It apparently takes a village of corporate marketing specialists to tell voters who she is. ‘Is Hillary Rodham Clinton a McDonald’s Big Mac or a Chipotle burrito bowl? A can of Bud or a bottle of Blue Moon? JCPenney or J. Crew?” That was the opening question of a front-page Washington Post story on Clinton’s effort to figure out her “brand.” To that end, she has recruited a team of corporate marketing specialists to “help imagine Hillary 5.0.” “It’s exactly the same as selling an iPhone or a soft drink or a cereal,” Peter Sealey, a longtime corporate marketing strategist, told the Post. “She needs to use everything a brand has: a dominant color, a logo, a symbol. . . . The symbol of a Mercedes is a three-pointed star.
The symbol of Coca-Cola is the contour bottle. The symbol of McDonald’s is the golden arches. What is Clinton’s symbol?” A columnist less charitable — and less constrained by the rules of publishing decorum — might be tempted to suggest some fitting symbols for Bill Clinton. But for Hillary, that’s a tougher question. Which is why the Hillary Industrial Complex is setting up a Manhattan Project to answer the question, “Who should Hillary be this time?” They’ll have their work cut out for them. More than any other politician in American life today, Hillary Clinton is an ironic figure. When she does or says anything, friends and foes alike ask, “Why did she do that?” “What was she thinking?”
The essays in Edward Alexander’s forthcoming Jews Against Themselves are an excoriating assault on Jewish “apostates”—Jews who, in the words of Maimonides, separate themselves “from the community” or “hold aloof from the congregation of Israel” and is “indifferent when they are in distress.” In Maimonides’s opinion, such no longer “belong to the Jewish people” and they have “no share in the world to come.”
Alexander’s apostates are Jews who are not only indifferent to the distress of Jews in Israel, but who join the anti-Israeli chorus. The genus comes in many species, and Alexander offers a brief taxonomy: “Jewish progressives against Israel; Jewish queers against Israel; Haredim against Israel; Holocaust survivors against Israel; children of Holocaust survivors against Israel; Jewish Voice for Peace; grandchildren of Holocaust survivors against Israel; survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto against Israel; J Street; Jewish postmodernists against Israel; Jewish Berkeley professors against Israel; post-Zionists against Israel; Jewish members of MESA (Middle East Studies Association) against Israel; Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (JBIG, also called, seasonally, London’s Jewish Christmas carolers against Israel); and so on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.”
Al-Jazeera — in Arabic — encourages terrorist attacks in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula by the Muslim Brotherhood, and preaches the destruction of Israel, non-stop.
Recently Al-Jazeera has been broadcasting a “documentary” series glorifying Hamas and the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, its military-terrorist wing. The entire series is devoted to idealizing Islamist terrorism and encouraging mass-casualty terrorist attacks against the Jews in the name of radical Islamist ideology.
One of the stars is the Palestinian arch-terrorist, Abd al-Karim al-Hanini, who was released from prison in Israel and found safe haven in Qatar.
No one has even tried to prevent Qatar’s participation in a global anti-terrorism forum.
The EU and the U.S. have recently been holding meetings in Brussels and Ankara with Turkey and Qatar, two of the major funders of terror groups, to form an “anti-terrorism task force” — while the very Islamists they support have been spiritedly spreading out. Turkey and Qatar have even agreed to help fight ISIS, apparently on the condition that the Turkish-trained forces also try to unseat Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad.
Bravery is Finn Norgaard. He was the 55 year old film director shot dead in Copenhagen earlier this month by Omar Abdelhamid Hussein.
Wider Swedish society did not stand by Lars Vilks. Galleries did not want to take his work, newspapers did not want to publish him.
A substantial proportion of the few people on the front line of the struggle for freedom of speech in Europe were crammed into that small room.
In an industry that likes to pat itself on the back for its supposed bravery, Norgaard lived, and died a death, of true bravery. Is it too much to hope that at some point his industry recognizes the real heroes of our time?
We’ve just had Oscar night in the US. But sadly there was no nomination for “Bravest Director.” Here is a nomination.
A new 50-page e-book released this month by ISIS gives directions to would-be jihadists and women wanting to join the Islamic State on everything from securing a safehouse in Turkey to packing enough underwear for the trip.
Maps in the book suggest flying into Şanlıurfa, Turkey, for a nearly 80-mile overland trip to Raqqa, Syria, the capital of the “caliphate.”
“People who leave to get to Syria do not tell anyone, not even family. Travellers to Syria usually want to reach Turkey. But for safety reasons, they buy a ticket for an indirect holiday country like Spain or Greece so their destination doesn’t seem suspicious,” the guide states, suggesting buying a return ticket to tamp down suspicion.
Upon arriving in Turkey, the person waits for a contact arranged through Twitter, important because “they will require protection in addition to not knowing where to go to, or who to trust.”
Rabbi David Saperstein was sworn in [1] as U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom on Friday, February 20. Appropriately, Rabbi Saperstein emphasized the primacy of freedom of conscience in his acceptance remarks, noting [1] he would:
… use this position fervently; to advocate for freedom of thought, conscience, and belief; for the rights of individuals to practice, choose and change their faith safely; not only living their faith through worship, but through teaching, preaching, practice, and observance; as well as the right to hold no religious beliefs; and consequently, to seek strongly anti-blasphemy and apostasy laws.
Indeed, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo reasoned elegantly in Palko v. Connecticut [2] (1937) that, absent the right to freedom of thought or conscience, other rights such as the right to freedom of speech are rendered meaningless:
Freedom of thought … is the
Good luck Israel, as China and Russia court the craziest regime on earth.
The world now anticipates that the US will reach a strategic agreement with Iran. Russia and China are responding by offering their own deals to Tehran. A possible game-changer is Russia’s offer of the Antey-2500 air defense system to Iran. After canceling the planned delivery of the older, shorter-range S-300 system in 2010, Russia has now escalated drastically by proposing to sell Iran a much more effective system. Western air forces have never engaged the Russian system, so we don’t know how exactly good it is. No-one I know in the military wants to find out; by Western estimates, the Russian systems are extremely good. It is possible that Russia’s unwelcome intervention might make Iran effectively impregnable from attack by Israel. The Antey-2500 can take down missiles as well as airplanes.
In addition, Russia is retaliating against the West’s stance on Ukraine. Russia has made it clear all along that it would respond to Western efforts to remove Crimea from Russia by making trouble in Iran, as Russia’s deputy foreign minister warned last March. Russia, unlike the US, views the world as a single chessboard: attack my position here, and I will hurt you somewhere else where you are not prepared. Putin isn’t crazy; he’s a Russian commander in the classic mold, forcing the burden of uncertainty onto his adversary, muddying the waters and leaving his opponent guessing.
Here is the proof.
Shoebat – Our dear leader loves to talk about how Islam has been in the fabric of our nation since its birth. My Colleague Ted Shoebat has talked about the Barbary Pirate wars, but prior to the American Revolution the Arab Muslims of North Africa biggest economic trade was to supply Slaves all over the world of which about 5% of all African slaves ended up here in the USA/Colonies with the majority going to Central and South America as well as slaves in the MIddle East and India. Obama obvious hates those white rich land owners, the founders of America who enslaved Black people and were evil, but he conveniently omits the suppliers of the slaves were mostly Arab Muslims, and still today the overwhelming majority of slavery that is prevalent today is promoted and controlled by Muslims.
The attorney general seems intent on taking one more jab at the police before leaving the Justice Department.
When all was said and done, the events that unfolded in Ferguson, Mo., last summer were not extraordinary but rather all too familiar. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, a black robbery suspect, resisted arrest, attacked a police officer and was shot dead. We’ve seen this movie many times before. But what might have prompted a helpful discussion about high crime rates in black communities has instead prompted a dishonest debate over police behavior.
Instead of demanding what each side cannot do, we must ask what each side can do—and then make the most of it.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders sit at a table and sign a treaty that ends a century of conflict. Israel pledges to withdraw from most of the West Bank, to uproot dozens of settlements and to redivide Jerusalem. The Palestinians forfeit their demands for regaining Haifa and Jaffa and relocating millions of Palestinians to Israel. The right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in its homeland is recognized. Thereafter, Israel and Palestine will live side-by-side in prosperity, stability and peace.
That is what policy makers have sought for more than 20 years, without success. The reasons are simple. A final-status agreement would require Israelis to cede land that is vital to their security and which many regard as sacred; to evict 100,000 citizens from their homes; and to give up half of the country’s capital. A final-status agreement would also mean creating a Palestinian state ruled by a corrupt, unelected regime that, in the current regional chaos, is likely to fall to radicals.
Such sacrifices and risks could be justified only if the Palestinians were genuinely willing to end the conflict. They would have to renounce all further claims to Israeli territory and a “right of return,” and to recognize a legitimate Jewish state on their border. But no Palestinian leader has ever agreed to those terms.
By insisting on concessions that neither side can reasonably make, the peace process has not only failed but brought us further from peace.
