My Thoughts on Changes

Is anyone paying...

...attention to Kurdistan and the Northern Irak? If you think sectarian violence is bad for Irak just add to the equation Turkey and Iran uniting their wills to take Kurds out of the it...

PUK alleges TSK launched artillery fire on northern Iraq - Turkish Daily News Sep 28, 2006

Over the weekend, a senior member of the peshmerga force in northern Iraq said that Turkish artillery units had opened fire on PKK camps in the Haftanin province of northern Iraq on Saturday night. A resulting fire burned for four hours, the peshmerga commander said, without elaborating as to whether anyone had been killed or injured in the blaze.

The PUK's report yesterday also didn't elaborate whether anyone had been killed or injured in the blaze.

Last month, the same Web site reported that a peasant was killed and another injured in artillery fire by Turkish and Iranian armed forces targeting PKK members based in a camp known as Hakurk, located near an area where the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi borders meet.

Yi-Toons: 21.4 > 27

How a country paints itself into a corner...

Us against the rest of the planet... How arrogant can we be? Is there a limit? When arrogance trumps logic, reason's been dead and buried for a while...

CNN.com - IAEA blasts U.S. intelligence report on Iran - Sep 14, 2006

The subcommittee's report also insinuates that the IAEA may be in cahoots with Tehran in covering up Iran's nuclear ambitions. The report alleges that an IAEA inspector might have been removed at Iran's request "for not adhering to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program." The IAEA shot back that the claim was "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion," but Rogers stood by it Thursday.

Kingdom of Perissology

Today is a happy day, I learned a new word. I was reading an old entry in  "El Interpretador" and the word "parresia" sent me running for the DRAE (something that doesn't happen every day unless I want to make sure how to conjugate a verb...):

parresia.

(Del lat. parrhesĭa).
1. f. Ret. Figura que consiste en aparentar que se habla audaz y libremente al decir cosas, ofensivas al parecer, y en realidad gratas o halagüeñas para aquel a quien se le dicen.

Aha... Now, even though it comes from the Spanish Royal Academy and is supposed to be impartial, that's a loaded cultural interpretation of the word. Quite accurate; we can be like that when talking to others. Furthermore, it works both ways...

Of course, being a Latin word I was certain there would be an English equivalent. Indeed, the word is actually spelled like in Latin: "Parrhesia." Merriam-Webster has this entry for it:

Main Entry: par·rhe·sia 
Pronunciation: parzh()
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Etymology: Medieval Latin, from Greek parrhsia, from para- 1para- + -rhsia (from rhsis speech, speaking); akin to Greek eirein to say -- more at WORD
: boldness or freedom of speech

Well, that's quite different from the Spanish interpretation... Even though we may think talking with double meaning is akin to "boldness" or "freedom of speech", it isn't really the case.

From there I started to concatenate ideas. After those two entries, Google gave me this under "parrhesia", courtesy of silva rhetoricae, Dr.Gideon Burton's site at the Brigham Young University.

Either to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. Sometimes considered a vice.

Examples
Jesus used parrhesia in response to the Pharisees:
The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, "Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee." And he said unto them, "Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." —Luke 13:31-32

Hmmm, talk about twists of interpretation... That entry also had a Related Figures link to the word "perissologia", which is the original Latin spelling of the English "perissology":

In general, the fault of wordiness. More specifically, periphrasis, circumlocution, synonymia, accumulatio, or amplification carried to a fault by length or overelaborateness.

==========

M-W has this:

Main Entry: per·is·sol·o·gy 
Pronunciation: persälj
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -es
Etymology: Late Latin perissologia, from Greek, from perissologos speaking too much (from perissos + logos speech) + -ia -y -- more at LEGEND
archaic : superfluity of words : PLEONASM

Oh my... Happy as a dog with two tails from having learnt something new, I went hunting for something where I could apply those words, specially "perissology". Not so far, only a link away in Google News, I found this:

Concord Monitor Online Article - Bush: We're in battle of the century - Your News Source - 03301

President Bush began a new effort yesterday to shore up flagging support for the war in Iraq, telling a veterans group that the fight against terrorism was no mere military conflict but "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." 

The president responded to those - including some Republican allies in Congress - who have questioned whether the sectarian violence in Iraq has grown into civil war, casting doubts on the U.S. role there. "Our commanders and our diplomats on the ground in Iraq believe that it's not the case,"Bush said. "They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country."

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