Hillary Clinton's Plan To Take On ISIS | Watch Nov. 19 Council of Foreign Relations Speech

Hillary Clinton's Plan To Take On ISIS | Watch Nov. 19 Council of Foreign Relations Speech

For friends trying to understand fundamentally what's going on with ISIS, VOX shares an overview of the history of ISIS: a 15-20 minute read that is highly informative.  AOC calls out three key paragraphs that are relevant to our understanding of the world and content strategy.

9 Questions about ISIS You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask VOX

The Apocalypse

ISIS's first obsession, though, is not the caliphate but the apocalypse. The group's leaders, by every indication, earnestly believe that their role is to help usher in the final days and the end of the world. McCants explained, in his interview with Williams, how this belief developed into ISIS's focus on building a state:

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Rape of Women

ISIS also promotes what the New York Times's Rukmini Callimachi called a "theology of rape": a vast infrastructure of sexual violence and slavery, with ISIS encouraging rape as not just a tool of war but a matter of daily life in the caliphate. Yes, this is its own awful recruiting tool, but it's even more than that: It's a way for both the group and its individual members to demonstrate power by associating sexual violence with victory.

Original Caliphates Centered on Religious Expression

For jihadists, the caliphates are the height of Islam's glory, the banner of a sort of Islamic nationalism. Framing your jihadist movement as the rebirth or continuation of the caliphate is a way of asserting the idea that all Muslims should be joined in one state, that they should be ruled by Islam (or more specifically, the jihadists' version of Islam), and that all other Islamic authorities and states are apostates.
The jihadists also promote the idea that because the caliphates existed a long time ago and were politically organized around Islam, they must have therefore been ultra-conservative theocracies. But that is quite simply false: At their height, the caliphates were centers of artistic expression and scientific development.


Safa Idriss Nour Is Waris Dirie's 'Desert Flower' In the Fight To End FGM In Somalia

Safa Idriss Nour Is Waris Dirie's 'Desert Flower' In the Fight To End FGM In Somalia

A simple Facebook share last week elicited more likes than any supermodel has achieved on my page. Meet Safa Idriss Nour, a young girl born in a slum in Dijibouti, Somalia.  Perhaps her gorgeous young-girl face soothed a world under fire in Beirut, Nigeria and Paris. Mali had not blown up yet as my FB friends fell under Safa's spell. 
On Friday I decided to look for information about this young girl, and the truth of her life amazed me. 
 A Young Somali Girl Uncut
An estimated 98% of girls and women in Dijibouti have undergone female genital mutilation, a procedure of varying severity in Somali culture. AOC has a long history of writing about FGM, the cutting off a female's clitoris and some of the labia. The procedure -- executed without anaesthetic -- is designed to protect a girl's purity and represents a sign of commitment to a future husband over a desire for sexual pleasure. In the most severe cases of FGM, a girl's labia is sewn together and only reopened after marriage. The probability of a young woman not being desirable as a bride and commanding no bride price for her family is high. 

 

Star Jones Co-Hosts Hillary Clinton Fundraiser in New York on Dec. 10, 2015

In 2012, women of color -- and especially Black women -- voted at a higher rate than any other group, representing a key constituency that elected President Obama. Black women voted in historically high numbers, voting Democratic and delivering a victory to the nation's first African American president. 
In the 2008 election, many of these women were split between Senators Clinton and Obama. Now they are united in their commitment to Hillary Clinton.