There is a bizarre case out of India this week where four people were arrested after they allegedly converted to Islam without state approval. In India, under the ironically named Freedom of Religion Act, you must get state approval before changing religions. The law is meant to guarantee that people are not coerced into conversions. In light of the ongoing forced conversions of ISIS or the Islamic State, that is a legitimate concern. However, it would seem a problem that can be addressed by just criminalizing forced or coerced conversions as opposed to forcing everyone to get state permission to change faiths. The obvious concern is that in the largely Hindu nation, such permission can itself be coercive for those who want to leave the Hindu faith.
Category: International
Last year, I wrote a column about how there appears to be little accountability in government for gross negligence, as shown by the response to the debacle over the rollout of the Obamacare website and billions wasted or lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. Egypt has shown that this is not just a problem in the U.S. Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, Mamdouh Eldamaty, is under fire after rehiring a company named Shurbagy for restoration of one of Egypt’s oldest pyramids after the firm caused damage and major deterioration to the very same structure in an earlier botched job.
There is a new report on global climate change this week that addresses many of the claims being raised against the theory by critics. Despite the overwhelming agreement of the scientific community, people continue to cite anecdotal observations of cool temperatures to refute predictions. The new report crunches the climate numbers and concludes that there is less than 1 chance in 100,000 that global average temperature over the past 60 years would have been as high without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading “Report: There is a 99.999% Certainty That Humans Driving Global Warming”
Dar Al Ifta, Egypt’s official body in charge of advising Muslims on spiritual matters, has shown that Egypt is not going to simply give up in the race back to the Stone Age between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Muslim cleric have issued a fatwa prohibiting online chats between unrelated men and women. How they are going to monitor that fatwa is a bit unclear but it appears that even sending text messages to a person of the other sex is an affront to Islam. Clerics issued the fatwa with the warning that social media is “one of the tools of the devil and a way for spreading discord and corruption.”
Continue reading “OMG U R F! Egyptian Clerics Issue Fatwa Banning Online Chats Between The Sexes”
In Riyadh, the Saudi morality police are again in the news. You may recall that when we last left the medieval mod squad they had secured a sentence to flog a woman who insulted them. Now, the religious police was caught on video beating up a British resident after they paid a bill at a women-only cask desk. The religious police was irate at the violation of the strict Sharia-based separation of the sexists and apparently took what they thought was the morality correct approach in beating the man in front of his wife who was wearing a black abaya cloak.
There is a chilling international report out of this week on the origins of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Researchers from the United States and Africa were able to trace the origins of the outbreak to a funeral in Guinea. The report expanded the data on Ebola by 400 percent. However, the standard listing of authors on the study have a chilling notation, a “‡” designation for “Deceased.” Five team members died in the effort to trace this Ebola stain and the release of the report honors their extraordinary sacrifice.
An Austrian SWAT team learned the perils of working in the dark this week (as did an innocent family) when the police decided to leave off hall lights in an apartment building so not to alert the suspect. The problem is that, with the lights off, they could not make out the door numbers and raided the wrong unit.
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The bloody horror that befell Northwestern Iraq and in Syria at the hands of ISIS is likely to force a geopolitical reassessment as to alliances and policies. There have been many calling for us to change our role in the Syrian civil war as well as demanding changes in the leadership of Iraq itself. One fact is certain the threat posed by ISIS is real, growing and it seems ironic that even other jihadi groups can no longer accept the actions of this terrorist organization. European governments worry of the distinct possibility a terrorist, failed state will emerge having shores on the Mediterranean.
Such a change might be beginning now and will ultimately find common causes between the West and the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party. While the German Government has historically used legal and diplomatic maneuvers to suppress the PKK, it now is poised to arm the Kurds in Northern Iraq in response to ISIS and very well could be ultimately supporting the PKK, at least unofficially.
Continue reading “Will The Threat Posed By ISIS Change Views Of The PKK From Terrorist To Friend?”
Submitted By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
We have discussed the sad plight of the low castes of Indian society and their removal from the benefits of India’s emergence in the world. In particular is the notion of certain human beings are considered to be untouchable. Examples include being last to be rescued during floods (HERE), a case of doctors refusing to treat an untouchable woman in labor resulting in she and her child dying (HERE) Children suffering horrific acts of violence (HERE) Child Rapes (HERE) and others.
Deutsche Welle recently published an interview with Meenakshi Granguly, the South Asia Director for Human Rights Watch who co-authored a study titled “Cleaning Human Waste: ‘Manual Scavenging,’ Caste, and Discrimination in India.” The study focused on “Manual scavenging” – the cleaning of human waste from open roads and dry pit latrines by communities considered low-caste – [that] is still being practiced by hundreds of thousands of people in India” The report was released August 25th. It is one of sorrow and deep social injustice.
A second American has died fighting for the terrorist organization ISIS, or Islamic State — a group that is so extreme and bloodthirsty that even Al Qaeda leaders have stood against it. The latest American to die is Abdiraaman Muhumed from Minneapolis, who notably left behind nine children to seek paradise in martyrdom as a terrorist.
Deputy Senate Speaker Roberto Calderoli (and Senator from the The Northern League and once Minister of Reforms under the center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi in 2006) may not appeal to many Italians. He is viewed as xenophobic and racist. He insults groups with remarkable frequency and . . . oh yes . . . he says that he is possessed. That’s right, Calderoli believed that he has been hexed by the father of the the Minister of Integration and wants an emergency exorcism from the Church.
Continue reading “Campaigning on Hope and Change? Italian Politician Asks For Exorcism By Pope”
Continue reading “Was Billy Crystal’s Tribute To Robin Williams Racist?”
Burger King is close to a deal that would acquire Tim Horton’s (Canada’s huge corporate version of Dunkin’ Donuts). It is more than a corporate expansion however. The move would allow Burger King to justify a “tax inversion” where an American company merges with a foreign company and then reincorporates abroad to fell under a more beneficial corporate tax rate. So long as shareholders of the Canadian companies end up owning at least 20% of the shares of the new parent company, you can escape the high corporate tax rate. I have previously criticized the corporate tax rate — and tax policies in general — as irrational in light of the lower rates in nearby countries. During the last campaign, even Obama admitted that our corporate tax rate is too high but there was never action to reduce it. The White House however recently asked for legislation to stop the inversion maneuver while Senator Sherrod Brown is calling for a boycott of Burger King.
China appears to be close to one of the greatest technological breakthroughs in military history: the supersonic submarine. I know that that sounds ridiculous but it is possible. As a military buff, I had to share the story. The submarine is based on “supercavitation” technology that was used earlier on torpedo technology but the Chinese have reportedly used to envelop an entire submarine that could theoretically allow it to cover the distance between Shanghai to San Francisco in less than two hours. If that (likely hyperbolic claim) is attainable, it would constitute less time than it sometimes takes to just get through the security line at Dulles International airport (of course some international flights seem shorter than TSA lines these days). It is not clear what the submarine would look like (this is a conventional nuclear Chinese submarine).