Nagham

Practice-led #research: A cultural approach to #Islamic #extremism #alternativenarrative #counternarratives #Counterterrorism #Media #Film #PopularCulture

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

I am a pacifist... With a bad temper

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

@AmazonUK Today and in the past 2 months, I rarely received a delivery. Instead pictures of packages left outside random doors that I had to chase and required to wait for investigation. I hope you are investing in restoring reliability to your operations. It is unacceptable

[Kegham Balian @kbalian90]

Lebanese cellist Mahdi Saheli playing Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's Andantino in the ruins of southern Beirut.

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

What made me such a supporter of Palestinian rights in the past few years?
Mostly, when I started studying genetics, I realized they were the Biblical Judeans. Then I spent 3-4 years digging & discovered it was the Z1onists who refused to settle: they wanted the whole thing.

[Camille Mourani || كميل موراني @camille_mourani]

في ٦ ايار ١٩١٦ أعدمت السلطنة العثمانية صحافيين لبنانيين في الساحة التي صارت تحمل اسمهم في #بيروت.
ففي ذكراهم هذه، نجدّد تمسّكنا في #لبنان بالقيمة الأهمّ التي قام عليها بلدُنا، ألا وهي الحرية:
الحرية السياسية، والفردية، والاقتصادية.

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

Fascinating

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

PHILOLOGY DU JOUR
Many Arabic names are mostly found among Christian Levantines & less frequently the Muslim: Turns out, these are simply translations from the Greek.
Atallah (Theodosius), Mounir (Luca, Photius), Jamil (Kallistatus), Afif (Sophronius), Shafik (Germanus), Fares (Philip), Najib (Gregorius).
Although Arabic, these names are often used to figure out the person's sect.
@klasssiks dug out this jewel

https://t.co/t6z0IsmTRd

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

@EastMidRailway allows customers reserve their seats; that's great in principle if only the train has seat reservations. Apologies for inconvenience is not good enough

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

@Ibrahim_mneimne @TahalofWatani Respect!

[Ibrahim Mneimneh | ابراهيم منيمنة @Ibrahim_mneimne]

التزاما ببيان ترشحي لرئاسة الحكومة والذي اكدت فيه على الانفتاح على أي طرح يحقق المصلحة العليا لبلدنا وتطلعات شعبنا ويتماهي مع عناوينا السياسية والاصلاحية وخطاب القسم لرئيس الجمهورية، وبعد أن أفضت الاتصالات مع عدد من الكتل والنواب إلى التوافق على اسم القاضي نواف سلام بما يمثله من قيمة مضافة للبنان ولموقع رئاسة الحكومة، وبما يتحلى به من مناقبية وسيرة مهنية، أعلن سحب ترشحي لصالح القاضي سلام، داعيا الزملاء النواب الى اوسع تأييد لهذا الترشيح بما يشكله من فرصة حقيقية لاستعادة دولتنا وإطلاق ورشة الإنقاذ.

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

That was good read

[sami kleib @samykleyb]

لمن يطرح اسم القاضي والدبلوماسي والمثقف العريق #نوّاف_سلام لرئاسة الحكومة اللُبنانية، هذا مُلخّص لأبرز أفكاره القيّمة الىي طرحها في كتابه " لبنان بين الأمس والغد" ويقيني أن الكثير من أفكاره تتلاقى مع خطاب القسم الذي طرحه الرئيس #جوزيف_عون.
https://t.co/xVb8JzqoXc

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

Totally! Thank you for putting it so eloquently

[Mona Harb @mona_harb_]

a person can simultaneously celebrate syria's liberation from dictatorship & worry about syria's future with HTS, celebrate hizb's resistance against israel & condemn hizb's role in syria and in lebanon. the brain/body can carry all these mixed thoughts and feelings. 3adi.

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

Recalling the #protesters in front if the #UN asking for pressure on the detainees in #SyrianPrisons without trial obviously
The sit-in protest was made to close and today some of them made it back

[VDL24 صوت لبنان @sawtlebnan]

بالصورة- مصير اللبناني كلود حنا ليشع الخوري المعتقل في السجون السورية تكشّف...ماذا عن الآخرين؟
https://t.co/RgtMokzw9Y

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

Situation might be dangerous and hopes to prove Lavrov wrong on the inevitably if a civil war in #Syria

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

Wait for me, mum That video floored me
Congratulations and all the love to #Syria and its people
#Assadist regime to the dustbins of history good riddance

[VDL24 صوت لبنان @sawtlebnan]

بالفيديو: "استنيني يا أمي".. الفنان السوري سامر المصري في أول تعليق له بعد سقوط النظام

[CODEPINK @codepink]

🚨 NETFLIX HAS DELETED 19 PALESTINIAN FILMS FROM ITS CATALOG THIS MONTH

After previously launching a "Palestinian Stories" section, only one film from it remains visible on the streaming platform.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Story here https://t.co/Uwl7QSoSTc

[Nagham @melodielaggaffe]

@rivkahbrown Building an everlasting peace requires Palestinians and Israelis however holding perpetrators of war crimes from individual soldiers to higher ups is paramount. It may be crucial to consider a deradicalisation program or a cultural policy that redefine/humanise the other

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

Notice how the Lebanese don't scamper away. It is considered a sign of moral weakness.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

If Israel insists on destroying civilian targets in Lebanon, let them buy and build their own weapons. American taxpayers should not be funding this.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

What Musk conveniently fails to omit is that the British empire was, before abolishing slavery in the 19th century, the driving force behind the transatlantic slave trade, which involved 12 million people being transported as slaves to the Americas with 1.5 million dying on board the ships...

It is true that slavery pretty much always existed BUT the transatlantic slave trade was unique in its scale: there are no other examples in history of millions of people being transported like cattle as slaves across vast distances, dying in such immense numbers.

Also, unlike many earlier forms of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade was incomparably more dehumanizing and racist. No other system ranked people with such rigid racial hierarchy and deliberately separated people from their families, languages, and cultural heritage. If you compare this to say, slaves in ancient Greece, ancient Egypt or the Roman empire, you'll see that slaves often had more defined roles in society, could sometimes own property, could be freed and rise up to prominent roles in society and weren't necessarily seen as inherently inferior based solely on their race. Just a few examples: Aesop, the famous Greek storyteller was a slave who was eventually freed due to his wit and wisdom. Or Epictetus, the famous philosopher during the Roman empire: he was born into slavery but managed to rise up to become one of the most famous thinkers of his time. Or in ancient Egypt Tiresias was a slave who became Chief Minister to Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

So saying that the British empire was a "force for good" because it abolished slavery is like saying it was a "force for good" because it "ended colonialism", when it was the very worst colonial power to ever walk the earth... Hard to give arsonists brownie points for extinguishing their fire... And, by the way, in this instance they only extinguished it because of tremendous pressure and revolt, not out of some moral awakening...

And speaking of colonialism, that was THE big atrocity of the British empire on an even far larger scale than slavery: according to research by economic historian Robert Allen, in India alone British colonialism killed north of 100 million people (https://t.co/oerUloRRyh) That's just India: the British had around 120 colonies at its peak, including much of North America, where it drove the genocide of the native population, probably the very worst genocide in history...

And this - colonialism - was truly unique in human history: never before had ideas of racial superiority been used so extensively to justify the domination and exploitation of entire peoples. With the consequences of it still the cause of so much human suffering to this day, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (ultimately a direct consequence of British colonialism) to what's currently happening in Sudan (the artificial borders drawn by the British in Sudan completely ignored ethnic and cultural differences).

So no, very much no, the British Empire was NOT "a force for good".

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

Respect, Ireland, Spain, Norway, and others who are taking the lead in supporting the weak and the oppressed.