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sissij

The Phrase Putin Never Uses About Terrorism (and Trump Does) - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...in-donald-trump-terrorism.html

new york times language social media

shared by sissij on 02 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • once famously saying he would find Chechen terrorists sitting in the “outhouse” and “rub them out.”
  • He and President Trump, notably dismissive of political correctness, would seem to have found common language on fighting terrorism — except on one point of, well, language.
  • criticized President Obama for declining to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • He has never described terrorists as “Islamic” and has repeatedly gone out of his way to denounce such language.
  • a group he often refers to as “the so-called Islamic State,” to emphasize a distinction with the Islamic religion.
  • Mr. Putin spoke of terrorists who “cynically exploit religious feelings for political aims.”
  • and added that “their ideology is built on lies and blatant distortions of Islam.”
  • He was careful to add, “Muslim leaders are bravely and fearlessly using their own influence to resist this extremist propaganda.”
  • Instead, Russian counterterrorism strategy focused on financing and militarily backing moderate Muslim leaders
  • “He cannot say ‘Islamic terrorism’ for a simple reason. He doesn’t want to alienate millions of Russians.”
  • In a phone call on Friday, President Trump and Mr. Putin discussed “real cooperation” in fighting terrorist groups in Syria. They could agree on an enemy. But the Kremlin statement described a “priority placed on uniting forces in the fight against the main threat — international terrorism.”
  • sissij on 02 Feb 17
     
    I find this article very interesting because it does some analysis to the language president use in politics. It sort of related to the language topic we discussed in TOK. President is a job that has to make sure he get the majority right, so what language he uses is very important. In this article, Putin's language when he addresses the terrorism of Islamic extremists is very interesting. Russia is a country with a lot of Muslims, so he has to be careful about not to labeling the entire religious groups as terrorists. Whenever he describe the group, he carefully distinguish the moderates from the extremists to keep the support from the majority of Russian. Trump should do some thinking on the language he is using since he is a president now. --Sissi (2/2/2017)
Aisling Horan

How we're herded by language | Sarah Bakewell | Comment is free | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...herded-language-metaphor-war

shared by Aisling Horan on 18 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • "the Middle East is a powder keg, and today the fuse is getting shorte
  • "armchair isolationists"
  • "America's poodle"
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Yet meanings shift.
  • contributors trace the present meaning of eager, obedient lackey back to at least 1907, when Lloyd George called the House of Lords the Earl of Balfour's poodle
  • "Das also war des Pudels Kern!" – "So that was the poodle's core!" – which became a German catchphrase
  • Once you start noticing the metaphors in everything you say, you realise how central they are to human ways of grasping the world
  • This is why Kerry's armchair works: if you sit down, you are not stepping up to the plate.
  • This is also the reason why talk of military "strikes" is significant. The term is more metaphorical than it may sound, and calls to mind carefully aimed knock-out punches or lightning bolts. We are more likely to think of a sharp, effective blow than with "bomb", which brings to mind explosions, injuries, mess. Bombs imply a down and outward movement, with things pounded to bits. Strikes imply an into and through movement, which sounds nicer. Our response is physical and instinctive, just as with the up/down distinction.
Emily Freilich

Israel's Netanyahu Says He'd 'Consider' A Meeting With New Iranian Leader : The Two-Way... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...transcript.php

israel iran netanyahu language paradox

shared by Emily Freilich on 11 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Iran's President Rouhani denies his country wants nuclear weapons, as Iran has denied for years. Netanyahu doesn't believe it. He notes that Iran's president used to be Iran's nuclear negotiator, and acknowledged his country continued its nuclear progress even as he was talking with the West. Reaching a deal now with Iran might take some give and take, some level of trust, some risk.
  • It's true that his election reflected the tremendous disaffection of the Iranian people with this regime. But, you know, he was - you know what the regime did, what Khamenei did: He took 700 candidates, eliminated 99 percent, left 1 percent - some democracy. And out of that 1 percent, the Iranian people chose the least-bad that they could get, which was Rouhani.
  • We got the book. We actually read it. He's an open book. He's an honest deceiver. He says this is what this book is about. I am honestly telling you how I deceived the West.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • I understand from your statements that you do not trust this man. You point out correctly that he's been part of the regime for a long time - President Rouhani. At the same time, I was in Iran at the time of their election, and he was elected by a substantial majority of the Iranian people on a platform where he explicitly said I want to improve relations with the world.
  • don't think anybody should take a leap of faith with a regime that systematically defies Security Council resolutions, that's cheated twice, whose chief negotiator said this is my strategy: cheating. He wrote a book about it. It's called "National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy."
  • But he is a servant of the regime
  • Would you meet Rouhani, if you had an opportunity to do that somewhere in the world? NETANYAHU: Yeah, I don't care about the meeting. I mean, I don't even - I don't have a problem with the diplomatic process. I have the problem - my question... INSKEEP: You're saying you would meet him? NETANYAHU: I haven't been offered, and I don't - you know, if I'm offered, I'll consider it. But it's not an issue, because I don't think - you know, if I meet with these people, I would stick this question in their face: Are you prepared to dismantle your program completely?
  • Why can't we have nuclear weapons, since Israel has them? What is a reasonable answer to that question? NETANYAHU: Well, I'm not going to say what Israel has or doesn't have. But I will say Israel has no designs to destroy anyone. We've not called for the destruction of a people, the annihilation of Iran or any other country. But that's exactly what Iran's doctrinaire, messianic apocalyptic regime - it's a terrorist regime.
  • NETANYAHU: Well, Israel - I think Israel is not the issue. And, in general, in the Middle East, the issue is not those who signed the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty... INSKEEP: People also asked why Israel hasn't signed Non-Proliferation... NETANYAHU: Well, you should look at those who signed it. See, the signing of it is meaningless, because Syria signed it. It was developing, you know, facilities for nuclear weapons. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, signed it. It was developing nuclear weapons - twice, actually - from the 1970s on. And Iran signed it, and it's developing these nuclear weapons,
Lindsay Lyon

Drowned Syrian boy's dad: Everything is gone - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...isis-aylan-kurdi-turkey-canada

emotion collective memory knowledge

shared by Lindsay Lyon on 04 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • "An image goes around the world and brings out emotion. It is shared," he said. "Europe is a group of principles, of values which oblige us to welcome those who are pushed out and look for refuge because they are persecuted." He said some of the 4 million displaced people in Syria have been "welcomed by neighboring countries that are themselves suffering."
dpittenger

Did climate change drive the Syrian uprising? | Science/AAAS | News - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...e-change-drive-syrian-uprising

climate change Syria

shared by dpittenger on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • dpittenger on 09 Mar 15
     
    This is related to the sociology stuff that we are starting right now. It is possible that climate change was a cause for the Syrian uprising. Its a very interesting discovery and its not something that you would believe, but some scientists are showing that it could be true.
Javier E

A Climate of Fear - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-cohen-a-climate-of-fear.html

fear emotion psychology

shared by Javier E on 28 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • a shadow fell over the world: annexations, beheadings, pestilence, Syria, Gaza and the return of the Middle Eastern strongmen. Hope gave way to fever. When Canada is no longer reassuring, it’s all over.
  • Many people I talk to, and not only over dinner, have never previously felt so uneasy about the state of the world. There is something in the air, fin-de-siècle Vienna with Twitter.
Javier E

While You Were Sleeping - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...while-you-were-sleeping.html

automation AI learning lifelong learning job success technology

shared by Javier E on 17 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • look at where we are today thanks to artificial intelligence from digital computers — and the amount of middle-skill and even high-skill work they’re supplanting — and then factor in how all of this could be supercharged in a decade by quantum computing.
  • In December 2016, Amazon announced plans for the Amazon Go automated grocery store, in which a combination of computer vision and deep-learning technologies track items and only charges customers when they remove the items from the store. In February 2017, Bank of America began testing three ‘employee-less’ branch locations that offer full-service banking automatically, with access to a human, when necessary, via video teleconference.”
  • This will be a challenge for developed countries, but even more so for countries like Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China and India — where huge numbers of youths are already unemployed because they lack the education for even this middle-skill work THAT’S now being automated.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Some jobs will be displaced, but 100 percent of jobs will be augmented by A.I.,” added Rometty. Technology companies “are inventing these technologies, so we have the responsibility to help people adapt to it — and I don’t mean just giving them tablets or P.C.s, but lifelong learning systems.”
  • Each time work gets outsourced or tasks get handed off to a machine, “we must reach up and learn a new skill or in some ways expand our capabilities as humans in order to fully realize our collaborative potential,” McGowan said.
  • Therefore, education needs to shift “from education as a content transfer to learning as a continuous process where the focused outcome is the ability to learn and adapt with agency as opposed to the transactional action of acquiring a set skill,
  • “Instructors/teachers move from guiding and accessing that transfer process to providing social and emotional support to the individual as they move into the role of driving their own continuous learning.”
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."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 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

Dan Hoffman: US will stay in Iraq to fight ISIS - Trump's order to kill Soleimani benef... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...eimani-benefits-both-countries

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Iraqi critics of the killings denounced the U.S. strikes as a violation of their nation’s sovereignty. And in the heat of the moment, Iraqi nationalist Muqtada al Sadr – who holds the most seats in Iraq’s Parliament – demanded that the remaining 5,000 U.S. troops in the country withdraw.
  • While the U.S. media have shifted their focus to the impeachment trial of President Trump, you may have missed the fact that cooler heads now seem to be prevailing in Iraq. That’s very good news.The caretaker prime minister of Iraq – Adil Abdul-Mahdi – has left it to his successor to deal with the issue of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq.And after a 10-day hiatus, joint U.S.-Iraqi operations against ISIS have resumed. This is a positive development benefiting both our nations.The bottom line: right now it doesn’t look like U.S. troops are exiting Iraq any time soon.
  • Trump’s strategic goal in taking out Soleimani – a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of more than 600 Americans and thousands of others – was to restore strategic deterrence in the U.S.-Iran relationship. The president made a calculated risk that Iran would not respond with a significant retaliatory attack.Going forward, Iran’s leaders know they will be in our crosshairs if they plan attacks against the U.S., including our embassy in Baghdad. Soleimani was responsible for an attack in which Iranian proxy militia forces penetrated the U.S. Embassy compound in the Iraqi capital shortly before his death.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Following the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of his country, Iran took advantage by directing its ally Syria to provide the Al Qaeda terrorist group with a safe haven to launch attacks on U.S. troops.Iran also deliberately benefited from Al Qaeda’s attacks on defenseless Shiite civilians in Iraq, which drove them into the arms of Iran’s proxy militias and enabled the militias to grow stronger as a result.
  • Iran sought to induce the U.S. to withdraw its military from Iraq even if it meant striking Iraqi military bases housing US service personnel. Iran’s goal was to shape Iraq’s domestic political future, especially following the resignation of Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi in November. For now, Abdul-Mahdi continues in office in a caretaker role.President Trump’s decision to eliminate Soleimani may indeed have opened a pathway to counter the two greatest threats to Iraq’s stability and sovereignty: ISIS and Iran.
  • President Trump’s bold decision to target Soleimani has the potential to benefit U.S. national security by weakening Iran’s ability to conduct asymmetric warfare in the region and beyond, as well as reducing Iran’s pernicious influence in Iraq.Those who are critical of Trump’s calculated risk in ordering the killing of Soleimani should ask this question: Would the Middle East’s future look brighter if the terrorist mass murderer was still alive and continuing to lead Iran’s vicious Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force in deadly attacks?
johnsonel7

Expect Trump to fight as if his life depends on it (Opinion) - CNN - 0 views

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

trump perception reality language

shared by johnsonel7 on 24 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Over the decades, Trump constructed and then inhabited a public persona that is powerful but unnatural. As a businessman and TV personality, Trump was, perhaps, the greatest illusionist of our time. He has repeated, ad nauseum, his unverified claims of wealth, sexual magnetism, and brilliance -- a "very stable genius" -- in an effort to produce the image of a great man.
  • But the theatrical dynamic of the Trump presidency was threatened every time real life collided with Trump's cartoon. His failures have often come at moments when he should be guided by a moral compass. But no one who is so devoted to a false persona could possess this kind of ethical reflex
  • Then, on Monday, Trump seemed to yet again try and regain his power by implying the Ukraine scandal couldn't be significant because it revolved around a "perfect" letter he wrote to Zelensky. It's the sort of distortion of the facts one would expect from a man whose comforting false reality is falling apart. As analysts have pointed out, Trump's contact with Zelensky involved not a letter, but a telephone call which was far from perfect. Indeed it was only "perfect" if one was looking for an example of a president abusing his office.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Russian connection echoes a long-running theme of the Trump presidency, which has cast doubt on his ability to lead the nation -- from Trump's criticism of the NATO alliance to his request for Russia to be admitted to the G7 economic summit countries, to his withdrawal of American troops from Syria. Indeed, last week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted that "all roads lead" to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
  • When we hear the gears of the Trump machine grind and see the decorative pieces of chrome loosen and fall, we are witnessing the results of a confrontation between reality and fantasy. This observation doesn't diminish the power of Trump's marketing method. It does, however, suggest its limits.
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