Wim Duzijn, Zwolle, The Netherlands
Ever since the beginning of the Arab Spring there has been much talk of revolutions. Not from me.
I’ve argued against the position that mass uprisings on their own constitute a revolution, i.e., a transfer of power from one social class (or even a layer) to another that leads to fundamental change.
Meer lezen over “Revolution or a Total Mess?”
Malbrunot: President Obama has postponed a military strike on Syria, how do you explain this?
President al-Assad:Some have seen Obama as weak because of his decision to withdraw or delay a possible strike by days or weeks; by waging a war on Syria, others have seen him as a strong leader of a powerful country.
From my perspective, power lies in your ability to prevent wars not in igniting them. Power comes from ones ability to stand up and acknowledge their mistakes; if Obama was strong, he would have stood up and said that there is no evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, he would have stood up and said that the right way forward is to wait for the results of the UN investigations and work through the UN Security Council.
Meer lezen over “Assad: Go back to the French Revolution”
“So we stand unshaken, clear in our mind and vision as to truth against falsehood, the colour black , which represents darkness, wickedness and aberration, as opposed to the colour white which represents truth, justice, fairness, purity, virtue, adherence to principle and defending these principles against those who abandoned them…, blind in both heart and conscience.” Saddam Hussein, 16-11-2002
“You Westerners do not realize that an Arab can do without everything except his dignity. If you touch his dignity he will be as ferocious as a lion.” Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of Babylon over the Chaldeans, 2002
Meer lezen over “Iraq & The Arab Identity”
Nothing reveals the calamitous failure of American adventure in Iraq more than the fact that 10 years after the war, this Arab country remains one of the most unstable and one of the most violent in the world. And nothing reveals the Iraqi leadership’s shortsightedness than their move to enlist US help to set things right.
More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in terror-related attacks in July, the deadliest month since 2008. August looks to be no better. … People are getting killed in terrorist bombings, internecine strife and security operations.
Meer lezen over “Saddam & Narrow-Mindedness”
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has appointed Elham Aminzadeh as Vice President for Legal Affairs – the first female to occupy the position in Iran’s history.
Aminzadeh is a law and public policy professor at Tehran University. Like Rouhani, Aminzadeh earned her Ph.D from the Glasgow University in Scotland.
The political role of women in Iran has been a touchy subject for years. Women in Iran were granted the right to vote only in 1963. Since then, they have held several high-ranking positions in public offices, serving as ministers and ambassadors. Since then, the progress of women’s rights in Iran has been unsteady.
Meer lezen over “Between Sharia and International Law”
JERUSALEM — In a victory for the ultra-Orthodox political parties that were shut out of Israel’s governing coalition this year, two candidates they backed were elected as Israel’s chief rabbis on Wednesday, defeating a rabbi who had promised, in an unusually aggressive campaign, to transform the troubled rabbinate.
Meer lezen over “Does Israel Need A Chief Rabbi?”
President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview o the local newspaper al-Thawra, in which he claimed that his opponents have “used up all their tools” and failed to overthrow his regime.
Interviewer: During this difficult time of crisis, it has often been said that Syria can accommodate evryone, but in reality it has not embraced all of its citizens. What has led us to this point?
President Assad: We often view nations as a group of people occupying a certain territory; whereas in fact a nation is about a sense of belonging and of culture which both ultimately form a collective identity. With a strong sense of belonging, we can ensure a united country that includes everyone. When the colonial powers left Syria, it was not to liberate the country but to reoccupy it through other means. One of their core strategies was to divide and conquer. By division, I do not mean redrawing national borders but rather fragmentation of identity, which is far more dangerous. Meer lezen over “Bashar al-Assad & Jihad”
TRIPOLI — Mohamed Al Megaryef, the president of Libya’s top political body, resigned on Tuesday to comply with a new law banning Qadhafi-era officials from government jobs. Megaryef was Libya’s ambassador to India in the 1980s under the regime of now slain dictator Muammar Qadhafi before he defected to become a leader of the exiled opposition for three decades.
The GNC passed the law on May 5 under pressure from gunmen who had surrounded the foreign and justice ministries for days to press the government to sack Qadhafi-linked officials. Many of the gunmen were former rebels who helped topple Qadhafi and were hailed as heroes for their actions during Libya’s 2011 revolution.
Megaryef criticised those in Libya who use weapons to push their agendas, saying it undermines the government’s efforts to rebuild the country and achieve democracy.
Meer lezen over “Libya & Legalized Revenge”
We in the West have become so used to dualistic (reductionist) thinking that it is sometimes difficult for us to perceive how to put more holistic viewpoints into practice.
As Parker J. Palmer states in his book The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life, “We have not been well prepared to understand our lives in terms of paradox. Instead, we have been taught to see and think in dualisms …. “A holistic spirituality would be one which perceives how the need for unity applies on every level of our lives and interactions. It is an attempt to look beyond notions of duality and see the underlying wholeness and interrelatedness of all things.
Anne Wilson: Holistic Spirituality
The display of the lynching of Mouamar Gaddafi exposes our societies for what they are. These gruesome images show that the objective of the war on Libya was not only conquest, leading to the plundering of oil or of Libyan assets, but also, just as was the case in the Crusades, the destruction of a symbolic order, leaving room for the sheer enjoyment of an act of killing…
When watching the broadcast images of the lynching of Mouammar Gaddafi, our political leaders manifested a strange pleasure. “Strange Fruit”… These images remind us of the images of the hanging of Saddam Hussein organized on the day of the Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice..
Through images, the will to power becomes unlimited… It echoes the continuous violation of the order of Law that can be observed since the 9/11 attacks.
Meer lezen over “Gaddafi & Western Barbarism”
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