The beating of women in Islamic countries remains a serious concern, particularly after Islamic clerics advised men how to beat their spouses in Islamically correct ways (here and here and here). With the rise of Islamic parties in Morocco, women are particularly concerned. This concern was magnified recently with the airing of a state television program on how women can use makeup to cover bruises left by domestic violence.
Category: International
I have previously posted haka videos, which I find endlessly fascinating. However, this wedding videotape is a must see, particularly when the groom and bride join in.
Continue reading “No Wedding Is Truly Complete Without A Haka”
Longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro is dead at age 90. While many around the world spoke highly of Castro’s success in greatly reducing illiteracy and proving basic services like health care, I have long been critical of his reign and his enablers in the West. Whatever success he achieved, he did so through a brutal dictatorship that denied freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other basic civil liberties. For those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s, he was a defining character of our generation. The menace across the border. When we were being taught to shelter under our desks in any nuclear attack, it was his image with that of the Soviet premier that would be flashed across the screen. It was a time of utter madness and mania — on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Continue reading “DEATH OF A DICTATOR: FIDEL CASTRO DEAD AT AGE 90”
We have yet another example of the barbaric application of Islamic Sharia law — a medieval system that is used in many Muslim nations to impose Islamic values on citizens. The latest example comes from Saudi Arabia where two women were sentenced by a Sharia “judge” to 20 lashes after having been found guilty of using bad language over WhatsApp.
Continue reading “Saudi Sharia Court Orders Two Women Flogged For Over Bad Language on Social Media”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel long ago established herself as a menace to free speech, particularly in her decision to first apologize to authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a satirical poem and then approve the prosecution of the comedian is a shocking and chilling disgrace. Now, she is throwing her support behind a crackdown on “hate speech” on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — radically expanding the already broad scope of government regulation of speech.
Continue reading “Merkel Backs Crackdown on Free Speech On Social Media Sites”
We have followed the actions of various universities and colleges to bar conservative speech either by declaring their positions as hate speech or claiming a campus security risk. One of the targets of this content-based censorship has been conservative British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos. Now, Yiannopoulos, 32, has been barred from speaking at his own former grammar school in the United Kingdom: Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury.
We have previously discussed how some European countries limit the names that can be given to chidren, including some with approved lists of names. We have seen such controversies arise in this country with children, for example, named after Adolph Hitler. However, this generally remains a protected right of parents in the United States. The latest case comes out of France where a court will decide whether a Muslim family can use the name of Mohamed Merah, an Islamic radical who killed seven people in 2012.
Continue reading “French Parents Fight To Give Infant The Name of Notorious Terrorist”
Dubai has been promoting its country as a vacation spot to the world — a rather implausible destination for most. Attracting Western tourists to a country that follows Muslim rules is a hard sell. That was driven home by the latest outrage from an Islamic legal system after Zara-Jayne Moisey, 25, reported her gang rape and gave the names of her attackers (two British men). Dubai police responded by allowing the alleged rapists to leave the country and then arrested Moisey for criminal extra-marital sex. Welcome to Dubai, the desert paradise.
We have yet another example of how our government has thrown away billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan without any discipline or repercussions for federal officials or contractors. The latest example is the “ghost hotel” of Kabul — a massive construction site for the Marriott Kabul that has never been completed but the taxpayer money has checked out without a trace. Just poof. It could be the perfect place for our ghost army to vacation at our ghost hotel.
We have been discussing the trend of firings and discipline for public employees who say or do controversial things in their private lives. We have previously seen teachers, students and other public employees fired for their private speech or conduct, including school employees fired for posing in magazines, appearing on television shows in bikinis, or having a career in the adult entertainment industry. Now there is an interesting twist on this trend out of India where two police officers — Dinesh Rathod and Tarkeshwari Rathod — have been suspended after police determined that they had lied. No, not about a crime scene or investigation. They lied that they had scaled Mount Everest.
Continue reading “Two Indian Police Officers Suspended For Faking Picture Climbing Mount Everest”
Germany has introduced the hydrogen-based Coradia iLint which will be the world’s first zero-emission passenger train. It will only release steam and represents another towering victory for the Germans in reducing pollution and fighting climate change.
Continue reading “Not Your Grandfather’s Steam Engine: Germany Introduces The Coradia iLint”
Israeli Deputy Minister for Regional Cooperation Ayoob Kara appears to hold a view of the Almighty as petty and capricious as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte . The Druze-Israeli Likud politician has declared that the two earthquakes in Italy this week were divine “retribution” for Italy’s support of the UNESCO resolution critical of Israel over its handling of a holy site in Jerusalem.
As our presidential campaign de-evolves into petty name calling and calls for prosecution, the French are having a quintessentially French scandal of their own. French presidential hopeful Jean-François Copé has found himself in deep fondue after admitting that he did not know the price of pain au chocolat and then radically understated the price. Sacre Bleu. The French have not been so incensed since “The Terrors” and many have denounced Copé as an out-of-touch elitist.
Continue reading “Let Them Eat Pain Au Chocolat: French Presidential Candidate Triggers Controversy Over The Price of Pastries”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte seems to be on a campaign to prove to the world that he is demonstrably insane. In his latest news grabbing headline, Duterte claims God spoke to him during a flight from Japan on Thursday and warned him the plane would crash if he kept using bad language. That’s right. The Almighty will not kill Duterte for ordering the murdering of thousands of criminal suspects, but he would not only kill Duterte but everyone on his plane because he really, really, really does not like swearing.
Continue reading “Duterte Claims Divine Guidance . . . and A Lethal Threat”
The Wikileaks disclosures continue to hound the Clintons and the recent release implicates the relationship between Bill Clinton and for-profit educational company, Laureate International. I previously wrote about the huge payments given to Bill Clinton by Laureate, a controversial global educational company that gave Clinton millions while his wife was Secretary of State. Now, emails reveal that one of Clinton’s closest aides, Doug Band, describes Bill Clinton’s use of the Clinton Foundation as a mean to secure personal windfalls as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”