MAN COME INTO EGYPT

Chanukah 2014

Why Do People Pray To The God Of Their Exploiters?

Is it because, given the chance, they'd be exploiters, too?

Until the Struggle for Justice is Internationalized...

Justice will continue to be denied.

State the Facts, Name the Names

Leaked Audio Shows Egypt’s Coup Leaders as a Criminal Syndicate » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Odious...

is the honor among thieves.

Ask Yourself The Tough Questions

Remember Building Seven.

You Have The Power

From Ferguson, Mo. to the Gaza strip; from Washington, D.C. to Paris, France; from Cairo to Miami Beach; from Beijing to Sao Paulo: you have the power. The way to seize it is to STOP COOPERATING WITH WHAT YOU KNOW TO BE WRONG.

Add This To The List...

The Road To Kashgar

Give That Man a Peace Prize!

Oh, wait. They already did...

Obama authorizes wider war in Afghanistan

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Jean-Paul Marat: The Hampton Institute

Jean-Paul Marat: The French Revolution's Own Pre-Marx Socialist Blogger I The Hampton Institute

Political Prisoner Mohamed Soltan

Cruel and unusual

A.I.D. at High Tide

I believe that we are witnessing The American Imperial Debacle at high tide. What it feels like to be an American citizen today is probably much like what it felt to be a British citizen in the late 19th century: looking forward to more of the same with no end in sight. But by the mid-point of the following century, the Empire was in tatters. Wars, economic depression, and revolutions weakened the British crown's hold on world hegemony. I fear that we, too, are in for much of the same.

As the Chinese economy undergoes a correction, watch the house of cards come down.

Truth

The British-Saudi alliance.

Now Let's See Them Actually Do Time...What Are The Chances?

Blackwater, torture and US imperialism

Canadian Government Leaps Onto The Anti-Terror Bandwagon/Gravy Train

Ottawa terror attack triggers massive police-military mobilization - World Socialist Web Site

Twisted

US-backed militias commit war crimes in Iraq

Reality Check

In the American war on Vietnam (between 1965 and 1975) over a million Vietnamese lost their lives (see Hirschman, Preston, and Loi, 1995). The ostensible purpose of American military intervention in Vietnam was to prevent the spread of Communism (considered to be a virulent ideology).

The American war on Vietnam ended in failure: after the withdrawal of American troops, the northern and southern sections of the country were united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a political arrangement that has persisted now for 40 years.

The American war on Iraq started in 1991 and has continued until the present time. No accurate statistics are presently available for Iraqi deaths during this period.

The ostensible purpose of American military intervention in Iraq has shifted over the last quarter of a century, from an alleged "mad man" at the helm (Saddam Hussein, now deceased), to an alleged "mad man" at the helm actively developing "weapons of mass destruction" for use against the U.S. mainland or Israel, to a feared takeover of the country by an alleged global network of terrorist cells ("al-Qaeda") bent on destroying Western civilization, to (at present) a feared takeover of the country by another alleged terrorist organization ("IS" or "ISIL" or "ISIS," the acronyms are unstable) bent on...establishing a medieval Caliphate?

Before proceeding further, the reader is requested to review some facts and questions posed in this blog on September 17, 2014.

For reasons that are obscure to the present blogger, the virulent ideology that is embraced by the Vietnamese (not to mention their neighbors China and North Korea) and that justified American military intervention over a ten year period and the deaths of over a million Vietnamese (men, women, and children) is, in the aftermath of our defeat, no longer virulent. How does that follow?

In Iraq, the alleged "mad man" is dead (executed by the U.S. military), his alleged program for the development of weapons of mass destruction was a fiction, and the same may be said for the notion that there is a global network of terrorist cells bent on destroying Western civilization.

Never mind any of that, now we are supposed to fear the establishment of a medieval political institution in Iraq because...this is the latest allegation fed to the American public through its news media.

At what point does the bizarre equal the utterly preposterous? And when do past disclosures of false allegations finally influence our estimation of the reliability of our sources of information?

And, perhaps most important of all, why don't we know, or care to know, precisely how many men, women, and children have lost their lives in Iraq due to the American war against that country since 1991?

JSIL

Calling a spade a spade.

Different Theater, Same, Tiresome, Script

Hong Kong protests ebb

The Same, Tiresome, Script

Behind the war against ISIS - World Socialist Web Site

Nota Bena: Interview With Iraqi Film Director Samir

On the differences between British and American empire and the cause of his optimism:
<em>Iraqi Odyssey</em> and other pictures of the modern world

The Latest Meme Circulated by the Supine 4th Estate

The 4th estate betrayed American democracy long ago. Observing its mendacity in action can be a form of entertainment, though quite distasteful. Even so, it is difficult to know what else to do. When someone routinely insults your intelligence, it is a sign that he (and not you) is the imbecile. Smart people know better.

Read FAIR's blog on the latest intelligence-insulting meme circulated by the idiocracy of the 4th estate: Obama as "reluctant warrior."

Then do what every thinking individual must do in the Age of Rampant Orwellian Newspeak: take note of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and compare that to the evidence. Then measure the distance between the two.

A Few Facts Concerning the Last Great Superpower and a Few Questions Those Facts Engender

Since 1991, the United States has been engaged in an undeclared war with Iraq.

Approximately 169,000 square miles, Iraq is roughly the size of the state of Washington (172,000 square miles).

But it is crowded: in 2012, the population of Iraq was roughly 33.7 million souls--slightly less populous than the state of California (in 2012, roughly 36.7 million souls).

The GNI per capita in 2011 for Iraqis (in U.S. dollars): $2,640.00
The GNI per capita in 2011 for Americans (also in U.S. dollars): $50,860.00

And yet, I repeat: since 1991, the United States has been engaged in an undeclared war with Iraq.

What is this war (and, I repeat, since Congress ceded its Constitutional control over the war-making powers to the Executive Branch after the Second World War, it is an undeclared war) all about?

What are its objectives? What does the United States hope/expect to gain from a (now generational) conflict with a small, crowded country in Mesopotamia?

How does this small, crowded country represent a threat, military or otherwise, to the Last Great Superpower?

Hamza Yusuf speaking about ISIS

The Andalusian Manhaj

Conflict is inevitable. And, from the writings of Heraclitus, we should know that conflict can be creative: the Logos threads its Way through Love and Strife. But conflict need not lead to physical violence. Physical violence ensues where the imagination ends--a "terminus" that is both false and tragic, for the imagination itself has no end. It would therefore be more accurate (and honest) to admit that physical violence ensues where the imagination has been abandoned. Where the imagination has been abandoned, stupefaction reigns.

Sleepy Iberia, who gave us Seneca, the Andalusian convivienca, Unamuno, and Santayana, rouse up from the depths of your spiritual reservoir the strength we need to overcome the world!

Did You Really Imagine, for Even a Moment, that Our Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Would Announce Any Other Approach?

Obama announces open-ended war in Iraq and Syria

Close The Gulag

Kcarab Amabo's Eve of 9/11 Anniversary Speech

Could not have been better timed.

Don't Confuse Us With The Facts!

ISIS atrocities and US imperialism

World Religions By The Numbers

According to Pew-Templeton.

Desmond Tutu Steps Up!

TUTU: My plea to the people of Israel - Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine

The Ironies of History

Resisting Nazis, resisting Zionists.

The True Mystery

After an Israeli bombardment of Gaza, a child is pulled from the wreckage:

And we, in the United States (aka "Land of the Lotus Eaters"), are astounded when people become radicalized. There is no mystery in that. The true mystery is why so few people become radicalized.

Egypt Under the "Security" Forces

The Real Heroes of Our Time...

are those who are willing to tell unpopular truths.

Gitmo

The racialized Twilight Zone financed by the American taxpayer.

Zone of Nonbeing: Guantánamo from IHRCtv on Vimeo.

Centenniel of the Great European Self-Implosion

One hundred years since the outbreak of World War I

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Mourning for a Judaism Being Murdered by Israel

Perhaps It's Time To...

Birds of a Feather

Bosnian Serb Leader Backs Israel's Gaza Operation - Global Agenda - News - Arutz Sheva

JVP's 5 Principles

1) The siege, assaults on Gaza, and the occupation would not be possible without unconditional financial and diplomatic support provided by the US, so any successful peace agreement requires a change in US foreign policy. It is our job to change these unjust policies and to oppose lobby groups like AIPAC who pressure policymakers into unconditional support for Israel while claiming, falsely, to speak for all Jews.


2) The Israeli government has proven its interest is not peace, but rather acquiring more and more land, for Jews only. Decades of U.S-brokered "peace talks" have provided cover while Israel actually expanded settlements. Israel won't give up its power willingly, and must be pressured. That's why we support Palestinian-led unarmed resistance, including the on-the-ground resistance in Palestinian villages, and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which gives every one of us an opportunity to vote with our wallets.

We already know from Israeli leaders that economic pressure can and is making a difference. We work strategically with thousands of activists and partners to build grassroots boycott and divestment campaigns on campuses, churches and in communities that we can all use to extricate ourselves from corporations that profit from the occupation.


3) Any resolution that has a chance of achieving a lasting peace must address Israel’s 47-year-old occupation, the unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the creation of what has now grown to be the world's largest refugee population when Israel was established in 1948. Therefore we work to educate ourselves and others about the Nakba (catastrophe), the forced dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians when Israel was created.


4) Sustainable long-term change comes from the grassroots, which is why we dedicate resources to training, organizing and cultivating leaders in over 40 chapters, on campuses, and in networks where we can help. In the last 3 weeks our chapters have organized hundreds of actions, often risking arrest, to raise a cry against those institutions and corporations that aid the Israeli assault on Palestinians.

It's also why we partner, not only with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, but with a diverse range of groups committed to a just peace--Christians, Muslims, Arab Americans, artists, academics, religious leaders, students, and more. Together, we move mountains.


5) While it is up to Palestinians to lead their liberation movement, we Jews must lead ours. We know that one people's freedom cannot be achieved at the expense of another's, and that Israelis can never be made safe by oppressing Palestinians. We also fight intolerance and racism in Jewish communities, work with young leaders who will replace the out of touch leadership of many Jewish institutions, and support efforts to undo the dehumanization of the oppressor in Israel and all over.

The Tolstoyan Imperative

The moment you concede that there is any validity to the proposition that violence is an acceptable method of conflict resolution, you have become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

There can be no exceptions to this fundamental rule of life. None. Any claimed exception is merely a compromise with evil.

Meanwhile, In Another Corner of a Failing Empire...

The Libyan catastrophe

The Victims of Colonialism...

are many. Consider the case of Albert Camus.

The Funny Thing About Walls Is...

When you wall someone out, you also wall yourself in.

Jewish Voice for Peace

Gaza

"No, Father. I've a very different idea of love [than you do]," Dr. Rieux told the priest, Fr. Paneloux. "And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture."

From The Plague by Albert Camus (tr. Stuart Gilbert, slightly modified).

CODEPINK Crashes Congressional Egypt Pro-Coup Caucus

"Deja Vu All Over Again?"

The day the US shot down Iran Airlines Flight 655 - World Socialist Web Site

My Son Asked Me The Other Day...

Dad, why is there so much conflict in the Middle East? I said, it's not rocket science. In fact, it's really quite simple. It's like this...

Moving Beyond Mercator

From the Jewish Daily Forward

Bloody Gaza Onslaught Built on Foundation of Politics and Lies

Now, More Than Ever...

As We Approach the 100th Anniversary of the Start of the Great European Implosion...

we should trade the usual cant for an historical perspective grounded in the evidence. John Morrow's The Great War: An Imperial History supplies us with just that:

Triumphs and memorials notwithstanding, the Great War imparts a sense of a tragedy of enormous proportions. Europeans, in their hubristic determination to rule the rest of the world, destroyed their own. The class-bound and imperialist governments of the time willingly consigned the men of their countries and empires to unparalleled slaughter, and expended their wealth and knowledge to improve and increase the implements of destruction. Their arrogance and exhortatory, excessive propaganda drove them to become the agents of their own annihilation. Their approaching exhaustion and collapse finally ended the conflict. The Great War originated in imperialism; the victors gained in empire, while the losers not only lost their empires but also their own imperial states. Disillusion and despair gripped all, because any reason, any aim, any goal, any gain, and any commemoration paled before the havoc they had wrought. No peace in the conditions of 1919 could lay to rest the demonic passions that four years of war had evoked. The war had solved no problems before it and left many more in its wake, which gave rise to its even more destructive spawn.

pp. 322-323.

Iftar on Istiklal Ave. (Istanbul)

Ramadan 2013.

Wake up and discover that the future is now.

Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Iraq Today

The wages of "liberation."

In the Mail...

Letter to Obama Administration on Egyptian State Violations of Human Rights

The U.S. Did Not "Win" in Iraq, Nor Did the War Ever End

Facing a debacle in Iraq, the US turns for help to Iran - World Socialist Web Site

Bedtime Reading

A Rhetorical Question

Why Should Fair Trials for MB Suspects be Important to Egyptian Christians?

The Strength of Egypt...

and the hope of Egypt reside in the great people of Egypt.

Contemplation in a World of Action

Perhaps This Is Why The U.S. Government Is So Worried About Russia

God help us if we don't have an enemy.

Can White People Be Terrorists?

Not in the U.S. media.

Nazianity

It is certainly understandable (and appreciated) that Christians wish to distance themselves from what happened in the heartland of the Protestant Reformation in the early decades of the 20th century. But there is a certain distortion of the historical record that is introduced by the strenuousness with which this distance is maintained. It is important to remember the ties that Hitler himself drew between his movement and Christianity. It is important to remember the cooperation he received from the majority of German Lutheran churchmen. Well educated and highly cultured Protestants herded Jews onto the trains bound for the camps and pulled the trigger when called upon to do so. And well educated and highly cultured Protestants who were not directly involved in the debacle obligingly looked the other way.

And they still look the other way when it comes to Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya--and that is just the short list.

As Santayana the Moor admonished us: Those who forget the past (or, in this case, selectively remember it) are doomed to repeat it.

What A Difference A Projection Makes

Switching from the Euro-centric Mercator Projection Map to the Robinson Projection provides one with a more accurate perception of physical and, in the example above, political geography.

I'll Take My Chances...

with the gentleman on the right.

Wisdom from Santayana the Moor

A military class is…always recalling, foretelling, and meditating war; it fosters artificial and senseless jealousies toward other governments that possess armies; and finally, as often as not, it precipitates disaster by bringing about the objectless struggle on which it has set its heart.

Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists. There are panegyrists of war who say that without a periodical bleeding a race decays and loses its manhood. Experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

[T]he panegyrist of war places himself on the lowest level on which a moralist or patriot can stand and shows as great a want of refined feeling as of right reason. For the glories of war are all blood-stained, delirious, and infected with crime; the combative instinct is a savage prompting by which one man’s good is found in another’s evil.

Reason and Society (1905)

Zionist Self-Criticism

An idea whose time has arrived.

More Egyptian Sumud

From Static to Active Sumud

"From a static sumud, characterized by an attitude of resignation (perhaps even self-pity), albeit coupled with the determination to stay put on the land, sumud muqawim emerged as activist and effective in seeking ways to build alternative institutions, and thus to resist and undermine the occupation."

--Samih K. Farsoun and Jean M. Landis, "The Sociology of an Uprising: The Roots of the Intifada," p. 28.

Self-Delusion

Engaging in the evil that you oppose in order to accomplish the good to which you aspire is self-delusion of the first order.

Prophetic Sumud

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

--St. Matthew 23:37.

Is Morsi the "New Mandela"?

Interview with Abdul Mawjoud Dardery.

Kazakhstan

I've been hearing for years now about how the Soviets destroyed Central Asia and that, since the collapse of the USSR, things have gone downhill from there. I don't doubt that there is some truth to these allegations--maybe a lot of truth--but the region still holds many treasures.

The few human beings who still inhabit this troubled planet must repudiate both the Cold War mentality and its successor, the "War On/Of Terror" mentality, and reclaim it.

The Square

Amiri Baraka "Somebody Blew Up America"

Why Am I Not Surprised?

#EgyConstitution : Talk to me about About the use of religion in Politics

The Worm in the Apple of the Zionist Project

In the mid-1980's, an Israeli journalist by the name of Yoram Binur took an assignment in which he posed for six months as a Palestinian laborer in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A committed Zionist, he suddenly found himself on the receiving end of the bigoted cruelties with which his fellow Israelis routinely treat Palestinians. The following reflections on sumud are excerpted from his essay, "Palestinian Like Me."

"Before one can speak of the intifada, as the Palestinians call the current uprising, one must first understand how the Palestinians have coped with life under the Israeli occupation up to this point. The key concept in this respect is sumud, which means "sticking with it," "staying put," "holding fast" to one's objectives and to the land--in a word, survival. Sumud is an attitude, a philosophy, and a way of life. It maintains that one must carry on in a normal and undisturbed fashion, as much as possible. Compared with organized civil disobedience, or passive resistance as preached by Gandhi, sumud is a more basic form of resistance growing out of the idea that merely to exist, to survive, and to remain on one's land is an act of defiance--especially when deportation is the one thing Palestinians fear most.

Although sumud is essentially passive by nature, it has a more active aspect, consisting of gestures that underscore the difference between surviving under difficult conditions and accepting them..."

Binur recounted conversations he had with Palestinian workers who described for him the subtle means by which they attempted to undermine the productivity of their occupiers: the very "weapons of the weak" that Jim Scott has chronicled in his scholarship and that are described in slave histories of the antebellum American south.

Those who undertake occupation and a position of dominance over other human beings--on whatever basis (be it racial, religious, ideological or statist)--can only succeed (short of mass deportations and/or extermination) if the occupied and dominated accept their assigned roles, i.e., adopt a stance that Etienne de la Boetie (d. 1563) rightly named "the politics of obedience" and the "discourse of voluntary servitude." To do so, however, is to accept de-humanization. Some human beings can be counted upon to do so, but many cannot. But even if the many could be depended upon for such compliance, the occupiers and dominant ought to consider the effect upon themselves and upon the society they wish to create of reducing others in their midst to such a condition.

This is the worm in the apple of the Zionist project--planted, as it is, in the Palestinian olive grove.

Sumud Observed and Theorized

Yale anthropologist Jim Scott has dedicated his career to studying the practice of sumud across cultures and political systems around the world.

Sumud is the politics of the powerless. It involves nothing more (or less) than the principled assertion of one's integrity via non-violent non-cooperation with oppression.

Egyptian Sumud