Reading Wednesday: War on Palestine redux
Jan. 29th, 2025 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frandroidThe 100 Years War on Palestine has come back from the hold loop, so I'm resuming reading that. Currently in the First Intifada, reading about how the PLO tried to get a grip from this genuinely organic uprising while its cadres were mostly in Tunis and other Arab capitals, and its smartest on-the-ground cadre got killed by Israel. (Their take, later on: "Oops, it might have been a mistake to kill him.")
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As a linguistic aside, I'm wondering how "cadre" has become a term to discuss high-level organizers and bosses in radical movements, whereas in French (Québec French at least) it just means a managerial bureaucrat in a regular corporation or government department. The term (in its radical sense) has even made it to Kurdish (and possibly Turkish, it's hard to dissociate the two in the company I keep) where it is known as kadro. The word literally just means "frame" in its non-metaphorical sense.
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As a linguistic aside, I'm wondering how "cadre" has become a term to discuss high-level organizers and bosses in radical movements, whereas in French (Québec French at least) it just means a managerial bureaucrat in a regular corporation or government department. The term (in its radical sense) has even made it to Kurdish (and possibly Turkish, it's hard to dissociate the two in the company I keep) where it is known as kadro. The word literally just means "frame" in its non-metaphorical sense.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-29 11:55 pm (UTC)Cadre literally translates to frame (as in picture frame). In English, in generally means the small-ish group who runs things/organizes things. In a military setting, it mostly means the full-time trainers at a training site (i.e. drill sergeants and leaders). It also frequently got used for a small group, especially partisans/resistance/raiders.