Thursday, December 18, 2014

Last post

Hello everyone. This is my last post on this blog, and I am in the process of archiving everything. Hope you enjoyed reading.

Much of the information on the blog is incorrect or inaccurate, as I am in want of understanding my country and history. From here, I will be devoting my time to learning and studies, and I might just come back with another blog.

The archive will be up in the near future, and I'll link to it from here.

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EDIT:
Hello. No archive for now, but soon in the future.

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EDIT:
No archive anytime soon. Sorry about that.

The Final Deybaja

The Republic of Sudan was a state set up by the British for continued British-American interests. It has nothing to do with a higher culture, or a new religious resurgence, or a nationalistic fervor. It is a state whose institutions were built by the British government for the now-demised British empire.

On independence, what happened? The state institutions were given to the Jallaba on a silver platter. Kitchener built Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum, which taught the Jallaba, the Egyptians and the British alike. Out of the universities came political parties and groups, without which the political parties of today would not have existed. The political parties were spearheaded and consisted by university students who came to study in Khartoum, most of whom were Jallabi or Halabi, with a minority from the Dinka or Nuer. 

They were Marxist, they were the front party of the neo-Mahdi caliphate project, they were the front party of the Khatmiyya Sufi sect, they were national socialists…but were they democratic – did they represent the people? Were they nationalist – did they belong to the nation and its people?

What is nation? Is it dozens of ethnic groups, each in its land, or co-inhabiting a common land by different patterns of settlement? How could you be patriotic to something that does not exist, or is not properly understood? Who are the people? Dozens of nations and peoples; African and Arabs and Afro-Arabs; or Jallaba and marginalized people?

What is the Sudan? I have no answer. I’d leave the answer completely blank. So…why should the Sudan exist? It has no reason to exist! In fact, its continued existence ruins everybody, as the most craven and most oppressive ethnic group of all – the Jallaba – plunged it straight into hell.

So, the Republic of Sudan should cease to exist, and anyone who is Sudanese, and who is not Nubian, Fur, Zaghawa, or of any other ethnic group, would be in deep trouble. Sudanese was and is another word for Jallabi. If you’re Sudanese today, you’ll be nothing but Muslim tomorrow. So good luck to the Jallab – I hope you wake up sooner.

What comes in place of the Republic of Sudan? The state of Darfur, the state of South Kordofan, the state of Blue Nile, the state of Jallabistan, the state of Makuria, and the Beja sheikhdoms. Just as it was in AD 1504.

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The Republic of Sudan was an idea based in Khartoum, and could have only developed in Khartoum. The Sudanese people were the Khartoumite people. Khartoum is a multi-ethnic city with a narrow Jallabi majority, and it was built by Egyptian occupiers for administering their empire properly, populated by Egyptian officers and Levantine and Jewish businessmen; and without Egypt, it would not have existed at all!

The people of Khartoum are not the people of Sudan – they are something different! They live lives that the Khartoum-named “people of the regions” do not live. They think differently and have different goals for the Sudan. And most of all, the people of Khartoum call themselves ‘the Sudanese people’.

What are the people of Khartoum? Spoiled oversized children, who go through the motions of education, reading newspapers and magazines, university, high-paying profession and honorable retirement, all while thinking highly of themselves as educated and sophisticated people, representing Sudan like a lighthouse at midnight, and carrying the burden of its ‘honor’. 

When that happens smoothly, as it did until the 1980s, then everyone is happy and fine. Otherwise, the Khartoumite people are cringing in discontent with moments of forgetful bliss, still convincing themselves that they’re great people all over.

Post-colonial Sudan was an idea that was based in Khartoum and could only exist in Khartoum. In fact, it was a set of clashing ideas, it was a struggle of multiple parties and ideologies, by pulpit and press, for control of the Sudan; or it was a fun way to pass time by intellectuals. The process was either significant, that is coming to power; or insignificant, that is to prove one’s own cleverness to his friends, his foes and the girls nearby. 

The neo-Mahdist Ummah party had plans for the Sudan, the Communist party had plans for the Sudan, the National Socialist party had plans for the Sudan, the wahhabi National Islamic Front had plans for the Sudan. All thoughout the 60s, the Sudan was an exciting project for the people of Khartoum, and it was yet to mature – give it time – as the sentiment was back then.

The Republic of Sudan did mature, in 1989, when the contest was won by the Wahhabis. To this day, they rule the Republic of Sudan from Khartoum.

The intellectual is a pariah, whose looks and presentation are more important than his ideas, and who has no other objective but to appear smart and eloquent. He writes lengthy and unnecessarily complex articles, he discusses issues and solutions with sophistry. He has no passion, he doesn’t really care for the problems of the Sudan. He cares first and foremost for himself, then everybody else comes along, that is, those who could help him to get his selfish desires.

The people of Khartoum never see a military coup happening – it just happens. They go out into the streets only after it is safe to do so, and only after they’ve been mobilized into action by self-serving political parties. The cycle of democracy and military rule goes thusly: military rule grows weak, the leaders of political parties, professional guilds and trade unions mobilize “the people” – most people in Khartoum, including students – and the military leader either steps down, or is caught by a surprise coup from a lower-ranking officer. Then elections, then back to democracy.

Democracy leads straight into military rule. Sectarianism between the Ummah party and the Khatmiyya sect's front party – the Democratic People’s Union – means that nothing gets done, the economy slips into recession, conflict breaks out somewhere unbeknownst to Khartoum, and then riots and massive protests in the major Jallabi cities. Of course, the press is free and the judiciary fiercely independent. Soon enough, amidst the weakness and chaos, a group of officers chosen and mobilized by one of the political parties overthrows the government, and proceeds to shut down newspapers, ban civil societies and imprison any kind of opponent.

The cycle is over, as 25 years of Wahhabism has sent the best minds abroad, brought refugees torn from their homes and families, and retarded the new generation by education and the culture that the Wahhabis allowed. Now, the republic of Sudan has matured – thank God! It became an Islamist hellhole.

Those who did not agree with the Islamists – Mohammed Wardi, Mohammed al-Ameen, Mustafa Sid-Ahmed and most of the Republican brothers – left the country. When the country was taken by Islamists, they did not stick around and fight back, or endure. In my opinion, they did not belong to the Republic of Sudan in heart, but for them, it was their own idea that did not mature. Nevertheless, all three returned, Mustafa Sid-Ahmed in a casket. 

However, Mahjoub Sharif (the people’s poet), al-Kabli, Osman Hussein and abdul-Aziz Baraka Sakin stayed. This is a sign of true patriotism – the willingness to stay despite all else, and the likes of such patriots will be the heirs of the future.

What’s left now, is a new occupier – either the US or Egypt – or rule by militia. The Janjaweed are in South Khartoum, but soon they might be in the Republican Palace.

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The core is the center of the spirit. It is the refuge that nourishes the soul. The core is not necessarily materialistic: it is a song, it is a symphony, it is a painting, it is a sacred place, it is a critique of society in a paper, it is blocks and corner-shops and neighbors, but it is home. 

There is no Nubian core. Nubia is divided, by blood and by borders. Nubia is too diverse to be ever reunified naturally from the Nuba Mountains to Aswan. It must either have its peoples mixed together, or it must be ruled as a unified empire viz a viz Prussia.

Nobatia, the land, is drowned and under Lake Nasser. The people, the disparate Nubian tribes of that region, had to leave their ancestral land. They were happy to, as Nobatia was a desert whose blessing was the passing by of the Nile River. The Nile, however, stretched narrow and flowed fast, leaving nothing for the soil around it. And thus, Nobadia was an improvident land inhabited by an anxious people.

The Nobatians were happy to leave their ancestral land as it was being drowned. They left for urban centers all throughout Egypt. Now, their culture is on the verge of disappearing. Like the Alodian Nubians – the Jallaba – they have become nothings and pariahs. Soon, like the Jallabis, they will be dangerous to their surroundings.

Makuria, the valley of the Nile between al-Dabba and Old Halfa, is improvident, its people silent by difficulty of reach, and unknown to the world. The life of the Makurian Nubians - the Danagla, Mahas and Jabäbra - is routine and obscure and esoteric.

Alodia is the great tragedy. Its people have assumed for themselves, an Arabian lineage that goes back to Muhammad's family, but in reality: beyond the 1500s is unknown or mystified. Its people, for centuries, have asserted their Arabian blood and lineage. Its people speak a creole version of Yemeni and Hejazi Arabic, infused with Nubian words, grammar rules and pronunciations; and insist on proper grammar and pronunciation. Its people are Muslims, and fanatically so. They revere the Sheikh more than anybody else, they value the Quran and Hadith more than all other books. They live on their land, but their blood has been infused with too much Arabian blood, and they have adopted the culture-destroying and soul-retarding Arabian mindset. No one likes them, but the Saudis and a few others; and everybody else either resents them or hates them with a burning passion.

The South Nubians are the true Nubians, with very little mixture from outside. They are a people with a land, pure-blooded since thousands of years ago. Nobatians are a people without a land; the Makurians are people with a land; the Alodians have a land, but they’re not a people, they’re a void; the Sennarians & Butanians are not a people: they are a disparate group of ink-in-water Arabian tribes, but they have a land.

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The Nubian has no proper idea of home. To him, home is a dream, a mirage, of distant memories or lovely imaginations. It is a way of playing music, it is a story about a village, it is rules and manners, and it is ceremony of joy and tragedy, and etcetera. 

It is an idea that takes a simple and confused concrete form; that is not loyal to a land, but in fact loyal to wealth and prosperity. It can be reenacted anywhere and everywhere, with slight environmental modifications.

If the weather is hot, if the weather is cold, if the food is strange or the food is familiar, if the people are warm or the people are cold, it does not matter! What matters is family and culture.

A nation that is found on ideas, reveres the ideas to the exclusion of everything else. Blood, keeping blood pure, land, holding on to it and distrusting all foreigners, is completely irrelevant. All are welcome and all are a part of the society, so long as they accept the ideas of the… 

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The Alodian Nubian has no home. He is a form without essence. The soul in him is mute, the philosophy of life in him is not whole. He is a simpleton who bows down to his oppressor, who will defend his molester in court and will curse the one who speaks against his molester. He is a simpleton who believes the advertisement, who believes the promise of the demagogue, and when he is disillusioned, he forgets that he ever praised the demagogue.

The Alodian Nubian’s core is a void that must be filled, and the the Alodian Nubian goes out in search of filling the void. He consumes the culture of the Arabians, and reads the book of Westerners. He takes up the Palestinian cause, the #free_whoever and #save_whatever causes, the unification of the Ummah and etcetera. Yet on the Darfur war, the South Sudan wars and the Blue Nile state war, he is conspicuously silent. Whenever they are brought up, he tries to silence the discussion and portray himself as the victim of a Western conspiracy. 

A jigsaw puzzle is a whole picture made by way of several pieces, not important in themselves, but having their place and deriving their importance only in relation to others. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle, where two jigsaw puzzle-pictures are trying to be converged into one picture, and there is a half-hearted rearrangement of the pieces, not even put in their right places. This is the confused and jumbled picture of the Alodian Nubian. He is a confused and conflicted Nubian.

He dares not say this out loud, but there is a civil war within him, whose peace is only maintained by an enemy outside of him. Solidarity is a cooperation of two dissimilars in united action against a common enemy. When the common enemy disappears, the solidarity is broken overnight. He wages wars on rebels, on America, on Israel, on communism, on everything else that is not him. This keeps the two opposing selves within him in common action, but not necessarily in peace.

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The people of void will be infiltrated by a foreign people, whom will soon overpower them, and whom will soon be at their mercy. The foreigner will either exterminate them, expel them like Palestinians, enslave them, or rape their women and mongrelize them for the umpteenth time.

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The soul must dare to express itself. If it does not, it is mute; and there is no core, there is no culture, and there is distress and fear and hatred.

The soul that is mute does not express itself. The soul is an immaterial, intangible force that can be conceived as a concept by the mind – which is the bridge between body and soul – but can communicate itself. 

It does so by music, the manipulation of sounds; by storytelling, the abridgement of a long event into a series of significant events, and its telling in spoken or written words with flow and charisma; by theater, the reenactment of real-life, actual or typical, onto a confined setting with the emphasis on real-life doubles aka actors and etcetera.

Music, theater, and storytelling: these are essential tools; and the tools needed to fulfill music, from the stage to instruments to scales, are existential tools. The true essence is the soul expressing itself.

If the soul is mute, there is no culture. If the soul is servile, it will serve its master. It will express, using the tools available to it, the praise of its master, and will advocate on his behalf: it will defend his honor in the face of his enemies, it will take up his causes and his hatreds; while denying itself its very right to expression, and its right to its biological disposition.

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The orientation is either towards the core, or outside of it. The core is the refuge, and just as it nourishes the self, it must be nourished by the self.

I envy the Egyptians: they have a core that stretches back thousands of years, that incorporates ancient greatness, Christian refinement and Islamic sublimity. When they want introspection, they have Taha Hussein, Sayyid al-Qimni, Mohammed al-Ghazali, Naguib Mahfouz, Pope Tewodros, and many more. If they want high culture, they have abdul-Halim Hafiz and al-Mutanabbi. If they want history, they have it. They have a core. 

The core creates a strong government, fervent patriotism, devotion to the needs and interests of Egypt, and gives dignity to the educated Egyptian. This core goes back and back: the Aryans who inhabited the narrow stretch of the desert along the Nile, and built a civilization that may be unrivaled by any other; the Byzantines who brought Christianity along with them, and brought Christian refinement; the Arabians who brought Islam with them and Arabian sublimation; the French and British who modernized Egypt to some extent, and the rule-by-military, who got a lot of things done, despite choking Egypt's literary tradition and highbrow culture.

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99% of Nubians are natural slaves. This means that, even if they were freemen and free women, they would still seek a master. The master is either someone they revere, or someone who commands them whether they like it or not. 

The master they hate, they cannot choose; the master they like and admire, if he came about by fate, they wouldn’t have chosen him. If they chose their master, they’d choose an Arab man or a famous Islamic scholar. 

The best master for Nubians is a Nubian. A Nubian scholar on Islam, an Orthodox priest, a cultured gentleman or a lovable average Joe. This Nubian would more likely to be female than male, as our long and proud history attests. The Kendäke – the Nubian queen – is the mother and father: she was Cleopatra before there was a Cleopatra.

But where will religion come from? Outside. Where will the tools of analysis come from? Outside. And to whom will the devotion go to?

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Theodore Dalrymple - One-Liner Quotes

Theodore Dalrymple

Retired prison psychiatrist, social commentator, traveller, eloquent and insightful writer.

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Arranged only in alphabetical order of first letter.

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Accomplished modesty seems to me better than failed ambition, which is much more frequently encountered in the history of art.

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The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

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All judgment is comparative.

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Analogies, by definition, are inexact.

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The attempt to enforce absolute virtue results in great evil.

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A carefully constructed argument tends to bore rather than to impress, and even to make him who employs it look arrogant or self-satisfied in the eyes of those who attend.

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Dogs are the greatest diplomats, or at least aids to diplomacy.

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Dramatic landscapes do not usually make for the best landscape paintings, which are generally of less startling views.

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The English, it was observed by an aristocratic Frenchman as long ago as the eighteenth century, take their pleasures sadly.

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Enough of philosophy, as characters say in Russian novels.

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The epidemiology, sociology and psychology of bad taste interest me because there is so much of it about. Bad taste is the shadow-side of self-expression, as it were; indeed, it often seems as if it is the only side of it.

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Even the most nostalgic among us do not wish for a return to the old days with regard, say, to medical treatment.

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Even the most punitive among us do not want punishment in effect to continue for ever, beyond the term laid down by law.

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Everyone’s knowledge is always finite, while everyone’s ignorance is always infinite.

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The exposure of Freud as a fraud, or a near-fraud, still comes as a shock in France.

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Fashions change in attitudes as surely as in dress, perhaps in an even more fickle way.
Few are the people who love dogs and cats equally, and there are those who love neither.

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Graffiti: the architectural equivalent of tattoos.

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Great poets think poetry the most important thing in the world, great entomologists, insects.

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Gypsies should be free to do as they like, but please God not near me: that is the lazy thought of most people in Europe.

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He who argues by the ad hominem is refuted by the ad hominem.

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He who knows only the best of anything does not know it well.

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Icarus view of life [:] life is nothing but ascent nearer and nearer to the sun of perfection.

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The internet acts on sleep rather as amphetamines do, that is to say it prevents it.

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If history teaches anything, it is not that no one learns anything from history, it is rather that people learn the wrong lessons from history.

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If someone were to tell that, for the rest of my life, I could listen only to rock music and read only airport novels, I should pray for a swift death.

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In an antinomian world, notoriety and fame are one.

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In Western Europe...it has become almost impossible for anyone to construct an aesthetically decent house, let alone public building...

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In the absence of talent...and of the willingness to work and study...transgression and outrage are the only way to fame.

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It is difficult to tell the truth in public, at least on certain matters.

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It is a mistake to suppose that all men...want to be free.
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It is non-paranoia rather than paranoia that needs to be explained.

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It is wealth and not poverty than stands in need of explanation.

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It is not easy to answer a puritan without sounding as if you are positively in favour of sin.

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It isn’t easy to imagine a charmless swindler, after all; it is almost a sine qua non of the trade.

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It is not logic that convinces but emotion.

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A joke is more effective than a statistic.

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Just as there is an infinite number of ways of dividing a sphere into two, so...there are an infinite number of ways of dividing men into two.

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Man does not live by rationality alone, and we must sometimes take him as he is.

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Man is the only creature capable of prurience.

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The man who has not studied is blinded by prejudice; the man who has studied, but has no instinct, is blinded by learning.

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...the marionettes of happenstance.

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No one remembers or long honours a translator, however good.

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Nostalgia is generally derided as at best a useless, and at worst a harmful emotion or mood.

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One of the ways to destroy trust, an invaluable social asset, is to mistrust when there is no need of it.

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The only way talent can be brought to fruition [is by] work and study.

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Passion has, if not its rights exactly, at least its excuses.

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Pedantry has its pleasures and psychological rewards.

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People who achieve something in life usually overestimate the importance of what they are doing, and if they did not they would hardly achieve anything.

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A persona assumed for long enough, however, soon becomes indistinguishable from a real.

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Posterity does not always award its medals according to merit.

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The prescient man is not the man who knows most. He is like the chess-player who takes in the situation on a board at once, the result of much study and the possession of instinct.

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Pride in learning is especially vulgar and reprehensible.

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Prisoners often say the most interesting things and their language often has a beauty of its own, but consecutive thought is not the first characteristic of their utterances.

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Progress there has been, self-evidently so, but not in everything.

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Prudence can be carried to excess, until it becomes the enemy of bravery, determination and daring.

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Rats I abominate, but mice – wild mice, that is, including house mice, not the white laboratory kind with pink eyes – I have always sympathised with and had much time for. 

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Rats will survive long after Man destroys himself.

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(On the Salwar kameez) is often of the greatest elegance, and vastly more grateful on the eye than the way in which many western women now dress.

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A society in which nothing was beyond the pale would be extraordinarily vicious.

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The Spartans are brave because they are afraid to be anything else; it is little else but a different kind of cowardice.

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That’s real integration for you: [Welsh] man, born and bred, who thinks of England as a foreign country.

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There is no law written into the constitution of the universe that guarantees overall improvement, steady or sudden as the case may be; and that is why prudence is so great a political virtue.

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There is no simple measure or yardstick of a life, or of life itself.

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There are two types of men: those who divide men into two types of men, and those who don’t.

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The thirst for order is at least as great as the thirst for freedom.

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A time that was happy only when viewed through the soft-focus lens of nostalgia.

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To say that the man who gouged out his girlfriend’s eyes should never be set at liberty is not the same as saying that he should be treated with cruelty inside prison (as, in strict justice, he would deserve to be treated, a proof, if any were needed, that justice is not the only value that we hold dear).

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The use of a single word can amount to a subtle lie.

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[Was] their previous seemingly instinctive good taste was merely lack of opportunity to express or act upon bad taste, or whether their good taste was something more positive than that?

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What is unusual often has the charms of novelty.

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Where sentimentality pervades, we cannot make...proper distinctions.

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When something is called classic it has a positive, even a laudatory, connotation.

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The worst of all fates for an egotist [is] to remain anonymous.

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You can think really highly only of those about whom you know little.

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You will hardly see an inelegant hut in the whole of Africa.



Monday, December 8, 2014

Edward Gibbons - The Decline of Rome

EDWARD GIBBON
(1737 - 1794)


Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, 
how many have escaped the notice of history, 
how few have resisted the ravages of time and barbarism

And yet even the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces, 
would be sufficient to prove that 
those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire. 

Their greatness alone, or their beauty, might deserve our attention; 
but they are rendered more interesting by two important circumstances, 
which connect the agreeable history of the arts with the more useful history of human matters. 

Many of these works were erected at private expense, and almost all were intended for public benefit.


Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures
since the productions of nature are the materials of art. 

Under the Roman empire, 
the labour of an industrious and ingenious people 
was variously, but incessantly employed, 
in the service of the rich

In their dress, their table, their houses, and their furniture, 
the favourites of fortune united every refinement of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour, 
whatever could soothe their pride or gratify their sensuality. 

Such refinements, under the odious name of luxury, 
have been severely arraigned by the moralists of every age; 
and it might perhaps be more conducive to the virtue, as well as happiness, of mankind, 
if all possessed the necessities, and none of the superfluities, of life.


It is scarcely possible that 
the eyes of contemporaries should discover 
in the public felicity 
the latent causes of decay and corruption

This long peace
and the uniform government of the Romans, 
introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. 

The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, 
the fire of genius was extinguished, 
and even the military spirit evaporated.

A Primer on Freedom for the Muslim World

The Contemptuous Mirror
Michael abdul-Nür
al-Hiwär al-Mutamaddin 
Issue 4468
May 30, 2014

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"I am a cheap citizen." Credit goes to 'Muna'

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We search for the truth, and we don't realize that our existence is the truth that precedes all of truth. We search for the truth without paying its price; and this proves that we do not look for it, but we look for what tickles our ears. How do we look for the truth without knowing that the beginning of knowing it, is in the freedom to look for it? 

Freedom is man's opportunity to decide his fate and choose his limits. Freedom is the natural way of suffering the self, and knowing it, and disciplining it, and choosing its bounds - it is man's opportunity to create himself by himself. Man cannot grow without freedom, and any claim to growth without freedom is growth in savagery and ferocity. And due to our failure in searching for the truth, despair has led us to the delusion that truth does not exist, or simply, that truth is not searching for truth. 

Therefore, our society gathers together for the sake of violence towards the evangelists of freedom, because we consider fleeing from freedom as freedom itself. But the real opponent to truth, is not deviation, but violence. Therefore, our fear of freedom affirms our slavery, even though it were under the garment of religion.  

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The fear of freedom is the fear of life. We claim to have love for life, and at the same time, we refuse to abandon childhood, which deceives us with its definition of fear as being life itself, and of true life as being the uninterrupted waiting for death.

We praise and give strength to those who support and cheer for fleeing away from life and for shelling ourselves within ourselves. But they themselves plunder us and steal from our existence in life. How do we not see that freedom is the real limit on the human soul; and those who do not entrust humans with it, do not consider the human anything besides an available battery from which to obtain their personal needs? They delude us by implying that virtue is blind obedience to those who preceded us, and the beforehand resignation to failure in confronting life.

But without freedom, there is no real virtue. Without freedom, there is no responsibility. Our fear of freedom has advanced to such a degree that it has become a definition for religious piety. We look for virtue without education, and we found it in our fear of freedom – we found it in not advancing and in deprecating education. And if they do not invite you to exit the cocoon, they will kill you under the pretext of helping you.

How can we be satisfied with the life of isolation and hiding, and call it freedom? What is the difference between the alive and ignorant and the dead and gone? Why do we fear baring ourselves in front of the light of freedom? Are we afraid of seeing our true selves? We now treat freedom as an enemy, because it exposes our nakedness, and shows our faults, and exits us from our boxes. 

This fear for the self is unnatural stability, and is nothing but self-hatred. Healthy love of the self calls us to face freedom and not to fear from it. Truly, this is the mirror that we flee from is the one that shows us our reality, and without it, we grow in the dark to become monsters that hate freedom and deem it obscene. And without it, we will not see the sun of peace and stability and progress.

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We want goodness in conduct, and we do not understand that goodness in conduct begins with goodness in will, which leads to goodness in conduct. We have renounced the inside, and we have become addicted to the outside, which has led to a society overwhelmed by appearances and deceiving masks. Now, we have struggle to please others, in an atmosphere of fake perfection, renouncing our need for human simplicity and its free existence. Our upbringing has forced us to revolve around ourselves, and to adapt to problems, and to never search for more than just the existent. 

Is the meaning of life in complacency? And is its meaning, the pathological fear for the self? The fear of freedom does not produce virtue, and does not confirm its existence, instead, it delays human growth. How can we claim success without examination or proof? Does our fear of freedom expose our fear of life? These are those who claim to virtue, because they were not fortuned with the opportunity to lack in virtue. And there are righteous people in the darkness of their diseased societies. 

The fear of freedom is evidence of the failure of society in facing life. Why do we fear taking the risk of life under the pretext of the fear of death? Is not dwelling in the peace of slavery true death? How true were the words of Helen Keller! “Security is only a myth. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

What a delusion, that delusion which alleges that virtue is the fear of freedom! Are we, by the naivety that assesses the righteousness of one by reason of his words and not of his actions, in the light? We affirm by that assessment our fear of freedom! The chatterers exceed in talk about freedom, with no proof.

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This mentality has made us live our lives in search of success without effort or trial; and it has led us to lay the blame on others, just as failure becomes inevitable in the realization of this success, that is, to flee from confronting ourselves and from realizing that our greed is the reason for this searching. Our greed in life without responsibility is the cause of our failure in realizing success, as individuals and as a society. For this reason, the other-blamers are abundant in our societies.

Such people are those who do not entrust us with freedom. They do not believe in it, and they do not want life for us, except for the sake of their own benefit. Because, a society without freedom finds its pleasure in following others, and its individuals are treated as herds without identity, except of what they have in property.



END

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"Accept the truth from whatever source it comes."
-Maimonides, Jewish theologian

Sunday, December 7, 2014

The Facebook anti-Salafist Movement

[RIGHT TO LEFT]

[CAPTIONS]
Syria
Muslim World
Arab Ummah

[QUOTE CLOUD]
"Go my son, 
may God protect you."


**


[HEADING]
The Oriental Man

[RIGHT HAND SIDE]

With his wife and his sister
Hijaaaaab!
Reserve!
Shyyyyness!
"I am against Facebook."


[LEFT-HAND SIDE]

With the rest of female-hood
"O honey, O beautiful one!"
"O sugar, you!"
"Can I have your Facebook, O moon-like one?"
"I die for opening up and openness."
[RIGHT TO LEFT]

[CAPTION 1]
Lovers [with arrow pointing]

[QUOTE]
"Debauchery and brazenness! You are the slaves of your own lusts!"

[CAPTION 2] 
(Sex slave)
"And this is another evidence of the collapse of Western Civilization!"
My body is a trust
Precious
My Lord's possession
My body is my honor.
The honor of my family
Tunisian Muslimah
"Shame! Seduction is wrong!"
"What? Do you not like our watermelons?"
[HEADING] 
The Middle East

[RIGHT HAND SIDE - CAPTION] 
Man of religion.

[LEFT HAND SIDE - QUOTE] 
The West is lost and disoriented, we should teach them Islam so that its problems end.
"You must become austere; and be wary of greed for this world."
Persecution of dogs, looks like Pakistan. Note the smiles.
"A devil! 
Kill him!"
[RIGHT]
"Muslims are the ones who laid down the foundations of European civilization, for how great is Islam!"

[LEFT]
"European civilization is a disgrace on human civilization, for how great is Islam!"
[HEADING]
The Dialogue

[RIGHT HAND SIDE - SALAFI MUSLIM]
"This is also in the fold of Islam. We have the right to critique your religion and your leadership and your media and your religion."

[LEFT HAND SIDE - SCANDINAVIAN]
"Under the fold of democacy, we have the right to critique our leadership and our media and even our religion freely." 
[RIGHT HAND SIDE]
With his son:
"I'll send you to study in America, to get to the highest ranks."

[LEFT HAND SIDE]
With the sons of the people:
"I'll send you to the jihad in Syria to win paradise, by God's care."
"Is the purpose of religion to trim your mustaches?
O nation, belaughed from its ignorance by all the nations!"

al-Mutanabbi

Friday, December 5, 2014

Oswald Spengler Describes the Muslim World

Oswald Spengler (1880 -1936)

**



**

"The eye of the beast of prey determines things according to position and distance. 

It apprehends the horizon. 

It measures up in this battlefield the objects and conditions of attack. 

Sniffing and spying, the way of the hind and the way of the falcon, are related as slavery and dominance. 

There is an infinite sense of power in this quiet wide-angle vision, 

a feeling of freedom that has its source in superiority

and its foundations in the knowledge of greater strength and consequent certainty of being no one's prey."



END.

**


The beast of prey is the powerful Muslim in a puritanical Muslim society of 2014. He is the imam, the general, the president, the minister of this and that, the journalist, the leader of the political party, the celebrity, the actor, the musical artist, the music producer, the television producer, the millionaire and billionaire CEO.

In the Middle East, it's either kill or be killed. In the Sudan, there is the saying, "Destroy, or you will be destroyed. That is "being no one's prey". 

The "infinite sense of power" is derived from the predator's element of mystery - from the prey not being able to understand or comprehend the power vested in the predator, because the predator shows little about himself and hides the more mortal features that, combined with the deceptive image, would expose his weaknesses like light of day. And weakness is exploited by the weaker, who in looking to assume the top position, brings down the one currently on top of everyone, that is, the strongest and smartest of the pack. 

In the Muslim world, freedom is negative: it is freedom from the influence of the oppressor. To avoid being the oppressed, you must have no one above you, that is, no one stronger than you, that is, you on top of everyone. And kill or be killed: this is a reality of a horrible place that creates Bashar al-Assads and Muqtada al-Sadr and not Ban Ki Moons and Dalai Lamas. The feeling of freedom is indeed based on superiority, as Spengler above states.

If al-Assad played nice, he and his family and his tribe and his whole religious sect would face a genocide from other beasts of prey. The Dalai Lama has no place in Damascus or Aleppo. Muqtada al-Sadr would have never known his prestigious place in the new Iraq of his time, if he did not double as a politician and remained a man of religion.

If theory remains without its practice, theory is useless, and its conceiver and bearer, the intellect, has wasted his life in it.



Marilyn Manson has admirers!

I discovered Marilyn Manson in 2007/2008 via Wikiquote, but I was familiar with his image since 1998, as a child, when I saw him on the news. (Back then, I watched cartoons all day and did homework, but I remember the Columbine tragedy on the news.) I had no interest in his music, and may have heard only one song of his in my entire life. 

What struck me was the contrast between his image - which he claims is only for shock value - and the eloquence of his ideas. He isn't a typical leftist of any kind, though he holds leftists stances on free speech. And to my surprise, he is somewhat known in a part of the word that preferred rap and R'n'B and absolutely hated rock music (except for a few circles here and there).

Marilyn Manson:



We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.
-Marilyn Manson



Evil Infiltrates and Acts Unseen


“Evil penetrates like a needle and then becomes like an oak tree.”
-Ethiopian Proverb

The Woman: A Board

A very controversial post.

Some of the pictures and words I disagree with, especially the tone of some of the statements, and the extent to which some of the images go, but all in all, everything must be said and posted.

**

From the Facebook pages:

أصحاب العقول النيرة

Michael Lotfy (1)

عرب جرب
**

"I pity the girl whose reputation goes sour. For she cannot grow a beard to erase [her negative] image."
-Ali Shariati 
"Arabs are in slumber...for when a woman disrobes, they heed in attention."
-Karima Makki al-3ammäry
"Satan is in your mind, and not in the body of a woman."
-Layla al-Mutawwa3
"Freedom according to an Oriental: that all the women of the world should be liberated except for his sister and daughter and niece.
Women's rights according to an Oriental: that he has sex with his neighboress and hits his sister if she's late for the dental clinic.
Equality according to an Oriental: that he goes on a trip with his female colleagues to the sea and talks to his sister and the son of her uncle from behind a screen (hijab).
It is the society of moral contradiction."
-Nabil Fayyad 
"All of society's contradictions manifest in the dealing with women. Which means, she is either shy or insolent. Either married or looking for a groom. Either covered or exposed. Contradictions that loom over our surroundings after the so-called Arab Spring.

We deal with women, in the manner that she is either a nun or a whore, and we assume that the only alternative for the woman without a hijab or a burqa is the bikini, to confirm the concept of either-white-or-black.

The conflict over the woman's body is a political conflict, where in it religion is used as a cover-up to undermine women. And in tuth, there are no large differences between the one who wears a bikini to display her body at gatherings, and the one who wears a burqa to cover it. Both use and deal with the body as a commodity!

It does not matter what the woman wears or undresses, if it was the result of a mature, conscious thought, far from social  or religious or cultural pressures, for the freedom of woman does not begin with her body. The freedom of a woman begins with her thoughts!

The bikini and the burqa is the product of a society immersed in contradictions and trivialities that cancel out all the freedoms in the body and sex!"
-Lubna Bijäli
"Our society has made the woman do nothing but shelter herself within four walls, and it is a sheltering that, at the end of the journey, does not mean chastity, but incontinence of chastity without walls."
-al-Sädig al-Nayhüm 


















"The society that prohibits the most, is the most obsessive of all societies."
-Michael Foucault
"Truly, when we locked the woman inside the house, and have narrowed her range of movement, her mind becomes naive to the farthest limits of naivety. And from here came the sayer's saying: that her mind equals half of a man's mind. And truly, we have found the Western woman almost competing with the man in farsightedness and soundness of opinion. And the reason for that goes back to her new progress, where she has taken to work and travel just as the men do. The thinkers who speak about the obligation of detaining women in their homes, have forgotten that her mind has lessened [in vigor] because of the hijab, for they have caused the narrowness of her mind by [means of] the hijab."
-Ali Wardi
"If you find yourself justifying or giving excuses to wife-beating, so that you can defend the legitimacy of your creed, maybe it is time for you to begin rethinking your stance on your creed per se!"
-Ahmed 3aqïl
"How ugly is the society that hates honesty! The society that effects debauchery in secret, over a pure smile in candor!" -Collette al-Khouri  
"They say horrible things about sex, and women, and lust, and sin, and they forget about fondness and love...

Everything in our books and catchwords and commentaries is colored red: blood from the neck, blood from the sword, blood on a tissue on the night of the wedding...

As though pomposity is equal in measure to what blood you can cause [to spill] or what feelings you can suppress...

How miserable is the culture we have inherited! For we, since 512 years ago, have been unable to produce a single verse of a poem, and we still claim ibn Khaldun to our ancestry, and the astrolabe to our inventions. How dreadful for us, if we are entitled to life and we still call the woman who penetrated outer space as an infidel!"
-Abboud Khadarshah 
"The Arabian culture of death is a culture that hates life, and glorifies death, and presents it as death in the way of God, and the solution to all of the woes that society suffers from.

But,

Life in the way of God, is more difficult than death in God's path."
-Ali Shariati
"Where the Muslims are not happy:

They're not happy in Gaza.
They're not happy in Egypt.
They're not happy in Libya.
They're not happy in Morocco.
They're not happy in Iran.
They're not happy in Iraq.
They're not happy in Yemen.
They're not happy in Afghanistan.
They're not happy in Pakistan.
They're not happy in Syria.
They're not happy in Lebanon.
They're not happy in Indonesia.

So, where are they happy?

They're happy in Australia.
They're happy in England.
They're happy in France.
They're happy in Italy.
They're happy in Germany.
They're happy in Sweden.
They're happy in the USA.
They're happy in Norway.

They're happy in almost every country that is not Islamic!


And who do they blame [for their unhappiness]?

[...] They blame the countries in which they are HAPPY! And they want to change the countries in which they're happy, to be like the countries they came from, where they were unhappy."

-Paraphrase of a comment by Jim Zima entered on foxnews.com regarding the November 24, 2011 news story U.S. Soldier: Removing Cross is Attack on Christianity by Todd Starnes.
"How can I liberate a woman who adorns her slavery,
and considers her fetters bracelets of gold that jingle in her wrist?
How can I liberate a woman who stands in line
in front of Scheherazade's room, until her turn comes?
**
The Arabian woman
wants the one who chews the lump of freedom and swallows it on her behalf.
Therefore, she is afflicted by poverty of courage and poverty of blood.
**
The woman fears freedom, like the house cat fears
leaving the home, where it had its meals
for free."
-Nizar Qabbani
"Love me,
Far away from the lands of oppression and repression!
Far away from our city that has been satiated
from death!
Far away from our bigotry!
far away from our rigidity!
Love me,
far away from our city
that, from the day it came into being,
love does not come to it,
God does not come to it!"
-Nizar Qabbani
"Music is the food of every lover."
-Jalal-ud-Din al-Rumi
"Be where the singers are. For the evil ones do not sing."
-Unknown
"I am not under coercion to bear suppression from the mob of non-Arabs and Arabs, and to wear what clothing they want! Whoever fears for himself and his religion from the temptation of women's bodies, in all simplicity, he can go castrate himself!"
Outside the societies of incense and the punishment of the grave, life has another flavor...
Freedom: an innate disposition we are born with, and we shall always be vivified by it.