"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."
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."
Notes
Care to Read What I Read?
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:
Shabbat Shalom. May our arguments be resolved through perceptive words and good deeds only; may we live another week helpful to one another in relative peace.
Photography: Prints & Services
A gentle reminder: I'm in business as a producer of fine art prints and as a provider of shoot-for-fee services, including portraiture and weddings plus assigned photojournalism. My general location: intersection of I-70 and I-81; core camera system: Nikon; transportation: Mustang.
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.
Research Services
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].
And Mr Yousef had harsh words for the movement that his father helped form, and which now rules the Gaza Strip after a bloody takeover in summer 2007. “Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis,” he told the daily. “That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels, only a cease-fire, and no one knows that better than I. The Hamas leadership is responsible for the killing of Palestinians, not Israelis."
Our common conception of the monotheist God by logic demands those who believe must believe that if God gave it to man, He did so with immutable perfection to Moses and to the effect that no abrogations, alterations, amendments, or updates would be necessary, for we believe time timeless within God's authority.
Recommended alternative reading: Scherman, Rabbi Nosson. The Chumash. Stone Edition. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, Ltd., 2000.
I've listed the organization promoting the above on my journals list to the left: "Stand With Us".
For as long as I've been blogging about conflict with an excursion into what I've come to call the "Islamic Small Wars"--every one of them is a civil war marked by an interface with non-Islamic majority cultures--the perception of an "intellectual battlespace", for which phrase I credit Tammy Swofford, a Dallas-area based blogger (http://tammyswofford.blogspot.com/), has been a part of it. While the production of religious dogma and the development of wars over religion have been a part of man's history and a continuing and often contentious part of contemporary politics, never has the modern "pop" perception of the same been so in evidence as it has recently in the many corridors of academe, nor has the same been ever so focused by one crystallizing conflict, which is the Middle East Conflict, or the transited discussion of Hitler's "Jewish Problem" into an updated bickering over the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
I've listed the choir on the left side too: CAMERA, Campus Watch, Honest Reporting, etc.
What I have not listed--and won't--are the shills for "Palestine", which has yet to settle matters between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority--and the names of the sophists who have worked hard on the dark mirror of language to turn every hopeful (and helpful) state of affairs upside-down and inside-out beneath a masquerade founded on the backs of refugees from the the most misbegotten wars in the history of the 20th Century.
Less often mentioned by such:
1. Grand Mufti Mohammad Amin al-Husayni's alliance with Adolph Hitler that positions his people against the American, British, French, and, dare I say it, Jewish tides, also democratic, brought to history and to the region [1, 1a].
2. The politically disastrous consequences of wars waged against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 ("In the summer of 1967, Arab leaders met in Khartoum in response to the war, to discuss the Arab position toward Israel. They reached consensus that there should be no recognition, no peace and no negotiations with the State of Israel, the so-called "three no's" [2]), and 1973, which finally produced a treaty with Egypt and an agreement with Jordan. Subsequent extraterritorial fast actions involving, differentially, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria have held the line for Israel.
3. Expulsion of the Jews from Middle East states, which right away turned out a major gift to those interested in heavily populating Zion.
4. Captivity and disenfranchisement of about half the refugee population in camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, a now multi-generational reduction of millions of men, women, and children to the status of near permanent political pawns, informationally ill-treated, kept ill-educated, and seemingly unwanted where they are. Perhaps one day they will wake up and know their captors and keepers were never the Jews.
From Damascus to Lahore, certainly in the small distance traversed between Hamas and Hezbollah, the idea that the existence of Israel and the persistence of Jewish culture and life worldwide fuels the world's violence may best be answered with a mirror large enough to reflect on the plight of Muslims in civil disruptions or outright wars in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia (1.25 million refugees helped to their fate by about 10,000 foot soldiers led by fewer than a thousand Islamist zealots, a figure I recall, quite informally, from the newsletter of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point--I've provided a separate reference to the conflict in Somalia so readers may get the gist of how little and how much it takes to keep 1.25 million souls in inexcusable limbo [5]).
A. Shore, Rafael (Producer) and Wayne Kopping (Director). "Crossing the Line", promotion up top, first viewed here on February 23, 2010, address and show-code embedded in the tile. Reference web site: http://campusintifada.com/homepage.php?p=about_makers
1a. Wikimedia Commons. From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MAal-Husayni.jpg Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (ca. 1895 - 4 July 1974, أمين الحسيني, alternatively known as al-Husseini, el-Husseini, Al-Hajj Amin or Haj Amin). Reproduced from http://www.passia.org with permission (Mahmoud Abu Rumieleh, Webmaster). Free to use with acknowledgement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MAal-Husayni.jpg
The cohort--you know who you are--will carry some little bit of one George Carlin monologue or another to the grave, but with all online and easily accessed, it's not too late to get a few more laughs from the master of fast and filthy talk--but lo and behold, above, in maturity, a clever coda, almost work safe and altogether true for the ages.
Communicating Arts - Main Web Site
1. Grand Mufti Mohammad Amin al-Husayni's alliance with Adolph Hitler that positions his people against the American, British, French, and, dare I say it, Jewish tides, also democratic, brought to history and to the region [1, 1a].