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
I've embarked on a great reduction in privacy by bookmarking my web-based reading on the "delicious.com" utility. It may tip my hand as to what I have in mind for blogging, but the same may help friends and frenemies alike track my thinking: here is the URL:
Main web: www.communicating-arts.com
E-Mail: [email protected]
Also: as of 2011, I am building a photography print-on-demand presence at Fine Art AmericaM. This is the address:
Effort in print-on-demand will not offset the production nor value of signed, limited edition prints made under my own hand. However, for very good convenience, price, and quality, print-on-demand may work out well for many fans and patrons.
If you're engaged in funded research in conflict analysis or other areas that may be addressed here and wish to engage my mind in your project, feel welcome to drop me a note at [email protected].
« June 2007 | Main | August 2007 »
With two of its hostage women in failing health, the Taliban have extended their deadline for resolution from 3:30 a.m. August 1 to 4:30 p.m. [1], which in Afghanistan is about 10 hours and 20 minutes away from this posting.
1. "Two Hostages in Serious Condition: Taliban Spokesman." Chosun Ilbo, August 1, 2007, 09:20 KST.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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Early footage from May 25 (by "darwishian") shows the carnival of war, the early stage when crowds may gather for the fireworks. Taped from behind a tank and in the vicinity of other Lebanese army hardware, the metallic sound of incoming, the clap of explosions, and the down-range kicks of dust clouding the air make for the unmistakable statement of any army bent on the methodical destruction of its enemy.
How about a ride through town: from "mra1385", posted May 22, 2007, "Nahr al-Bared2, Caught in Crossfire."
Move it up: two weeks ago, directed by Stefan Schmiederer, posted July 12, 2007, "Lebanese army pounds Nahr al-Bared."
War is the demolition derby for cities, for sure.
One day the kids joy ride through Kalashnakov fire (and practically catch their own bullet); two months later, nothing that doesn't have the clearance of an armored carrier or the clout of a tank gets down the same streets.
I wouldn't call it a carnival for the press, but to camp out with a few on the outskirts of the besieged city: "haraldmarkd" posted the Dutch experience on June 29, "Two Dutch Journalists and translator around Nahr al-Bared."
From Al Jazeera English, "Life under siege in Nahr al-Bared - 13 Jul 07".
Footage from ten hours ago out of the burgeoning camera phone medium: "Lebanese Army smoking hookah in Nahr al-Bared," posted by "justimage", July 31, 2007.
[1]
There's plenty to catch on YouTube as regards Nahr al-Bared, and draw what conclusions you may from the footage, it is a certainty the cordon will tighten on the remaining fighters, which it has been doing today in expressions of square yardage to go, and it is possible that the lives of about 50 children may be spared if the Lebanese military can take care of the parents separately.
That last footage looks to me like the return to the carnival of war, the picnic, the relaxing behind the armor while the boys (I use the term in its American "good ol'" sense) take turns, 'one by one', but in this arena on the muscle side of the equation, taking their shots at the remaining resistance.
1. Search string used at YouTube: "Nahr al-Bared".
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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alI stand corrected. Yesterday's "Song Kin-Shi", the second Korean hostage killed by the Taliban as reported in Chinaview is more likely Shim Sung-min, as reported by Reuters today [1] In this latest war zone where terror keeps down the numbers of the press and cell phones suffice for information from disembodied voices, one may expect such misperceptions and transpositions in the reporting of proper nouns.
Shim Sung-min turns out an IT professional who was working as a volunteer with Saemmul Church and thinking about going on to graduate school when the Taliban made him a part of world history.
The Taliban's next move: another deadline, this latest for Wednesday, August 1 at 3:30 a.m. [2] It's coming on 9 p.m. in Kabul, so the hostages will have another and possibly sleepless six hours before the next slaughter.
Reuters also reports this moning on how the hostages' families have been surviving this cruel ordeal in which deadlines have been set and passed several times without finality [3]
For all who have ever, even once, felt themselves impotent and helpless in the face of disaster or threat of any kind, this crisis may suggest how states feel it. Cooperation fully empowers the Taliban to carry out more of the same; refusal sacrifices innocents. The Taliban, who most likely will blame the Afghani government and the allied coalition for murdering their hostages, may themselves not have the ability to reconsider their course (perhaps by abandoning the hostages), which decision may betray relatives in the government's prisons.
In Guerrilla, Walter Laqueur points out the advantages of a surrounding force leaving its enemies a line of retreat in ambush, the idea being to compel other than a vicious fight to the death on the part of an entire outmaneuvered party. Some will choose escape and reduce the threat in the immediate kill zone overall.
Unfortunately, the psychology having to do with social obligations and beliefs about the nature of belief at Lal Masjid, Nahr al-Bared, and here make compromise, retreat, and surrender equally impossible.
At the mosque and in the Palestinian camp, faith in martyrdom may have provided its hopeful note, whether one sees that thinking as upside-down or not, but with the holding of hostages, now 21 of 23 initially detained, and no gun battle in sight, martrdom, other than Christian martyrdom, may seem as far off as appeals for the return of the humanity of the captors.
1. "Killed South Korean hostage was active volunteer." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
2. "Afghans recover body of slain Korean hostage." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
3. "'Life in Hell' for Korean Hostages' families." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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Dead, so far:
It is 3:25 a.m., Tuesday, July 31, 2007 in Afghanistan, not a good time for another rat-tat-tat, not with government troops in the vicinity, nor for further negotiations, but I may assume too much. The one thing known with certainty is that for the 21 hostages remaining with the Taliban overnight, their captors hold and represent absolute power.
Chinaview, reporting Song Kin-Shi's death, goes on to review the recent spate of Taliban kidnappings in Afghanistan [1].
In one of the most widely known of recent abductions, of course, the Taliban released Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo in a prisoner exchange deal, for which Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai was heavily criticized, but beheaded the journalist's driver during the ordeal and continued to detain and later killed, possibly by slitting his throat, fellow traveler and journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi.
Released to the Taliban in the Mastrogiacomo deal: five leaders, including two commanders [2].
Update and correction, July 31, 2007: the identity of "Song Kin-Shi" has been reported by Reuters as "Shim Sung-min" [5].
1. "Spokesman: Taliban kills 2nd S Korean hostage." Chinaview, July 31, 2007.
3. "Daniele Mastrogiacomo." Wikipedia.
4. "Ajmal Naqshbandi." The Travel Photographer, April 9, 2007.
5. "Killed South Korean hostage was active volunteer." Reuters, July 31, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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Tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor wishes to report the 22 Korean nationals held by the Taliban in Afghanistan as being alive. [6] So far, so good then, provided you're neither a Korean nor a parent, in which case the incessant setting and passing of deadlines refers to the beating or stilling of your countryman's or child's heart.
The 23 members of the Saemmul Church that set out to provide volunteer medical services to Afghani citizens should be everyone's children.
While the Korean hostage crisis takes on the familiar life of its own, the hard note of Iraqization continues to sound in Pakistan with "11 dead in blast" on the day of the miraculous, in my opinion, reopening of Lal Masjid, minus the girl's school, to prayer. [1]
One may mourn the living as well as the dead in the wake of that signal.
It has been a while since I last read the news in Somalia, where in Mogadishu the Grim Reaper juggles grenades and puts on a show or two or three every single day, so it's something to catch the perfectly cinematic, big box office, Lord of War style news on the arms trade out of Eritrea, which has been accused of smuggling in large weapons shipments by air, which implied bills of lading have included surface-to-air missiles. [3]
Lebanon demonstrates Edison's wisdom: the last 10 percent of the project requires 90 percent of the labor. Translated to Nahr al-Bared, it means producing a cordon for the camp, blocking escape by sea, enduring sniper fire, and generally pounding the place to smithereens turned out the easy part weeks ago (and one may add to that getting about 30,000 civilians somewhere else safely). The army has been working in the camp for better than week and on the last 200 yards and surviving militia and related family for days, and it is still suffering. [4]
Often, when anti-Islamic fervor takes on the same florid and irrational cast as antisemitism, I bring up Turkey, its history of religious tolerance, its membership in NATO, its democratic and predominantly secular-operating system, and its $2 billion annual market economy with Israel--all good, peaceful, and productive things, and no one misses prayers or should because of them. The appreciation and encouragement of differences in customs and outlooks may turn out a hallmark--a continuing one, I hope--of contemporary and open societies.
It was with a sinking heart, then, that I happened on Eward Luttwalk's, "Turkey's leaders plan Muslim Europe" in the UK publication, The First Post [5], which somehow web surfed me over as unhappily to the Turkish phenomenon that has been the Valley of the Wolves television show and 2006 movie, the movie featuring atrocities by American military forces who sell their victims' body parts with the help of Jewish surgeons, that wrap according to Luttwalk.
An exaggeraton of the perfunctory "Hood Event", in which U.S. forces detained Turkish forces operating in northern Iraq in July 2003, took them to Baghdad for interrogation, and released them in accord with the American-Turkish diplomacy of that day (detained: 11 troops on July 4, 2003; released: 11 troops on July 7, 2003), Valley of the Wolves follows from familiar enough Hollywood conventions, especially, perhaps the convention of coming up with a convenient Arab now cum "Islamist" terrorist as an antagonist to generally white bread, sometimes, as with screen star "XXX", tattooed pumpernickle, American Rambo's.
Would that whatever went around would come back around because the reversion to depictions of killing children (and every adult is someone's child) and stealing their parts, perhaps for matzoh, speaks to what is most reprehensible in the unreasoning regions of mind and heart, and that went around a long, long time ago.
There's a short flight over the morning's news, which will be about the same but different tomorrow, I am pretty sure of that.
1. "11 dead in blast near Red Mosque." CNN, July 27, 2007, 10:10 a.m. EDT.
4. "Two Lebanese soldiers die in camp battle overnight." Reuters, July 27, 2007, 8:22 a.m. EDT.
5. Luttwak, Edward. "Turkey's leaders plan Muslim Europe." The First Post, July 27, 2007.
7. "U.S. releases Turkish troops." CNN, July 7, 2003.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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July 27, 2007, 10:30 a.m.
This will turn out a warm day.
The air is still.
Temperatures in the 80's (F) and thunderstorms have been predicted.
I am going to type steadily, slowly, ritually, half awake over coffee while fan blades spin above the dining room table.
As I once played my guitar five times a day, I wonder now how beautiful a day I may make this one with music, photography, cooking, reading, writing, gardening--not just the arts through which one may pass in a day, out of election or necessity, but which in each separate meditation touches on the divine.
I have been too long on the Internet, chatting with strangers, swimming in the war news, bathing my mind in its blood and horror, and off the web reading through one of Walter Laqueur's histories, an appropriate accompaniment to the timeless drifts of bandits and revolutionaries across the universal mindscape.
Whatever the misery and tumult, some few may for a while live apart and farther into the present than the past, for the beauty of an art sufficiently developed lies in the effect it has on time, which may be made to expand and grow still.
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"In optics, astigmatism (from Greek: α- a- "without" + στίγματος stigmatos, gen. of στίγμα stigma "a mark, spot, puncture"[1]) is when an optical system has different foci for rays that propagate in two perpendicular planes. If an optical system with astigmatism is used to form an image of a cross, the vertical and horizontal lines will be in sharp focus at two different distances." Wikipedia on astigmatism.
Here again, the action: take hostages.
The reaction, generally: no negotiations--
Followed by negotiations.
And this too will resolve.
Without question, there will be another action and of a similarly circular nature.
In Afghanistan's Korean hostage crisis, the sweetest of do-gooders, a group of Christians from an affluent Korean district set out to provide humanitarian services in what they may have perceived as a country recovering from war rather than one still mired in it.
The wisdom of that thinking has been soundly and roundly criticized and dismissed here and elsewhere.
Beyond that tragically parochial decision-making lies the practice of delivering to a xenophobic Islam services of an Islamic cast--i.e., not the "Red Cross" but the "Red Crescent"--and recognizing the traditional sanctity of a country's prevalent and legitimate customs and laws. However, when adventurers violate such, expulsion and escort, if appropriate, to the border generally suits.
Kidnapping serves other and varied purposes.
In this episode, Digital Chosunilbo, a leading information resource for Korea, notes the efforts of the Korean Muslim community to pray for and urge the Taliban to release the 22 so far surviving hostages. [2]
In another article, Chosunilbo passes along the world's indignation and puzzlement over the point of further bloodshed. [3]
One of CNN's Associated Press dispatches begins, ""Afghan clerics and tribal elders are negotiating for the release of 22 South Korean hostages . . . ." [5]
The latest deadline I've read for the Taliban resolving how the hostages will fare is 4:30 p.m. Korean Standard Time, [6] about three hours from this post.
2. "Korean Muslims Pray for Safe Return of Hostages." The Chosun Ilbo, July 24, 2007.
3. "Taliban Denounced Around the World." The Chosun Ilbo, July 27, 2007.
4. "South Korean hostage pleads for help." BBC News, July 26, 2007.
5. "Afghans negotiate with Taliban over 22 Korean hostages." CNN, July 26, 2007, 10 p.m. EDT.
6. "Korean Hostage Tells Media of Group's Plight." The Chosun Ilbo, July 27, 2007, 8:57 KST.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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This entry's companion piece: "Islamic Women's Revolution".
My literary education in Islam may have started with the classic and on occassion reviled Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973) but I am certain it will end with other reading and other perceptions of Islam and its adherents.
Patai in 1973 set the stage for General Petraeus's echo in Baghdad this summer with the thought that without criticism, introspection, and some kind of updating either in language or practice, there may not be much progress, from a western point of view, to be had with Islam.
That thinking now encounters an established, telling, and growing counterpoint: the presence of Islam in western societies and the prevalence in predominantly "open societies" to question, revisit, and reformulate everything continuously from both expert and popular bases. Implicit in the concept of freedom, curiosity and reformulation prove irresistible to personalities that through accidents of fate coupled with will find themselves on a small part of the wheel of history and endowed intellectually and logistically with the ability to articulate and publish ideas bearing directly on the most difficult issues at hand.
In the wake of Lal Masjid, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf asked, "What do we as a nation want? What kind of Islam do these people represent?" [1]
Those rhetorical questions, which I cannot address, may be answered in part by those who have stakes in Islamic identity, the sculpting of contemporary western lives, and the fashioning of peace.
Note: I'm aware of public relations advocacy and defense institutions representing Islam but seem to want to avoid them here as I do in Jewish life as well. My inclination is to focus on personalities as I find them and as they appeal to me as critical and progressive intellectuals.
Herewith, the start of a list of men, just started this July 26, 2007, writing about Islamic culture and theology as appropriate and fitted to contemporary "western" (I would call it "universal middle class" actually) life.
Hesham A. Hassaballa: His blog: God, Faith, and a Pen: The Official Blog of Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa. In the creative writing and English literature classrooms, one may try to provide students with a better story about their lives than they would otherwise care to provide to themselves. That intent has nothing to do with fakery or manipulation but rather clarified thinking along well formulated strands. I wouldn't call the foundations--whether mystical or empirically reasoning, secular or religious--for similar invention interchangeable, but they may be less opposed than some (or many) would wish to have them. Either way, the good story strengthens identity and enhances life and the love of it, and I sense that intent in this gentleman's work and pass both his name and blog address along to you.
Mohamed Sifaoui: The blog's in French: http://www.mohamed-sifaoui.com/. Britain's Telegraph has billed him as "The Man Who Got Inside Al Qaeda" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/08/31/bosif24.xml). And there's a book: Inside Al Qaeda. More journalist than activist, possibly, I think he's going to be around a while and thought to list him here. His blog provides for an e-mailed newsletter subscription.
Naser Khader: Founder of the Democratic Muslims in Denmark, the Dutch parliamentarian works to hear and frame the Muslim community's positions in his country while trying himself to stay a democratic and moderate course. In a recent interview with Middle East Quarterly (MEQ) publisher Daniel Pipes, he notes that, "Muslims of Denmark differ widely on politics and religion, and to our delight, it turns out that the largest group of Muslims were those who supported our work." Khader has a web site with an English translation under way: http://www.khader.dk/flx/in_english/. The MEQ interview, "Naser Khader and Flemming Rose: Reflections on the Danish Cartoon Controversy," resides here: http://www.meforum.org/article/1758.
Tawfique Chowdhury: An example of the Aussie's work: "The Ethical Role of Religion in Promoting Peace (Part 1)"; his bio online with the Alkauthar Institute, through which, I presume, he may be reached. Native Americans have made mention to me of the "professional Indian"--the guy who dresses up for the Hollywood buck--and there's a little taint of that in all who package up a little bit of culture for capitalism, which is undeniably in full swing here. However, beneath the "professional Indian" there is always a real one, and beneath the DVD set and jet setting, one finds also the soul of the person and the authenticity of the quest.
Another Native American note passed to me: "Speak, so we may see you."
Last updated: September 25, 2007
1. "Musharraf vows war on militants." BBC News, July 12, 2007, 16:51 GMT.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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According to the Kuwait News Agency dispatch, the Lebanese army has whittled its fight with Fatah al-Islam to within 200 meters of the militant's position. [1]
According to yesterday's video from Reuters [2], the devestation of the camp may lay beyond imagination. From tents to blocks in 60 years, from blocks to ruins inside of two months: when it is said that "Allah makes all things possible," the broadest consideration of what is possible may be included in that thought.
From bank robbery to shootout at the camp gates to siege to the methodical, steady thumping by a modern military, Nahr al-Bared as an event fits the closed-loop pattern noted here last night. History surrounds it, contains it, ends it.
Reuters on July 24 report the numbers killed by the fighting to that date [3]: Lebanese army--120 dead; militants--81 dead; civilians--41 dead.
The familiar toll in twice-displaced Palestinians: about 30,000.
After the loop closes, there's always the next action founded on the last hopes of both sides.
For old PLO caught somewhere between Hamas in Gaza and the immediate futility of returning to the devestated "camp" that was Nahr al-Bared, one may hope for reexamination of the possibility of campaigning for integration into Lebanese life.
It's well know that while dreams need never expire, lives do, and with the destruction of the adjusted, if less than happy, ecology of 30,000 lives, the matter of sustaining violence in service to dreams becomes just that much more accute: how much longer, how much more?
The only good answer is no longer, no more.
The enjoyment and inclusion of amenity in contemporary life involves enormous administrative challenges for which the channeling of misery into endless arguments about systems of belief, government, and justice proves always counter-productive. Where "winning" (anything) may have once meant "control" of the thing won, it now means having in addition and ready for implementation a beneficial program for after the fact.
Some have cast the "war on terror" as a conflict between the modern and medieval worlds: I would submit and quite to the contrary that it's about the end of colonialism and World War II--i.e., the unfinished business of the 20th Century, including finishing off the mythic superman and racism.
May the 21st Century start with concern and action taken on behalf of all those displaced by warfare, and then not to reconstruct the past but rather to renew their lease on the future.
3. "Militants kill 3 Lebanese soldiers in camp battle." Reuters, July 24, 2007, 10:13 a.m. EDT.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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