Trump, Carson Lead Republican Primary; Sanders Edging Clinton Among Democrats, Harvard IOP Poll Finds

After Paris Terrorist Attacks, Solid Majority of America's 18- to 29- Year-Olds Support Sending U.S. Ground Troops to Defeat ISIS; Less Than 20% Inclined to Serve if Needed

A new national poll of America's 18- to 29- year-olds by Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP), at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, finds Donald Trump (22%) and Ben Carson (20%) locked in a dead-heat as young Republicans' first choice in their party's presidential primary – and young Democrats giving the edge to Bernie Sanders (41%) over Hillary Clinton(35%) as the top selection in their presidential primary.  Overall, a majority (56%) of 18- to 29- year-olds prefer a Democrat win the 2016 campaign for president over a Republican, a net increase of five points since the IOP's spring 2015 survey was released.

The IOP's newest poll results also show – in the wake of the mid-November Paris terrorist attacks – a solid majority (60%) support the U.S. committing ground troops to defeat ISIS.  When asked how likely they would be to serve, 16% said they "have already," "would definitely" or "would strongly consider" joining the U.S. military to combat ISIS if additional troops were needed.  A detailed report on the poll's findings is available online: www.iop.harvard.edu/harvard-iop-fall-2015-poll.

Star Wars: Escapist Fantasy Or Dream Of The Future?

© 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Right Reserved.

By Kevin Hunt, Nottingham Trent University

In certain corners of the internet a modern myth celebrates the idea that Ben Rich, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” – the legendary and highly secretive wing of Lockheed Martin concerned with aircraft development – concluded a 1993 presentation at UCLA with the blockbuster line: “We now have the technology to take E.T. home.”

How we engage with scientific and technological progress has long been influenced by science fiction. Science fiction provides a testing ground for future visions informed by areas as diverse as biological and mechanical engineering through to political, social and ethical concerns. Such visions often combine the optimistic with the pessimistic. They draw upon the genres of utopian and dystopian storytelling that date back to Plato’s vision of Atlantis.

Divided kingdom: How England Could Force A Brexit, Even If Others Vote To Stay

Black Zack, CC BY-NC-SA

By Rachel Ormston, ScotCen Social Research

As the debate over Britain’s future in the European Union gathers pace and heat, there has been much discussion of what might happen if voters in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales disagree. What if the UK were to leave based on the English vote alone?

Would such an outcome provide the “material change” in circumstances cited by the SNP’s leadership as a potential trigger for a second independence referendum? What would such a decision mean for support for independence in Scotland and Wales? Could there even be implications for the peace deal in Northern Ireland, as the Irish prime minister recently suggested?

At the same time, rather less attention has been paid to the potential for another, equally plausible, outcome. What if England votes narrowly in favour of leaving the EU, but is kept in Europe by its more Europhile UK neighbours? Could such an outcome trigger calls from England for further loosening of ties within the UK?

Toastmasters International Lists 7 Most Buzzworthy Speeches of 2015

Whether it was David Letterman signing off on the Late Show for the final time or Caitlyn Jenner accepting an award recognizing her courage, the most discussed and shared presentations of the year were thought-provoking, emotional and inspiring. After viewing hundreds of contenders, Toastmasters International considers the following seven speeches the most buzzworthy in 2015:

Scholars: Trump's Call To 'Ban Muslims' Is Un-American

Trump calls for a ban on Muslims entering the US. Randall Hill/Reuters

By Sahar Aziz, Texas A&M University ; Denise A Spellberg, University of Texas at Austin, and Muniba Saleem, University of Michigan

Q: Presidential candidate Donald Trump called Monday for barring all Muslims from entering the US. He previously called for surveillance against mosques and a database for all Muslims living the US. What can you tell us about the history of attacks against Muslims in the US? Are Trump’s comments unique?

Sahar Aziz is an associate professor of law at Texas A&M. She is author of Sticks and Stones, the Words That Hurt: Entrenched Stereotypes Eight Years after 9/11.

Trump’s desire to keep Muslims out of America goes back two centuries. The Naturalization Act of 1790 barred Muslims from citizenship because only white people were eligible. Muslims were viewed as either black slaves, who were not considered full persons, or Turks and Arabs who were deemed enemies of white Christianity – a hallmark of American citizenship.

Even after the end of slavery, Muslims continued to be excluded. Immigration laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to exclude Chinese, Japanese and other Asians. Whiteness was still the prerequisite for naturalized citizenship. Islam was associated with Asiatic cultures deemed antithetical to American values.

What makes the contemporary period different is the exclusive focus on Islam and Muslims as the primary threat to American life – as opposed to Muslims being caught up in anti-black or anti-Asian prejudice. Mirroring the historic racist rhetoric against the Chinese and Japanese, a critical mass of Americans view Muslims as disloyal, suspicious, dangerous and possessing a culture deemed irreconcilable with American norms.

We witnessed the manifestation of such stereotypes most acutely in the months and years immediately following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Individuals identified as Muslim – either by their headscarves, names, national origins or associations – were assaulted, spied on, investigated or subjected to “special registration” procedures. However, the post-9/11 discrimination is not merely backlash, but rather an entrenched form of bigotry.

At a time when most Americans are taught that our nation is post-racial and that we have moved beyond Japanese internment or Chinese exclusion laws, Trump’s statements and consequent rise in the polls remind us that our nation has not advanced as much as we’d like to believe.

No, The Front National Is Not On The Verge Of Taking Power In France

By Hugo Melchior, Université Rennes 2

The first round of France’s regional elections took place on December 6, and the far-right Front National finished first, with 28% of the vote. After the second round of voting on December 13, it could well win control of a number of regions, though its historically anti-regional ideology raises questions about how it might govern.

Could the FN be on the verge of taking power in the 2017 national and elections? A look at past elections seems to indicate otherwise.

How To Build A Real Lightsaber

David James/Lucasfilm

By Gianluca Sarri, Queen's University Belfast

As even casual Star Wars fans will know, lightsabers are probably the coolest weapon ever to make an appearance on the big screen. Lightsaber fights are so elegant that they are almost hypnotic and, even though not all of us might have a strong enough flow of Force running through our veins, a lightsaber in the right hand is by far the deadliest weapon to be found in the universe.

The idea behind a lightsaber is simple genius: a light-weight and immensely powerful tool that uses a blade of energy to not only slice up disciples of the Dark Side in a single blow but also act as an effective shield against laser blasts. So why don’t we have working lightsabers in real life? Surely physicists must be smart enough (and big enough Star Wars fans) to be able to produce one of these incredible objects.

The obvious way of building a lightsaber would be to use a laser, which can be seen as a particularly bright and directional burst of light. But even though laser technology is continuously striding towards more efficient and practical machines, we are still miles away from a working lightsaber. Let’s see why.

Donald Trump's Honorary Degree Has Been Revoked!

You probably have heard by now of the online petition asking the British government to ban Donald Trump from entry to the UK on hate speech grounds...

 click on this link to access the petition page

But there was another online petition regarding the US presidential candidate going as well that you might not have heard about... That one was asking Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen) to "strip Donald Trump of the honorary degree it bestowed on him with immediate effect."

How The Ku Klux Klan Seized Cinema To Become A Force In America

Klansmen in Birth of a Nation. (Wikimedia, CC BY-SA)

By Tom Rice, University of St Andrews

An advertisement appeared in the Atlanta Journal for “The World’s Greatest, Secret, Social, Patriotic, Fraternal Beneficiary Order” on December 9, 1915. Next to this advert for the newly reformed Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was a poster for the film The Birth of a Nation, which celebrated and memorialised the original Klan and was just beginning its record-breaking run in the city. Three days earlier at the premiere, members of the Klan had reportedly paraded outside the theatre.

Birth of a Nation poster (Wikimedia, CC BY-SA)

A century on and the dark days when the Klan recruited millions of members across America to its divisive and racist creed may seem like history, but the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment around the world and recent proclamations from the likes of Donald Trump – who has said he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US – are a sobering reminder of how the media can be used to spread division in society.

The Klan knew how powerful an institution the fast-growing movie industry was going to be and, while historians have recognised the link between DW Griffith’s hugely controversial film and the reformed Klan, what is less well known is the broader way in which the Klan used film over the next decade to recruit members, generate publicity, shape public behaviour and define its role within American society.

At its height in the 1920s, the Klan had an estimated 5m members and oversaw a massive publicity operation. It was publishing dozens of weekly newspapers. It was producing films and radio shows, owned theatres and staged large-scale community plays. It had its own bands and baseball teams, a university, a successful women’s group and a strong presence in local protestant churches.

Klan groups set up film companies and produced their own feature films during the 1920s, such as The Toll of Justice (1923) and The Traitor Within (1924). As part of the Klan’s efforts to position itself at the heart of local communities, these films would play in churches, schools, Klaverns (Klan buildings) and at outdoor events. Posters advertised Klan values as much as the film itself, with slogans such as “Do away with the underworld” and “Protect clean womanhood”, while often identifying the Klansman as “100% American”. Indeed advertisements for The Toll of Justice presented “The picture that every red-blooded American should see”.

These Klan productions would also play in cinemas owned or run by Klansmen. For example The American theatre in Noblesville, Indiana once advised patrons that they could come to the film “before or after the K.K.K. parade tonight” and used the three Ks to describe its premises as “Kool, Kozy, and Klean”.

A war against “immorality”
The Klan’s own films were often intended to “counteract” what the Klan saw as “immoral” mainstream productions. These criticisms helped the Klan to project its own religious and social values to a wider public, often aligning itself with more established groups. It launched a strong campaign against The Pilgrim (1923), in which Charlie Chaplin plays a convict who pretends to be a protestant minister. This helped to get the film banned or cut in a number of states.

The Klan objected to the actress Pola Negri’s “low ideals of womanhood” in Bella Donna (1923). The following year it took on Paramount Pictures' “sex plays”, objecting to titles such as Manhandled, The Enemy Sex, Changing Husbands and The Female – which promised to show Betty Compson “more nearly nude than she has yet appeared on screen”.

Yet its main criticisms of these Paramount films were reserved for the producers and the film industry. This is all too evident in the relevant Klan pamphlet, which was titled: “Jew Movies urging sex vice: Rome and Judah at work to Pollute Young America”. A few years later, in 1933, the Klan publication Kourier ran an article on Jewish film producers which concluded that: “Hollywood certainly needs a Hitler!”

In decline
Yet by the 1930s the Klan was increasingly marginalised, which is partly reflected in Hollywood films of the era. The late 1930s saw a cycle of “social problem” films directly exposing Klan activities. In 1937 the Klan filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros, objecting to the appearance of the “Klan insignia” in the Humphrey Bogart film, Black Legion. The Klan demanded $500 for every time the picture had been shown and $100,000 in damages. It lost the case, but gained a few valuable column inches.

Bogart meets a Klan-like group in Black Legion (Channel Awesome)

Two years later, producer David O Selznick cut all mention of the Klan when he adapted Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind, for the big screen. Mitchell had presented the original Klan as honourable and necessary. The Klan press condemned this edit by complaining that “Jews will even stoop to … distortion of history to carry out their propaganda”. The Klan still sought to align itself to the film, though. It contacted MGM, offering to parade outside the Atlanta premiere, just as it had done 24 years earlier with The Birth of a Nation. The offer was dismissed out of hand.

While the Klan would never again exercise such influence through film and the media, the example serves as a reminder of how a small group reformed in Atlanta 100 years ago used the entertainment industry to become one of the most influential and recognisable social and political forces in the country.

It would be foolish to dismiss this as the stuff of history – the Klan’s fearmongering around the themes of immigration and “The Traitor Within”, begin to look depressingly familiar when you looks at the proclamations of the likes of Trump and the media organisations only to happy to give him a platform – Fox News being the most obvious example. We always need to keep a close eye on what the media tells us is “normal” and how it projects national identity.


About Today's Contributor:
Tom Rice, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of St Andrews

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Bonus Video:

Frank Sinatra's 100th Birthday Celebrated on SiriusXM Channel, Siriusly Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

SiriusXM today announced its extensive programming to celebrate the iconic Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday on his exclusive SiriusXM channel, Siriusly Sinatra...  

The schedule will include a new special hosted by Nancy Sinatra including some of her personal favorites; shows hosted by Frank Sinatra, Jr. and Tina Sinatra; and an hour-long feature highlighting a new boxed set of rare radio recordings that Frank made during the early part of his career; broadcasts of The Chairman's Hour, the Siriusly Sinatra series 'hosted' by Frank Sinatra himself using archival material; and episodes of Playing Favorites, the SiriusXM radio show featuring Tom Brokaw, Tony Bennett, Angie Dickinson, Steve Wynn, Linda Ronstadt and many others hosting their favorite Sinatra music.  

Nancy Sinatra

Shia Muslims Hold Large Anti ISIS Rally In Washington DC

More than a thousand Shia Muslims gathered in Washington DC on Sunday in a multicultural show of anti-ISIS demonstrations. The protesters marched from DuPont Circle to the White House chanting slogans denouncing the terror group, while volunteers distributed coffee and donuts to passers-by.

Adil Rizvi, the main protest organizer, said "The first step to stopping ISIS is for us to denounce them and show the world they are not a part of our community."

In recent years, the overwhelming majority of ISIS victims have been Muslim civilians, although the terror group is now engaging in attacks against Western targets

Another organizer Dr. Azmat Husain said "We are all victims of ISIS, every American and every Muslim, and we cannot let anything divide the close bonds of friendship and community the American Muslim community has developed with our neighbors."

France's Front National: An Anti-Regional Party At Heart

Leader of the Front National, Marine le Pen, the morning after
her party’s strong showing in the first round of regional elections. 
Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

By Thibaut Fleury Graff, Université Rennes 1

France’s extreme-right Front National (FN) Party has come out on top of the first round of voting in France’s regional elections, gathering 28% of the overall vote. The second round, on December 13, will tell the full story, as the ruling Socialist party and opposition Les Républicains may yet join to form a shared front, but it is not too early to notice that the FN’s local campaign is at odds with the fundamental nature of the party.

Comparing the speeches of FN leader Marine Le Pen, candidate for president of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy region (NPCP), and her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, candidate in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region (PACA) with the party’s long-standing political program, two mutually exclusive conclusions can be drawn.

First, the FN does not respect its ideological foundations: the accusations of cronyism and political opportunism that it regularly levels against the major parties can be applied to its own ranks as well.

Second, despite the discourse of its candidates, the party will maintain its traditional ideological line, and in case of victory, its policies in the NPCP and the PACA are likely to be profoundly anti-regional.