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qkirkpatrick

'Defending the Faith' in the Middle East - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-faith-in-the-middle-east.html

middle east history faith knowledge

shared by qkirkpatrick on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • qkirkpatrick on 04 Jun 15
     
    Religion in the Middle East. Who is right and how do we know?
catbclark

'Defending the Faith' in the Middle East - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-faith-in-the-middle-east.html

faith the middle east east

shared by catbclark on 02 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • nder the umbrella of Shiite solidarity, Iran provides military aid and funds industrial projects, madrasas, mosques and hospitals. And its leaders have become more vocal about their aims, with President Hassan Rouhani proclaiming himself protector of Iraq’s holy cities.
  • The most extensive patronage efforts, however, were made by the Ottomans. From the reign of Abdul Hamid II in the 19th century, the Ottomans used their self-professed status as the defenders of global Islam to advance their influence into rival empires, from French North Africa to British India.
  • The politics of religion undermined the Westphalian order, based on the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, these policies subverted states, fueled divisions within them — and often ended in violence.
tongoscar

Trump's Iran strike could present an opportunity to China - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Last June, however, world leaders flocked to the capital of Kyrgyzstan for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a key regional security and political alliance. Attendees included Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as well as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, with whom they posed alongside in photos from the event. It was a pertinent reminder of Tehran's strong ties with two of the world's foremost powers, further underlined when the three countries held joint naval exercises near the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz in the Indian Ocean last month.
  • A statement added that Tehran hoped China could "play an important role in preventing escalation of regional tensions."Such sentiments are also likely shared well beyond Iran's borders, including among other Middle Eastern powers which are no fans of Tehran. The killing of Soleimani could present Beijing with a major opportunity, not only to prevent another disastrous war, but to increase its influence in the region, supplanting an increasingly unpredictable Washington.
  • "China's emphasis on noninterference, state-led economic development, and regional stability resonates with many autocratic leaders in the Middle East, allowing China to promote its 'alternative' model of great power leadership."
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  • So far -- in no small part thanks to its humungous checkbook -- China has managed to thread the needle of maintaining ties with traditional allies such as Iran and Syria, while also improving relations with their rivals in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Beijing has also resisted strong pressure from Washington to ditch both Tehran and Damascus, using its role as a United Nations Security Council member to rein in some international action against them.
  • Tehran's enemies may frown at Beijing's refusal to ditch its old ally to make new ones, but this policy will appear far more attractive in the wake of Soleimani's death. And the distinct chance we could now be headed for another Middle Eastern conflict -- or at the very least a period of saber-rattling and disruption to global trade -- could prop up Beijing's ability to play all sides, perhaps indefinitely.
  • "China is not a revisionist state. It does not want to reshape the Middle East and take over the responsibility of securing it. It wants a predictable, stable region -- as much as that is possible -- in which it can trade and invest,"
  • Such a role will likely be welcomed by many players in the region. Indeed, it's difficult to think of a more pertinent example of the contrast between Chinese and US policy than Trump threatening -- just as Beijing was calling for calm -- to target Iranian cultural sites, in what could well be a war crime if it was carried out.
tongoscar

The Middle East Isn't Worth It Anymore - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...t-worth-it-anymore-11579277317

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • If Iran’s retaliation for the Trump administration’s targeted killing of Tehran’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, had resulted in the deaths of more Americans, Washington was, as Mr. Trump tweeted, “locked and loaded” for all-out confrontation.
  • Why does the Middle East always seem to suck the U.S. back in? What is it about this troubled region that leaves Washington perpetually caught between the desire to end U.S. military involvement there and the impulse to embark on yet another Middle East war?
  • Previously, presidents of both parties shared a broad understanding of U.S. interests in the region, including a consensus that those interests were vital to the country—worth putting American lives and resources on the line to forge peace and, when necessary, wage war.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Today, however, with U.S. troops still in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan and tensions high over Iran, Americans remain war-weary.
  • Yet Mr. Trump subsequently sent some 14,000 more U.S. troops to the Gulf, along with an aircraft carrier strike group that the Pentagon would have vastly preferred to deploy to the South China Sea to deal with the more important 21st-century threat of a rising China.
  • To fulfill his popular campaign promise to end America’s war of choice in Iraq, Mr. Obama withdrew all U.S. forces from the country in 2011. Just three years later, he sent some 5,000 troops back after the jihadists of Islamic State exploited the vacuum to seize swaths of Iraqi territory for its self-styled “caliphate.”
  • To be sure, the global economy—and therefore the American economy—would be hurt by a major disruption in oil supplies from the Gulf.
sissij

Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think? | Linguistic Society of America - 1 views

www.linguisticsociety.org/...-i-speak-influence-way-i-think

psychology language

shared by sissij on 25 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • What we have learned is that the answer to this question is complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do you lack words for them because you don't think about them?
  • Whorf believed that because of this difference, Hopi speakers and English speakers think about events differently, with Hopi speakers focusing more on the source of the information and English speakers focusing more on the time of the event.
  • There's a language called Guugu Yimithirr (spoken in North Queensland, Australia) that doesn't have words like left and right or front and back. Its speakers always describe locations and directions using the Guugu Yimithirr words for north, south, east, and west. So, they would never say that a boy is standing in front of a house; instead, they'd say he is standing (for example) east of the house. They would also, no doubt, think of the boy as standing east of the house, while a speaker of English would think of him as standing in front of the house.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But not always. You can easily conjure up mental images and sensations that would be hard to describe in words.
  • Not really, but if the new language is very different from your own, it may give you some insight into another culture and another way of life.
  • sissij on 25 Oct 16
     
    I found it very interesting that how we speak can have some influence on how we think. It may even have a slice of the logic and ideology of our culture. As my second language, English is very different from Chinese. We may have different description for the same event because we value things differently. --Sissi (10/24/2016)
sissij

Why Westerners and Easterners Really Do Think Differently | Big Think - 0 views

bigthink.com/...has-a-great-deal-to-do-with-it

science research psychology

shared by sissij on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • While the studies cover many different topics, the subject of an individualistic or holistic thinking style is noteworthy.
  • In one study, complex images were shown to test subjects from East Asia and North America. The scientists tracked the eye movements of the participants in order to gauge where their attention was focused. It was found that the Chinese participants spent more time looking at the background of the image, while the Americans tended to focus on the main object in the picture. Holistic and individualistic thinking manifested in one clear example.
  • Of course, these tendencies are generalizations.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • One is that the staple food of a region may have something to do with it. This is excellently seen in China, where the northern half of the country grows wheat and the southern half grows rice. Rice growing is a labour intensive activity, that requires the coordination of several neighboring farms to do properly. Wheat farming, on the other hand, takes much less work and does not require coordination of irrigation systems in order to work.
  • Even today, more than 100 years after the colonization effort, the effects of living in a society that was so recently a frontier show up in individual and holistic thinking tests. With residents of Hokkaido demonstrating tendencies towards individualism to a larger extent than the rest of the Japanese population.
  • sissij on 06 Feb 17
     
    I really like the author stating that "Of course, these tendencies are generalizations." This shows that this study is not to categorize people into east and west, two groups. But this tendency is worth-noticing. The trials presented in the article shows different possibilities of why there is a difference. I think this cultural difference is similar to why Australia has very distinctive animal compare to the other continents. Since in the ancient times, westerners and easterners are isolated to each other, they took different approaches to develop their civilization. However, I really like the author emphasizing that this difference is not a stereotyping, it is the result of population analysis and observations. --Sissi (2/6/2017)
Javier E

A Curious Midlife Crisis for a Tech Entrepreneur - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-for-a-tech-entrepreneur.html

lifestyle role model entrepreneur happiness downsize

shared by Javier E on 16 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • as he approached 40, Fabrice Grinda, a French technology entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $100 million, couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Somehow the trappings of his success were weighing him down.
  • “People turn 40 and usually buy a shiny sports car,” Mr. Grinda said during an interview in a penthouse suite at Sixty LES, a downtown boutique hotel. “They don’t say, ‘I’m downsizing my life and giving up all my possessions to focus on experiences and friendships.’
  • He dubbed it “the very big downgrade”: He was going to travel the world, working on the fly while staying with friends and family. He was purposely arranging things so that he would have a chance to focus on what was meaningful in life.
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  • But that is exactly what Mr. Grinda did. He moved out of the Bedford house in December 2012, ditched the city apartment and got rid of the McLaren. He donated clothes, sports equipment and kitchen utensils to the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Lower Manhattan. He gave his furniture to Housing Works and he packed a Tumi carry-on suitcase with 50 items, including two pairs of jeans, a bathing suit and 10 pairs of socks.
  • Once he realized his days as a roving houseguest were numbered, Mr. Grinda decided to shift his approach: He kept traveling, but now he was renting apartments on Airbnb or staying in luxury hotels.
  • Born in suburban Paris in 1974, Mr. Grinda graduated from Princeton in 1996 with a degree in economics. He worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company for two years before moving back to France to found an online auction start-up funded by the business magnate Bernard Arnault, which Mr. Grinda sold in 2000.He returned to the United States, where he co-founded Zingy, a mobile phone ringtone and game maker, which fetched $80 million in a 2004 sale. After that, he was a founder of OLX, a Craigslist-like service that has become one of the largest global classified websites.Now he is an entrepreneur and angel investor, with more than 200 investments to date, who visits start-ups in Berlin, Paris, New York, San Francisco and other cities.
  • He looks (and acts) something like Sheldon Cooper, the oddball science geek played by Jim Parsons on “The Big Bang Theory,” an observation Mr. Grinda himself has made.“Friends, who knew me in my late teens and early twenties, would tell you I had exactly the same delusional sense of self-worth and condescending and arrogant self-centered worldview,” he wrote in a blog post that noted his similarities to the sitcom character.
  • In all, Mr. Grinda said, he stayed with about 15 friends and family members in the first months of 2013. “Everyone was, like, ‘It’s a great idea. Come over,’ ” Mr. Grinda said. “The problem is, the idea of ‘Great, come over’ and me there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is very different. Especially when their lives are not in sync with mine.”
  • “When I looked back at the things that mattered the most to me,” he said, “they were experiences, friendships and family — none of which I had invested much in, partly because I was too busy, and partly because I felt anchored by my possessions.”
  • He hatched a new plan: His friends and family members would come to him.“Rather than me going to them and disrupting their routine,” he said, “getting everyone together in a setting of vacation makes more sense.”
  • He invited his parents, his friends, their partners, children and nannies for a two-week stay in Anguilla, an island east of Puerto Rico, where he rented two conjoining houses, at a cost of $240,000, with chefs and full house service (and a total of 19 bedrooms).
  • Mr. Grinda forgot to consider that not everyone lives as he does.For one thing, he had scheduled the Anguilla vacation during the school year, which meant friends with children couldn’t make it. The island’s remoteness, furthermore, meant some guests were forced to endure a tangle of flight connections, leaving some of them exhausted by the time they arrived.And many of the people he invited, who had jobs and other obligations, could stay only for a long weekend.
  • Mr. Grinda said he has learned a lot from his very big downgrade. He reconnected with old friends, even if it meant annoying them a little, and he rekindled his relationship with his father.“We spent time talking about his life,” he said. And he is no longer against the idea of having a fixed address; he said he is now in negotiations to buy a two-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side, which he plans to rent out when he is not in town.
  • Still, the experiment has taken its toll. “The philosophy is interesting,” he said. “But how do you put it into practice? How do you make it real?”
  • He recently split up with Otilia Aionesei, a former model who works at technology start-up, whom he had been dating, off and on, for two years. The sticking point was their lack of a shared home.“If you want to be his girlfriend, this is the life you have to lead,” Ms. Aionesei said. “I like simple things, to watch movies on the same couch.”Mr. Grinda had a different view. “We went to the Galápagos,” he said. “We went to Tulum. To St. Barts. We have these wonderful experiences and memories together.”
  • “My home is where I am,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter if it is a friend’s place or a couch or the middle of the jungle or a hotel room on the Lower East Side. But I realize that most of humanity, especially women, don’t see it that way.”
catbclark

Europe's Languages Were Carried From the East, DNA Shows - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...na-europe-language-archaeology

languages dna science research

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Europe's Languages Were Carried From the East, DNA Shows
  • New DNA evidence suggests that herders from the grasslands of today's Russia and Ukraine carried the roots of modern European languages across the continent some 4,500 years ago.
  • "First there are early hunter-gatherers, then come farmers, then farmers mix with hunter-gatherers—then comes a new population from the east, which is the major migration,"
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "You can see a direct genetic relationship between these two populations," says David Anthony, an archaeologist at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York, and a co-author of the study. "They're close cousins, at least."
  • "From a conservative archaeological point of view, I would not have predicted people from the steppe would have migrated from the mouth of the Danube to Denmark within a century or two," says Anthony. "This is a big surprise."
  • There's more work to be done. The genetic and linguistic data support the idea that Indo-European entered Europe via the steppes around 4,500 years ago, but "it's still not clear to me where the oldest branches" of the language come from,
Javier E

Opinion | How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...genetics-race.html

genetics race science research human origins

shared by Javier E on 25 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • In 1942, the anthropologist Ashley Montagu published “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race,” an influential book that argued that race is a social concept with no genetic basis.
  • eginning in 1972, genetic findings began to be incorporated into this argument. That year, the geneticist Richard Lewontin published an important study of variation in protein types in blood. He grouped the human populations he analyzed into seven “races” — West Eurasians, Africans, East Asians, South Asians, Native Americans, Oceanians and Australians — and found that around 85 percent of variation in the protein types could be accounted for by variation within populations and “races,” and only 15 percent by variation across them. To the extent that there was variation among humans, he concluded, most of it was because of “differences between individuals.”
  • In this way, a consensus was established that among human populations there are no differences large enough to support the concept of “biological race.” Instead, it was argued, race is a “social construct,” a way of categorizing people that changes over time and across countries.
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  • t is true that race is a social construct. It is also true, as Dr. Lewontin wrote, that human populations “are remarkably similar to each other” from a genetic point of view.
  • this consensus has morphed, seemingly without questioning, into an orthodoxy. The orthodoxy maintains that the average genetic differences among people grouped according to today’s racial terms are so trivial when it comes to any meaningful biological traits that those differences can be ignored.
  • With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.
  • I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”
  • Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades
  • Care.
  • The orthodoxy goes further, holding that we should be anxious about any research into genetic differences among populations
  • You will sometimes hear that any biological differences among populations are likely to be small, because humans have diverged too recently from common ancestors for substantial differences to have arisen under the pressure of natural selection. This is not true. The ancestors of East Asians, Europeans, West Africans and Australians were, until recently, almost completely isolated from one another for 40,000 years or longer, which is more than sufficient time for the forces of evolution to work
  • I am worried that well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science.
  • I am also worried that whatever discoveries are made — and we truly have no idea yet what they will be — will be cited as “scientific proof” that racist prejudices and agendas have been correct all along, and that those well-meaning people will not understand the science well enough to push back against these claims.
  • This is why it is important, even urgent, that we develop a candid and scientifically up-to-date way of discussing any such difference
  • While most people will agree that finding a genetic explanation for an elevated rate of disease is important, they often draw the line there. Finding genetic influences on a propensity for disease is one thing, they argue, but looking for such influences on behavior and cognition is another
  • Is performance on an intelligence test or the number of years of school a person attends shaped by the way a person is brought up? Of course. But does it measure something having to do with some aspect of behavior or cognition? Almost certainly.
  • Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases.
  • in Iceland, there has been measurable genetic selection against the genetic variations that predict more years of education in that population just within the last century.
  • consider what kinds of voices are filling the void that our silence is creating
  • Nicholas Wade, a longtime science journalist for The New York Times, rightly notes in his 2014 book, “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History,” that modern research is challenging our thinking about the nature of human population differences. But he goes on to make the unfounded and irresponsible claim that this research is suggesting that genetic factors explain traditional stereotypes.
  • 139 geneticists (including myself) pointed out in a letter to The New York Times about Mr. Wade’s book, there is no genetic evidence to back up any of the racist stereotypes he promotes.
  • Another high-profile example is James Watson, the scientist who in 1953 co-discovered the structure of DNA, and who was forced to retire as head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in 2007 after he stated in an interview — without any scientific evidence — that research has suggested that genetic factors contribute to lower intelligence in Africans than in Europeans.
  • What makes Dr. Watson’s and Mr. Wade’s statements so insidious is that they start with the accurate observation that many academics are implausibly denying the possibility of average genetic differences among human populations, and then end with a claim — backed by no evidence — that they know what those differences are and that they correspond to racist stereotypes
  • They use the reluctance of the academic community to openly discuss these fraught issues to provide rhetorical cover for hateful ideas and old racist canards.
  • This is why knowledgeable scientists must speak out. If we abstain from laying out a rational framework for discussing differences among populations, we risk losing the trust of the public and we actively contribute to the distrust of expertise that is now so prevalent.
  • If scientists can be confident of anything, it is that whatever we currently believe about the genetic nature of differences among populations is most likely wrong.
  • For example, my laboratory discovered in 2016, based on our sequencing of ancient human genomes, that “whites” are not derived from a population that existed from time immemorial, as some people believe. Instead, “whites” represent a mixture of four ancient populations that lived 10,000 years ago and were each as different from one another as Europeans and East Asians are today.
  • For me, a natural response to the challenge is to learn from the example of the biological differences that exist between males and females
  • The differences between the sexes are far more profound than those that exist among human populations, reflecting more than 100 million years of evolution and adaptation. Males and females differ by huge tracts of genetic material
  • How do we accommodate the biological differences between men and women? I think the answer is obvious: We should both recognize that genetic differences between males and females exist and we should accord each sex the same freedoms and opportunities regardless of those differences
  • fulfilling these aspirations in practice is a challenge. Yet conceptually it is straightforward.
  • Compared with the enormous differences that exist among individuals, differences among populations are on average many times smaller, so it should be only a modest challenge to accommodate a reality in which the average genetic contributions to human traits differ.
runlai_jiang

BBC - Travel - The secrets hiding in Warsaw, the Paris of the East - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...n-warsaw-the-paris-of-the-east

shared by runlai_jiang on 11 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Once known as ‘The Paris of the East’ for its Baroque beauty, Warsaw saw more than 85% of its buildings destroyed amid the ravages of World War II. Despite its past hardships, Poland’s capital city continues to rise from the ashes – and its once-famous elegance can still be found by those who look beyond the surface.
  • Poland’s capital is full of surprises in unexpected places. “I discovered a skiing station in the middle of the city, a tropical beach on the Vistula River and a deer freely living in the Łazienki Park,” said French-Russian Sasha Naslin, who moved here from Belgium three years ago and blogs at The Alternative Travel Guide. “I was lucky to see him only the once!”
katherineharron

Happiness may be healthier for some cultures than others - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Just a few months ago, the New York Times declared that "studies have shown an indisputable link between having a positive outlook and health benefits like lower blood pressure, less heart disease, better weight control and healthier blood sugar levels." Plenty of news articles present similar ideas in a stark black-and-white fashion: optimists live longer; pessimism kills.
  • But some research suggests that things aren't so simple. In 2016, for example, a study of more than 700,000 British women failed to find a link between happiness and longevity. Which raises the question: What makes this particular group of study participants any different? Could it be that culture plays a role -- that British people, overall, are just more tolerant and accepting of gloominess?
  • Even after accounting for things like a person's age, gender, socioeconomic status, and chronic health conditions, there was a significant difference between the two groups: "American adults who experience high levels of positive emotions, such as feeling 'cheerful' and 'extremely happy,' are more likely to have healthy blood-lipid profiles," explains lead study author Jiah Yoo, but the same was not true among Japanese adults.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Past research has reached similar conclusions. In a 2015 Stanford study of 690 Chinese and American participants, for example, the Americans generally sought to maximize positive feelings and minimize negative ones, while the Chinese subjects were more likely to report that they commonly felt mixed emotions. The study authors argued that the results had to do with differing ideas about the importance of the individual: The individualistic American culture places more emphasis on people doing what's best for themselves, while more collectivist East Asian cultures prioritize doing what's best for the group.
  • Yoo believes the cultural influence on the positivity-health connection may be the result of culturally specific health behaviors. "Frequent experience of positive affect in the Western context would be aligned with prescribed values and beliefs, and thus likely motivate engagement in and pursuit of healthy behaviors," she explains. "In contrast, positive affect aligns less with norms and beliefs about positive affect in the East Asian context, and thus may not be associated with healthy behaviors."
  • It's not simply that Americans are more intent on seeking happiness, then -- there's also a high bar for how intense that happiness is supposed to feel. "Westerners value high-arousal emotions more than Easterners, so they promote activities that elicit high-arousal emotions.," Lim noted. "Even children of the West learn through storybooks that high-arousal emotions are ideal, and the opposite is true for children of the East."
mcginnisca

We Talked to One of the World Trade Center Bombers About ISIS and Mass Shootings | VICE... - 0 views

www.vice.com/...lamic-state-and-mass-shootings

world trade center US politics history ISIS terrorism language ambiguity

shared by mcginnisca on 09 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Eyad Ismoil is one of the half-dozen men convicted for carrying out the World Trade Center bombings in 1993
  • sentenced to 240 years in prison for driving a rental van packed with a bomb into a garage, killing six and injuring about 1000 more
  • for someone who's supposed to "hate the infidels," he shows no signs of loathing towards the many prisoners and staff who openly despise him.
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  • "hate the infidels,"
  • when I first asked Ismoil about ISIS after the Paris attacks, he asked me one question back: "Why do you think they did it?" I responded with the only thing I knew: "They hate us."
  • He said that to resolve the conflicts between extremists in the Middle East and the West, it was important to talk "human to human," but he also made it clear that he empathizes at least somewhat with the Islamic State. Unsurprisingly, many of his views would be considered appalling to the vast majority of Americans, but our conversation gave me a window into the worldview of people who think the US is to blame for terrorism.
  • ISIS is not jihadists recruited from all over to fight. They are the Sunni Muslims that have lived through 25 years of wars, torture, and rapes. They are the Iraqi and Syrian people that have suffered from unjust wars started by the US government. And when the US government [mostly pulled out of] Iraq in 2010, the Shia and Maliki government started killing the Sunni day and night under the watch of the Americans.
  • You don't have to recruit people for ISIS. They're Muslims from all over the world that have seen an injustice after 25 years and want to help their brothers. What you have to understand is the Iraqi people are the most stubborn of the Muslim world. They won't accept occupation or humiliation.
  • People over in America ask why ISIS did this. [But] people in the Middle East ask, "Why is the US doing this to us?" Put yourself in their shoes—France is dropping bombs for a year in Iraq and [more recently] Syria, destroying everything, women, children, buildings... A bomb doesn't discriminate between ISIS or women and children—it just destroys.
  • Imagine the Iraq and Syrian people. After a year of bombing, you see your people killed, land destroyed, children scared to do anything more than hide in the corners all day. All this coming from bombs in the sky and you can't stop it. What would you do?
  • So, the question should be who is the first to be blamed? Tell both sides of the story.
  • My religion prohibits attacks on civilians. Unfortunately, many Muslims don't know much about Islam
  • What about the Planned Parenthood attack?What this man did is worse then what the doctors do. If this is what he's angry at, taking life, he did worse. Islam doesn't believe in abortion—all life is precious....[But] what he did was kill adult people who are grown. How is he trying to solve the issue?
  • For every action, there's a reaction. If you throw a ball against a wall, it's going to come back at you. If you throw a ball hard, it's going to come back at you hard. This is the problem with all sides in these wars. We hit you, you hit back. We hit you hard, you hit back harder. Back and forth, back and forth. Nobody wins. Both sides end up with death and destruction.
  • The Arabs are not radicalizing themselves. Your government action is radicalizing the Arabs
  • The only thing that keeps us just is Islam. Because in Islam, the peace, the justice, comes from the sky. The one who created earth and man, he knows best.
  • To solve the problem from the root, everyone has to become human. They need to talk, human to human. Let the people decide what they want. Leave them alone. Everyone can come together and say enough is enough. How long are we going to keep this action up? For the rest of our lives?It's the law of the jungle that we're living in right now. We were given more sense than this. We walk on two legs, with our heads high. But right now, we are walking with our heads down. We need to lift our heads up, and use the brains God created for us.
sissij

The Wave (2008 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

en.wikipedia.org/...The_Wave_(2008_film)

film psychology

shared by sissij on 17 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • Ron Jones's "Third Wave" experiment, which took place at a Californian school in 1967. Because his students did not understand how something like national socialism could even happen, he founded a totalitarian, strictly-organized "movement" with harsh punishments that was led by him autocratically. The intricate sense of community led to a wave of enthusiasm not only from his own students, but also from students from other classes who joined the program later. Jones later admitted to having enjoyed having his students as followers. To eliminate the upcoming momentum, Jones aborted the project on the fifth day and showed the students the parallels towards the Nazi youth movements.[3][4]
  • “Therein lies the great danger. It is an interesting fact that we always believe that what happens to others would never happen to us. We blame others, for example the less educated or the East Germans etc. However, in the Third Reich the house caretaker was just as fascinated by the movement as was the intellectual.”[10]
  • sissij on 17 Sep 16
     
    I think this experiment is very interesting because it shows a flaw in human thinking that we are always progressing. However, just like the quote says: "Barbarism is not the inheritance of our pre-history. It is the companion that dogs our every step." The film "Die Welle", based on this experiment, is also very interesting and worth-watching. --Sissi (Sept 17, 2016)
nataliedepaulo1

USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...96613034

shared by nataliedepaulo1 on 15 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • A "stubborn' decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would involve "very serious consequences" and damage efforts for peace in the Middle East, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Sunday.
  • Hundreds of people rallied in support of Israel outside its embassy in Paris on Sunday."Wwe are here today to express our objection to the Paris Middle East conference, which we consider an anti-Israeli tribunal, similar to the negative decisions adopted by" the United Nations, Francis Kalifat, who heads a Jewish advocacy group in
julia rhodes

Fict or Faction - How Much Do We Care About the Truth? | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...uch-do-we-care-about-the-truth

brain science science research knowledge psychology bias truth

shared by julia rhodes on 02 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Many books and hundreds of articles have been written about how drug companies have “gamed every system” to push their products. Negative clinical studies are suppressed; claims are made for larger usefulness that have no real basis in fact; side effects are ignored or deliberately underreported; and companies pay fines in the billions that still represent small fractions of total sales.
  • Spending enormous amounts of cash looking at cancer, cardiovascular and “women’s health” research, the Bayer scientists could corroborate less than a quarter of the studies they tested. In other words, 75-80% of these major research findings could not be confirmed.
  • Science lives on replication. Yet these clinically critical attempts to corroborate research findings could not confirm them. Why? Ironically, the reasons resemble many that are used to describe the malfeasance of drug companies – the need for money, grant support, major findings to achieve tenure – and a desire for others not to have the “secret sauce” of methodology needed to create the research.
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  • The author retorts “I really have an issue with the word hoax.” He regards himself as a performance artist. His response – “It’s the people who reported it who are deceiving their audience.”
  • Why is fake news so popular on newssites? Here are two reasons: first, it provides emotional “buzz.” Second, because it can make a lot of money. As the Washington Bureau chief of the Pulitzer winning Huffington Post lamented, “If you throw something up without fact checking it, and you’re the first one to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it’s proved false, you still got those views. That’s a problem. The incentives are all wrong.”Especially when, as at places like Bloomberg, remuneration is based on the number of hits an article receives. But incentives are wrong not just for news gathering organizations.
  • Americans continue to believe important historical “facts” that are untrue. After 9/11, Americans were incensed to hear that the many in the Middle East thought Osama bin Laden’s horrifying attack was the product of a CIA-Mossad plot. To this day, large majorities in countries like Pakistan think the massacre of 9/11 was created in Washington or Tel Aviv.
  • Yet close to a majority of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein, tyrant of Iraq, was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda, especially before the 9/11 attack. The Bush administration told them so.Which people in the Middle East rightly regard as preposterous.Saddam Hussein was the leader of a boldly secular, Arabist tyranny. Sunni fanatics like Al Qaeda were his regime’s blood enemies. That they would work together rather than murder each other was just insane. Welcome to the world of fict and faction.
  • What can we learn from this? Plausibility is not truth; when something is “too good to be true” it generally isn’t; institutions increasingly do not back up what they proclaim and sell.And the “free informational marketplace” of the Internet is a wonderful site for fraud, scams, lies, plausible lies, and pleasant, beautiful untruths. So we all need our own truth detectors.
johnsonel7

US dials back Iran rhetoric and seeks 'peaceful resolution' over Saudi attack | US news... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...l-resolution-over-saudi-attack

iran saudi attack Trump

shared by johnsonel7 on 20 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said Washington and its allies were seeking a “peaceful resolution” with Iran in the wake of the attack on Saudi oil facilities, making clear that Washington would limit its initial response to further sanctions.
  • “I was here in an act of diplomacy. While the foreign minister of Iran is threatening all-out war and to fight to the last American, we’re here to build out a coalition aimed at achieving peace and a peaceful resolution to this,”
  • “US inaction will be perceived as weakness,” said Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy programme at the Brookings Institution. “Let me be clear: I’m not advocating war. The point is that [Trump] engaged in a stupid, unnecessary, incredibly dangerous bluff and the Iranians have called him on it.”
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  • The Pentagon said the focus of its own response was to explore “potential ways to look at mitigating future attacks”.
  • stupid
  • johnsonel7 on 20 Sep 19
     
    Though many politicians like to talk a big game, it would be extremely costly to and rash to rush into another war in the Middle East.
tongoscar

Did China capitulate to the US on 'beautiful monster' trade deal? | Trade War | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...rade-deal-200118112844311.html

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Three years ago Chinese President Xi Jinping stood in front of the world's business elite in Davos, defending the post-war international liberal order as President Donald Trump railed against globalisation.
  • China's treatment of 13 million Uighur Muslims, tactics against democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and removal of presidential term limits - giving Xi indefinite power to stay as leader - have created uncertainty, cramping growth both at home and abroad.
  • "They did lose the battle politically, there's not a lot of support. They have basically isolated themselves for a number of reasons and I think President [Trump] has done a really good job of exposing some of the flaws or some of the real problems with the Chinese model," Swenson says.
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  • First came the opening of a $55bn pipeline to supply gas to China, completing Putin's so-called pivot to the East. And this month, Russia opened a pipeline through Turkey to supply southern Europe, further punishing Ukraine, which now stands to lose billions in transit fees, for strained relations between the two neighbours.
  • Russia currently supplies 40 percent of Europe's gas. The proposed pipeline will provide more gas for Turkey and open up markets in Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. It comes as Russia's biggest gas company, Gazprom, was forced to halt construction of another pipeline under pressure from the US.
tongoscar

Why the US needs Russia and China to help change Iran's behavior | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...-to-help-change-irans-behavior

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Predicting the future behavior of any country in the Middle East is a dangerous undertaking. Some might suggest it’s a lot cheaper and more effective to rely on a pack of tarot cards than a report from the U.S. intelligence community.
  • Unfortunately, in America, we seem to have little memory of this region’s history, and the misplaced illation made by many over Iranian General Qassem Soleimani’s death soon will fade.
  • In the process of deciding how they will exact this price, Iran will weigh its options against our domestic condition, whether these are set by the U.S. election cycle or Iranian perceptions of who, exactly, should pay the highest price. What Iran’s leadership does know is that a majority of Americans do not want war, nor do most Americans support the seemingly unarticulated reason for keeping U.S. troops in the region. 
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  • Asymmetric responses by the U.S. are a real option, but this comes with a high price. While we could pay this price, Washington would be unable to sustain such an effort indefinitely because of domestic and global political reasons. Israel has been undertaking such operations for many years, with some measurable impact, but the Israelis arguably have the political support at home and the same elements needed for asymmetric warfare that Iran has. Furthermore, the threat of large-scale U.S. military retaliation could quickly broaden the scope of the conflict, with unintended regional economic and political consequences, and still not diminish Iran’s capability to carry out covert attacks on American officials, interests and regional allies. 
  • Pursuing such superpower diplomacy, along with asymmetric pressure on Iran, will not come without some price. Washington may need to compromise with Moscow and Beijing on other matters of considerable geopolitical significance. However, Iran is one area where all three superpowers might find a workable agreement that brings the country back into the fold. Iran is an ancient, formidable regional player and the actions taken by all concerned, across a broad spectrum of issues, will have long-term repercussions for each stakeholder’s critical geopolitical goals in the region and beyond.
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