Friday, December 26, 2014
Americans Spit In The Eye Of North Korea. "The Interview" Will End Up Being A Blockbuster.
Sony Thanks Moviegoers for $1 Million 'The Interview' Opening
Friday, 26 Dec 2014 12:47 PM
On the heels of a $1 million-plus Christmas Day launch for "The Interview," Sony Pictures' top distribution executive has thanked moviegoers for their support of the controversy-laden political comedy. "Considering the incredibly challenging circumstances, we are extremely grateful to the people all over the country who came out to experience 'The Interview' on the first day of its unconventional release," said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony Pictures, in a statement Friday morning.
"The audience reaction was fantastic -- the limited release, in under 10% of the amount of theaters originally planned, featured numerous sell-outs and a first-day gross over $1 million."
"The Interview" finished in 15th place for Christmas Day and played at 331 independent theaters in the U.S., following more than a month of intensive news coverage -- starting with a massive cyber-attack on Sony, a Dec. 16 threat by hackers to launch a 9/11 style attack on theaters showing the movie, the studio's decision to withdraw the movie on Dec. 17 and an about-face six days later.
The opening day numbers for "The Interview" were impressive in light of Sony launching a VOD release on Wednesday morning via YouTube, Google Play, Microsoft's Xbox Video and its own http://www.seetheinterview.com site. Major chains such as AMC, Regal and Carmike are refusing to book "The Interview" due to the VOD release.
As a result, "The Interview" wound up playing in smaller venues and its per screen average for the day came in around $3,000. By comparison, Disney's "Into the Woods" took in about double that per-screen total as the musical played particularly well in big-city multiplexes.
Overall Christmas Day business was better than expected on three titles -- Universal's "Unbroken" with $15.6 million at 3,131 sites; Disney's "Into the Woods" with $15.1 million at 2,440; and New Line-MGM's "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" with $13.6 million at 3,875.
All three are likely to wind up with at least $40 million each for the four-day Christmas weekend.
Angelina Jolie's war drama "Unbroken" notched the third highest Christmas Day opening in history and the highest Thursday Christmas Day opening.
© 2014 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved."The audience reaction was fantastic -- the limited release, in under 10% of the amount of theaters originally planned, featured numerous sell-outs and a first-day gross over $1 million."
The opening day numbers for "The Interview" were impressive in light of Sony launching a VOD release on Wednesday morning via YouTube, Google Play, Microsoft's Xbox Video and its own http://www.seetheinterview.com site. Major chains such as AMC, Regal and Carmike are refusing to book "The Interview" due to the VOD release.
As a result, "The Interview" wound up playing in smaller venues and its per screen average for the day came in around $3,000. By comparison, Disney's "Into the Woods" took in about double that per-screen total as the musical played particularly well in big-city multiplexes.
Overall Christmas Day business was better than expected on three titles -- Universal's "Unbroken" with $15.6 million at 3,131 sites; Disney's "Into the Woods" with $15.1 million at 2,440; and New Line-MGM's "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" with $13.6 million at 3,875.
Angelina Jolie's war drama "Unbroken" notched the third highest Christmas Day opening in history and the highest Thursday Christmas Day opening.
Where Are The Women's Groups? Why Are They Not Protesting The Sex Slave Trade In The Middle East? Why No Protests Over ISIS And Its Practices?
Report: ISIS Sex Slaves Driven to Suicide
“Cursed be the day wherein I was born; the day wherein my mother bore me, let it not be blessed.” (Jeremiah 20:14)
(Photo: YouTube Screenshot)
Islamic State practice of abducting girls and forcing them into sexual slavery has driven some to suicide.
Reports of IS abuses have been pouring into Western media for months now, each a fresh horror. IS has seized control over wide swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, capturing those it considers non-believers and killing or enslaving them.
One group that has been particularly targeted are Yazidis, a religious minority from Iraq. On Tuesday, Amnesty International called the IS actions ethnic cleansing.
“The physical and psychological toll of the horrifying sexual violence these women have endured is catastrophic,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, in a statement. “Many of them have been tortured and treated as chattel. Even those who have managed to escape remain deeply traumatized.”
The women and girls who are captured are divided among the IS fighters, and sometimes their supporters, in accordance with the terror group’s interpretation of sharia law. The group boasted in an article in its propaganda publication Dabiq, “This large-scale enslavement of mushrik [polytheist] families is probably the first since the abandonment of this sharia law.”
For some, the suffering is too great. According to Amnesty International’s report, a 19-year-old girl named Jilan took her own life out of fear she would be raped, her brother said. Another girl held with her corroborated the account.
“One day we were given clothes that looked like dance costumes and were told to bathe and wear those clothes. Jilan killed herself in the bathroom.”
“She cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was very beautiful; I think she knew she was going to be taken away by a man and that is why she killed herself.” Jilan’s companion ultimately escaped.
Another former captive, Wafa, aged 27, told Amnesty she and her sister tried to strangle themselves rather than be taken into a forced marriage, but they were stopped by fellow captives.
“We tied…scarves around our necks and pulled away from each other as hard as we could, until I fainted…I could not speak for several days after that.”
Another young woman, 16-year-old Randa, was captured with her family and raped by a man twice her age to whom she had been given.
“It is so painful what they did to me and to my family,” she told Amnesty. “What will happen to my family? I don’t know if I will ever see them again.”
Even after the fact, the trauma, along with the stigma of lost ‘honor’ from being raped, have a lasting and life-threatening impact on victims. One grandfather spoke to the human rights group about his 16-year-old granddaughter who escaped IS captivity after being raped. “She is very sad and quiet all the time. She does not smile any more and seems not to care about anything. I worry that she may try to kill herself, I don’t let her out of my sight.”
Rovera called on the world to take action. “The Kurdistan Regional Government, UN and other humanitarian organizations who are providing medical and other support services to survivors of sexual violence must step up their efforts. They must ensure they are swiftly and proactively reaching out to all those who may need them, and that women and girls are made aware of the support available to them.”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/26368/isis-sex-slaves-driven-to-suicide-middle-east/#zXIoGZ16qQYHXGu8.99
Turkey, The Child No One Wants To Claim.
Why Does Nobody Want to Play with Turkey?
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Turkey is too big, too Islamist and too un-European for the EU; it is too little Islamist and a disliked former colonial power for most of the Arab street; a sectarian and regional rival for Iran, and a security threat to the bigwigs in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.Theoretically, Turkey is a NATO ally. In reality, it is a part-time NATO ally. It became the first member state that had military exercises with the Syrian army and the Chinese Air Force; awarded a NATO-sensitive air defense contract to a Chinese company; supported jihadists in Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere in the Middle East; allied with what NATO nations view as a terrorist organization (Hamas); shared, until recently, an embarrassing list of potentially terrorist-sponsoring countries with seven others including Syria and Pakistan, and sported a population with the lowest support for the NATO alliance.
Also, theoretically, Turkey is a member candidate of the European Union [EU]. In reality, since 1974, Turkey has been occupying one-third of the territory of an EU member state, Cyprus; it boasts a record number of violations of human rights, according to rulings by the European Court of Human Rights; it remains the EU's dreaded problem in most areas of fundamental policy; it habitually (and undiplomatically) ignores EU calls for broader freedoms; and it is gripped by a deep distrust of the EU. A most recent survey, "Public Opinion in The European Union – November 2014," conducted by the European Commission's Eurobarometer, revealed that only 18% of Turks trust the EU.
Just recently, Russia's prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, recalled a joke by his predecessor Viktor Chernomyrdin [prime minister between 1992 and 1998] who once was asked by a journalist when Ukraine could join the EU. "After Turkey," Chernomyrdin replied. When should we expect Turkey to become a member, asked the journalist. "Never," he said.
During most of the 2000s, Turkey's soul searching, coupled with its leaders' apparent quest for the revival of pan-Islamist and neo-Ottoman ideas, pushed the country into the illusion of a "Middle East Union" to be led, of course, by Turkey. Instead, Turkey in the post-Arab Spring years has found itself as the target of enmity in the Middle East. Many overt and covert hostilities and tensions created diplomatic crises with all countries in the former Ottoman lands -- except one: the tiny hydrocarbon-rich emirate, Qatar (along with Hamas).
Theoretically, Turkey is the regional empire in the Muslim Middle East. In reality, it is an unwanted ally.
So, the soul searching continues. In January 2013, President [then prime minister] Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly toyed with the idea of Turkey seeking its future in another alliance: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO]. Since then, he has mentioned this desire a couple of times. In November 2013, Erdogan once again demanded a seat for Turkey at the SCO from Russian President Vladimir Putin, as this would "save Ankara from the troubles of the EU accession process."
"Allow us into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and save us from this trouble," Erdogan asked Putin.
'Why won't anyone play with us?' Pictured: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
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A few years earlier, Turkey had behaved like the "bizarre ally" it was: it became the first NATO member state to become a "dialogue partner" with the SCO. But is there a future for Turkey in the SCO, sometimes call the "eastern NATO plus EU?"
Theoretically, yes. Turkey, with its democratic culture and Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule, looks like a perfect fit for the group. Its members already include Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (the SCO's other dialogue partners are Belarus and Sri Lanka. Countries with an observer status are Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia).
But actually, Turkey is probably no more wanted in the SCO than in the EU or among Arab nations in the Middle East. The SCO's heavyweights are Russia and China, both of which support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan's one-time best regional ally and presently his regional nemesis. During Putin's high-profile visit to Ankara at the beginning of December, Erdogan had to admit that Turkey and Russia "keep on falling apart" on the issue of Syria.
For Russia, Turkey means $$$$$: Tens of billions of dollars in bilateral trade -- a perfect client for Russian natural gas, as well as a potential transit route to export gas to third countries. But it also means a hostile country ruled by Islamists who seek Sunni supremacy using jihadists, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to expand its regional clout in the Middle East, often against Russian interests.
For China, too, Turkey is a good client. Unlike Russia, Chinese companies actively win infrastructure, telecommunications and mining contracts in Turkey. But like Russia, China, too, deeply distrusts Turkey politically. China's most pressing domestic security issue, the ethnically Turkic Uighur Muslim separatists in the western province of Xinjiang, has a Turkish connection. Chinese authorities often accuse Turkey of harboring Uighur terrorists and allowing jihadist Uighurs a safe passage between Syria and China.
With its neo-imperial ambitions and Sunni Islamist policy calculus, Turkey once again fails to fit any alliance's broad foreign policy and security structure. The soul searching will have to go on.
Turkey is too big, too Islamist and too un-European for the EU; it is too little Islamist and a disliked former colonial power for most of the Arab Street; a sectarian and regional rival for Iran, and a security threat to the bigwigs in the SCO.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Why Does The Administration Refuse To Enforce The Laws Of The Nation? Is There Another Agenda? Is The Plan To Crash The Country? We Think So!
August 20, 2014
The Anti Riot Act. One more law unenforced by this administration.
Inciting a riot is against the law. Crossing state lines to incite riots exacerbates the violation of the law breaking. Yet the President and the Attorney General don’t mention this law-breaking. We begin to see where exactly the allegiances of Obama and Holder really reside.
To call for calm is not to say “We will arrest and prosecute if you break the law.” Instead we get the “let no crisis go to waste” lateral move that we must examine our criminal justice system.
To call for calm is not to say “We will arrest and prosecute if you break the law.” Instead we get the “let no crisis go to waste” lateral move that we must examine our criminal justice system.
From the Federal Judicial Center, 2101. Riots
(a) (1) Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including, but not limited to, the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, with intent –The proof is for all to see. The New Black Panthers once again are not prosecuted at the choice of federal authorities. (Recall Philadelphia polling incident.) Need we mention who those authorities are?
(A) to incite a riot; or (B) to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot; or (C) to commit any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; or (D) to aid or abet any person in inciting or participating in or carrying on a riot or committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; and who either during the course of any such travel or use or thereafter performs or attempts to perform any other overt act for any purpose specified in subparagraph (A), (B), (C), or (D) of this paragraph shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (b) In any prosecution under this section, proof that a defendant engaged or attempted to engage in one or more of the overt acts described in subparagraph (A), (B), (C), or (D) of paragraph (1) of subsection (a) and (1) has traveled in interstate or foreign commerce, or (2) has use of or used any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including but not limited to, mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, to communicate with or broadcast to any person or group of persons prior to such overt acts, such travel or use shall be admissible proof to establish that such defendant traveled in or used such facility of interstate or foreign commerce.
Add in the “Revolution Club” of Chicago…yes Chicago, that makes the trip down to Ferguson. In their full regalia these inciters ply their trade unafraid of legal consequences.
We may not be a lawless nation, but we are certainly in an era of selective law enforcement. And, isn’t that the first step to lawlessness? Illegal immigration, inciting riots in racial matters, and drug use all seem to get a pass from those in the Obama administration. The sympathies and prejudices of those in power are clear and unquestionable.
Perhaps we should reexamine the oaths of office and the resolve of those who took those oaths to enforce the laws of the country.
Inciting a riot is against the law. Crossing state lines to incite riots exacerbates the violation of the law breaking. Yet the President and the Attorney General don’t mention this law-breaking. We begin to see where exactly the allegiances of Obama and Holder really reside.
To call for calm is not to say “We will arrest and prosecute if you break the law.” Instead we get the “let no crisis go to waste” lateral move that we must examine our criminal justice system.
From the Federal Judicial Center, 2101. Riots
Add in the “Revolution Club” of Chicago…yes Chicago, that makes the trip down to Ferguson. In their full regalia these inciters ply their trade unafraid of legal consequences.
There are others as well.
We may not be a lawless nation, but we are certainly in an era of selective law enforcement. And, isn’t that the first step to lawlessness? Illegal immigration, inciting riots in racial matters, and drug use all seem to get a pass from those in the Obama administration. The sympathies and prejudices of those in power are clear and unquestionable.
Perhaps we should reexamine the oaths of office and the resolve of those who took those oaths to enforce the laws of the country.
To call for calm is not to say “We will arrest and prosecute if you break the law.” Instead we get the “let no crisis go to waste” lateral move that we must examine our criminal justice system.
(a) (1) Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including, but not limited to, the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, with intent –The proof is for all to see. The New Black Panthers once again are not prosecuted at the choice of federal authorities. (Recall Philadelphia polling incident.) Need we mention who those authorities are?
(A) to incite a riot; or (B) to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot; or (C) to commit any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; or (D) to aid or abet any person in inciting or participating in or carrying on a riot or committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; and who either during the course of any such travel or use or thereafter performs or attempts to perform any other overt act for any purpose specified in subparagraph (A), (B), (C), or (D) of this paragraph shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (b) In any prosecution under this section, proof that a defendant engaged or attempted to engage in one or more of the overt acts described in subparagraph (A), (B), (C), or (D) of paragraph (1) of subsection (a) and (1) has traveled in interstate or foreign commerce, or (2) has use of or used any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including but not limited to, mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, to communicate with or broadcast to any person or group of persons prior to such overt acts, such travel or use shall be admissible proof to establish that such defendant traveled in or used such facility of interstate or foreign commerce.
Add in the “Revolution Club” of Chicago…yes Chicago, that makes the trip down to Ferguson. In their full regalia these inciters ply their trade unafraid of legal consequences.
We may not be a lawless nation, but we are certainly in an era of selective law enforcement. And, isn’t that the first step to lawlessness? Illegal immigration, inciting riots in racial matters, and drug use all seem to get a pass from those in the Obama administration. The sympathies and prejudices of those in power are clear and unquestionable.
Perhaps we should reexamine the oaths of office and the resolve of those who took those oaths to enforce the laws of the country.
Will Wonders Ever End?
A Kuwaiti Muslim’s Journey to Chanukah
“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.” (Psalm 22:3)
Mark Halawa on the first night of Chanukah in Tel Aviv’s Great Synagogue. (Photo: Anav Silverman/ Tazpit News Agency)
When Mark Halawa lights his family’s menorah during Chanukah, it is not without recalling his unique journey as a Kuwaiti Muslim to Orthodox Judaism. The 38-year-old businessman, who lives today in Jerusalem with his wife and family, keeping Shabbat and kosher dietary laws, began his journey 12 years ago in Canada.
“I was born to a secular Muslim family in Kuwait,” Halawa told Tazpit News Agency in an exclusive interview. “We didn’t strictly follow Muslim traditions, but I would accompany my grandfather, who was religious, to the local mosque.”
Halawa spent a lot of time with his grandparents and knew early on that his maternal grandmother came from a Jewish family. “We knew that our grandmother’s family was Jewish but it never meant anything more,” said Halawa.
“I saw a siddur once in my grandma’s home and sometimes I would see her tearfully read from it when she was alone,” he recalls. “I once even found her birth certificate, which contained the last name, Mizrahi, and Hebrew, Arabic and English on the document’s header.”
At age 13, Halawa’s family left Kuwait following Sadaam Hussein’s takeover of the tiny Persian Gulf nation which had left his father’s business in ruins. The family immigrated to Canada but eventually returned to the Middle East. Mark, however, stayed behind to pursue studies at the University of Western Ontario.
It was during his time in Canada when the hateful stereotypes that Halawa grew up with against Jewish people and Israel began to fall apart. “In Kuwait, when I would go with my grandfather to the mosque, the imam always preached horrible things against Jews. The media, scouts, everything around me was against Israel and the Jewish nation.”
“It was always confusing to me because my grandmother, who is a very nice lady, came from a Jewish background.”
But the moment that marked Halawa’s official shift took place during a chance meeting with a Jewish rabbi at his university’s library in Ontario. “I was studying in the library one day and I saw a man dressed in Jewish Chassidic garb. “I went up to him, and asked him, are you Jewish?”
Halawa found himself telling the man, Dr. Yitzchok Block, a Harvard professor of philosophy and Chabad rabbi who taught at the University of Western Ontario, all about his family’s background.
Halawa’s Jewish grandmother was born in Jerusalem during the years of the British Mandate in the 1930s. She had married a Jordanian soldier, Muhammad al-Masri from Nablus, and converted to Islam. The couple moved to Zarqa, Jordan, where her husband was eventually stationed. When King Hussein expelled his army of Palestinians following the 1970 Black September uprising, the family moved to Kuwait, where Halawa’s mother met and married his father.
“The rabbi told me that according to Jewish law, I am considered Jewish. And according to Muslim law, I am Muslim.”
“I was shocked to discover that I was Jewish,” Halawa told Tazpit. “But that was the point when my journey to Judaism began.”
Halawa joined a Jewish congregation in Toronto and in 2011, visited Israel for the first time and went to study at Jerusalem’s Aish HaTorah Yeshiva. “My family went through various levels of shock. At first, they were very skeptical and then angry. Today, I avoid talking about religion with my mom.”
“I’m just a human being like everyone else, striving for good and truth. I grew up hating Jews but today I find it an honor to belong to the Jewish nation – an honor worth all the family turmoil my journey has caused,” said Halawa, a married father, who lives today in Jerusalem.
“I hope I can be a bridge between Muslims and Jews, between the Arab nations and Israel. There is a lot of misinformation about the other on both sides,” notes Halawa.
“I feel very fortunate that I am continuing my grandmother’s line and the path of the people she left behind.”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/26312/a-kuwaiti-muslims-journey-to-chanukah-inspiration/#BJcj4hDQ2IEcbfmT.99
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