Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
Distributor: Sony Pictures ClassicsCast: Niels Arestrup, Tahar Rahim, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi, Reda Kateb and Jean-Philippe RicciDirector: Jacques AudiardScreenwriters: Jacques Audiard and Thomas BidegainProducer: Martine CassinelliGenre: Prison dramaRating: R for strong violence, sexual content, nudity, language and drug material.Running time: 150 min.excerpt below: view full article HEREWith the honor of being chosen as France’s Foreign language film Oscar contender to add to its Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix, A Prophet has been rightly lauded by critics. Whether audiences have the stomach for 150 minutes behind bars remains debatable, but there is no denying the persuasive power of a film that takes no prisoners and pulls no punches.It could have just been another sinewy prison drama, detailing the deprivations and eruptions of violence of life on the inside. It says much for the ability of director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped and A Self-Made Hero) that he manages to create an emotional intensity that lifts the commonplace on to a higher plain.
byThomas Sowell - Published by Basic Books - 398 pages
The reputation of certain intellectuals may not be so immune after Mr. Sowell has finished with them, because he is withering in assessing and recording their failures.
Over the course of three proper full-length albums and a smattering of singles, LCD Soundsystem—the oft-one-man-show of New York DJ, producer and DFA Records co-honcho James Murphy—has become an increasingly sure bet.
Europe supported its welfare state with borrowed money, a practice that can be perfectly healthy as long as both welfare state and debt are modest and loans can be serviced by diligent workers. Europe, however, is not nearly as wealthy as it thought it was, or as wealthy as its national way of life indicated.
It’s difficult to see how the scientists could be “cleared” after e-mails appeared to show potential manipulation of temperature data, a willingness to destroy information rather than release it under British Freedom of Information (FOI) law and the intimidation of publications willing to publish skeptical articles.
The unseen hand of journalism manipulating American democracy is no longer unseen, nor is it as effective as it once was. But that hasn’t stopped the media from trying its best.
The "ruling class" has burgeoned in size and pretense, has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people.
Why are so many liberal intellectuals, social democrats and feminists so silent on the more noxious features of Islam – the fierce intolerance toward unbelievers, the repression of individual freedom, the routine abuse of children, the misogyny, the forced subservience of women? “It’s the seduction of totalitarianism,” she says. In her view, Western defenders of Islam are the intellectual heirs of those highly intelligent men and women who used to heap praise on Comrade Stalin. “It’s a blind spot that left-wing intellectuals have always had.”
CNN's slide has been precipitated not only by its outrageous partisanship and lack of journalistic objectivity in presenting the news, but by the rise of News Corporation's Fox News and the so-called 'alternative media' as the antidote to the decades-long Liberal domination in the Battlefield of Ideas.
For those who prefer not to answer to any higher moral authority other than their own malleable conscience, an untrammeled admission of their trespass ought to be viewed as an act of courage. Forgiveness and a call for restitution are not the appropriate responses to such brazen candor. A more fitting response is to salute the offending party for their admirable honesty, eclipsing the fact that any transgressions have been committed in the first place. That is why, generally, liberals consider it a virtue to air one's dirty laundry.
American academia has been transformed into the most postmodernist, know-nothing, anti-American, anti-military, anti-capitalist, Marxist institution in our society. It is now a bastion of situational ethics and moral relativity and teaches that there are no evil people, only misunderstood and oppressed people. American academia is now a very intolerant place, As Ann Coulter, who has been driven off more than one campus podium because of her conservative views, has put it, "There is free speech for thee, but not for me."
The Crucifixion was a governmental solution to the problem of the Christ. By the third day the world knew the government boys in Jerusalem had solved nothing. Ultimate Goodness had risen and would remain “a problem.” And for centuries, ever since the legal twits of the Sanhedrin and Pilate botched their chance, every government has ultimately failed on the matter of ultimate goodness.
Some may claim that pop culture is harmless. But its ubiquity has become an imperialistic force. If modernism has brought a desecration of the human spirit, we must penetrate the mists of contemporary banality to restore the idea of the sacred, in which our true and fullest freedom resides.
In truth, there cannot be, nor has there ever been, a clear and universal - let alone unique - Western civilisation. There have only been historians, or pseudo-historians and the like who, like Huntington, claim that the “future of the West depends in large part on the unity of the West.” Such expedient and simplistic pigeon-holing of ideas, based on simple historical ignorance, is irresponsible, since it is dangerously discriminating, creating a kind of incipient international apartheid, a sort of exaggerated power-block nationalism, where arrogance and suspicion rule the roost.
Flash-Player required
To see this SideBar you will need the Flash-Player.
Russian “Illegals” Not Alone in Trying to Seal U.S. Secrets
Anyone who underplays the perils that Russia and its tactics presents to the US in... more