Archive for April 2016
Leila’s Project: Mashrou3, Leila مشروع ليلى
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 30, 2016
Leila’s Project: Mashrou3 Leila
A group of performers, created a decade ago, has been touring the Arab World.
It had toured Jordan 3 times with good audience.
This time around, the Jordan Kingdom has banned the performance on the most ludicrous and flimsy excuses that the performance goes contrary to social norms.
It is a fact that radical Islamists are sweeping Jordan communities and enforcing their own standards.
Andrew Bossone shared مشروع ليلى Mashrou’ Leila’s photo.
“We also have been unofficially informed that we will never be allowed to play again anywhere in Jordan due to our political and religious beliefs and endorsement of gender equality and sexual freedom.
We deeply regret having to cancel this event in this country that we have made our own.
Jordan is the home of some of the most supportive, beautiful, and kind people we have had the pleasure of working with and playing for.
Jordan is also the only place where we get to perform for our Palestinian audience, who organize elaborate bus trips to come from Palestine to see us play.
Jordan is the birthplace of our lead singer’s mother, a formative part of his identity and writing, and a place we have always considered our second home.
We denounce the systemic prosecution of voices of political dissent.
We denounce the systemic prosecution of advocates of sexual and religious freedom.
We denounce the censorship of artists anywhere in the world.
We apologize for having thus far failed at creating a cultural environment that allows our children to speak their minds. We believe whole-heartedly that we have only ever acted with the intention of making our world a more equal, and just place, even if “only through song.”
We pledge to our audience that we will continue to place the integrity of our art as our foremost priority, and to never succumb to the pressure to compromise our message, or to waive our freedom to speak. We promise to continue to write out of love, and with the desire to spread love.
We will fight, as we have always done, for our right to freely play our music and speak our mind.
We urge our fellow musicians and artists across the world to continue to produce work that challenges any unfair status quo, despite the difficulties confronted.
We respectfully ask the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to reconsider its stance towards our message, and our art, and urge the Kingdom to choose fighting alongside us, not against us, during this ongoing battle for a culture of freedom against the regressive powers of thought control and cultural coercion.
We strongly hope the authorities will make the right decision
We strongly hope the authorities will make the right decision, so that we can see you in a few days.” See More

مشروع ليلى Mashrou’ LeilaLike Page
For the English translation please scroll down.
يؤسفنا إبلاغكم أننا لن نستطيع عرض حفلة “ابن الليل” التي كانت ستعقد يوم الجمعة 29 نيسان 2016 في المدرج الروماني …في عمان.
لقد تلقينا خبر سحب رخصة العرض لحفلتنا.
التبرير الخطي الذي وصلنا من وزارة السياحة والآثار ينص على أن القرار جاء بسبب تعارض الحفلة مع “أصالة” الموقع، رغم انه سبق لنا أن أحيينا ثلاث حفلات في الموقع نفسه سابقاً وخضعنا لنفس آلية طلب الترخيص من السلطات المختصّة.
أما على أرض الواقع، خارج النصوص الرسمية، فإنّ الأمر أكثر تعقيداً.
لقد تم إبلاغنا بشكل غير مباشر بأن السبب وراء هذا التغير المفاجئ قبل ايام معدودة فقط من يوم الحفل جاء عقب اعتراض جهات معيّنة لا يمكن الإفصاح عن هويتها في هذا الوقت لتفادي دعوى قضائية موضوعها التشهير او الافتراء.
حسب ما نمي الينا، فإنّ تلك الجهات قد قامت بالضغط على بعض الشخصيات السياسية، وقامت بإطلاق سلسلة من الاحداث التى أدت الى سحب الرخصة المعطاة لنا.
لقد تم أيضا إبلاغنا بشكل غير رسمي بأنه لن يكون من المسموح لنا بأن نقدم عروضنا في أي مكان في الأردن بسبب معتقداتنا السياسية والدينية وإقرارنا بالمساواة الجنسية والحريّة الجنسية.
نحن نعتذر بشدة من الجميع لإضطرارنا إلى إلغاء الحفل في هذا البلد الذي نعتبره بلدنا.
فالاردن وطن لأجمل وأكرم المؤيدين للفرقة، والذين عملنا معهم ولأجلهم.
الاردن أيضاً هو البلد الوحيد الذي يجمع بين الفرقة وجمهورها في فلسطين، الذي ينظم رحلات برية ليحضر حفلاتنا في عمان.
والأردن مسقط رأس أم المغني الرئيسي في الفرقة، ومكون أساسي من هويته وكتاباته، ووطن تعلمنا أن نعشقه كأنه وطننا الثاني.
نستنكر الملاحقة المنهجية ضد أصوات الإعتراض السياسي.
نستنكر الملاحقة المنهجية لمؤيدي الحريات الجنسية والدينية.
نستنكر الرقابة على الفنانين في أي مكان في العالم.
نعتذر لجمهورنا لأننا فشلنا حتى الآن في خلق بيئة ثقافية تسمح لنا ولأطفالنا بالتعبيرعن ارائنا.
نؤمن بكل اخلاص اننا طوال مسيرتنا الفنية والمهنية لم نتصرف إلا من منطلق الإيمان والعمل تجاه عالم أكثر إنصافاً، ومساواة، وديمقراطية، ولو عبر الوسائل البسيطة المتاحة لنا “من خلال الأغنية”.
نتعهد لجمهورنا اننا سنواصل وضع نزاهة فننا في المقام الأول من اولوياتنا، واننا لن نخضع إطلاقاً لأي ضغوطات لتغيير رسالتنا أو التنازل عن حريتنا في التعبير عنها.
نتعهد أن نثابر على الكتابة بدافع الحب، وبدافع نشر الحب. سوف نحارب، كما حاربنا سابقاً، في سبيل حقنا لعرض موسيقانا وأفكارنا بحرية.
نحن نحث زملاءنا الفنانين أن يواصلوا إنتاجهم وتحدي الأفكار السائدة والإضطهاد الذي نعيشه جميعاً، رغم التحديات الناتجة عن قلة الإنصاف بحق حرية الفن.
نحن نطلب بكل احترام من المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية اعادة النظر في موقفها إزاء رسالتنا وفننا، ونحث المملكة على ان تحارب إلى جانبنا وليس ضدنا في هذا النضال الجاري من اجل الحرية الثقافية ضد قوى السيطرة الفكرية والعسف الثقافي.
نأمل ان تغير السلطات المعنية قرارها، كي نراكم بعد كم يوم.
Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical: He Has Mass Support for Healthcare and Tax Positions
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 29, 2016
Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical, He Has Mass Support for Healthcare & Tax Positions
“Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person… But he’s considered radical and extremist, [and] he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat.” – Noam Chomsky
During an event Tuesday night, Noam Chomsky was asked about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and said he considered him more of a “New Deal Democrat” than a radical extremist, as some have portrayed him.
Chomsky said Sanders’ positions on taxes and healthcare are supported by a majority of the American public, and have been for a long time.
He added that Sanders has “mobilized a large number of young people who are saying, ‘Look, we’re not going to consent anymore.’
If that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.”
Chomsky is a world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century.
He spoke at the Brooklyn Public Library at an event hosted by Live from the NYPL.
The event also featured Greece’s former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. He discusses his role in the country’s financial crisis in his new book, “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future.”
Varoufakis will be a guest Thursday on Democracy Now!
TRANSCRIPT
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system.
Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower, who said, in fact, that anyone who does not accept New Deal programs doesn’t belong in the American political system. That’s now considered very radical.
The other interesting aspect of Sanders’s positions is that they’re quite strongly supported by the general public, and have been for a long time.
That’s true on taxes. It’s true on healthcare.
So, take, say, healthcare. His proposal for a national healthcare system, meaning the kind of system that just about every other developed country has, at half the per capita cost of the United States and comparable or better outcomes, that’s considered very radical.
But it’s been the position of the majority of the American population for a long time. So, you go back, say, to the Reagan—right now, for example, latest polls, about 60 percent of the population favor it. When Obama put through the Affordable Care Act, there was, you recall, a public option. But that was dropped.
It was dropped even though it was supported by about almost two-thirds of the population.
You go back earlier to the Reagan years, about 70 percent of the population thought that national healthcare should be in the Constitution, because it’s such an obvious right.
And, in fact, about 40 percent of the population thought it was in the Constitution, again, because it’s such an obvious right. The same is true on tax policy and others.
So we have this phenomenon where someone is taking positions that would have been considered pretty mainstream during the Eisenhower years, that are supported by a large part, often a considerable majority, of the population, but he’s dismissed as radical and extremist.
That’s an indication of how the spectrum has shifted to the right during the neoliberal period, so far to the right that the contemporary Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. And the Republicans are just off the spectrum.
They’re not a legitimate parliamentary party anymore. And Sanders has—the significant part of—he has pressed the mainstream Democrats a little bit towards the progressive side.
You see that in Clinton’s statements. But he has mobilized a large number of young people, these young people who are saying, “Look, we’re not going to consent anymore.” And if that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized—mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.
“Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the political spectrum that is mildly left of centre.
His “wacky” ideas of free education, free healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in the world.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in the world index for 2016.”
How to read an academic paper?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 29, 2016
How to read an academic paper?
It is beyond me why juries on thesis, Masters or Ph.D, insist on producing voluminous books.
Probably, to initiate the candidate to learn Job’s patience for writing?
Or to give the illusion that what is produced is worth years of wasting time and energy on a book that barely anybody will ever read to refers to it?
Any one who went through this headache knows that half the time spent on a PhD program was reserved for writing the thesis. No wonder, most of these graduates gave up on writing anything afterward and refused to teach or pursue an academic life.
I suggest that professional writers who pressured their publishers to edit short books be included in such juries in order to lighten the book from redundant paragraphs.
What kills me is when you are forbidden to use the first personal in order to give an objective tone to the research. As if personal experiences are Not valid or our world views are not mainly generated from the few personal experiences we faced and tackled.
Not a grain of faith in me darling?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 29, 2016
Not a grain of faith in me darling; (Mar. 28, 2010)
You lined your eyelids dark blue;
You have so little faith in me baby:
If you had a grain of faith in the power of my love
You would know I melted the night to paint your eyelids.
You used to tell me:
“Ease off your kisses. If my lips melted what would you do?
If your brutal suckling wilt the flowers of my pomegranates
What would you do next?”
Baby, hold your horses on lengthy conversations.
I need the silence loving your hands doing the talking.
Stop harassing me and insisting to repeat “I love you”:
Wine loses its potency as the bottle of emotions is frequently opened.
Young Palestinians enjoying an indoor party, Jerusalem, early 1940’s
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 28, 2016
Young Palestinians enjoying an indoor party, Jerusalem, early 1940’s
Looking at these 2 pictures, I realized how homogeneous were the styles in cloths and hairdos in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.
The borders were opened, even as France had mandated power over Syria and Lebanon, and the British over Palestine and Jordan.
Lebanese spent more time in Haifa than in Tripoli, Saida or Tyr.
Palestinians and Lebanese knew Damascus better than their urban cities.
We actually were One people until the colonial powers decided that we belong to created “Independent” States
And they facilitated the creation of Israel by splitting and dividing this One people.


British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library added 2 new photos.Like Page
Young Palestinians enjoying an indoor party, Jerusalem, early 1940’s
What’s in the dawn?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 28, 2016
What’s in the dawn? (Apr. 7, 2010)
What’s in the dawn?
Birds must be chirping.
Cool breeze must be biting.
Wet thyme must be tingling.
And I am smiling.
What’s in the dawn?
Is it raining?
Is it thundering?
Is it freezing?
I am sending a prayer
To the sick, the ill, the suffering from cold and hunger;
To the many at the end of their rope
Curtain drawn
What’s in the dawn?
I am breathing fresh life.
In a couple of hours nature dies:
The drama of the day begins
I can’t get used to that drama.
I want my dawn
Any day of the year.
Minority rule: it takes a few very intolerant and tenacious people to make the system more honest
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 28, 2016
Minority rule: it takes a few very intolerant and tenacious people to make the system more honest
No troll should be able to abuse the media and academic system!
Ethical Breaches
Background: After being called a BS vendor by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the past, Smith in a vendetta, has written 4 articles with similar attempts at discrediting and distorting without the slightest familiarity with the subject. More on these, later, as this is not the end.
This is a public service for others who might fall prey to the overactive BS operator passing for expert Noah Smith (who was thrown out of academia for not meeting standards), with the misfortune of having been given a voice on Bloomberg, thus risking to turn Bloomberg (otherwise with tight standards) into a BS vending operation.
John Peter shared this link of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. April 18 at 4:38pm ·
Added a page as public service (he will now leave me alone, this is to protect others, preserve the integrity of the system)
This is the minority rule: it takes only a few very very intolerant and tenacious people to make the system more honest.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/SmithBSVendor.html
Summary of Breaches of Journalistic Ethics & Logic in Noah Smith’s Bloomberg View Article on The Black Swan of April 16, 2016
Ethical Flaw
Taleb in The Black Swan:
There are two varieties of rare events:
a) the narrated Black Swans, those that are present in the current discourse and that you are likely to hear about on television, and
b) those nobody talks about, since they escape models—those that you would feel ashamed discussing in public because they do not seem plausible. I can safely say that it is entirely compatible with human nature that the incidences of Black Swans would be overestimated in the first case, but severely underestimated in the second one.
[…]
This miscalculation problem is a little more subtle.
In truth, outliers are not as sensitive to underestimation since they are fragile to estimation errors, which can go in both directions.
As we saw in Chapter 6, there are conditions under which people overestimate the unusual or some specific unusual event (say when sensational images come to their minds)—which is how insurance companies thrive.
So my general point is that these events are very fragile to miscalculation, with a general severe underestimation mixed with an occasional severe overestimation.
Noah Smith in Bloomberg View: [goes on and on presenting the Black Swan as only overestimating market crashes]… In other words, Taleb might be wrong — people might be overestimating, rather than underestimating, the risk of market crashes.
So visibly Noah Smith is not familiar with the book that he is discussing.
This led to an incoherent response: Noah Smith said he “agrees with points above” (not explaining then his Taleb is “wrong” other than to create hype), and his editor, James Grieff saying “He read the book but disagrees with it”. His editor claims that “he read the book”is like someone claiming he read War and Peace, it takes place in Venezuela.
Background: Noah Smith has a long documented track record of writing critiques of books he hasn’t seen, and discussing papers he hasn’t read.
Here you have authors spending 10 years writing a book, and some troll with a megaphone critiquing it on things that have nothing to do with the content.
I first became aware of it when he previously commented on my skin-in-the-game without realizing there was the expression of a mathematical theorem, when it was on page 2.
Logical Fiasco
The editor has to have a problem to miss the severe asynchrony. Noah Smith takes a book published in 2007 (before the last crisis), discussing events until 2006, then says “Taleb is wrong” from inference on market estimation of probability between 2007-2016 and what decision to take today based on prices today, 2016.
Perhaps the participants adjusted to events of 2007, the book, or something else. The claim by Noah Smith about the Black Swan concerns the market value of risk, not the structure of risk, which is something subsequent to the book. That his editor missed the asynchrony is very, very strange…
Other Violations of Professionalism
Noah Smith has no familiarity with finance.
In 2009 I made a statement in Moscow about 4 trades to do. I was not aware of being filmed and used trader language.
One of them was short T Bonds. After I communicated to Noah Smith that he was a BS vendor, he advertised in 2014 my claim of short bonds … in 2009 as a way to wreck my credibility in every way possible. Did he report on the other trades in the ensemble? No.
Did it hit him that trades are something that don’t last 4 years? No.
Did it hit him that bonds collapsed after the talk? (markets happen to go up and down). No.
Did he realize that I have several hundred thousand trades in my career and no self respecting scientist would play the media megaphone to select one, particularly 5 years later without knowing the true outcome?
This is why he couldn’t write an academic paper: his mind has a defect in its logical wiring.
No finance academic would commit the lack of professionalism of cherry-picking a trade in a portfolio, and, worse, not realizing that a dynamic trader buys and sells and there is low correlation between the trade and the fate of the market.
How can someone that ignorant about finance write about finance?
Hotbeds of active extremist members of religious sects
The active extremist members of religious sects live in ghettos in the suburbs of urban surrounding.
They observe the surrounding and have a notion of the civil laws but prefer to abide by the ghetto laws.
If the religion has a set of laws, they take it and run with it.
They are the most secrtetive and isolate of clans, kind of living in ghettos within ghettos.
They are what used to be the conveyor belt of tribes living close to urban cities and towns with the desert and rural regions…
They understand the abstract notions of urban religious sects but adopt the remote rural sets of traditions
What is a Madrassat? It is a religious school funded by the Saudi Kingdom and teaches the most obscurantist Wahhabi brand of Islam.
Let’s face it: Until the thousands of Wahhabi Islamic Madrassat working around the world are transformed into secular public schools, Extremist Islamic sects will be around for hundreds of years.
The USA, China and Europe must find the necessary funds and training to all States ready to close down or reform these Saudi Kingdom funded Madrassat in the last 3 decades
Da3esh or ISIS is back in north Syria and are recapturing lost towns very quickly: If the US and Turkey still want to control this northern region, then Syria will let loose ISIS to deal with these so-called moderate military oppositions
In a speech to Egypt President Abdel Nasser in 1953: The Moslem Brotherhood leader wants women to wear the veil when stepping out from homes: Let him himself wear the veils first
King Salman: The man in charge of the ‘most dangerous man in the world’
- Samuel Osborne. Friday 22 January 201
When he came to the throne exactly a year ago, King Salman of Saudi Arabia was expected to continue to provide the relative stability which characterised the rule of his half-brother, King Abdullah.
Instead, the reign of Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, 80, has been marked by wars in Yemen and Syria, an ongoing feud with Iran and mass executions
Since then, the father and son’s power has dramatically increased – as have the criticisms of the human rights abuses they preside over.
These are the reasons for the ongoing controversy surrounding King Salman’s rule:
Mass executions
10 examples of Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses
Last year, Saudi Arabia executed 158 people, the highest number in two decades, according to Human Rights Watch.
International condemnation followed the news the state had sentenced six teenage offenders to death.
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was 17 when he was detained, is due to be crucified – his headless corpse displayed in public for several days.
Abdullah al-Zaher, who was 15 when he was arrested, could be beheaded at any moment, making him the youngest person to be sentenced to death.
War in Yemen
Two months into King Salman’s reign, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of 10 nations into a controversial war in Yemen, which continues to this day.
Code named Operation Decisive Storm, the king ordered the bombing of Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former President of Yemen, who was deposed in the 2011 uprising.
The Saudi-led air campaign conducted air strikes in apparent violation of the laws of war, using banned cluster munitions, Human Rights Watch reported.
Almost 6,000 people are estimated to have been killed, almost half of those civilians. The war is also costing the Saudi treasury billions of riyals.
Backing rebels in Syria
When the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, Saudi Arabia made it clear they backed the rebels and wanted the removal of President Assad.
In December, Saudi Arabia held a meeting in an attempt to unite the disparate opposition groups in Syria.
Many political and rebel factions in Syria agreed a common negotiating position for talks which could lead to the replacement of President Assad.
The Gulf state is also discussing sending special forces to Syria as part of US-led efforts to fight Isis.
Feud with Iran
Earlier this month, the state executed 47 people for terrorism offences, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
The execution of the cleric led a mob to set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which some commentators believe could only have happened with the approval of Iranian authorities.
Following the ransacking, Saudi Arabia immediately broke all diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Iran, leading to escalating tensions between the two Middle East powers.
While Saudi Arabia is backing the ousted Sunni-led government in Yemen, Iran backs the Shia Houthi rebels. (Not so simple: It is a revolution against Saudi Kingdom wanting to enslave the Yemenis to their dicta)
The future of the Saudi throne
Eight of the 12 surviving sons of Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch support a move to oust King Salman and replace him with his 73-year-old brother, according to a dissident prince.
When King Salman ascended the Saudi throne in January 2015, he was already ailing and relying heavily on his son. There are several reports he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and is only able to concentrate for a few hours a day.
Currently, the succession is due to hand the throne to the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, 56, who is also interior minister
British arms companies ramp up bomb sales to Saudi Arabia by 100 times
An Undertone of Joy and Fear
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 27, 2016
An Undertone of Joy and Fear
1. Our last dreams with the living
Are the exact replica of our first dreams.
That’s how it should be
In the symphony of life.
2. Our last dreams are edited out
Of people, trees and actions.
We don’t fall, fly, walk or run.
They are perpetual waves of motion
In a kaleidoscope of light and colors.
An undertone of joy and fear.
3. Our first dreams are the same as the last ones.
Mostly in black and white.
Combinations of grey colors?