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Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

The Kind of Woman the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Imprisons and Possibly Abuses and Tortures for Her Activism On Behalf of Other Muslim Women

14 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Political Psychology, Religion, Saudi Arabia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

activism, Eman al-Nafjan, feminism, human rights, imprisonment, International Culture, Internet Culture, medieval v modern, Saudi Arabia, web culture

Blogger; mother of four; B.A., English, University of Birmingham; M.A., English as a Second Language; post-graduate Ph.D. field: linguistics; religion: Wahabbi Muslim.

Present Location: Dhaban Central Prison, Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

Disclosure: BackChannel’s editor’s Facebook friendship and correspondence with Eman Fahad Al Nafjan dates back to May 12, 2011.

The editor’s last note to Eman — it was a long time ago given the richness of the Internet experience: August 16, 2016 — contained reference to a Muslim Matters piece, “World’s Largest Women’s University Opens in Saudi Arabia” (May 31, 2011), and had to do with Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman Women’s University, Riyadh. The find had to do with work on a BackChannels’ piece: “Sixteen Women — The Kingdom’s Most Powerful.” November 2, 2016.

The Kingdom had to have seen this greater day coming, “greater” for connecting the privileged of Saudi Arabia with the full breadth of the world’s English-speaking and other intelligentsia, i.e., the broad if thin international band of cosmopolitan, engaged, informed, and rapidly “chatyping” personalities. Nafjan has not only fit right in with the world’s intellectual class, she appears to be in trouble with the medieval kingdom for having been raised for the modernizing path and role taken.

What is it about feudal / medieval / tribal peacocks that so sustains contempt and fear in relation to women that the royal response to mild challenge, criticism, and practical reasoning comes to a still barbarous demand: “Lock her up!”

Addendum – March 14, 2019 (added to post July 27, 2019)

NEW YORK—PEN America announced today that it will award the 2019 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award to journalist, blogger, and activist Nouf Abdulaziz, activist and social media commentator Loujain Al-Hathloul, and blogger, columnist, and activist Eman Al-Nafjan—three Saudi women imprisoned for challenging, through their writing and their activism, therestrictive guardianship system that governs Saudi women and limits theirability to travel, marry, work, or receive education and healthcare without approval from a male guardian. Abdulaziz, Al-Hathloul, and Al-Nafjan each used their digital and news-reporting platforms to speak out on women’s rights and other forms of human rights repression in Saudi Arabia, including the long-standing ban on women driving. The ban was lifted in June 2018, yet immediately thereafter, many of those who had advocated for this change were arrested. Today these three writer-activists are among those still incarcerated for their dissent, reportedly facing torture, isolation, and threats of rape. In early March, Saudi authorities announced that they are planning to indict a number of those detained on national security-related charges; initial hearings in the trials of Loujain Al-Hathloul and Eman Al-Nafjan began March 13.

Pen America. “Pen America to Honor Imprisoned Saudi Writer-Activist and Woman’s Rights Champions Nouf Abdulaziz, Loujain al-Hathloul, and Eman al-Nafjan with the Pen/Barbey Freedom to Write Award at 2019 Literary Gala”. Press Release, March 14, 2019.

Related Online

Al Jazeera. “The Saudi women detained for demanding basic human rights.” Reposted on News24, November 30, 2018. –>

Those under arrest have been branded threats to national security and have been accused of being foreign agents. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the reason for the arrest is to silence the women and prevent others from participating in activism.

Rights organisations and governments around the world have called on the Saudi authorities to release all political prisoners, but to no avail.


Al-Nafjan, Eman. “Saudi Arabia, My Changing Home.” The New York Times, June 8, 2012. –>

Most people in the West, naturally enough, get their ideas about Saudi life from the media. They learn that women here are forbidden to drive, that they must be almost completely covered up when they appear in public, that unmarried women and girls can’t appear in public unaccompanied by family members.

All of this is more or less true, but it omits the reality that, for the average middle class Saudi woman who comes from a healthy family background, life is pretty good.

When everything is in place, a Saudi woman can live a comfortable life. A respectable husband is arranged for her to marry; she typically has a driver, servants and an extended family ready to give her financial and emotional support. All that’s expected of her is to have babies and fulfill social obligations.


Amnesty. “Saudi Arabia: Release Women’s Human Rights Defenders Immediately!” June 21, 2018. –>

Official statements in state media accused Loujain al-Hathloul, Iman al-Nafjan and Aziza al-Youssef of forming a “cell,” posing a threat to state security for their “contact with foreign entities with the aim of undermining the country’s stability and social fabric.” A related hashtag describing them as “Agents of Embassies”, along with a graphic showing the six activists’ faces, have also been circulating on social media and Saudi Arabian print and broadcast media. Amnesty International is concerned that if charged, the activists could face up to 20 years in prison. Now is the time to take action and defend these brave activists, who are some of the most prominent heroines of the human rights movement in Saudi Arabia.

As the world praises Saudi Arabia for recent “reforms” – including allowing women to drive – we must raise the alarm for these imprisoned defenders who have fought tirelessly for years for women’s rights in the Kingdom.


Amnesty International. “Saudi Arabia: Release women human rights defenders now!” Update on detainees and FAQs. n.d.

Amnesty International. “Saudi Arabia: Reports of Torture and sexual harassment of detained activists.” November 20, 2018. –>

According to three separate testimonies obtained by the organization, the activists were repeatedly tortured by electrocution and flogging, leaving some unable to walk or stand properly. In one reported instance, one of the activists was made to hang from the ceiling, and according to another testimony, one of the detained women was reportedly subjected to sexual harassment, by interrogators wearing face masks.


Associated Press. “Saudi Arabia tortured female right-to-drive activists, says Amnesty.” The Guardian, November 20, 2018.

Committee to Protect Journalists. “Saudi blogger Eman Al Nafjan detained.” May 22, 2018.

Facebook. “Emad Al Nafjan”.

Fahim, Kareem. “Jailed Saudi women’s rights activists said to face electric shocks, beatings and other abuse.” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018.

Human Rights Watch. “Saudis Arrest 7 Women’s Rights Activists who had Upstaged Crown Prince on Driving.” Reposted by Juan Cole in Informed Comment, May 19, 2018. HRW Location.

Wikipedia. “Eman al-Nafjan”.

Saudiwoman’s Weblog. “About”.

The Guardian. “Eman Al Nafjan”. Profile and authored stories.


The Kingdom’s brand for the Kingdom’s best: “Traitor”.

Author of the tweet: Jamal Khashoggi.

منذ اول اعتقالات جرت بالمملكة توافقت الدولة والمجتمع على عدم التعريض والاساءة للمعتقل بالصحف، ومن حتى يلمح ويفعل ذلك محاولا التكسب ينظر له باحتقار من قبل زملائه والمسؤلين . للأسف انهارت تلك القيم في زماننا هذا ! أدناه نموذجا لوضاعة وسيلة إعلامية مرخصة pic.twitter.com/22Vznd2XYL

— جمال خاشقجي (@JKhashoggi) May 20, 2018

—33-

Epistemological Khashoggi: A Kind of Poem

23 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Middle East, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Identity, intelligence, Jamal Kashoggi, political spychology, Saudi Arabia, Turkish McCarthy

“Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.”


Epistemological Khashoggi

Things we know.
Things we don’t know.
Things we don’t know we don’t know.
Things we don’t want to know.
Things we will never know.
Thing we know but don’t know that we know.
Things we don’t know but fervently believe.
Finally
Things we would like to find out.


One of the 15 suspects in the death of dissident Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was caught on surveillance cameras walking around Istanbul on the day Khashoggi went missing.

Footage being used as part of the Turkish government’s investigation into Khashoggi’s death was shared with CNN, and shows the man, identified as Mustafa al-Madani, leaving Saudi Arabia’s consulate through the back door wearing Khashoggi’s clothes, a fake beard, and glasses, a senior Turkish official told CNN.

Caralle, Katelyn. “After Jamal Khashoggi disappeared, a Saudi agent left the compound in his clothes.” Washington Examiner, October 22, 2018.


Were they really Jamal Khashoggi’s clothes?

Even so, what has happened to other potential evidence of murder?

Above all: where is the body?


A man in a foreign land leaves his fiancee (of another nationalist) parked by the curb, walks into his nation’s embassy to obtain a permit for marriage and fails to walk back out to drive off into the sunset with his presumed beloved.

Missing: the body.

Also missing: blood spatter; the odor of disinfectant; the appearance of discarded  . . . anything: clothing; a table or parts of one involved in a murder; not even a shoelace, much less a pair of shoes, has been shown to the public.

Also for public notice: embassies are considered a part of the sovereign territory of the state represented: what have the Turks been doing (directly) in the Saudi’s building?

Everyone knows the answer to that question — one good reason for the invention of the “Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)” within buildings intent on defending the most private and sensitive of conversations.

Bold added:

Erdogan called on the perpetrators to be brought to justice in Istanbul and questioned whether the Vienna Conventions, which give immunity to diplomatic staff, applied in this case.

It was the first time that any official in Turkey has publicly outlined the Turkish contention that Khashoggi was killed by a hit squad sent from Saudi Arabia. But while Erdogan had promised the “naked truth,” he offered few details beyond those revealed by Turkish officials speaking privately.

Tuysuz, Gul and Eliza Mackintosh. “Erdogan says Khashoggi was victime of ‘ferocious’ pre-planned murder.” CNN, October 23, 2018.

Perhaps when Jamal Khashoggi left his fiance waiting at the curb, he had cause for wanting to leave . . . everything — and become a new man.

Perhaps a body will turn up.

Perhaps we will hear a recording or be subject inferential visual data.

However, the public may be left with an impossible question: whose data — whose story — should it adopt as true?


Related Online

Gall, Carlotta. “Security Images Show Khashoggi and Fiancee in His Final Hours.” The New York Times, October 22, 2018.

Perper, Rosie. “Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée wrote a touching tribute for him on Twitter hours after Saudi authorities confirmed his death.” Business Insider, October 21, 2018.

But officials are skeptical of Saudi’s explanation for the Khashoggi’s death. Turkish officials have repeatedly touted claims that Khashoggi was brutally tortured and dismembered by what appeared to be a 15-person kill squad flown in from Saudi Arabia.


Where are the bones? The clothes? The “body bag”? Was there a sink? A plastic or porcelain tub? Where are the clothes of the killers? Where was the fire and smoke needed to burn things that burn? Where are his shoelaces and their plastic tips (if of common construction)? No nails? No hair follicles?


O’Connor, Tom. “Saudi Arabia Fires Intelligence Officials, Blames Them for Khashoggi Death.” Newsweek, October 19, 2018.


After his transforming Turkey into a family enterprise, what motive has anyone from the post-Enlightenment west for believing the presentations of President Erdogan?

In Sum

Where is the body?

Where, in fact, is the story?

BackChannels may suggest that the Saudi confession to murder should have been accompanied immediately by its evidence.  Today, the lag in time between the confession and the turning up of evidence — so late as to make fabrication possible — may make the confession suspect.

The time may be running out for even the telling of an untimely untruth.

Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.


Breaking Online

Haaretz. “Report: Saudi Journalist Khashoggi’s Remains Found.” October 23, 2018:

Multiple sources suggested Khashoggi had been cut up and his face “disfigured,” Sky News reported.

Sources in the Istanbul Prosecutor’s office denied that Khashoggi’s remains were found at the consul general’s home, adding that a picture on social media purportedly showing the corpse is fake.


Haaretz and Reuters. “Explained Turkey Takes Aim at MBS: What’s Driving Erdogan in the Khashoggi Scandal.” Haaretz, October 23, 2018.


BackChannels will try to stop at this point: where is the body?  Is a body found really the body?  If a man wished to leave his body, loosely speaking, would he also not leave behind his old clothes?

There is no way to address such questions from an armchair or by watching television.

That may not be the problem — so the man is dead or, perhaps, on his way to early skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (never let it be said the editor of this blog has not been a foolish romantic); what is the problem is that “the public” — or respective national publics or statistical clumps of national or party identity — may lose its basis for believing anything from any source.

What then?

What now?


Update: October 24, 2018

Kobrin, Nancy Hartevelt.  “Why the Saudis Had to Cut Up Khashoggi’s Body.”  Clarion Project, October 24, 2018.

Gruesome, brazen and barbaric were some of the terms that were thrown around in response to learning his fingers were cut off first, then his head and finally his body was chopped into small pieces in order to “disappear” it from the crime scene.

Images of such a sadistic act were the linchpin in inciting the political debacle. Yet, since the remains of Khashoggi’s body had not been found yet, it also served to precipitate a war over who controlled the narrative. With this “memory” destroyed, who owned the truth?


–33–

Sixteen Women – The Kingdom’s Most Powerful

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Middle East, Saudi Arabia

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

exceptional women, powerful women, Saudi Arabia, women leaders

Arab Leader.  Banker. Chair.  CEO.  Economist.  Editor in Chief. Educator. Engineer.  Entrepreneur.  Executive.  ‘First To’ in Multiple Fields.   Journalist.  Inventor.  Media Personality.  Member of the Board.  Novelist.  Philanthropist.  Physician.  Scholar.  Scientist.  Women’s Rights Activist.

BackChannels will let the browser figure out which title belongs to which personality.

Or simply graze the list.

Haifaa al Mansour

Lubna Olayan

Bayan Mahmoud al Zahran

Mona Al Munajjed

Hayat Sindi

Khaula Al Khuraya

Somayya Jabarti

Manal al-Sharif

Nahed Taher

Samira Islam

Samia Al-Amoudi

Nermin Saad

Badreya El-Bishr

Thoraya Ahmeud Obaid

Munea AbuSulayman

Lama al-Sulaiman

An article in Arabian Business provided for the extraction of names from a greater listing of “100 Most Powerful Arab Women”; Wikipedia has served both as first reference and first authority for transliterated nouns.

BackChannels, sigh, may have reached the point where passing along articles (as with the content of the “Also in Media” category) and looking things up for regurgitation may not suffice for noble or worthy effort.  Political analysis — or for the editor, verbal art — may be more the thing.  On this note for social progressives, the women listed are each their own persons who carry within themselves broad and cosmopolitan educations as well as their respective talents, and they have done so in relation to a national culture slow to welcome them but today invested in their support and the support of others like them.

The Kingdom has changed.

Reference

Arabian Business.  “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women.” March 3, 2014.

Arabian Business.  “Sheikha Lubna tops female power list for fourth year running.”  March 3, 2014.

–33–

FTAC – 24 Years – A Long Time Not Gone

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Philology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

diplomacy, Israel, online journalism, open source intelligence, philology, politics, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, prognostics, Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom

In response to reading only the headline, “Saudis refuse soccer match with Palestinians in Judea-Samaria” (November 4, 2015).

If true, I don’t think it’s nonsense. The Kingdom has to assert itself against the revised Moscow-Damascus-Tehran alignment. Everyone knows that the PLO was a KGB project from the git-go and that similar politics (as with a Moscow meeting with the PFLP at this time last year) have been sustained by Putin. The Kingdom — and Kingdom Holdings — Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal have become stakeholders in the west.

The Soviet dissolved in session almost 24 years ago.

For people who think with calendars, this next year could be a doozy.

Cute, But Slow Down That Trolley!

What was reading before reading that headline:

Saudi multibillionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal has said that he would stand with Israel against the Palestinians if a new uprising was ignited, Kuwaiti media reported on Tuesday.

According to the AWD news website, bin Talal told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas: “I will side with the Jewish nation and its democratic aspirations in case of outbreak of a Palestinian Intifada.”

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/21971-al-waleed-bin-talal-supports-israel-against-palestinians

There has been a correction — or disinformation.

You decide.

The alternative and later-breaking headline shouts, “Fabricated quotes attributed to Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal on Israel-Palestine go viral” (October 29, 2015), and here is what it says:

An article from an obscure website falsely claiming that Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal had said that he would side with the Israelis against the Palestinians, went viral on social media before the prince released a statement on Thursday roundly denying the story.

Uh oh.

And Now the Rest of the Message from “Behind the News” (Israel)

The Saudi Arabian Football Federation has announced its refusal to play a World Cup preliminary match against the Palestinian national soccer team in a stadium near Ramallah, Samaria.

In its official announcement Tuesday to FIFA, Saudi Arabia expressed concern for the safety of its players in the sensitive area of Judea-Samaria, but reports say the real reason behind the refusal is fear that playing in the area would be a recognition of the “Israeli occupation.”

“Saudis refuse soccer match with Palestinians in Judea-Samaria” (November 4, 2015).

Of course, BackChannels prefers the allegation of Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal’s gentle swing west to the strident reportage and commentary produced by east and west partisan press.

To test public attitude and sentiment on any given but not yet presented policy, one may “float a trial balloon” — put it Out There: “swings west” vs “refuses play on Israeli occupied territory!” — and ascertain the public response to each possibility.

Happens every day.

What is the distance between the private convictions of the powerful and the public perception of the same?

The Prince Online

One of the largest shareholders in Citigroup, the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after the Murdoch family, and with major stakes in dozens of other Western companies, he travels the globe often wearing bespoke suits instead of the traditional Saudi thawb. Based in a country where women can’t drive or vote, he champions women’s rights and discourages his female employees, who make up 65 percent of his workforce, from wearing the veil in his offices.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi – 3/21/2013.


Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Co. agreed to sell its almost 30 percent stake in Saudi Research and Marketing Group at nearly double the market value.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-01/kingdom-holding-sells-saudi-research-stake-at-91-percent-premium – 11/2/2015.


“Not in London, not in New York, not in Dubai, right here in Saudi Arabia,” he said eagerly. “Kingdom Hotels, that will go public in Dubai and London. But Kingdom Holdings, that must go public here, that’s for sure. Because half of my investments are in Saudi Arabia.” 

Farther down the column of the same piece:

Many of Prince Alwaleed’s most visible investments have been in the West, especially in hotel properties–most recently Fairmont Hotels & Resorts , which he purchased with Colony Capital for some $3.5 billion. Kingdom Hotel Investments, which Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley will take public, raising at least $300 million, holds stakes in 26 hotels including such landmarks as London’s Savoy, the George V in Paris and a number of Four Seasons properties.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/19/prince-alwaleed-kingdom-holdings-cx_daa_0220saudidiary.html – 2/20/2006.


The world online, probably much like the one represented virtually, appears to have arrived freighted with classes and masses.  The wealthy, the few breathtakingly so, appear to battle for share of control of the world’s productive businesses and resources, and two of the qualities of high honor, dignity and integrity, attend their achievements.  The much, much, and far less wealthy may both bask in that glory as well as swim in its patronage and its “sweet words”, at times, perhaps, pandering.

Where is the Prince going?

The reader’s guess may be as good as BackChannels’ — although a writer blessed with look-up time and cursed with imagination may have a small edge in the collection of tea leaves for floating above the dark waters of an abyss of possibilities.

Back rooms and boardrooms, closed curtains and curtains lifted on theaters, few in the world, much less meandering around the web, may ever ascertain a true state of affairs in the region of the practical interests and strategies of the world’s chief controlling agents of privately-held capital or privately-controlled state capital.  Whether watching Kingdom or Kremlin — how different those two! — the (public access) watching needs must take place from somewhere far on the sidelines — down the columns and between the lines of common publications — and however magnificent the parade, one may see only one’s own small and shades-of-gray portion of the passing show.

# # #

 

Unfreedom – Saudi Arabia – Daddy Dearest

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Saudi Arabia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

barbarism, despotism, enslavement, Jawaher, King Abdullah, politics, Sahar, Saudi Arabia

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:

* * *

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.

Wickham, Daniel.  “An Interview with the Imprisoned Daughters of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.”  Muftah, June 2, 2014.

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.

Update February 23, 2015

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.

# # #

“Why are we, grown women, held against our will?” From the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Revolt in the Compound

29 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Saudi Arabia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

foreign affairs, freedom, political, politics, Saudi Arabia

Reference: http://www.channel4.com/news/saudi-princesses-sahar-jawaher-king-abdullah-barack-obama – 3/28/2014.

The story of two young women kept behind the walls of their Saudi compound but connected to the web and its social resources has been tweeted 867 times and cited on Facebook 2,700 times or so.

Perhaps we will find freedom itself as much a binary as an open or closed channel.

The world online and where channels are open is a still new and still free world, mind to mind, mouth to ear, listening, responding, corresponding, sharing aspirations, circumstances, fears, values.

* * *

Circumstances change, and one hopes for the better.

If circumstances appear to change for the worse, then one hews to values, and the value of shared and supported dignity, freedom, and respect — between men and women, between husbands and wives, between parents and their children — are themes eternal.  However, it is to each generation to again evaluate and affirm or dispose of beliefs and customs that while once protective would seem to have come to lend themselves to the humiliating and infantilizing of their own offspring and assorted additional significant others.

# # #

Link

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/saudi-arabia-foreignrelations.html

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by commart in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

analysis, foreign affairs, history, international relations, middle east, political, politics, Saudi Arabia

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/saudi-arabia-foreignrelations.html

The discovery of oil would transform the geopolitical role of Saudi Arabia. It was an American firm, later called Aramco — not a British firm — that succeeded in getting the rights for prospection in 1938. Aramco sought assistance from the U.S. government to exploit the fields.

One consequence of Aramco’s interest combined with President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision of the geopolitical future of the United States was a now famous, then little noticed, meeting of Roosevelt and the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, on Feb. 14, 1945 aboard a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea. 

Syria – Tug-of-War

18 Tuesday Feb 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

KSA, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria

Saudi Arabia has managed to win crucial support from Pakistan in the ongoing insurrection in Syria, as the two key Muslim states on Monday called for the formation of an interim governing body to replace the Bashar al Assad regime.

Following talks between the visiting Saudi crown prince, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the two countries demanded ‘the formation of a transitional governing body with full executive powers enabling it to take charge of the affairs of the country (Syria)’.

Ouster of Assad regime: Riyadh wins Islamabad’s support on Syria – The Express Tribune – 2/18/2014.

* * *

Syria Theater of Jihad, Dutch report: Wahhabi are flocking into from all over the world, – YouTube – 2/17/2014.

______

Russia/NATO – Hezbollah/al-Nusra – Shiite/Sunni

Stalemate

______

The only half-good observation one might make about Syria is that it seems to be, by and large and just to date, it’s own burning building.  What’s happening within it hasn’t, so far, gone on to wreck Lebanon, Jordan, or Turkey, and it hasn’t affected Israel much either.

There’s Sochi charm in the world going on around the turmoil in Syria.

There’s something here too of an update on the American Vietnam Era experience of sitting down to supper with the network news delivering accounts and images from Saigon: because there’s conflict in the world, because, perhaps, someone somewhere is dying by way of political violence as I type, I should skip breakfast?  Some else should forego the morning jog around the neighborhood?  Elsewhere, sleep should be interrupted?

Related: Pieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_Icarus.jpg

* * *

8:04:

“If the Dutch forces would send a unit or fighters to Syria to help the oppressed people, I would be the first one to sign up for the Dutch army, but no one is doing anything.   So why when people want to do something to help these people and to make a change, is there a problem?”

Dutch former Royal Netherlands Army soldier trains jihadists in Syria. – YouTube – 1/27/2014.

Related: A Dutch Jihadist in Syria Speaks, and Blogs – NYTimes.com – 1/29/2014.

Additional Reference

Holland spy chief: Dutch citizens fighting in Syria | The Times of Israel – 2/8/2013.

Young Dutch fighters in Syria – heroes or potential terrorists? | Radio Netherlands Worldwide – 6/22/2013.

GUEST POST: Dutch Foreign Fighters – Some Testimonials from the Syrian Front « JIHADOLOGY – 10/13/2013.

Dutch court sentences would-be Syrian rebel fighters | Al Jazeera America – 10/23/2013.

The Dutch Foreign Fighter Contingent in Syria | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point – 10/24/2013.

www.kronosadvisory.com/Kronos_DUTCH.FIGHTERS.IN.SYRIA.pdf – 10/24/2013.

www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Bakker-Paulussen-Entenmann-Dealing-With-European-Foreign-Fighters-in-Syria.pdf – 12/2/2013.

European Muslims Join Terror Groups to Fight in Syria – 12/9/2013.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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