Faisal Abdul Raif, and Primary Commentary.  August 24, 2010.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Obama and the Double Story.”  May 20, 2010.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Obama’s Double Story and the Islamic Small Wars.”  July 31, 2012.

Oppenheim Arts & Letters.  “Ye Who Would Wish to Help Man, Write for God.”  February 2, 2012.

RIA Novosti.  “Moscow Concerned about Syria, Not Assad – Minister.”  February 25, 2013.

RIA Novosti.  “Syrian Communists Urge Economic Reforms as Crisis Solution.” February 26, 2013.

Tabler, Andrew J.  “The Day After Assad Wins: The Hard Truths About Post-War Syria.”  Foreign Affairs, August 21, 2013.

The Heritage Foundation.  “2013 Index of Economic Freedom: Syria”.

Wikipedia.  “Gaslighting”.

Zelizer, Julian.  “Obama’s Syria dilemma: Becoming the president he didn’t like.” CNN, September 1, 2013.

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Reference: “Accusation in a Mirror”

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Politics, Psychology

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“One of the most astonishing discoveries in the history of genocide studies was the Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement (the “Note”), a mimeographed document found in Butare prefecture in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. The Note, which draws from Goebbels, Lenin, and others, is a manual of the rhetorical methods that could be used to inflame ordinary people to attack their countrymen.”

Marcus, Kenneth L.  “Accusation in a Mirror.”  Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, 43 (2012): 357-393.  PDF published via Loyola Law eCommons.

In practice, the technique has become visible and easy to spot in peace / hate-peace group chatyping.

As awful as the consequences intended by “Accusation in a Mirror” (AiM) may be, the technique fits well with other forms of disingenuous speech, hate speech, and sophistry.  Put it one the same page as “blood libel” and common slander.

Motivation?

Somebody thinks they’re going to get something by way of the sheer beauty and force of their will.

Such lose their conscience, their humanity, their restraints, and while they and their people may pay for it, disingenuous speech, motivated, so I suspect, by the want of self-aggrandizement powered by hate, leads always to great suffering.  When the practitioners are stopped in their tracks, related suffering abate, but it takes a while to understand this.

Related Reference

Truman Web Design.  “Kangura magazine.”  I believe I found this one the web at least as far back as 2006.  The home page starts this way: 

“Foreign invaders, plundering the rich earth of Rwanda.  Bloodthirsty parasites, who prefer exploitation to honest labor. An elite minority, enjoying influence out of all proportion to their numbers—ferreting their way into the highest-paying jobs, monopolizing the banking system, the educational system, even the very government to ensure the soft life for themselves and their kin.  Scheming, shrewd and crafty.  Without scruples. Without conscience.  Fearsome, loathsome, cunning as a cockroach.  Intent on the destruction of every hard-working member of the native people to whom the country rightfully belongs. If they were in your country, wouldn’t you want to be warned? Wouldn’t you read the newspaper each morning,wouldn’t you keep all the radios on?”

 The Truman Web Design-prefaced site (the subset is a “~” extended location) on the use of propaganda in the Rwandan Genocide also discusses, in addition to Kangura Magazine, RTLM Radio and media coverage of the event.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) maintains a similar report online: “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.” Similar sub-section: “Propaganda and Practice”.

Leets, Laura.  “Experiencing Hate Speech: Perceptions and Responses to Anti-Semitism and Antigay Speech.”  Journal of Social Issues, 58:2 (pp. 341-361), The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 2002.  The abstract notes (this is a partial quotation), “A content analysis of the accounts produced the following patterns: (a) short- and long-term consequences mirrored a three-stage sequence found within other traumatic experiences; (b) respondents described motives as enduring, not situational, states; (c) the most common response strategies were passive; and (d) participants often sought support. The discussion focuses on implications for interventions that may mitigate negative consequences of hate speech.”

FTAC – A Note on the Dark Mirror in Language

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Language contains a dark mirror.

It allows or even tricks Hutu into accusing Tutsi of planning the genocide of the Hutu, but when this happens, it is actually the Hutu who have in mind the slaughter of the Tutsi in their entirety.

The dark mirror in language has a poisonous base: all it takes, it seems, is a small suggestion that God favors . . . blue eyes, for example, not green, and an elaborating process takes over . . . blue eyes and blonde, pure of heart and race, superior to all the rest of mankind, and ready to prove it out of factories melting ore and transforming it into cold steel.

The dark mirror in language confuses the mind: it convinces the Ayatollah dressed in white that he is God’s emissary today even while he runs Evin Prison and doles out patronage to thugs who then keep suppressed the more true revolutionary forces of Iran; it convinces Hamas who agreeing to truce in 2009 that it may continue launching rockets at Israeli residential space — more than 1,000 of such attacks in 2012 alone — because it believes it has a divine right and cause, one that allows it to exceed limits not only as regards its ambitions for the Jews (articulated: genocide right to the last Jew hiding behind a rock or tree) but in regard to the minds and bodies of its own children and women whom it keeps placed around its weapons and materiel stores and before itself in battle.

The Jewish story begins not with conquest but with fleeing an ugly condition — enslavement in Egypt under Pharaoh.  With the direct intercession of God and with the company of a great mixed multitude. Canaan and the Canaanites were in the future and for 40 years the hard scrabble of desert was to be the reward for leaving Egypt.

In the archaeology, Canaanite and Hebrew artifacts have been found in proximity, but, not yet, evidence of a battle royal, suggesting perhaps that the story is an idealization, a template, an illustration of an historic change in ways of life. Again, for reading, The Peace and Violence of Judaism (Oxford University Press) provides a straightforward compilation, neither always pretty nor ugly, of the defense and military doctrine of the Israelite.

For the record, about 20 percent of the population of modern Israel is Muslim and Muslims at their own discretion may elect to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, and some do.

Reference

Beno, Goel.  “Muslim woman: Arabs must enlist in IDF.”  YNet News, June 28, 2012.

Hoffman, Jordan.  “His deep, dark secret: He’s Arab, Muslim and serves in the IDF.” The Times of Israel, November 10, 2012.

Jewish Virtual Library.  “Biblical Jerusalem: From Canaanite City to Israelite Capital”.

Oppenheim, James S.  “Jews, Muslims, and the Halls of Dark Mirrors.”  Oppenheim Arts & Letters, July 7, 2009.  Excerpt:

“Muslims who determine the worth of women as half that of men . . . Jews who would determine that their study of the All may require (lesser) others to support them: these may be the first distorted mirrors in the hall of dark mirrors that would make Hamas and the haredi liberating forces–and all others “kafir”–such are the opposite mirrors that ascribe to the other one’s own worst and most distorted contemplations.

Those mirrors are there because the writers of the monotheist foundation texts found a way to elevate their audiences into an atmosphere engineered around divine right.  Jews and the gentiles, Believers and the “kafir”, the righteous and holy and the sinners–how deep those divides that for their existence rely on not much more than stubborn ideation or “habits of mind” and the political power that comes of wielding intellectual levers and wedges that divide some humans from others in accord with their literary endowments.”

My perception of conditions have change but not my comprehension of the natural basis for the pursuit of health, individuation, and freedom.

Ruda, Bennett.  “Muslims in the IDF–It’s Not Just the Druse.”  Daled Amos, July 29, 2011.

Science News.  “Earliest Known Hebrew Text in Proto-Canaanite Script Discovered in Area Where “David Slew Goliath.”  Science Daily, November 3, 2008.  Related update: Boyle, Alan.  “3,000-year-old artifacts reveal history behind biblical David and Goliath.”  Cosmic Log on NBC News, May 8, 2012.

Smith, Peter.  “Christian Arab youth come under fire over desire to enlist in IDF.”  The Right Context, November 3, 2012.

Wikipedia.  “Israel Defense Forces”.  Subsection: “Minorities in the IDF”.

Wikipedia.  “Merneptah Stele“.

Wikipedia.  “Muslim supporters of Israel”.

Yitzhaki, Michal Yaakov.  “An Officer and a Muslim Zionist.”  Israel Hayom, September 7, 2012.

Yossi, Yehoshua.  “First female Arab soldier joints elite unit 669.”  YNet News, April 4, 2008.

YouTube.  “Muslims soldiers serving in the Israeli Army – Audio (1/2)”.  Posted September 11, 2009.

“I’m joining the army in order to make a change, to make peace between the nations.” From the film Ameer Got His Gun.  

BCDN – BackChannels News Day

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in BCND - BackChannels News Day

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I have shared a reading log through “delicious” for a while, but with this blog I’m inclined to try posting each day, or for every few days, a rolling list of articles, the kind of thing I had intended for the “Fast News Share (FNS) category.  This seems like it might be less disruptive to the blog as well as more pleasant for the reader stopping by in his own newsy meandering through the conflict arena and related subjects.  –jso

Possibly intended to assure or incite westerners in the MEMRI fashion, Quradhawi is telling a story about political and sectarian Islam without fully comprehending the post-WWII arrangements that today have Syria’s nuts — seriously as well as every possible pun intended — in a vice.

Posted by MEMRI, October 15, 2012.

In the post-WWII world, Syria has been Russia’s client and buffer for decades, and the mixed bag of a revolution in Syria has threatened to bring Russia and NATO into conflict.  Recognizing that, both have agreed to stand off while Russia fulfills its contractual obligations with the Assad regime (for economic and military support) and the United States, probably most unhappy with this state of affairs, fears Turkey tugging on its leash to drag into a war in which it has little interest.

Within Islam in the middle east, large rivalries defined as Shia vs.  Sunni and Arab vs. Turkish vs. Iranian (I’m not going to endorse the morally hideous regime there by linking it with “Persian”, even though that is what it wants) will keep blood flowing in Syria because there is no solution to the kinds of problems combatants (from the dictator to the shia to the sunni to the Turk, the Arab, and the Iranian) have in their heads.

War in Syria involves the power of language and promises expressed.

One — to be clear, everyone — would inherit their power by family or ethnic or sectarian assignation, not by building the same painstakingly on good business and good deeds all around.

Interfering with transformation: the locked down mind cultivated by multiple literary clerical bodies insulated from criticism through a haut posturing developed to reject  the same out of hand.

The video was sourced as a reblog via Counter-Jihad Report, then back to Creeping Sharia and forward to an AFP article in The Nation — “Russian Troops Kill 49 Militants in Massive Sweep”.

* * *

The assassination of Malala’s character – By ROB L. WAGNER – Monday, 22 October 2012

Well, the Malala Yousufzai backlash took all of … five minutes. The outpouring of shock and outrage over the Taleban’s attempted assassination of the teenager who advocated for girls education has been replaced with a campaign of character assassination and conspiracy theories.

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Farewell to Afghanistan, with sadness and affection

A Times correspondent ending a three-year assignment reflects on the fears and horrors, but also on the beauty and people that will make her miss Afghanistan.

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times
October 22, 2012, 5:04 p.m.
KABUL, Afghanistan — After years of comings and goings, almost everything about leaving Kabul is familiar: the ride through dusty dawn streets, skirting past old men on bicycles and boys in horse-drawn carts, the long airport trudge through four luggage screenings and pat-downs, the way the plane’s wingtips seem to almost scrape the jagged peaks surrounding the city.

Everything is the same — but the knowledge that this is the last time.

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