The top Saudi clerics have found another person to execute for free speech. We have previously seen a number of people accused of blasphemy for brief tweets or Facebook entries or even reading a book or speaking insulting thoughts at prayer. There is now a campaign to execute 23-year-old journalist Hamza Kashgari for a tweet that he sent to Mohammad on his birthday about Kashgari’s faith. There is no evidence that Mohammad is actually one of his followers but Mohammad’s followers are pretty ticked and labelled Kashgari an “apostate” who must be killed for his offense to Islam.
You are probably thinking the tweet must be pretty darn bad to fit serious blasphemy into 140 characters or less. Yet, Kashgari is being charged over a fake conversation that he had with Mohammad, who is not even listed as one of his “followers” on Twitter. Kashgari (who has apologized) wrote “On your birthday I find you in front of me wherever I go. I love many things about you and hate others, and there are many things about you I don’t understand.” As also tweeted “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.”
The faithful even created a festive Facebook page with nearly 10,000 members dedicated to executing the journalist — declaring “The Saudi people demand Hamza Kashgari’s execution” already has nearly 10,000 members.
The committee of top clerics confirmed that these people are only doing what is right and told Saudis that “Muslim scholars everywhere have agreed that those who insult Allah and his prophet or the (Muslim holy book) Koran or anything in religion are infidels and apostates.” They called on him to be “judge[d] based on sharia law,” which demands death for those who insult Mohammad or the religion.
Other clerics repeated prior warnings that good Muslims do not Tweet. Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh announced that Twitter is “a great danger not suitable for Muslims… it is a platform for spreading lies and making accusations.”
Once again, these stories show the perils of the effort of the Obama Administration to establish standards for the criminalization of anti-religious speech with Muslim countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Source: Washington Post
Gene H:
here is some more homework for you:
http://econstories.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The-Great-Depression-of-1946.pdf
Malinvestment not possible or legally permissible under the protections afforded by Glass-Steagall.
You’ll have to do better than that.
“The Financial Times described it as the view that “when markets unravel, count on the Federal Reserve and its chairman Alan Greenspan (eventually) to come to the rescue.” According to economist Antony Mueller, “Since Alan Greenspan took office, financial markets in the U.S. have operated under a quasi-official charter, which says that the central bank will protect its major actors from the risk of bankruptcy. Consequently, the reasoning emerged that when you succeed, you will earn high profits and market share, and if you should fail, the authorities will save you anyway.” The Financial Times reported in 2000, in the wake of the dot-com boom, of an increasing concern that the Greenspan put was injecting into the economy “a destructive tendency toward excessively risky investment supported by hopes that the Fed will help if things go bad.””
From the essay by Tom Woods.
Full essay here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods111.html
Malinvestment created by signals from the Fed caused the bust.
“Woods is a libertarian and von Mises disciple. Why should anyone devote four or five minutes to him, let alone 34 minutes?”
Because he is brilliant and is very interesting to listen to. And he is presenting an alternative understanding to the hide bound dogma of Keynes and Krugman.
Maybe Keynes and Krugman arent right and maybe this guy is, or maybe the truth lies somewhere between the 2 and the only way to know is to listen to what he has to say before you criticize him.
“But I do think capitalism, unregulated capitalism would curtail the power of large corporations.”
Then you’re simply cherry picking Chomsky and hallucinatory about human nature and the history of how corporations got out of control in the first place. Chomsky thinks the only legitimate source of authority is democracy in both society and the workplace. He understands the necessary roll of government in society and regulation in business. In fact, despite considering himself an anarchist (an anarcho-syndicalist specifically – I think he thinks it sounds cool), he often sounds more like a democratic socialist. Consider that Chomsky also said, in defense of anarchy, “One can, of course, take the position that we don’t care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don’t pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That’s exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.”
Smith was dealing with an ideal. Perfect liberty doesn’t exist in society and can’t by operation of the social compact. Chomsky knows this. He also recognizes the role of government in markets and his objection isn’t government’s involvement, but rather that its involvement currently is not operating in the best interests of the people. He calls it state capitalism, but it’s really just another form of corporatist fascism by another name.
Now quit moving the fucking goal posts and trying to sideline the issue.
You’re the one claiming I’m wrong about deregulation being the cause of the current debacle being caused by investment banks selling derivatives based on commercial paper that they issued in bad faith to game the system when those loans failed.
You prove it. Don’t opine. Don’t try to change the subject. Prove it.
Woods is a libertarian and von Mises disciple. Why should anyone devote four or five minutes to him, let alone 34 minutes?
Gene:
Start watching at around 34 minutes for about 4 to 5 minutes:
Gene:
is this what you mean?
Read the part about Adam Smith.
http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm
I pretty much agree with Chomsky although I dont agree with all of it.
But I do think capitalism, unregulated capitalism would curtail the power of large corporations.
And he is right, people go to college purely to punch a meal ticket and become technicians who then go to work for large corporations and become automatons or salarymen as they call them in Japan. The self is subordinated to the group. There is no self, there is only the corporation. It is a soul destroying existence.
Actually, regulation did end those practices, but if you want to believe that laws enable smart criminals by forcing them to find new avenues to exploit? You keep believing that if it makes you feel better. Ignore the fact that laws (and the threat of substantive consequences) makes criminal’s jobs harder for them. You might as well start believing in Santa and the Easter Bunny too because they are both as childishly naive and logically nonsensical. The rest of your blather is just that: blather. An appeal to emotion bereft of proof. Seriously, your floundering and grasping is simply pathetic at this point.
Now. Quit moving the goal posts. You’re the one claiming I’m wrong about deregulation being the cause of the current debacle being caused by investment banks selling derivatives based on commercial paper that they issued in bad faith to game the system when those loans failed.
You prove it.
“Regulation ended many of those practices..”
nope all it did was create avenues for smart people to take advantage of. The crash was its own regulator. And had it been left alone as Harding did in 1920, the market would have taken care of the problem.
Had Bush left the market alone in 2008 the market would have consolidated and we would be out of it by now.
Gene:
that is where you go wrong, the principles behind various economic situations do not change. In terms of complexity, it is probably more complex now because we have 80 more years of regulations to deal with.
The derivatives and credit defaults swaps you bitch about, they are because of the regulations. People find ways to manage risk/get around regulations.
You have caused complexity due to regulations. I shouldnt have to sign 30 pages of verbiage for a mortgage, it should be able to be done on one sheet:
name of lender/lien holder
name of borrower
address of property liened
value of property
amount of loan
interest rate
# of loan payments
signature of lender
signature of borrower
That is all you need to make a loan between 2 consenting adults. One page and it should take 2 hours, long enough for the borrower to obtain a credit check. All most of your regulations have done is distort the relationship between buyer and seller and made the lawyers rich. Maybe that is why you like regulations?
Bron,
1) You’re the one who brought out the race card by making homogeneity of population part of your economic argument. I was merely pointing it out.
2) I could give a shit what Thomas Sowell says. He’s just another laissez-faire clown operating off of bad assumption about human nature.
Bron,
“Go look at the statistics from the 30′s. Prove me wrong. All you have ever done is tell me I am wrong or you post one or two references and then you say you use logic to demolish my argument. I have read the meeting minutes, I have read a couple of articles on the history of the act. I did it because I wanted to find out why you were saying what you did. That act, along with other acts and programs in the 30′s extended the depression.”
Attempting to shift the burden of proof, argument by non sequitur and fallacy of simple cause. The cause and the duration of the Great Depression are 1) irrelevant to the current situation – this is now, not then – and 2) causally more complex than the current situation. It wasn’t regulation that caused the Great Depression though. The dual occurrence of bank failures (caused by inadequate rules on capitalization) and wild and risky trading practices leading to the stock market crash (caused by inadequate rules placed on trading) driving a loss in consumer confidence are causally connected to the advent of the Great Depression. Regulation ended many of those practices and provided the sound(er) foundation in banking and trading that helped fuel the eventual industrialization of our economy (which before 1930 was largely agrarian). The argument that regulation increased the duration of the Great Depression (instead of what it actually did which was to remove some of the causes) is an argument only made by Austrian School economists and its logic – like yours – is backwards and based upon the unfounded belief that regulation is bad simply because its regulation. That the industrialization of our economy was kicked into overdrive by WWII does not change that the economy overall was steadily improving toward the end of the 1930’s. If that wasn’t happening fast enough for you? That says more about your greed than the reality of the damage to consumer confidence bad business practices can and do create.
You’re the one claiming I’m wrong about deregulation being the cause of the current debacle being caused by investment banks selling derivatives based on commercial paper that they issued in bad faith to game the system when those loans failed.
You prove it.
Good luck with that.
Gene:
You are dangerously close to being an idiot. Thomas Sowell says you know you are winning an argument when the other guy brings out the race card.
Now tell me that those countries are not homogeneous and that the United States is. Although you could make the case that the US should have a higher GDP based on heterogeneity, more choices in food, clothing, movies [nothing better than a Chinese movie], music, etc.
I trust my son’s observations, he is a good deal smarter than you are.
How can you be certain someone is close to an idiot? Look who is talking.
Gene:
go look at the history of the Glass Steagall act. Read the original material from the committee meeting minutes. It was a political bill to placate the public. Banks which sold securities were 4-5 times less likely to fail.
Go look at the statistics from the 30’s. Prove me wrong. All you have ever done is tell me I am wrong or you post one or two references and then you say you use logic to demolish my argument. I have read the meeting minutes, I have read a couple of articles on the history of the act. I did it because I wanted to find out why you were saying what you did. That act, along with other acts and programs in the 30’s extended the depression.
You also probably dont know that at the turn of the century around 95% of people were considered to be below the poverty line and that by the late 50’s that had dropped to around 15% and that was prior to Johnson’s Great Society. What is the poverty rate now? After 50 years of throwing money at the problem. Has it fallen any more?
You really need to look into this more, you really dont know shit about these subjects, i.e. history and economics.
Pardon me if I put about as much faith in your son’s unscientific observations as I do in yours. Which is to say none at all.
I’m not going to even entertain answering you this time, Bron. If you want to argue with the CIA over their information and statistical methodology, take it up with them. They’re in the Langley, Virginia phone book. In addition, it wasn’t socialist economics that created the bad decisions that led to the recent economic collapse. It was deregulation. Period. The removal of the wall that used to separate investment and commercial banking. Deregulation that is the policy darling of laissez-faire capitalists. Also, your “homogenous” remark is dangerously close to racist.
You’re simply grasping at straws. You always have been.
They have a hampered market system which still has some economic incentives. Ireland is in trouble, like Spain, Greece and Portugal.
By the way, my son is over in Spain. Everyone barely gets by and they spend most of their time in bars and with friends because they cant afford to do much else. I have a modest home in the suburbs, my son says it is like a palace to those people. It is a small to medium size rambler.
From what he says, it is a nice country but the standard of living isnt that great. Everybody has only what they need and there is not much money for anything else. As with most socialist countries the rich are still rich but the middle class has spit and not much hope of rising higher.
It doesnt work, no matter how much you may want it to. Or I should say it works for the rich and the poor but not for the industrious.
“These countries are Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Netherlands. What do these countries have in common? They are all socialist countries.”
They mostly have a homogeneous population and a population which probably all work. We have very many people who produce nothing [not counting people who are out of a job no thanks to bad decisions based on socialist economics] which dilutes the GDP per capita. What is it if you take all the people who do not produce and never have produced? What does that do to the stats?
I want justice so I wouldn’t to anything to remove the Commerce Clause.
As to the rest of what you said, it’s all just more blather and grasping at straws, Bron. Your opinion and an ill-informed opinion based on your fanatical devotion to Objectivism and non-scientific von Mises political polemic disguised as economics.
“The CIA World Factbook” shows nine European countries place ahead of the United States in terms of per capita GDP. These countries are Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Netherlands. What do these countries have in common? They are all socialist countries. Just like the United Kingdom, Austria, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany who come close behind the United States in per capita GDP. So it would appear that your contention that socialism doesn’t work is nonsense.
Consider this fact too: many if not most of those countries have considerably less resources than the U.S. and yet they manage to provide excellent services which benefit all like universal health care, free and efficient public transportation for the poor and generous unemployment and pension benefits. Statistically speaking, these countries also score higher than the U.S. on level of education (a further reflection of investment in society reaping dividends), citizen happiness, and income equality.
“And Glass Steagall? That caused banks to fail in the 30′s, it did not prevent them from failing. But you didnt know that banks which sold securities were 4-5 times less likely to fail than banks which did not.”
Pure horsehit, Bron. That is a statement not even remotely grounded in reality. The entire cause of the CDS debacle was removing the wall between investment banking and commercial banking that Glass-Steagall created. If those protections hadn’t been removed, the venal assholes on Wall Street wouldn’t have been able to sell derivatives based on commercial loans – commercial loans that banks made in bad faith so they could game the system from the investment side of their house when the commercial loans failed.
Smart people let the facts inform their theories and if the facts contradict previous theories, they come up with new theories. Stupid people let their beliefs inform their theories and when the facts don’t confirm their beliefs, they bend them until they do. You don’t know anything about psychology, law, sociology, economics or history. You think you do, sure. Your mistaken belief that you do is rooted in your Objectivist ideal that you are the ruler by which all of existence is to be measured. All you know is that selfishness is a virtue because Ayn told you so and greed is good because von Mises told you so. Facile and false rationalizations so you can feel better about being venal and self-centered. This is demonstrated time and again in your writings. One of the reasons your “knowledge” is always half-knowledge at best is because you filter it through your Rand/von Mises filter, ignoring anything that doesn’t confirm your biases built upon your poorly examined beliefs. Beliefs chosen not based on evidence and reason, but rather tailored to your desires and need to create a positive self image for yourself no matter how badly you act toward society in general.