Are Iranians shipping weapons to the extremists Shia in Iraq? US officilas have got the proof... or maybe not !!

This is a wicked show, i love it!!

Humble valentine's thought

Dedicated to her...


If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were."

-- Kahlil Gibran

Baby it's cold outside, analysis of George Bush’s state of the union address

Following my previous post on Adam Curtis’s documentary the power of nightmares, I am going to elucidate in this post some real examples on what he does mean by politics of fear, baby it’s cold outside strategy, in other terms how politics do scare the public in order to keep them under their control. I can’t think of a better example than George Bush (although many politicians do the same, but he does it extremely well ;) I will analyze some sentences from his last state of the union address.

We know with certainty that the horrors of that September morning were just a glimpse of what the terrorists intend for us, unless we stop them.

The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a nation at war

In these sentences, it is clear his manipulation to keep the panic spread among the Americans, so he can justify any military budget or the continuous losses in the American army in Iraq. It is very interesting how he uses the analogy of good and bad, evil and God to appeal to one specific sector of the American society, this sentence is directed to some of the religious groups that do support him, they see the world in this perspective God vs. evil, we are the good and they are the bad. (this applies to any religion fanatics as we see in Al-Qaeda discourse)


Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen.


This is one of my all-time favorite logical fallacies, how one can measures success by something that has not occurred?? Like saying: I am successful person because I overcame my handicap which I have never had.


Al Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology.

These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East.

The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat.

Bush distinguish between Shia and Sunni for the first time ever, this is a very interesting point, I think this is just a maneuver to let people believe that the number of USA’s enemies is greater than ever, and all of them are actually planning to do harm to the Americans. So instead of al-Qaeda, there are Sunnis, Shiaas and much more people who want to do harm to them.


Take almost any principle of civilization, and their goal is the opposite.


To start, what are the principles of civilization? And which ones “the extremists” are against? This logic is suitable for bed time stories for 5 year old children, because it actually encourages their imagination ;)


They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.


So, they want to kill the Americans, kill the democracy in Middle East and after that they will kill on much horrific scale!! What a nice fairy tale ;)

Actually, many of these political discourse’s strategies are well known psychoanalytic defense mechanisms as splitting and projective identification, maybe I will explain this point in the near future…

Andre

What do Geroge Bush and Bin Laden have in common ?

This is the First part episode, click on the episode´s name to see the 2nd and the 3rd

The highly controversial documentary filmThe Power of Dreams is a three hours documentary by Adam Curtis , where he criticizes the ruling by fear strategy, which is applied widely in the political scene nowadays. The idea of this documentary is based on the fact that “Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares”.

The documentary analysis’s is one of the best I have ever seen, interestingly enough, he compares between Neo-conservatism and radical Islamic movements and shows that they share the same view of the world but from different angles, he goes on analyzing the rise of both currents in the world and showing the clash between them.

The documentary is in three parts, the first one named Baby it’s cold outside covers the era between the fifties and the eighties, the rise of the neo-conservatism in USA and the radical Islam in the Middle East, the second part The phantom victory emphasizes the mujaheddin war against Russia, and how at that time, these mujaheddin movements and USA had a common enemy which was the “communist Russia”. The third part The shadows in the cave covers the 9/11 attacks and how these two currents, radical Islam and Neo-conservatism, came to a clash between them.

It is a great documentary covering a very interesting topic, which its implications and consequences are shaping our century.

Highly recommended, by moi ;)

Blogs, Books, and Shanklish

Blogs are going to be printed in books which, I bet, will be available online afterwards, is not the media world wired?

Pamphleteer press , An American publishing group, is starting a new project, following the huge success and the world wide spread of a disease called bloging, they decided to publish books where they collect some of what blogers had to say on a specific topic. Naturally they should choose some controversial issues so lot of materials can be found. They have published five books till now; can you guess the title of three of them? I bet you can, out of five there are three about Hizbollah and the Lebanese-Israeli conflict. The editor of these three books is Michael Totten who writes in Middle East journal blog . It will be interesting to see the type and the quality of the posts collected in these books and how much they do cover the wide spectrum of ideas available on the web. The fourth book is about Jewish cuisine. So since they are willing to indulge into Culinary stuff, I can not think about anything better than Abu fares’ Shanklish post to publish it in a separate book, the passionate carefully explained process of making Shanklish does demonstrate that this is not about making these fermented yogurt balls, this is about the concept of Shanklish and what memories and feelings does unleash (well besides the unleash of onions’ odor, bad joke Andre ), screen the amazing 52 comments this post received and you will see that it is not about Shanklish per se, it is about home, nostalgia, family memories and much more!!
Well done Abu fares

Damm it !! Another blogger wants to write his list of five

Okay, i have been tagged by Razan so it seems that the deal is to write five things you don’t know about me, sweet!, but because I am fond of philosophy generally and philosophy of the mind and logic especially, I can not help it not to point out the logical fallacy in this tag, five things you don’t know about me , but the truth is that you actually don’t know me , so this tag may should be named “five things I would like you to know about me” ;)

Having been brought up in a non conventional structured family, I don’t believe in family ties, there are people who I like and people who I don’t,as simple as that. I have difficulties establishing long term relationships, maybe part of the reason is that I lived in four different countries in the last five years, this taught me not to be attached to people, meet them experiencing a humanistic whatever experience with them, for one hour, a month, a year then I leave without saying goodbye, quietly, without strong emotions or feelings. I dislike effort people make in exchanging e-mails and phone numbers as part of the goodbye process, even if they had met for just a day, we are not going to use them anyway, so why to bother?

Robert Doisneau - Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville, Paris, 1950

My favorite book of all times is Paulo Coelho’s the Alchemist, if you have not read it yet, stop reading this meaningless post and rush to the nearest bookstore, it is the I-Ching of the modern times. My favorite movie is the Godfather I ; no mortal creature can create such a thing. And my favorite motorcycle, the one that I will hopefully buy next year when I get my first paycheck, is Kawasaki Ninja. I like house/underground music and there is no room to list the Djs I like, but my favorite ones for the moment are Franz and Shape , they are great and I think they will be the next big thing in the underground music industry.

Kawasaki Ninja

Despite the fact that I am highly interested in the Christian philosophy, I can’t say that I am a believer. I am interested in the religion as a system of believes rather than faith and daily practices. I have got my “own” understanding of religions in general and the Christian religion in special, I am fond of the Liberation Theology school , which explores the relationship between Christian, , theology and political activism, particularly in areas of social justice, poverty and human rights.

Kandinsky, Wassily Kandinsky

I like Beer, who does not?, seriously I have been for almost 2 years and half now without having anything else (umm well except for wine), I can have up to 4 litters of beer on a good night out or on a discussion on some of Freud theories, this is the same amount of human’s blood, so I think what I have in my veins is beer not hemoglobin. Last year I did a “Beer trip” to Belgium, those people are the kings of beer, they never serve two different types of beer in similar cups, each type of beer has got its own cup, sounds like philosophy, is not? And for curious people my favorite ones are Duvel, Leffe bruin and Kwak

What I want to do in the future? very simple, I like Psychiatry but I think that it has been done in a wrong way (a lot of useless dispute between neurosciences and psychoanalysis), so having trained in both of them, I am going to USA next year, to start my psychiatry training, and to show them how it should be practiced ;). (Actually in medical terms this sounds like full blown mania patient, ya3ni majnoun bil3rabi ;)

The thinker, Rodin

Actually I thought that this post was going to be much more difficult to write, I think I am able to go on and write another 5 things, but I will stop here for the moment.

Andre

P.S: thanks Razan for the tag, writing is not one of my favorite hobbies and I need a motivation to do it :)