Assaults on Jews rose in 2014

cartoons
  • Tel Aviv University says violent anti-Semitic attacks spiked in 2014 – An annual report from Tel Aviv University researchers reveals that anti-Semitic incidents rose dramatically worldwide in 2014, with violent attacks on Jews ranging from armed assaults to vandalism against synagogues, schools, and cemeteries.
  • The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State – An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State’s takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.
  • Greece Flashes Warning Signals About Its Debt – That Athens might still be exploring ways to restructure its debt underscores how close the country is to defaulting.
  • Greece short-term bond yields hit another high
  • KFC’s new ad sees the peddler of peppered poultry sink to new lows – Few would have thought it possible for KFC to come up with something even more monstrously unspeakable than popcorn chicken, but it’s managed it. The chain is now using orphans to flog its food.
  • The marriage calculus – Women with money and education tend to get and stay married in America. Why don’t working-class women do the same?
  • Why Kill Charlie? – [Slain editor, Stéphane Charbonnier – “Charb”] Charb’s choice of symbolism and rhetoric marked him out as a distinctly old-fashioned leftist – of the kind which has no hang-ups about hurting other people’s feelings and whose instinctive reaction to fascism is to oppose it without equivocation. It also shows that he too had a sense of being embroiled in a “grande bataille” – one that transcended the everyday mediocrity which he scorned in his weekly column entitled “Charb n’aime pas les gens” (Charb doesn’t like people). For Charb the freedom to ridicule was a higher value, beyond normal practical considerations. It was a quasi-religious cause for which he was overtly prepared to sacrifice himself – a show of defiance that is at once inspiring and unnerving. Did he overdo it? Of course he overdid it. Did they have to publish the caricatures? Of course they did not have to publish them. They chose to do so. That is the whole point. Freedom of speech only becomes an issue when others decide to shut you up.
  • Abe breaking arms taboo with Japan’s first defense trade show – Japan will host its first international defense trade show next month, underscoring Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to loosen the shackles of its postwar pacifist Constitution amid territorial tensions with an increasingly assertive China. … The lifting of the ban on arms exports allows Japan to take part in joint development projects, as well as potentially exporting finished products to bring down unit costs for its military. While talks are underway about a sale of its Soryu submarines to Australia, doubts remain as to the level of success Japan will have in boosting overseas shipments.

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