August 2014
Laina with August Movies
Laina At the Movies
By Laina Farhat-Holzman
August 2014
The Hundred-Foot Journey
Another foodie movie has cheered us all, in sheer contrast with the catastrophe films that mark every summer. Perhaps life is not coming to an end after all.
Oprah Winfrey and Steven Speilberg cooked this one up for us, and it was delicious. The story takes place in a French town near the Swiss border, breathtakingly beautiful. A restaurant rated wi more...
By Laina Farhat-Holzman
August 2014
The Hundred-Foot Journey
Another foodie movie has cheered us all, in sheer contrast with the catastrophe films that mark every summer. Perhaps life is not coming to an end after all.
Oprah Winfrey and Steven Speilberg cooked this one up for us, and it was delicious. The story takes place in a French town near the Swiss border, breathtakingly beautiful. A restaurant rated wi more...
Al Qaeda Spawned A Monster Child, The Islamic Caliphate.
Middle East analysts are trying to assess this new beast that has emerged out of Islamist dysfunction: ISIL or, as they like to call themselves, The Islamic State. The borders of this imagined ?state? are vague because this cult does not recognize borders. Their aim is to melt all the boundaries established by the victorious powers of World War I, which dismantled the Ottoman Empire and parceled out the lands to newly minted countries (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia more...
Caliphates and Tooth Fairies Are Cousins.
Those Islamists who have announced that they are a new Caliphate must also look under their pillows when they lose a tooth. Maybe they will find a quarter there. The likelihood of the quarter is better than that of a Caliphate. However, they represent pure Islam, tracing their decapitation of non-Muslims to the example of the Prophet himself. Mohammad preached a war of terror, with plenty of examples of it in the Koran.
Caliph is the Arabic word for successor to the Prophe more...
Proxy Wars Have Unanticipated Consequences
Getting somebody else to fight while you watch is an old idea. ?Let me hold your coat,? says an onlooker in a bar fight. Even better is watching a prizefight in which poor, unfortunate idiots beat each other to a pulp for entertainment and prize money.
World War II was actually the last time that major powers were locked in deadly combat. Since that time, almost all wars have involved proxies: conflicts in which the actual beneficiaries are not doing the fighting. The enti more...
Will Pakistan Become a Failed State or Change Its Direction?
Did the US go to war with the wrong countries when we took on Iraq and Afghanistan? Perhaps we should have gone after our ?good allies? Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who were really responsible for 9/11. This is, of course, wishful thinking considering the many ways that we need relations with these two countries, so we hold our noses and deal with them as ?frenemies,? not friends.
Pakistan grows more troubling by the day, with the Islamists increasingly violent and the secul more...
Can Wars Be Proportional?
If columnist Amy Goodman had covered the carpet-bombing of Germany in World War II, she would have indignantly defended the Nazis. Fortunately for the outcome of that war, the public did not get a play-by-play description from observers who want war to be proportional.
Throughout 10,000 years of human history, wars were never proportional. Winners won. Chivalry plays no role in warfare.
In history, total conquest was used when repeated conflicts between warring par more...
Throughout 10,000 years of human history, wars were never proportional. Winners won. Chivalry plays no role in warfare.
In history, total conquest was used when repeated conflicts between warring par more...