Off With His Head Cicero saved the republic from conspirators in 63 B.C., only to lose his own life (and hands) as Rome slid into civil war and dictatorship. By Maxwell Carter

‘The history of the world,” wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1841, “is but the biography of great men.” Libertarian polymath Herbert Spencer countered 30 years later: “Before [the great man] can remake his society, his society must make him.” With whom does the novelist Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy, which began with “Imperium” (2006) and “Conspirata” (2009) and ends now with “Dictator,” side? Cicero’s lifetime (106-43 B.C.) saw the ambitions, caprices and convictions of the Roman Republic’s leading figures (Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Octavian, Antony and Cicero himself) determine the fate of Western civilization. Were these truly great men or the bitter fruits of an intrinsically corrupting political system?

“Imperium” traces Cicero’s rapid ascent; “Conspirata,” the career-defining stand against Catiline; “Dictator,” his (and the Republic’s) downfall. The middle narrative has hooked many schoolboys, myself included. The year he served as consul (63 B.C.), Cicero inveighed against Catiline, an aristocratic malcontent, gleefully detailing his alleged plot to overthrow the state. Having forced Catiline from Rome and secured Cato’s decisive backing, Cicero pushed through the execution of five conspirators without trial. (Catiline offered battle in 62 B.C., dying, according to the historian Sallust, with conspicuous bravery.) Where Cicero’s consulship was compact and—as he would have it—morally unambiguous, the events that led to his proscription were drawn out and often bewildering.

The challenge for Mr. Harris of maintaining dramatic momentum through 15 years of shifting loyalties and shabby compromises is considerable. Yet as anyone who has read his previous novels, including the riveting alternate history “Fatherland” (1992) and the political thriller “The Ghost” (2007), knows, he is incapable of writing an unenjoyable book.

Told from the perspective of Cicero’s slave-amanuensis, Tiro, who reputedly invented shorthand, “Dictator” picks up the thread in 58 B.C., when fallout from the unlawful Catilinarian executions drove Cicero into exile. Tiro recounts his master’s role in the developments of the first and second triumvirates—the alliances whereby Caesar, Pompey and Crassus and, later, Octavian, Antony and Lepidus divvied up the empire—and ensuing civil wars. Tiro’s viewpoint is partisan but not unquestioning. In “Dictator,” Cicero, whom Tiro served off and on after his manumission in 53 B.C., can be weak and monstrously egotistical.

How to Build a Better City How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design? By Moshe Sadfie

New York is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more.

The flurry of high-rise tower construction now under way in New York will bring about a quantum leap in density, one that will forever change our urban environment. The city is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more. They are a reminder that towers have become the dominant building type in most major cities around the world, increasing congestion as they accumulate.

These developments raise fundamental questions: How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design, be it residential, commercial or mixed use? Are our current planning and zoning regulations adequate in guiding this growth, in mitigating the impact of density? Or do we need new tools for a new era of mega-scale construction? Finally, towers create fundamental questions about the nature and character of the public realm.

Neither the prevailing tower designs nor current planning practice world-wide are able to cope with the new reality. The quality of life within towers is wanting. We still treat them, at best, as sculpture, and at worst, as utilitarian vertical extrusions of space. Many towers are designed from the outside in— elegant forms with decorative skins, hermetically sealed from the outside world. If instead they were designed as living, organic environments—with considerations of orientation, views, light and the capability to connect to the outdoors, creating terraces, gardens and solariums—tower designs would be dramatically transformed. The work space must also be rethought. Natural ventilation, diversity of workspaces and a connection to the exterior are all qualities that would help overcome the oppression of scale and crowding.

Marco Rubio, a Senator, Decries Congress’s Impotence and Inaction, Calls for Term Limits By Reid J. Epstein

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – To hear Marco Rubio talk, Congress is an impotent branch of government that needs a full-scale overhaul – and that’s exactly why he’s running for president.

Federal legislators, in Mr. Rubio’s description, are peripheral figures in Washington, people who can have some impact on policy but are not in a position to set it.

“While I’m a senator I can help shape the agenda — only the president can set the agenda,” the Florida senator said to a woman here who asked him during a town hall meeting how she can defend his record of missing Senate votes to her friends. “We’re not going fix America with senators and congressmen. The only way to turn this around is to reverse the damage this president has done to the United States of America.”
Of course, Mr. Rubio’s meager Senate attendance record has been a point of conflict in the Republican presidential primary for months. Rival Jeb Bush criticized him about it during an October debate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brought it up in New Hampshire.

Mr. Rubio, who is forgoing a bid for a second Senate term in order to run for president, also endorsed constitutional amendments to instate term limits for federal legislators and judges. But congressmen, he said, will never agree to limit their own tenure.

Alastair Gale and Kwanwoo Jun North Korea Says It Successfully Conducted Hydrogen-Bomb Test Hydrogen bomb is ‘self defensive’ step against U.S., North Korea says

SEOUL—North Korea said it successfully staged its first test of a more powerful form of nuclear weapon, expanding the U.S.’s foreign-policy challenges and highlighting the limits of China’s ability to rein in its volatile ally.

North Korean state television said in a midday broadcast that scientists had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb at around 10 a.m. local time.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that it detected a magnitude 5.1 earthquake at that time near North Korea’s nuclear test site in the country’s northeast.

Experts have said it was unclear whether North Korea had developed the ability to build a hydrogen bomb. The magnitude of the latest explosion was the same as a 2013 test of an atomic bomb.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. couldn’t confirm North Korea’s claims of a nuclear test but is monitoring the situation.

“We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site and have seen Pyongyang’s claims of a nuclear test,” Mr. Kirby said.

The world from here: BDS: A weapon of Islamic warfare By Dan Diker, Harold Rhode

Arab and Muslim leaders publicly declare the same goals as BDS activists; to eliminate Israel as a non-Muslim entity from lands that “belong” to Islam.
Hamas, PLO groups and the Palestinian Authority exploit the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign as a tool of Islamic warfare.

Arab and Muslim leaders publicly declare the same goals as BDS activists; to eliminate Israel as a non-Muslim entity from lands that “belong” to Islam. Following the al-Aksa war of terrorism in 2001, leading Muslim Brotherhood scholar Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi published an Islamic legal ruling (fatwa) on boycotting Israeli goods. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did the same. For Islamists, the reason is simple:

Since the existence of Israel is an affront to Islam, as former Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, himself an Alawite and therefore not a true Muslim in Sunni eyes, declared throughout his life, any strategy and every tactic to rid the world of Israel is acceptable in service of advancing Islam as a victorious and conquering civilization.

Palestinian affairs analyst Khaled Abu Toameh reminds us of Hamas’s support for BDS. He writes in a Gatestone Institute brief that, “Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq, heaping praise on BDS advocates and activists openly, admitted that the ultimate goal of the BDS campaign was to destroy Israel.” Risshek said, “We call for escalating the campaign to isolate the occupation and end the existence of its usurper entity.” Yair Lapid, former finance minister and head of the centrist Yesh Atid Party put it bluntly. He said, in June 2015, speech “the BDS movement is actually a puppet in a theater operated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”

German women report string of sexual assaults by ‘Arab and North African men’ Mayor of Cologne to investigate “outrageous” series of New Year’s Eve attacks on women by large gangs of men “of Arab or North African appearance” By Justin Huggler, Berlin

Latest: Mayor of Cologne urges code of conduct for young women to prevent future assault

Police in Germany are investigating an alarming series of sexual assaults on women trying to celebrate the New Year by large groups of single men “of Arab or North African appearance”.Authorities in the city of Cologne are to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday after police described a group of some 1,000 men who took over the area around the main station on New Year’s Eve.

Women were robbed, groped, and had their underwear torn from their bodies, while couples had fireworks thrown at them.Police have received 90 criminal complaints, around a quarter of them for sexual assault, including one case of rape.

Police in Hamburg say there was a series of similar incidents in the city’s Reeperbahn red-light area. Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets.

In Cologne, the attacks took place around the main station, opposite the cathedral, a traditional gathering spot to see in the New Year.

A 27-year-old witness named only as Anne told Spiegel magazine’s website she was shocked by the crowds when she arrived at the station with her boyfriend.

“The whole place was full and almost only with men,” she said. “Only a few frightened women, who were being stared at.”

A short time later, she said, she “felt the first hand on my behind”.

FRAGRANCE FROM RUSSIA SEE NOTE

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YEARS AGO THEY CALLED COLOGNE A DILUTED PERFUME “TOILET WATER” RSK
MOSCOW – A perfume, whose creator says was inspired by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has gone on sale in Moscow.
The “Leaders Number One” scent, created by Belarussian-born perfumer Vladislav Rekunov, is sold in a black bottle featuring Putin’s profile at Moscow’s luxury GUM department store as well as online for 6,500 rubles, or $95.

US Criminalizing Free Speech? by Judith Bergman

Is this House Resolution a prelude? Has Attorney General Lynch seen the potential for someone lifting her “mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric”? And what is “anti-Muslim rhetoric” exactly? Criticizing Islam? Debating Mohammed? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? Who decides the definition of “hate speech” against Muslims?

Of all 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes reported in the United States in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims, according to the FBI. By contrast, over half of all anti-religious hate crimes were directed against Jews – 56.8%.

Why this lopsided, discriminatory House Resolution in favor of a religious group that statistically needs it the least?

Are the Attorney General and the eighty-two House Democrats out to destroy the First Amendment and introduce censorship? A House Resolution could be reintroduced later as binding legislation.

Eighty-two leading Democrats have cosponsored a House Resolution (H.Res. 569) “Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States”.

The Resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives by Democrat Donald S. Beyer (Virginia) on December 17, 2015 — a mere 15 days after Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook gunned down 14 innocent Americans and wounded 23 in an ISIS-inspired terror attack at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California.

The House Resolution states, “the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes and rhetoric have faced physical, verbal, and emotional abuse because they were Muslim or believed to be Muslim,” and the House of Representatives “expresses its condolences for the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes.”

What victims? Of all 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes reported in the United States in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims, according to the FBI. By contrast, over half of all anti-religious hate crimes were directed against Jews – 56.8%. The fewest, 8.6% of anti-religious hate crimes, were directed against Christians (Protestants and Catholics).

The True Meaning of ISNA’s Christmas Greeting Exploiting the willful ignorance of Christian leaders.Dr. Stephen M. Kirby

On December 29, 2015, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) extended a Christmas greeting to “Our Christian Brothers and Sisters.” ISNA, it must be remembered, was, and still is considered an unindicted co-conspirator in the successfully prosecuted federal terrorism case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. ISNA is also Number One on the list of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “organizations and the organizations of our friends.”

The tone of the greeting was how much in common Muslims have with their Christian brothers and sisters. This should not be surprising because at the bottom of the greeting was: Dr. Sayyid M. Sayeed, ISNA Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances Director.

So, let’s examine some of the claims of commonality in this greeting.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus

The Christmas greeting makes much of the fact that Mary appears to be equally revered by both Muslims and Christians. To show that Muslim reverence, ISNA points out there is an entire chapter of the Koran named after Mary (Chapter 19). But the greeting fails to mention that of the 98 verses in that chapter, only fourteen are actually devoted to Mary (Verses 16-29).

And Islam has an interesting, but different, approach to the virgin birth of Jesus. 21:91 and 66:12 of the Koran state that Mary became pregnant by the Angle Gabriel blowing into an opening of the garment she was wearing. Ibn Kathir explained:

George Soros Condemns the Victims of Jihadist Terrorism for Fighting Back Blames the United States, Europe and Israel. By Joseph Klein

Leftwing radical billionaire George Soros fancies himself as “some kind of god.” He believes in the delusion that he is endowed with special insight into what is best for the world, even as his declarations defy reality and any objective distinction between good and evil.

Soros’s latest example of self-righteous tripe was his op-ed article, appearing on December 28th in The Guardian, in which he blamed the “hysterical anti-Muslim reaction to terrorism” for helping jihadist groups recruit more fighters to their cause. He wrote that “the fear of death leads us and our leaders to think – and then behave – irrationally…when we are afraid for our lives, emotions take hold of our thoughts and actions, and we find it difficult to make rational judgments. Fear activates an older, more primitive part of the brain than that which formulates and sustains the abstract values and principles of open society.”

Sorry to pop Soros’s balloon, but open societies will not be “open” for long if the jihadists succeed in expanding their Islamic supremacist ideology to the West. It is both a rational judgment of free peoples and a perfectly understandable human emotion to want to fight and destroy those who want to kill us.