The centenary of the artistic movement known as Dada is coming up in 1916 and it ought to produce a lot of nonsense. The word “Dada” is supposed to come from the Kru language in Africa, and refers to the tail of a sacred cow. Up till then, the purpose of art had been to say something about humanity, and how to be a human being. Dada had the contrary purpose that there is nothing to say about human beings. The artist’s mockery and nihilism is supposed to be proof of his superiority to the stupid public.
The moving spirit was the Romanian Tristan Tzara (a pseudonym meaning “sad in the country”). He had fled to the safety of Zurich, neutral in the First World War, and there he attracted like-minded writers and painters from almost all European backgrounds. They sat in cafés and argued and wrote manifestoes. Of them all, James Joyce was the only one with real talent, but Finnegan’s Wake, that unreadable effusion, shows how Dada had got to him. In the wake of Dada came Surrealism, Socialist Realism, and today’s conceptual art in which humanity doesn’t feature at all. Adolf Hitler gave all such work a longer hold by calling it degenerate and having it destroyed. Unfortunately, his view that the purpose of art was to inspire racism is a kindred absurdity. Tzara and his coterie were preparing to make the world a worse place at the very same month that a million men were being killed or wounded in the Battle of the Somme so that the world could be a better place. Their centenary is likely to be celebrated with lots of anger expressed against the politicians who got Europe into that war. The city of Zurich, I notice, is already planning visits to cafes, readings, and who knows what. It is only fitting that the final word on Dada should go to tourism.
Robert Joseph is senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy and a former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. William Tobey is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University and a former deputy administrator for nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Obama administration’s negotiations over nuclear matters are a disaster. The administration’s defenders are vigorously rebutting allegations that President Obama has made too many concessions in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Their defense is a simple statement of fact: There is no agreement yet, so how can the critics be right? They assert that we must wait until the outcome is agreed upon before we can assess it. The concern, however, is both bipartisan and international — with many Democrats voicing alarm and with Israel and the Arab states alike frustrated that a seemingly desperate administration has placed Iran’s interests above those of its allies. While Obama’s defenders are technically accurate in that Iran has not yet agreed to what has been placed on the negotiating table, press reports citing U.S. officials have provided information on the status of all key issues under consideration and the likely provisions of an agreement, if Tehran is ultimately able to take yes for an answer. Of course, if current negotiating trends continue, the terms could get even worse than described below. They certainly won’t get better. The concessions already acknowledged by U.S. officials include:
The U.S. is admitting too many immigrants from high-risk countries. This week al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamic terrorist group, advertised its intent to attack the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., among other targets. Whether al-Shabaab has the capability or adherents in the area to carry out such an attack isn’t clear. But one thing is: Our federal government doesn’t do nearly enough to keep potential allies of groups like al-Shabaab out of the United States. Especially notorious is the flow of refugees from war-torn, predominantly Islamic Somalia, but a whole raft of refugee and asylum programs present concerns.
There are several documented instances of Somalis who, given safe haven by our country, left America to join and fight with al-Shabaab in Somalia, that lawless and lost land, and even with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Liban Haji Mohamed, a former Somali refugee who later naturalized, is the most recent addition to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, for his activities in support of al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda. One of the Kenya mall attackers was a former refugee who had lived in Minnesota. Unfortunately, turncoat Somalis are not alone, as refugee communities go. Here are just a few other examples: Six Bosnian Muslims from St. Louis, Chicago, and Utica, N.Y., were arrested a few weeks ago for providing material support to ISIS.
We need a meritocratic, ethnically blind system — the opposite of the status quo. A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Obama’s executive order that overrode existing immigration law. The result is more acrimony and chaos. It is a good time to remember that there are more than just two types of immigration — legal and illegal. There also exist liberal and illiberal approaches to immigration. Take liberal immigration. It is governed by laws passed by Congress and signed and executed by the president.
Nearly all Americans accept that no individual can pick and choose which federal statute he chooses to obey, depending on his own perceived self-interest. Liberal immigration would be entirely legal, meritocratic, and ethnically blind. Skills and education would matter more than proximity to the border or political clout. The numbers of immigrants would be balanced by liberal considerations: the need for skilled newcomers to avoid dependency on American society, and concern that their arrival not harm the economic aspirations of poor working citizens.
Federal officials today charged three New York residents on charges of trying to join ISIS, with one offering to assassinate President Obama for the Islamic State.
Two Uzbekistan citizens — Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, 24, and Abror Habibov, 30 — were charged, along with one Kazakh, 19-year-old Akhror Saidakhmetov. Each faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
The New York office of the FBI said authorities began watching Juraboev in August 2014 when he posted on an Uzbek-language jihadi website. He and Saidakhmetov forged a plan to travel to Turkey to join ISIS, and the latter was arrested today at JFK trying to board a flight to Istanbul.
With nearly 40 million people, California offers an inviting target to Islamic terrorists. Ahmed Ressam, for example, aimed to blow up LAX in 1999, stopped only by a sharp-eyed customs agent. Since then, the Golden State has been free of attacks of 9/11 magnitude, mass murder in the style of “Soldier of Allah” Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, and the kind of attacks now occurring in Europe. That could change under the strategy that emerged from the president’s recent “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.”
In attendance was Obama appointee Benjamin Wagner, U.S. Attorney for California’s Eastern District, the territory from Los Angeles County to Oregon. Steve Magagnini of the Sacramento Bee asked Wagner, “What’s our first line of defense?”
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/why-isis-beheads-on-the-glazov-gang-1-1-1/
A journey into the dark world of Jihad’s key tactic and signature.
ISIS’s savagery ensues without pause, as the terror group continues its diabolical barbarity with its recent kidnapping of at least 90 people from Christian villages in Syria.
In response to this ongoing terrorism perpetrated by the Islamic State, Frontpage is running The Glazov Gang’s feature interview with Dawn Perlmutter, the Director of the Symbol Intelligence Group and one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in symbols, symbolic methodologies, unfamiliar customs and ritualistic crimes.
The discussion focused on Why ISIS Beheads, taking us into the dark world of Jihad’s key tactic and signature:
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ford Campbell, a teacher who has, for the past eight years, been teaching a graduate class, “Islamic Radicals & Terrorism,” at the Intermediate Unit 1 in California, PA, that appears to be the only one of its kind in the United States. He also teaches another graduate course called “Israel & Middle East Issues.” He has taught social studies for over 30 years and has a master’s degree in Biblical & Theological Studies from Luther Rice Seminary.
Frontpage: Ford Campbell, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Let’s begin by you telling us about the two graduate courses you are teaching.
Ford: Thanks Jamie.
The two classes are for school teachers to take so that they can further their certification with ACT 48 credits and continue to teach in PA. Both classes have been approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and I am thankful for the foresight and courage that the Department of Education has shown in approving it, especially with the rise in Islamic terrorism around the world.
FP: Tell us about your Islamic Radicals & Terrorism class. What are some of the readings you assign?
This week, the media broke news that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, at an event attended by prospective Republican presidential candidate Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, that he does not believe President Barack Obama “loves America.” This isn’t news. Barack Obama doesn’t love free enterprise, believes founding philosophy was fatally flawed and sees the American people as rubes with antiquated religious and racist tendencies. Sure, we can all agree that Obama likely loves America’s scenery; perhaps he loves America, but doesn’t like her very much. But that’s not what Giuliani was talking about, and everyone knows it.
But in any case, Giuliani wasn’t the media’s true target. The true target was Walker.
After Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, the Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon summed up the absurdity with the book “So Sorry We Won.” Israel’s greatest defeat was its victory. Thousands of years of persecution had taught Jews what to do when they lost. It had not taught what to do when they won.
Instead they had learned to feel guilty when they won as if there was something wrong with winning.
Last February, a divestment resolution went before the UCLA student government. Despite intense pressure, harassment and hate, Jewish students pushed back against it. And the resolution failed 7-5.
In November, a divestment vote came up again and UCLA Jewish student groups chose to sit it out.
