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An “Ordinary Day” Away from the EMadding Crowd . . . .

15 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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“Almost unanimously Iraqis tell me that America will initially win the military war but will face a fierce resistance for establishing peace.  The exiled opposition, with its varying agenda, will pull Iraq further apart.”

Fassihi, Farnaz.  Waiting for an Ordinary Day.  New York: Public Affairs, 2008.

More than 99 notifications await me on Facebook.

I fear to download the weekend’s e-mail, this having signed on to enough lists to receive from the vending and politics communities about 5-MB of email per day.

That’s a lot of slush.

Then too, the world has a lot of absolutely senseless problems driven more by vainglorious egos — so I harp: malignant narcissism — and the mafia societies they create through, in, and around themselves, than any other cause for bellicose behavior.

Not particularly exceptional in this, even Hamas in Gaza lives in mansions.

Whatever they’re about (psst — murder and plunder), they’re not about justice, much less God.

Perhaps I should be receiving 10-MB of e-mail per day.

Or not.

Here one may make a case for a quiet space far from the emadding crowd, a fair cup of coffee, and a good book.

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Aside

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics

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Unfortunately, that kind of killing has to be stopped by killing.

There are no pacifist or passive options that are not ultimately self-destructive.

“These guys” — I think I can say that about both religious and secular fascists — simply do not have an “off button” — no containment, no self-restraint.

In their heads, they are the favored of God and can do no wrong.

At the moment, in fact, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has confined and laid siege to the lives of four daughters, and he is killing and will kill them in this manner (Twitter hash #FreeThe4) and there seems no power on earth interested in or willing to stop him, and verbal persuasion may have no effect at all.

Humanity at large is on a collision course with this aspect of its own errant psychology. It is complex if interpreted as “secular vs religious” adherence, but that’s not what the fighting is about: it is about The Despotic (mafia and fascist) vs. The Democratic (justice and inclusion).

Test it out in argument elsewhere.

Let me know how it works.

Aside

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Philosophy, Politics, Religion

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“Who is a Jew?” is a terrible question as it is answered so often by anti-Semites with a program for plunder (or conversion and taxation).

Apart from that, I’ve started my definition (so it’s not the pervasive definition, whatever that may be) with ” . . . a global ethnic commune . . . .” and at stake in determination is that linkage x language (!) x belief x calendar x customs x identity in self-concept. Jews could, I suppose, measure by Likert scale their own performance in each dimension (e.g., Hebrew 0=None, 5=Fluent) and that might tell something . . . but ask a Jew to embrace another faith and one is more likely to get Muhammad’s 1/0, black-and-white, you-in-you-out perspective on the matter.

The rest is a) demographics and b) invention sidelining the ethnic tie while endorsing and embracing, buying into, the dual Judaic concepts of the God of the universe and justice predicated on the gifts that are human awareness, self-awareness, and conscience predicated on awareness and good regard for the other, as Eve and Adam are to one another when they “cover” (leaving God, sigh, God) to sew the first real clothes.

I should like to have been around to see the first time a primate (or any other form) ever adorned, covered, or made a habit of wearing a loin cloth or anything remotely like it.

FTAC — There’s a threaded conversation around the above blip, if that, on the theological radars scanning for possibility.

🙂

The thread starter: Jonathan Tobin’s recent piece in Commentary, “The Problem with American Jewry” (the system’s fast enough to block-and-search a string while I hold on to my next seven free views of the publication, as funding subscriptions to key online publications becomes an issue here).

I might amend that to “fortunately by religion”, for there are more of us than there are of them, and we’re likely to find or highlight in our respective religions greater cause for defending one another as believers and, perhaps, exemplars of the next platform (which related to “coming forward of our respective positions) and thereby promoting in common values good in the sight of God, within the better graces of nature, and beneficial to mankind.

The above comes from another portion of the awesome conversation but with the same person on the same day.

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Aside

06 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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After half a dozen years of visiting the world through Windows and watching and thinking about global conflict, most of it, I think the true axis in the world is about freedom — community and individual autonomy and self-determination — and the form is simply The Despotic vs The Democratic. Secular political mafia and religious fanaticism commanding martial forces are of the same personality, deeply contemptuous of others, fearful, aggressive, and violent.

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Aside

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in A Little Wisdom

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God is many ideas.

On one hand, I favor Tevye’s, and on the other Einstein’s.

For divinity and earth consciousness, Christ process, and the like, I only remind that the volcano (earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, tornado, wildfire, plague, and the distribution of despots worldwide) seems not to care much about what anyone thought about God or anything else upon the arrival of its evil.

If I were not myself a little bit narcissistic, romantic, and sentimental, I’d be an atheist along the lines of Christopher Hitchens. As it is, for perhaps sheer cussed free will, I prefer belief, but it’s not the sort of belief that has in it the hubris to test God either with rattlesnakes or battle.

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Aside

A Correspondent Comments on Signal, Symbol, and Threat

24 Saturday May 2014

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology

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Threat does not look like what you think it looks like and can be very hard to detect . . . .  Symbols and signals will fly. We may be able to catch them in the air with NSA tools, but catching is not identification, now is it? I can catch a pretty insect in my back yard. But if I am not able to identify it, [if] it is poisonous and it bites me, it does me no good. It is not enough to capture words. We must understand these words and what they mean.

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I’ve long characterized the Islamic Small Wars as wars for detectives and poets: detectives because so much that happens has been planned and put together in closely guarded private channels; poets because language and motivation seem inseparable, and language and objects made symbols may be used to facilitate operations.

Are computers close readers?

How is their apprehension of metonymy?

Do they play the glass bead game?

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Aside

20 Tuesday May 2014

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

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Reading at the moment: https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/2277_The-Resolution-of-Land-Use-Conflicts-in-Sao-Paulo

Again, I’m concerned with transitioning from observation and complaint — and with open warfare, that’s about all an online pundit may do — to working on a project and solving problems, and I think that may be much more doable on the other side of conflict: development.

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