With the rising tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the execution of Sheikh Nimir al-Nimir, there is a wonderfully ironic element as Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of stifling free speech by a cleric who merely disagreed with the regime. Iran of course is the government that has beaten and killed protesters calling for basic rights. We have regularly commented on Saudi Arabia’s medieval Sharia system as well as Iran’s suppression of free speech. Both countries regularly decapitate people and hang or crucify people in the name of Islamic values. Now both countries are exchanging insults about how the other is an extremist regime.
Al-Namir was a key leader in the Arab Spring protests in Saudi Arabia before his arrest in 2012.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the execution and said that al-Nimr “neither invited people to take up arms nor hatched covert plots. The only thing he did was public criticism.” You will recall that this is the same Khamenei who stood back and watched as a cartoonist was arrested for mocking the Parliament and protesters were beaten for seeking freedom.
In the meantime, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has been routinely connected to terrorism, compared Saudi Arabia to ISIS and denounced Saudi Arabia’s “medieval act of savagery” in putting al-Nimir death. Sort of like the medieval savagery countenanced under Iran’s Sharia legal system like pouring acid in the eyes of prisoners or throwing men down rocky hills in a burlap bag.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi went to Twitter to proclaim how “peaceful opposition is a fundamental right. Repression does not last.” That will come as welcomed news to those people rotting in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Free speech? This has nothing to do with it.
A Conspiracy Theory That Everyone Can Believe In
To call someone a “Shiit Cleric” seems to demonize him. An extra letter “i” should not get you off the civility rule.
Off topic but Obama performs miracle today! He rubbed his left eye and then got very emotionally distraught talking about those 26 people who were murdered in Newtown (who never showed up on FBI crime stats) and proceeds to cry out of ONLY his left eye! He’s either got some unique ability/disorder or he’s one helluva a bad crises actor. Anyway, please come take our guns to make America safe again!
By the way, in light of the following, and a prison population that dwarfs even China’s, which is the repressive government?
Olly, this will tickle your goat
————————————
“The Rule Of Law No Longer Exists In Western Civilization
By Paul Craig Roberts
January 05, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – My work documenting how the law was lost began about a quarter of a century ago. A close friend and distinguished attorney, Dean Booth, first brought to my attention the erosion of the legal principles on which rests the rule of law in the United States. My columns on the subject got the attention of an educational institution that invited me to give a lecture on the subject. Subsequently, I was invited to give a lecture on “How The Law Was Lost” at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
The work coalesced into a book, The Tyranny Of Good Intentions, coauthored with my research associate, Lawrence M. Stratton, published in 2000, with an expanded edition published in 2008. We were able to demonstrate that Sir Thomas More’s warning about prosecutors and courts disregarding law in order to more easily convict undesirables and criminals has had the result of turning law away from being a shield of the people and making it into a weapon in the hands of government. That is what we witness in the saga of the Hammonds, long-time ranchers in the Harney Basin of Oregon.
With the intervention of Ammon Bundy, another rancher who suffered illegal persecution by the Bureau of Land Management but stood them off with help from armed militia, and his supporters, the BLM’s decades long persecution of the innocent Hammonds might have come to a crisis before you read this.
Bundy and militiamen, whose count varies from 15 to 150 in the presstitute media, have seized an Oregon office of the BLM as American liberty’s protest against the frame-up of the Hammonds on false charges. As I write the Oregon National Guard and FBI are on the way.
The militiamen have said that they are prepared to die for principles, and the rule of law is one of them. Of course, the presstitute media is making the militiamen into the lawbreakers—and even calling them terrorists—and not the federal government’s illegal prosecution of the Hammonds, whose crime was their refusal to sell their ranch to the government to be included in the Masher National Wildlife Refuge.
If there are only 15 militiamen, there is a good chance that they will all be killed, but if there are 150 armed militiamen prepared for a shootout, the outcome could be different.
I cannot attest to the accuracy of this report of the situation: https://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/723 The resources required to verify the information in this account of how the government escalated a “crisis” out of the refusal of a family to bend is beyond the resources of this website. However, the story fits perfectly with everything Lawrence Stratton and I learned over the years that we prepared our book on how the law was lost. This account of the persecution of the Hammonds is the way government behaves when government has broken free of the rule of law.
I can attest with full confidence that the United States no longer has a rule of law. The USA is a lawless country. By that I do not mean what conservative Republicans mean, which is, if I understand them, that racial minorities violate law with something close to impunity.
What I mean is that only the mega-banks and the One Percent have legal protection, and that is because these people control the government. For everyone else law is a weapon in the hands of the government to be used against the American people.
The fact that the shield of law no longer exists for American citizens is why, according to US Department of Justice statistics, only 4 percent of federal felonies ever go to trial. Almost the entirety of federal felonies are settled by coerced plea bargains that force defendants to admit to crimes that they did not commit in order to avoid “expanded indictments” that, if presented to the typical stupid, trusting, gullible American “jury of their peers,” would lock them away for hundreds of years.
American justice is a joke. It does not exist. You can see this in the American prison population. “Freedom and Democracy” America not only has the largest percentage of its population in prison than any country on the planet, but also the largest number of prisoners.
If you consider that “authoritarian” China has four times the population of the United States but fewer prisoners, you understand that “authoritarian” China has a more protective rule of law than the United States.
Compared to “freedom and democracy America,” Russia has hardly anyone in prison. Yet, Washington and its media whores have defined the President of Russia as “the new Hitler.”
The only thing we can conclude from the facts is that the United States Government and those ignorant fools who worship it are evil incarnate.
Out of evil comes dictatorship. The White House Fool, at best a two-bit punk, has decided that he doesn’t like the Second Amendment to the US Constitution any more than he likes any of the other constitutional protections of US citizens. He is looking for dictatorial methods, that is, unlegislated executive orders, to overturn the Second Amendment. He has the corrupt US Department of Justice, a criminal organization, looking for ways for the dictator to overturn both Congressional legislation and Supreme Court rulings.
The media whores have fallen in line with the would-be dictator. All we hear is “gun violence.” If only Karl Marx were still with us. He would ridicule those who turn inanimate objects into purposeful actors. It is extraordinary that the American left-wing thinks that guns, not people, kill people.
The position of the “progressive left-wing” in the United States is perplexing. Here are Americans, immersed into a police state, as are the Hammonds, and the progressive left-wing wants to disarm the population.
Whatever this “progressive left-wing opposition” is, it has nothing in common with revolutionaries. The American left-wing is totally irrevelant, a defeated force that sold out and no longer represents the people or the truth.
Even more astonishing, judging by comments on RT’s report on the situation and the readers comments, all RT and American blacks want to know is where is the National Guard in Oregon? Why isn’t it called out against the White militia protests as it was called out against the Black Ferguson protests? https://www.rt.com/usa/327809-bundy-militia-oregon-reaction/
If protesting the murder of a young black American by Ferguson police is not legitimate and the protesters are “terrorists,” why aren’t the Oregon protestors terrorists for trying to protect jailbirds from their “lawful sentence”? This is the wrong question.
It really is discouraging that the American black community is unable to understand that if any American can be dispossessed, all Americans can be dispossessed.
It is also discouraging that RT decided to play the race card instead of comprehending that law is no longer a shield of the American people but is a weapon in the hands of Washington.
Why doesn’t RT at least listen to the President of Russia, who states repeatedly that America and the West are lawless.
Putin is correct. America and its vassals are lawless. No one is safe from the government.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Neoconservative Threat To International Order: Washington’s Perilous War For Hegemony, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
And there is this…still waiting for you to reply to my question, karen, as I did yours:
——————————–
karen said to Po:
Do you consider crashing a van deliberately into a civilian bus stop, hitting people, and then jumping out with a knife to stab a woman with a baby a terrorist attack? Yes or now. And this time answer the question.
Po answered:
yes, I do!
Do YOU consider the bombing of hospitals, of schools, of ambulances, the dropping of a missile on 4 kids playing on the beach, the lighting of a sleeping family on fire a terrorist act? Yes or no? And this time answer the question!
po – I will answer for Karen. Depends.
Oh, olly, too many to list, dear…too many to list…
Karen,
I would have noticed a comment like that. When did you make such a statement or rather, what statement did you make that makes Po believe you feel that way?
Ah, yes, the same old argument that my criticism of the abuse of human rights in the Middle East means that I want American women to die. And then frantic attempts to pretend that the ME is unfairly maligned.
Excuse me while I laugh until I roll off my chair.
Actually, karen, to take your (il)logic to its unavoidable conclusion is to conclude that all the middle east is especially evil, especially violent and especially misogynistic… conclusion which you reached many times previously. Lest anyone think this comes out of nowhere, it is an ongoign intellectual beat down I am delivering, though it has yet to be effective.
Some people are stubborn, especially when they have fallen off their chair and lost their bearings!
So…
…if the only times you voice your condemnation of extremism is when Muslims are concerned..
…if the only place you see evil is in Muslim countries…
….if you keep referring to shariah law as the most dangerous thing we face…
….if you keep speaking generally about Islam while claiming to be speaking solely about extremism islam…
….if you justify the massacre of Palestinians, women and children, by claiming that Israel has the right to defend itself…
….if you keep offering as Muslim role model a woman, an atheist woman, Ayan Ali, who advocates destroying Islam, all of it…
…if you refuse to condemn any act of terrorism by Israeli settlers…
…if you refuse to condemn, as I did, that any act of violence, moral and physical directed towards civilians is terrorism no matter who commits it…
then friend, you either are scrutinizing much too hard or are practically blind to anyone else but Muslims… both of which define you as that which we know you to be….an islamophobe!
At least bambam is open about his, something to be respected.
Additionally, have the decency to specify which country you refer to when you state ME… Or is it just safer being general since I have caught you too often placing the wrong country into the ME and accusing it of false items 🙂
I don’t recall any instance of you spouting your “knowledge”on the ME without being corrected!
I am starting to believe it isn’t accidental…
Deception, when you hold us into your claws…
“Your arguments place all nations that fall short of their ideals in the same boat.”
isaac,
Actually I place all nations that don’t have the security of unalienable rights as their first priority in the same boat as that is the only legitimate purpose for government. Any other goal or “ideal” as you call it will always fail. This is what has been happening in our country and we only aspired to be “more perfect” tomorrow than we are today.
What good isaac is being more “societally evolved” or focused on “more difficult to attain accomplishments” doing for Western nations when they infringe the natural rights of their people? Each one of us is one more “elected” tyrant away from losing more liberty, property or our llives. This is not being narrow in my perspective but quite the opposite. Historical evidence supports my classical liberal worldview; what supports your progressive worldview?
By the way, karen, why worry so much about ME women when American women, your fellow american women, your pregnant american sisters are killed at a rate unmatched by any other country in the world?
Your silence about it suggests at best a lack of concern, and at worse a tacit support for domestic abuse of pregnant women.
What does that say about your society?
About you?
Shame!
karen…as usual,you offer erroneous statements,
I break them down
reveal them as false and deceptive
you resort to ad hominem attacks 🙂
What else to expect from someone who thinks that Palestinian women and children deserve to be killed and maimed by the IDF and the settlers!
Olly
Your arguments place all nations that fall short of their ideals in the same boat. Look at the ideals and then look at what the nation has accomplished. Western nations fall short but their ideals are vastly more societally evolved than those of the Middle Eastern Islamic nations whose performances are seriously lacking in almost all that is ideal naturally or otherwise.
The goals of the Western nations are focused on much more difficult to attain accomplishments than power by beheading those who wish to discuss issues.
By placing everyone in the same boat you reveal an extremely narrow perspective.
Nick – Do you mean the why-don’t-we-just-build-nukes-for-Iran deal?
Oh, and Po once again misquoted me, and resorted to ad hominem false logic.
karen says:
It is false logic to condemn anyone and everyone who criticizes a Muslim country or extremist Islam in general. The fact is unavoidable that human rights are quite poor in Middle Eastern countries, where one may be put to death for apostasy, homosexuality, adultery, criticizing Islam or the government. Deface a Qu’ran and you’ll be murdered by mob in many areas.
—————————
You are welcome, karen, I answered your questions for you…saved you a great deal of efforts.
Let’s establish a premise. Human rights are quite poor in ME countries. Let’s develop that idea. Which countries?
Which countries have death for apostasy, homosexuality, adultery or criticizing islam or the government?
Deface a quran and you’ll be murdered by mob in many areas, which areas?
It is as vague and deceptive of a statement as me saying that American cities target black people to fund their coffers based on St louis’ case.
Or woman’s rights are quite poor in America because murder is highest cause of death for pregnant women in the US.
Deceptive.
Lazy.
Dishonest!
As usual.
The fact that other despotic countries like Israel, China and Russia also abuse human rights is immaterial to the discussion of human rights abuses specifically under extremist Islamic rule. It would be akin to claiming that one may not condemn murder by a spouse because murder between strangers also occurs.
Sure, it is immaterial only if we agree on what we are talking about. Otherwise we need a frame of reference, a standard by which we judge something. Since you refused to explain your statement or offer the frame of reference, I supplied it for you.
So, if we agree that ,arguably, China is a more repressive state than Iran, where does Iran sit on the scale of repression?
Behind Russia?
Before Rwanda?
Does Iran’s regime qualify as extremist islamic rule?
How?
“Discussion does not have to be argument or drivel.””
Totally agree with you, Bark!
Sorry you won’t post here any longer…(since that seems to be all that you routinely offer, drivel 🙂
Nick, did Obama cut you off once and flipped you the finger?
Or did he steal your girl? Is there anything you can’t blame on him?
What did you do before he came along?
The Po arguments and those who argue with Po, remind me of the arguments between Shiites and Sunnies. Perhaps Po has a little itShay in him/her. Or been in the sun too long.
Discussion does not have to be argument or drivel.
America has no friends in the pirate territories. Fly over and flush.
The Kingdom is antagonizing Iran for several reasons. Firstly, it is religious hatred that goes back many generations. But, more immediate is the sham nuclear deal our feckless prez made w/ Iran. The Kingdom is almost as fearful of the crazy Iranians as are the Israelis. The Kingdom is causing other countries to choose sides, and many are choosing the Kingdom. The Obama crew are in the stammering “Homina Homina” stage presently.
Olly, you are right. Absolutely power corrupts, absolutely, whether it’s wielded by religious or secular means. And you are correct that the protection of natural rights is a safeguard against such abuses.
isaac,
Why is it that the most civilized cultures and the most uncivilized cultures will commit the same heinous acts imaginable against others ? It’s because deep down our natures are all the same. You show me a culture that makes the security of natural rights for ALL the primary purpose for their government and it won’t matter what else they believe in. This requires a level of humility not common among people that cannot acknowledge their own (sinful) nature. And placing that nature in the position of law-making (power) should warrant a healthy skepticism that it will be a force for good. That’s neither half-empty or half-full. That is 100% reasonable.
Shiite’s only comprise about 10%, or a bit more, of the global Muslim community. They are overwhelmingly in the minority in most countries. There is a history of Shiite/Sunni conflict dating all the way back to 632, when the Prophet died. So, obviously, a Shiite majority country would decry the execution of a Shiite cleric in a country where they are the minority, while simultaneously cracking down on any protests in their own land, because they are a repressive country . In addition, State has considered Iran a sponsor of terrorism for decades. Because they do not tolerate criticism of their own government, clearly free speech is not their platform of objection.
But it’s a lovely place to visit as long as you don’t get thrown in jail.
It is false logic to condemn anyone and everyone who criticizes a Muslim country or extremist Islam in general. The fact is unavoidable that human rights are quite poor in Middle Eastern countries, where one may be put to death for apostasy, homosexuality, adultery, criticizing Islam or the government. Deface a Qu’ran and you’ll be murdered by mob in many areas. The fact that other despotic countries like China and Russia also abuse human rights is immaterial to the discussion of human rights abuses specifically under extremist Islamic rule. It would be akin to claiming that one may not condemn murder by a spouse because murder between strangers also occurs.
https://freespeechfreepress.wordpress.com/iran/