;)
The Commentariat -- Nov. 14, 2015
Internal links removed.
Adam Nossiter, et al., of the New York Times: "President François Hollande on Saturday blamed the Islamic State for the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, as the death toll rose to 127 victims, with 200 others hospitalized. He declared three days of national mourning, and said that military troops would patrol the capital. France remained under a nationwide state of emergency":
The Times' live updates are here. The Times is providing free digital access to its stories about the attack. From the liveblog at 10:02 am ET: President Obama will convene the National Security Council this morning ahead of his trip to Turkey, the Philippines and Malaysia. ...
... Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times: "The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for the catastrophic attacks in the French capital, calling them 'the first of the storm' and mocking France as a 'capital of prostitution and obscenity,' according to statements released in multiple languages on one of the terror group's encrypted messaging accounts. The remarks came in a communiqué published in Arabic, English and French on the Islamic State's Telegram account and then distributed via their supporters on Twitter, according to a transcript provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist propaganda."...
... The Local's liveblog for today is here. The Local's front page currently [9 am ET] has news on the reactions of other European countries to the Paris attacks. The Guardian's new liveblog is here. ...
... The Washington Post's liveblog is here. At 8:40 am ET: "The [U.S.] State Department says American citizens were among those injured in the Paris attacks.'
... Adam Nossiter & Rick Gladstone of the New York Times: "The Paris area reeled Friday night from a shooting rampage, explosions and mass hostage-taking that President François Hollande called an unprecedented terrorist attack on France. He closed the borders and mobilized the military in a national emergency." ...
... Friday, 10:04 pm ET: "The Paris police prefect, Michel Cadot, said all the assailants directly involved in the attacks around the city were believed to be dead, though they may have had accomplices who were still at large. It was not immediately clear how many attackers were involved in total." (from the Times liveblog) ...
... The Local's liveblog is here. The Guardian's liveblog is here. ...
... Francois Hollande declares a state of emergency & closes borders:
... President Obama reacts to the attacks:
... Timothy Cama of the Hill: "A Paris concert hosted by former Vice President Al Gore to advocate for global climate change action was suspended Friday as the city was hit by multiple terrorist attacks that killed dozens. The climate event near the Eiffel Tower was still happening around 6:30 p.m. eastern United States time, but it was stopped shortly thereafter. The web-based livestream for the event was replaced with a statement. 'Out of solidarity with the French people and the city of Paris, we have decided to suspend our broadcast,' it says." ...
... Jon Swaine of the Hill: "New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo late Friday directed the One World Trade Center's spire to light up in blue, white and red in solidarity with the French following multiple attacks in Paris."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law that would leave the state with about 10 abortion clinics, down from more than 40. The court has not heard a major abortion case since 2007, and the new case has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... New York Times Editors: The "entire purpose [of the Texas law] -- like that of similar laws around the country -- is to end legal abortion services. At an anti-abortion rally before he signed the Texas bill, known as H.B. 2, Rick Perry, then the governor, said that an 'ideal world' is one without abortion. 'Until then,' he said, 'we will continue to pass laws to ensure that abortions are as rare as possible under existing law.'... First-trimester abortions, which account for the overwhelming majority of all abortions, are already among the safest medical procedures available. What endangers women's health is when legal abortions are made harder or impossible to obtain, because women will be forced to wait until later in their pregnancies.... The justices ... have the opportunity to make clear that courts cannot simply uphold clearly deceptive legislation without questioning its actual function, as the Fifth Circuit did." ...
... Steve M. has a conspiracy theory: "... the Roberts Court took this case with the understanding that it would drive voter turnout on ... the Republican side.... And what kind of decision would do that? Obviously a decision that rejects the conservative position.... I'm betting on a full or partial rejection of the Texas law."
Lydia Wheeler of the Hill: "The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to review a case out of Virginia that questions whether state lawmakers unlawfully considered race when they drew congressional district lines."
Paul Ryan Turns Down Full-Time Job for Part-Time Work. Dana Milbank: "House Republican leaders this month ... declared that the people's representatives will be working only two days a week next year. The House will be in session just 111 days in 2016. This means the chamber will be closed more weekdays (150) than open, and many of the 111 are partial days. That's upward of 30 weeks of paid vacation for all 435 members of the House.... Worse..., lawmakers have awarded themselves essentially unlimited travel budgets so they can spend more time at home.... 'It's a great irony, really, that by every measurement it looks as if Congress is more out of touch with constituents than ever before,' [former GOP Rep. Vin] Weber said, 'and yet they've been back with their constituents more than they've ever been.'"
Griff Witte, et al. of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military is 'reasonably certain' that an American drone strike in Syria killed the Islamic State executioner known as 'Jihadi John,' an official said Friday as British and U.S. officials seek to confirm the details of the attack." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Charles Pierce was fairly unimpressed with the piece I linked yesterday, by Chris Whipple, on the Bush administration's failure to heed the CIA's pre-9/11 warnings about an imminent Al Qaeda attack because Pierce doesn't trust George Slam-Dunk Tenet & the Boyz. "This piece just reeks of score-settling and of ass-covering, and by the time it gets to Jose Rodriguez, the CIA's torture expert, who belongs in a fcking cell, and he starts talking about how what we did to people wasn't torture, it was all I could do to keep from throwing the laptop out the DB Cooper door at the back of the airplane. None of these guys -- from C-Plus Augustus on down -- is ready to accept responsibility for the worst national-security disaster since Pearl Harbor...." Pierce has a point.
Ben Terris & Stephanie Kirchner of the Washington Post tell the heartbreaking story of the Binder twins, the boys conjoined at the head whom Ben Carson separated. The operation made Carson a star, but the boys never developed normally. "Years later, neither boy could get around on his own, nor feed himself.... [Their mother] brought them to a home for disabled children, where they became wards of the state.... Patrick Binder died sometime in the past decade.... Benjamin is 28 now and still cannot speak but ... is doing 'relatively well.'... 'My job as a doctor is to make sick people well, and when I fail to do that, regardless of exactly why, I still failed, Donlin Long, the former head of neurosurgery, said in a phone interview about the Binder surgery. 'So in that way, the simple answer is no, I do not think it was a success.'"
Presidential Race
Emily Steel of the New York Times: "In the hours after the deadly attacks in Paris, CBS News significantly reworked its plans for the Democratic presidential debate it is hosting [in Des Moines, Iowa,] on Saturday night to focus more on issues of terrorism, national security and foreign relations." ...
... Date Night with Bernie, Hil & Marty. Gail Collins: "This weekend's Democratic debate is going to be a tough sell. Two hours on a Saturday night, and not a single candidate who appears to be certifiably deranged. There are only three Democrats left in the contest, and none of them has compared the competition to a child molester. None seems to have an unusually creative theory on why the pyramids were built. Yawn." ...
... Reminder. Noah Weiland of Politico: "The second Democratic presidential debate will be Saturday, Nov. 14, live from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.... The debate will last two hours and begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time.... The debate will air on CBS and stream for free at www.cbsnews.com/live/. No cable subscription is necessary. CBS will also air the debate on its radio affiliates...." (Also linked yesterday.)
Brian Beutler: "The cardinal imperative of electing a Democrat in 2016 is to prevent Republicans from consolidating control of government and using it to regressive ends. Against that backdrop, the question of who's best equipped to advance progressive goals fades into near-irrelevance, behind the less-inspiring question of which candidate has the best chance of winning.... If Clinton can best O'Malley and Sanders on the electability question, or fight them to a draw, subsequent questions become much less tricky for her. If she's the most electable candidate, her appeal to Democrats is obvious. And if all three candidates are electable, then the argument that Democrats should nominate another male candidate, rather than the first female major-party candidate, becomes a very tough sell. (Point, Hillarybots.)"
Hadas Gold of Politico with another Hillary conspiracy theory: the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz scheduled all the Democratic debates at a time hardly anyone would watch "since having fewer viewers reduces the chances of a rival delivering a serious blow to front-runner Hillary Clinton.... A broadcast network executive, speaking on background, said broadcast networks are much more limited on time slots than cable, so they have to work within the schedule in place. Wasserman Schultz insisted that the DNC's goal was to reach more viewers" by airing the debates on broadcast networks rather than on cable.
Ezra Klein: "Anyone watching the fourth Republican debate would be excused for thinking America is mired in a deep recession -- that the economy is shrinking, foreign competitors are outpacing us, more Americans are uninsured, and innovators can't bring their ideas to market.... They would be surprised to find that unemployment is at 5 percent, America's recovery from the financial crisis has outpaced that of other developed nations, the percentage of uninsured Americans has been plummeting even as Obamacare has cost less than expected, and there's so much money flowing into new ideas and firms in the tech industry that observers are worried about a second tech bubble.... Republicans are stuck between a description of the economy that seems increasingly detached from the reality of the recovery and a set of economic plans that actually worsen many of the problems Republicans say they want to solve. It's a pickle." ...
... Kevin Drum: Klein is "completely correct, but ... Republicans aren't really talking about the economy when they adopt this 'apocalyptic' rhetoric. In fact, so far this hasn't been an election about the economy at all.... It's a culture war election. The topics that have really driven the campaign so far are illegal immigration, political correctness, abortion, Obamacare, Vladimir Putin, the war on Christianity, and so forth." ...
... CW: The GOP has nothing to sell. Scapegoating Mexicans or gay couples or Starbucks works only if the economy totally sucks & there's no hope of recovery. Democrats are suggesting myriad ways to improve the personal financial positions of middle- & lower-income Americans; Republicans are saying a minimum living wage is too damned high. I had this argument with my neighbor today: he too thought $15/hour was too high, & I conceded that I didn't know what the exact best figure would be. But I said (a) everybody who is willing to do what the boss tells him to do should earn a living wage for doing it, even if the skill & experience level required to do the job is low; & (b) right now you're subsidizing WalMart & McDonalds, etc. whose low-wage employees only get by with the help of food stamps & other social services. Most of the people who use social welfare programs are working, I said. Why should your taxes, I asked my neighbor, go to feeding WalMart employees when the Waltons are the wealthiest people in the U.S.? (My rant was longer than that, but that was the gist of it.) Oh yeah, sez he.
Greg Sargent: Donald Trump's "meltdown [at an Iowa rally Thursday] represents something much greater than merely a cringeworthy spectacle. In a way Trump's rambling monologue amounts to an indictment of the fundamental stupidity and arbitrariness of American politics in general. And as such, we may look back at this moment and see it in a different light, as crossing from sheer buffoonery into a semi-poignant glimpse into the foibles of human vanity.... Trump is right to rail at the profound absurdity of the Carson spectacle. But the problem is that in so doing, he's also railing at the same absurdities that have been holding him aloft, too." ...
... Lisa Lambert of Reuters: "... Ben Carson recommended praying for rival Donald Trump after the real-estate mogul..., in a 95-minute rant in Iowa, likened him to a child molester, Carson's business manager said on Friday."When I spoke with Dr. Carson about this yesterday how we should respond, you know he was so sad about it. He said: 'Pray for him." He feels sorry for him because he really likes Mr. Trump,' Armstrong Williams, who often acts as Carson's surrogate in the media, told CNN. 'To see him just imploding before our very eyes - it's just sad to watch,' Williams said." ...
... Bethany Karn, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Ben Carson the doctor saved my daughter's life, but now I worry that Ben Carson the president could put others' lives in jeopardy.... Like most of the Republican field, he promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But Carson has outdone the others, calling it 'the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.'... As we prepared my daughter for brain surgery eight years ago, Carson was right to tell me not to worry about insurance. No one should worry about cost when a child's life is on the line. Indeed, that was the whole point of the ACA, which Carson and his rivals pledge to undo." ...
... Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "... the more fundamental question -- the scarier question -- about Carson isn't whether the retired neurosurgeon is a fabulist, and therefore whether he has the right character to be president. It's whether he has the knowledge and understanding to be president. The evidence is rather conclusive that he doesn't.... Carson doesn't just need fact-checking. He needs thought-checking.... The tripartite architecture of [Carson's] non-answers [to debate questions] has become apparent: duck the actual question; revert to a comfortable, if irrelevant, talking point; finish with patriotic platitude." ...
... Ben Carson Knows Guys Who Know. Katherine Krueger of TPM: "Carson said his campaign would release 'some material on that' before the end of the weekend when asked about National Security Adviser Susan Rice saying there's no evidence to support his claims that the Chinese are involved in Syria. 'I have several sources that I've got material from, I'm surprised my sources are better than theirs,' he told reporters after a town hall event." ...
... CW: What's the trait most dominant here: arrogance or delusion? Ole Doc's assumption is that a few of his crackpot friends have more reliable information than the Pentagon, the CIA & the NSA combined. I'll bet the "material" Carson releases "before the end of the weekend" is a grainy photo of a guy who works at Damascus's all-you-can-eat China Buffet. ...
... We discovered that we were so much alike and shared the same values and principles that govern our lives. -- Ben Carson, in a 2007 letter to the court in support of Alfonso Costa, after Costa pled guilty to health insurance fraud ...
... Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "Ben Carson is continuing to stand by his business associate and 'best friend' Alfonso Costa following revelations that Costa pleaded guilty in federal court in 2007 to healthcare fraud. Costa, a former dentist from Pittsburgh, is a self-employed real estate speculator.... 'Al Costa is my very best friend. I know his heart. I am proud to call him my friend. I have always and will continue to stand by him. That is what real friends do!' [Carson said in a statement.] Carson and Costa are also business associates, with Costa's firm managing a suburban Pittsburgh office building owned by Carson that last year earned the former neurosurgeon between $200,000 and $2m, according to financial disclosure forms cited by Mother Jones.... In a break from the campaign trail earlier this fall, Carson spent a week at one of Costa's properties, a villa on Italy’s Amalfi coast.... Carson has for years been a frequent visitor to the villa, which rents for between $30,000 and $50,000 per week...." In a 2012 book, Carson alleged that the Justice Department unfairly targeted Costa because "the lead agent was either jealous of his success or incorrectly concluded that he had organized crime connections that produced his wealth." (CW: i.e., Costa was a victim of racial stereotyping). ...
... Here's Costa, giving a tour of the villa. Carson claimed Costa "lives modestly compared to the lifestyle he could have had if he so desired.":
Director Judd Apatow supports Carson for president. Sarah Burris of Salon elaborates:
Doctor Ben Gets Something Right (and Indirectly Criticizes Jeb!). Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "After speaking at a Republican Party conference [in Orlando, Florida,] on Friday, a reporter asked Carson what he thought of the infamous [Terry Schiavo] case.... 'We face those kinds of issues all the time and while I don't believe in euthanasia, you have to recognize that people that are in that condition do have a series of medical problems that occur that will take them out,' he said. 'Your job [as a doctor] is to keep them comfortable throughout that process and not to treat everything that comes up.' When the reporter asked whether Carson thought it was necessary for Congress to intervene, he said: "I don't think it needed to get to that level. I think it was much ado about nothing.'"
Sabrina Siddiqui of the Guardian: "Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Friday took a sharp turn to the right by laying out a plan that would place new limits on legal immigration, increase deportations of undocumented immigrants, end birthright citizenship and build a wall along the US-Mexico border. The Texas senator unveiled his proposal at a fiery campaign rally in Orlando, Florida, where he echoed the hardline immigration rhetoric of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump." CW Translation: Nobody's gonna out-asshole me. P.S. to the GOP base: When Donald Deport'em's meltdown is complete, I'm your guy. ...
... Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "In an interview while taping a 'Candidate Cafe' segment for radio station WMUR in New Hampshire, Mr. Cruz acted out an entire scene from the movie" "Princess Bride." CW: If Ted had pursued an acting career instead of becoming the conniving creep he is today, you might even like him (although I have a feeling directors would typecast him in villain roles):
Jeb! Visits a Home He Can't Recall. Tom Dart of the Guardian on the Bush family home in Midland, Texas, which is now a shrine (you can visit!) to George W. Bush. CW: Look for the threads of this story (which I liked) in an upcoming MoDo column.
Beyond the Beltway
Kim Chandler of the AP: "The conservative Republican governor of Alabama, a Deep South state where 'Obamacare' is often reviled, said Thursday that his administration is mulling an expansion of the state's Medicaid program under the federal health care law. Gov. Robert Bentley, a dermatologist turned governor, emphasized that he was in the exploratory stages -- and said funding the state's share of costs could be a major stumbling block -- but his comments were the strongest to date about the possible acceptance of expansion dollars in the deeply red, high-poverty state."
Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "A Utah judge has put a hold on his order to remove a foster child from the home of a married lesbian couple, whom he had said were unfit to keep the girl because of their sexual orientation.... The original order to remove the child from the home of the Carbon County couple drew an outcry from around the country, with former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton chiming in and even the state's Republican governor declaring himself 'puzzled' and concerned that Johansen was not following the law." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Mark Tracy of the New York Times: "Saying that he has cancer and wants to focus on his family and his treatment, the head coach of the University of Missouri football team, Gary Pinkel, announced his resignation Friday. The move shocked the campus after racial protests had put it in the national spotlight and Pinkel had backed his players' threatened boycott of a coming game."
License & Registration, Please. Dana Hedgpeth of the Washington Post: "Beep, beep. A Google driverless car was pulled over in California. The problem? It was going too slow. An officer in Mountain View, Calif., apparently saw traffic backed up behind the little, white vehicle. The car was traveling 24 mph in a stretch where the posted speed limit was 35 mph.... It was unclear whether a ticket was issued." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond
Victor Mather New York Times: "Russia was provisionally suspended from track and field on Friday by the sport's world governing body in the wake of sweeping doping allegations against the country's athletes, coaches, trainers, doctors and officials."
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Reader Comments (11)
Religion! Religion! Too bad the terrorists don't know they are just plain dead. Sorry, no virgins available.
I'm waiting for "Well, if people in Paris were allowed to carry, those terrorists would have been toast right from the get-go." Since Paris doesn't have a "right to bear arms..." they have strict gun control. Random people with guns aren't gonna do squat to these Isis bastards whose agenda is to destroy what they deem sinful which is mostly everything except their own killings and beheadings. I was thinking last night when watching this unfold how traditional wars seem in retrospect to make sense in the sense we understood them. Or as Bush was wont to say:
"When I was coming up [was always tickled at "coming" rather than "growing"] it was a dangerous world and we knew exactly who 'they' were. It was us versus them and it was clear who 'them' was. Today we're not so sure who the 'they' are but we know they're there"
Except in this case we know whom (along with other terrorists playing along side with Isis) but they do not represent a country, they are scattered all over and like rabbits they seem to multiply exponentially.
A note for Islander: Just loved your description of the separation of the wheat from the chaff (see? I spelled it right this time)–-how lucky you are to have the pleasure of experiencing this first hand. Thanks for your comment.
PD Pepe, you are right, this is all because we don't have enough guns!
The assholes will not mention that the gun murder rate in France is 0.22/100K and 3.55/100k in the USA. If France was America, there would be about 80 gun murders a year in Paris on statistical average but in being a city, the annual rate would be about what the terrorists did yesterday. Or in other words, gun ownership is just as efficient as terrorism.
By last night the fun I had lampooning Trump seemed sadly trivial. Crazies are one thing; one can smile, even take pleasure in poking fun at their antics. Crazy violence is another, and the news from Paris was not fun at all.
I'm reminded this morning of exchanges I had with a very smart college classmate who, as he aged, became increasingly conservative, past the edge of entertaining contrarianism to genuine anger and paranoia.
We became estranged for a time over Iraq. He thought our invasion of Iraq was just fine. He even said nuking much of the Mideast would be just dandy. I never knew how seriously to take some of the extreme things he said (now that I have the image in mind, looking back I can see more than a little Trump in him), but when our conversations went in that direction, I would find an excuse to leave.
I never understood how someone as intellectually capable as he was could believe the things he eventually believed, so contrary to evidence and rational thought. I still don't. I know he mixed a brand of American-grown religion in there somewhere, but that alone doesn't explain it. I could only attribute his unique blend of brilliance and nuttiness to a personality disorder, incomplete and unsatisfactory as that explanation remains today, nearly a year after his death.
We split over Iraq because we saw the conflict very differently. Not only did we disagree over whether we should have invaded the country at all, he saw the war as a struggle between West and East, Christianity and Islam. I saw it as a misdirected attempt to impose rationality on an irrational world. Of course, we couldn't talk about that large difference, because in my mind his religious beliefs made no more sense than the beliefs of those he said we should nuke.
So on this morning after the somber news from Paris I think about him and the issues of rational thought and conduct at the forefront of our relationship.
That relationship and events like yesterday's Paris tragedy perpetrated by murderers and rapists who justify their actions by claiming that those they murdered were the truly evil ones suggest two levels of insanity, those of thought and conduct.
First are the nutty beliefs that can lead to nutty behavior, some of it shockingly violent. Second, history proves we can establish social norms that blunt and contain the destructive impulses fed by our irrational selves, rational societies defined as those that tamp down and control the worst within us.
Creating and maintaining that kind of society is obviously not easy. As common as insanity and violence are within our own borders, and considering all the hand-wringing that takes the place of meeting and treating either cause or symptom, we don't have to look to Europe or the Mideast to see how difficult it is.
Still, this morning I see the social avenue the only course to follow. I couldn't do anything about my friend's psychology, just as Marie's application of reason failed to convince her "oh, yeah, sez he" neighbor. So our only hope is to support social orders that marginalize and control the lunatics.
In short, we can't control what they think but we must control what they do. And that control and the degree to which it meets the standards of what might be called civilized is entirely dependent on how we choose to govern ourselves.
A long-winded way of saying that, despite the temptation to despair, I still remain a political junkie on this sad morning.
@PD,
I got the "if they only had guns speech" from my winger brother, as he handed me a copy of NY Times- a rag in his opinion.
mae finch
The gun nuts will howl about this til after the election
oye vey!
@Ken Winkes: Excellent commentary. Actually, my neighbor agreed with me in the end, tho I suspect by next week he'll have forgotten all about it & think wages are too damned high.
But people like my neighbor are different from your old friend. My neighbor is at least open to considering & even adopting differing viewpoints; your friend isn't going to "listen to reason" any more than were those now-dead jihadists would have. There is a connection, as you point out. It's easy to imagine oneself as a secular or quasi-secular person living in a Middle Eastern country who is horrified & embarrassed by -- and the victim of -- what (mostly young) men in her country do in the name of a religion that is as much or more about peace as Christianity is. Westerners add to that horror & victimization by marginalizing or condemning all people from Middle Eastern countries (or Far Eastern countries; many Americans can't tell the difference between a Sikh & a Muslim).
When you combine intolerance of new or counter-intuitive ideas, an inability to reason, tribalism & a worldview that labels every event & every person in black-and-white terms, you end up with President Donald Trump. Add a fundamentalist religious component & a conspiratorial mindset, and you get Ben Carson. It's interesting to see how these two, who come at life from quite different perspectives & life experiences, still end up drawing fundamentally immoral (and sometimes similar or the same) conclusions about social & economic matters.
We all have built into our DNA a capacity for narrowmindedness, for the id to beat down the superego. This is the font of all human tragedy, & we see it every day, writ both large & small -- small, we hope, in ourselves, and large in what we read in the daily news.
Marie
Recruit: To engage the services, hire. Can this really be done in secrecy? Why are the ones recruiting the young people in the Muslim community not exposed. This is something that cannot be done in secrecy, lots of people have to be approached.
The debacle in France must have had dozens of participants and hundreds of Muslims living in France must have had some knowledge of the anti government attitudes and bad intentions of their fellow Muslims.This will bring hatred down on all of them.
What unreported plans are being made in America today and will those with knowledge help stop them?
The internet can propose but the actual planning has to be done at the local level and some people have to know.
Last night, having already learned of the atrocities in France, I viewed Bill Maher's "Real Time" on HBO. His very first guest (not a panelist), who will launch the program, was Asra Nomani.
I don't know if her appearance was serendipitous, or if she had been brought in - last minute - as a result of the attacks in Paris.
If interested, the interview - approximately 10 minutes - can be viewed via YouTube by Googling:
"Real Time With Bill Maher: Asra Nomani Interview (HBO)"
Ophelia M.
Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be attending a performance of La Bohème by the Virginia Opera at George Mason University. I've sent an email to the director of the opera, urging that the cast and orchestra render La Marseillaise before the overture.
May I suggest that any CWs who will be attending public events in the coming week do likewise.
Vive la France !
Thanks Ophelia. Another interesting conversation on YouTube is a September 2015 one with Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, "Islam and the Future of Tolerance". Their conversation lasts about 40 min and the q&a 25 min is also worth hearing, if you have time. Nawaz calls for the adoption of universal human rights regardless of religion or country.
Another (6 min) one is YouTube "It's not the "Radical Shaykh" it's Islam - Fahad Qureshi"
About a year ago I read the Pew Research study on Islamic attitudes around the world. The (~50pp) report is worth the time to read if you can. It supports what these people say. And it shocked me to realise just how many people in the world hold what Nawaz calls anti human rights views, eg, stoning as punishment for adultery, see 6 min video above.
Thank you, Gloria, for your most informative reply -
So very much appreciated! . . .
with best wishes.