Fatah (Arabic: فتح, Fatḥ), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the second-largest party in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, is the chairman of Fatah.
Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in revolutionary struggle in the past and has maintained a number of militant groups. Fatah had been closely identified with the leadership of its founder and chairman, Yasser Arafat, until his death in 2004, when Farouk Kaddoumi constitutionally succeeded him to the position of Fatah Chairman and continued in the position until 2009, when Abbas was elected chairman. Since Arafat’s death, factionalism within the ideologically diverse movement has become more apparent.
In the 2006 election for the PLC, the party lost its majority in the PLC to Hamas. The Hamas legislative victory led to a conflict between Fatah and Hamas, with Fatah retaining control of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank through its president. Fatah is also active in the control of Palestinian refugee camps.
Founding
The core group of Fatah was most likely founded in Kuwait in autumn 1957 by five or six Palestinians, among them Yasir Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir. This core group agreed on the movement’s name, drafted its manifesto, and planned its “Revolutionary Organizational Structure.”
The name Fatah, the Arabic acronym in reverse for Harakat al-tahrir al-watani al-Filastini (The Palestinian National Liberation Movement), came to attention in the first issue of the magazine Filastinuna–nida’ al-hayat (Our Palestine–The Call of Life), in Beirut in October 1959, and cells of the group began to be formed in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
As a movement of refugees, Fatah needed support from the Arab world, which it initially found in Algeria starting in 1962, then in Syria starting from 1963. Relying on this support, the movement leadership began preparations to set up a clandestine military wing named al-ʿAsifa (storm).
In July 1968, during its second conference held in the Syrian town of Zabadani (the first conference took place in Damascus in Summer 1964), Fatah finalized its organizational structure. Its composition was based on two decision-making committees that constituted its leadership: the Central Committee, which included ten members who represented the movement’s senior leadership, and the broader Revolutionary Council, considered an intermediary body between the Central Committee and the party’s general membership.
Guiding Principles
Fatah was the first national liberation movement since 1948 to be started by Palestinians themselves and that brought together Palestinian activists from different ideological and intellectual backgrounds. It called on all politically active Palestinians to abandon their party affiliations and to be united under its banner as a movement to “organize a vanguard that would rise above factionalism, whims and leanings to include the entire people.”
The movement’s leadership saw armed struggle as its primary means of liberating Palestine. It modeled itself after the revolutionary struggles in Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam.
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Every so often, when someone criticizes astrology online, I see responses implying that that person is just ruining people’s fun, sometimes implying that they’re sexist (in the sense that astrology is feminine-coded and perhaps the person doesn’t show as much contempt for similarly-nonsensical masculine-coded hobbies.)
I do think astrology is silly, if I’m being honest, but at the same time, I want to understand what the appeal is. My experience of it tends to boil down to horoscopes and trying to understand people’s personalities/destinies in terms of their star signs. Which, to me, seems inherently silly, and don’t think there’s any good reason to believe that the stars have such a direct effect on people’s personal lives.
There are some supernatural/“woo woo” beliefs I can at least understand the appeal of in an aesthetic way or even find amusing from a non-supernatural way. For example, tarot cards can have neat designs, and even if you don’t literally believe that tarot readings tell you about the future, it seems plausible that a tarot reading could give a person some random input that helps them reflect on their life in a useful way. So I can understand why people like tarot cards.
But I’m not seeing this with astrology. What do you even DO in astrology, other than attach arbitrary labels to people and then get attached to those labels? Like, I’m apparently a Capricorn, but what does that do for me? I can’t change my birthdate, so I’m stuck being a Capricorn forever – it’s a very static system. What benefit do I even get from identifying myself as a Capricorn? The usual claim seems to be that it determines my personality or destiny, which (1) seems pretty obviously untrue, and (b) again, just makes this sound very static and not particularly useful.
I’m not just ranting for the sake of being edgy, and I really do want to understand what the appeal is, because I literally do not understand it. Does anyone have a better idea of why astrology is popular?
I’m fairly certain it’s about escapism
By believing that people are the way they are because of their moon and sun signs, and that good or bad things are happening to them because of the current alignment of stars or the mismatch of star signs with others, they are able to have uncontrollable mystical reasons to blame. And because there’s nothing that can ever be done since this is just how the things way are, there is no point trying to improve or change anything
It’s discarding materialism because they don’t want to confront reality and acknowledge that the economic base affects the fucked up superstructure. By becoming ignorant to how the world works, they are now free to ignore the voice at the back of their heads telling them that they need to put lots of effort and energy if they want to improve things. That they may even have a responsibility or obligation to do so
It’s just post-religious religion. So just like religion I fuck with the followers the same way Marx did
That’s quitter talk. I propose we turn Jupiter in to a giant fusion torch-ship and take fate in to our own hands!
The most destructive and least criticized form of astrology is the MBTI
INTJ moment lol
That’s one of my red-lines with people. I can tolerate astrology and tarot and the other esoteric stuff, that’s fine. But the psuedo-science phrenology stuff wigs me out and I want nothing to do with it.
At least my MBTI result has some causal relation to my own behaviour. I can understand the appeal of MBTI in the same way I can understand the appeal of “Which Disney Princess are you?” quizzes. Astrology doesn’t have that: you’re born a Capricorn, you’re stuck being a Capricorn forever, and it has no meaningful causal relationship with anything in your life.
MBTI was created by an incredibly racist and eugenicist fiction writer and her mother, both with zero pschoanalytical experience. The original version was created specifically for American women entering the workforce after WW2 to assign them personalities to better integrate them into the workplace. They tried to sell MTBI as legitimate to psychologists but when they were rightfully turned away, they tweaked it and sold it to companies which used it to enforce favorable work personalities.
MTBI is just capitalist astrology.
Yes, I’m aware of the history of MBTI as well. How does this interact with anything I’ve said?
You are shitting on astrology in the exact same post that you’re giving validity to MBTI. I thought a leftist would know better than to give even minor approval to it so I assumed that you didn’t understand the history of it. The fact that you do understand it and decided to elevate anyway is sus
I don’t think MBTI is invalid because of it’s history (if I did that, I’d have to be opposed to EVERYTHING that has something bad in its history). I think it’s invalid for other reasons that I’ve discussed in other comments. I don’t think being a leftist means I have to be imprecise.
A mystery novel writer that writes a book about a southern family self-destructing at the idea that they might contain a single drop of non-white blood goes to make a personality test that’s consistently rejected as pseudoscience by scientists for 80 years. Do we really need more than that to invalidate it?
Putting aside the much longer and complex discussion that all science can be shaped by racism, anything that specifically involves psychology or sociology absolutely can and must be examined and invalidated for racist (or homophobic, transphobic, etc) history or we are just reinforcing white supremacy.
Oooor you could examine everything independently and make decisions on a case-to-case basis? No need to fall back on fallacies.
But honestly, “I think you’re dismissing MBTI for mostly correct but imperfect reasons, whereas my reasons for dismissing it are better reasons” is not a hill that strikes me as worth dying on, so I’m going to tap out here.
Thinking about this further, I do want to acknowledge that I’ve failed to consider the element of power. Astrology is incorrect, but there’s not really a system of power that’s using astrology to oppress people, whereas there IS an infrastructure for using MBTI to oppress people.
I’m sorry to have spent so much effort nitpicking about this.
Sure, but that’s not the same thing as saying “This person said something racist, therefore we don’t need any other evidence to refute anything else they’ve ever said”. (The phrase “critical support” exists for a reason – sometimes people who are wrong about one thing are right about another). You mentioned that MBTI has been dismissed as pseudoscience by scientists for 80 years. I’m pretty sure those scientists were more rigorous than just “This person wrote a racist novel, therefore their argument is invalid”.
I’m a bit confused by this. Are you saying I’m committing a fallacy (and if so, which one?) Or are you criticizing me for pointing out your fallacy (“This person was bad, therefore their theory is wrong” is just about the most textbook example of the genetic fallacy imaginable).
No it doesn’t, you have been grifted.
When I answer the questions one way, I get one result. When I answer the questions another way, I get another result. So, yes, my behaviour has some causal interaction with the result in a way that it doesn’t with my star sign.
All results are nothing but comforting generalities, like a cold reading.
Actually, I want to go back to this comment. It’s been my experience that there are a lot of people who dismiss MBTI for the wrong reasons, usually out of incuriosity.
The reason I’m not a fan of MBTI isn’t because of a vague sense of it being pseudoscientific or because I’m dismissive of the idea of people using personality tests to understand themselves. The reason I’m not a fan of MBTI is because it gets taken seriously by schools and businesses even though I’m not convinced the results have any predictive power, which is kind of important if people want to consider it a scientific test. For example, the reason Mendeleev’s period table was important wasn’t because he put the elements in an arbitrary order – anyone could have done that. The periodic table was important because it revealed something meaningful about chemistry and could be used to predict the properties of elements that hadn’t been discovered yet. In contrast the MBTI doesn’t really predict anything, it just divides results up in an arbitrary way.
But at least in the case of MBTI, the act of answering questions about one’s behaviour might be a useful exercise in introspection, even if the result is meaningless. It may be useful in the way that I described tarot cards as being useful. I don’t see anything in astrology that even manages to be THAT engaging.
The use in schools and businesses is what I was primarily referring to by calling it destructive.
I can understand the appeal of cold readings better than I can understand the appeal of astrology.
It’s all the same thing.
a newspaper horoscope isn’t a cold read.
people who have a violent hatred of astrology remind me of people who violently hate furries
as a trans person i personally don’t feel amazing about a system that says the way people are born is immutable and dictates your course in life, but even i can’t bring myself to have that much animus for it
Word. Most people I know who are in to astrology are just hippies who really don’t have any power to hurt anyone if they wanted to. They’re harmless. It’s can be weird and uncomfortable when they all start talking about magic with each other though.
I don’t know if I’d describe my attitude towards astrology as “violent” (more “dismissive”). When I find out that someone sincerely believes that (say) the Earth is flat, that makes me think that they have serious deficits in their ability to examine their beliefs about the universe in any serious way, and it makes me less inclined to take other things they say seriously. I don’t necessarily hate them, but I do pity them and I’m not inclined to form a deep friendship with someone like that. That’s basically how I feel about astrology, from what I currently understand about it.
Whereas, there’s nothing about being a furry that requires believing things that are false.
Part of it’s appeal is that it is feminine coded. Just like some guys are suspiciously against it some other people see it as a source of feminine wisdom and enjoy it. How many sources of feminine wisdom are there? You don’t got alot of options.
i don’t understand what those words mean in that order, but the axial tilt of the earth in the time since ancient babylon means that everybody’s birth-month horoscope from that tradition has become misaligned. that doesn’t sound like a very wise system to me or to women like rebecca watson.
I didn’t say a source of knowledge. At least for most people today it provides a way to organize your thoughts. A feeling of connection to something greater. It might feel comforting to like your life is less chaotic if you fel there is some pattern you can learn. It is cool to think about the stars and that maybe your are a part of the universe like that. Or maybe it let’s you feel kinship with the women that came before you. For any person it would be hard to guess which particular emotions it provides. However they are all more adaptive to dealing with alienation under caoitlaism that raw empiricism. As Marxists how often does simply being right improve our lives? Not that often really. Religions, or superstitions, are the opiate of the masses. Opiates are medicine that makes things hurt less. They are are useful tools even if they don’t fix anything.
painkillers are supposed to give you relief while you heal. endless superstition doesn’t do that, and if the downtrodden accept our lot in life because of some universal pattern or whatever are we more or less likely to actually do anything about the problem?
How many problems in our lives has Marxism solved? We are people that need to understand the world. Some people just need to get by for those cases religious ideals are documented to improve quality of life. If nothing is going to make your life better being delusionally optimistic isn’t gonna hurt anything. It might give you a punchers chance at improving things and make you feel better the entire time you are losing. Which is better than what being right would offer most people throughout most of history.
believing false realities isn’t understanding the world.
that’s just not true at all
I ment you and I. For some people thst simply isn’t ad emotionally salient.
You are infact wrong. Pick any random miserable figure though history. Subject of some empire or another. Doesn’t matter who. Now imagine if they new Quantum chromodynamics. Does that improve their lives? Not in the slightest. Instead teach them that all their suffering is meaningless and they will see their love ones again after they die. Their lives are significantly better.
We don’t have to like it. We do have to accept that is a true fact if we wanna do better though. That informs the turn of the century atheist movement. Knowing what do we about religion being the opiate of the masses it is obvious that the atheist wave could only have attracted people with enough comfort and privilage so that they don’t need opiates to get by. Which means the movement could only have been of a liberal nature which precluded any useful progress coming out of it.
we have a fundamental disagreement about the premise of this, and even if i grant it i don’t think the conclusion is true.
As someone who reads tarot I am 95% sure astrology is just grift.
Many people want to be told who they are, they long for something external to give them a sense of identity. Astrology can do that for you. It gives you a label and a group of people “like you”, and if you buy into it it can tell you why you are the way you are. Or rather, yknow, it can give you a false answer but it doesn’t really matter.
I think most people just read the horoscopes, but from what I understand there are a bunch of different systems for doing complex divinations based on the position of the visible planets, the seasons, and who knows what else. So if folks really want to get deep in to it there’s a bunch of esoteric systems to investigate. Some of them are medieval, some have roots way back in the ancient world.
The one I think is really funny is all the “Mercurcy is in gatorade” stuff. Retrograde motion was proven to be an illusion created by the relative motion of the Earth and the other planets centuries ago but I guess that just doesn’t matter. Sometimes I tease astrology people of not accounting for the motion of all the planetoids in the Oort cloud, and that it’s throwing off their calculations. It’s just hard to really treat seriously, even if you’re trying to be interested and kind about it, when you know there are planets that aren’t visible to the naked eye, that Jupiter has like a gazillion moons, that there are a punch of dwarf planets and planetoids zipping around. If the Astrologers were right and they could divine things from the positions of the planets and stars they’d need a bunch of telescope arrays and some big computers to crunch the movements of the thousands and thousands of objects flying around the Sol system.
I often quip that I’m taking donations to build a giant rocket to crash Mercury in to the sun so the little fucker never goes retrograde again.
I get this feeling that you can get a useful piece of information about someone by how they react to astrology. If they need to disprove it and tear it to shreds then they might be annoying when you tell them about other woowoo that you believe. It’s the same way you ask your partner if they’d love you if you were a worm.
I think it is important to believe true things instead of false things, and if I sincerely believed something that was clearly false, I’d hope that the people who care about me would respect me enough to say something, and not be condescending to me.
My tea reading cup uses astrological symbols. It’s a fun tradition I practice every Halloween. I used to fuck with a bit more of magick, but even I just see Horoscopes as a fun little diversion. Then again, that’s exactly what a Virgo would say, isn’t it.