England has seen the rise of calls for speech prosecutions, including calls from powerful politicians for crackdowns on insulting or offensive comments. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). The rapid decline of free speech in England has been both chilling and frightening for civil libertarians as the country appears to have abandoned this once defining right of Western Civilization. Now, a Manchester man reportedly has been arrested and sentenced for making “grossly offensive” comments about Muslims on Facebook. Stephen Bennett, 39, (who has a Muslim mother-in-law and sister-in-law) has been sentenced to 180 hours of unpaid work and a 12-month community order for expressing his views.
Category: International
Many have criticized NBC for its dismal coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Rio Olympics for inane comments, numerous commercials interruptions, and a bizarre decision to repeatedly play over the ceremony music with an interview from one of the creators on the “vision” underlying the ceremony (that NBC was not showing). Whether it is the general controversy over the selection of Rio or the NBC coverage problems, the viewers are not tuning in — at least thus far. The ratings are substantially below those of 2012 and 2008. Indeed, the rating are even below 1992 levels.
Continue reading “Rio Olympics Ratings Plunge To Levels Below 1992 in Barcelona”
Below is my column in USA Today on the history of corruption and negligence at the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) remains a troubled (and frankly troubling) international organization. After this column ran, a new doping scandal emerged around the Kenyan Olympic team. Here is the column:
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor.
One of the reasons I seldom watch television is that I’ve grown tired of having my intelligence insulted by ever increasing numbers of childish, and inane commercials which offer nothing of substance to convince me why I must buy their product or service. The mindset and goal of advertisers to race to the lowest common denominator who they perceive lacks the capacity to think for themselves.
Yet one possible relief from the deluge of televisions scorns such as the endless sitcoms, television shopping networks, religious charlatans, and political advertisements, could be found in the modern epic and magnificent Olympic Games, with its spectacular and well choreographed performances, light, movement, and cultural flavor of the host nations. The tradition of bring the flame and the showing of the athleticism and conglomeration of the peoples of the world surely brings a true sense of awe and wonder to those ancients if somehow they blessed the clairvoyance to envision what would become of theirs millennia later.
Eighty years ago, the Games of the XI Olympiad was the first to feature a television broadcast bringing forth to an eventual world wide audience the ability to witness the Olympics without the burden and cost of live attendance. Unfortunately, it has given rise to the sports broadcaster style of news, the dark side of which is the seemingly endless need to describe the minutia in every detail, flapping jaws incessantly, and often destroying the poignancy of the moment. We the audience are capable of understanding what we witness. So to all the Olympics broadcasters of the world, do us a favor–Shut UP!
Continue reading “Attention Broadcasters Of The Olympics Worldwide: SHUT UP!”
A new video is circulating on the Internet showing Sheikh Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric in Syria affiliated with al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, sending out young Muslims to die in the battle for Aleppo with the promise of 72 virgins who are so beautiful that they can simply spit in the sea and turn it sweet. They also apparently release perfume when you hug them. There are many Muslims who insist that the 72 virgin claim is a myth started by anti-Islamic forces.
Iran has given the world another outrage in its enforcement of the medieval Islamic Sharia law. The victim was Hassan Afshar, 19, who was hanged for what the Sharia court called “forced male-to-male anal intercourse.” Afshar insisted that that the sex was consensual, though in Iran you can also be executed for simply being homosexual — as we have previously discussed.
Continue reading “Iran Executes Gay Teenager Under Islamic Sharia Law”
There is a rather bizarre lawsuit in France that is likely to reaffirm the view of many that the French labor force is noncompetitive due to long-standing expectations of employees about mandatory work conditions, vacations, and protections. Frederic Desnard wants 360,000 euros (£300,000) under a claim of a “bore out” or boredom’s equivalent of burnout.
Continue reading “Bore Out: French Executive Sues Over Boring Work Conditions”
With states and cities struggling to support schools, infrastructure and other basic necessities, our government continues to spend wildly and wastefully with little political accountability. The latest such example is the $1.4 billion dollars spent on abstinence-only education as an effort to reduce the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa from 2004-2013. A new study shows that the program never showed any success and yet the government continued to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Africa because the program was politically attractive.
Continue reading “Report: United States Wasted $1.4 Billion on Abstinence Education in Africa”
Australian customers should have some legitimate questions about the sanitization of the Hungry Jack restaurant outside of Perth. It appears that a man died of a drug overdose in a toilet but was not found for roughly three days by the Australian franchise of Burger King. In a remarkable statement, the police have said that finding a man dead after three days in a toilet is “not being treated as suspicious.” I certainly understand the lack of a suspicion of a crime but at least we could agree that it is a bit curious.
Continue reading “Corpse Left For Three Days In Hungry Jack Restaurant Bathroom”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Having seen recent events culminating with the failed coup to oust Turkish leader Erdogan and the onset of his Orwellian crackdown against the judiciary, academics and any others perceived to be a threat to his increasingly autocratic rule, the time has come for the United States and subsequently the NATO alliance to reconsider whether Turkey is stable enough to host a nuclear stockpile.
New Yorker Magazine, quoting Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, Incirlik Airbase holds about fifty B-61 thermonuclear bombs–more than twenty-five percent of the nuclear weapons in the NATO stockpile. The dial-a-yield of these bombs can be adjusted from 0.3 kilotons to as many as one hundred seventy kilotons. For comparison, the yield of the Little Boy device that destroyed Hiroshima is estimated at fifteen kilotons.
During the coup attempt, the Turkish government closed Incirlik to all travel and cut off its power, forcing operations command to rely on back-up generators. The base’s commander was temporarily detained. The coup only hastened and to a much greater extent expanded the suppression of civil liberties and dissent.
The Erdogan government accuses dissident Fethullah Gulen, currently living in exile within the United States, of organizing the coup and warned the United States that it would be making a “great mistake” if extradition was not granted.
The dictatorial becoming of Mr. Ergodan should come as a strong worry especially when met with the inevitable backlash against his rule could pose a risk of proliferation if these weapons are not secured.
Continue reading “The US Should Consider Removing Nukes From Turkey”
Zahra is a young girl who should be known to every person cares about liberty and the plight of young girls in many traditional Islamic areas. Zahra wanted to go to school and follow her dream but she lived in Afghanistan where girls are often treated like commodities. She ended up being transferred to a family as part of a dowry at 11 and married off while in the sixth grader. She was later allegedly burned alive and died in a Kabul hospital — she was four months pregnant. The reason was that the family (which reportedly beat her savagely) was mad that she was not working hard enough.
We have followed the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has single-handedly destroyed Turkey’s secular traditions and rolled back on civil liberties. With the support of Islamic parties, Erdogan used the recent failed coup to complete his work in arresting his critics, forcing the resignation of thousands of secular academics, and suspending all civil liberties in a proclaimed state of emergency. The United States helped create the tyranny rising in Turkey in its support of Erdogan as he systemically dismantled the only secular, free country in the Arab world. Now, Erdogan is threatening the United States that he wants his greatest critic, US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, delivered to him and that a failure to yield to his demands would be a “big mistake.” Now, one could easily dismiss this threat as the ravings of an egomaniacal, delusional dictator with a persecution complex. However, Erdogan already forced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to reject basic free speech rights to appease him.
Saudi Arabia’s top Islamic clerics have renewed a prior religious edict or fatwa that warns against playing Pokemon in order to expressly denounce the playing of the wildly popular mobile phone application Pokemon Go as UnIslamic and evil. This will come as a shock to my kids and their cousins who recently coerced me to drive around the neighborhood to bag a few Pokemon (while correctly me that it is not pronounced “pokeMAN.”) One would have hoped that with Sunni following the Saudi Wahhabi sect beheading people and enslaving girls, Pokemon Go would seem fairly low on the list of “to do” subjects for clerics.
Continue reading “Saudi Arabian Muslim Clerics Issue Fatwa Against Pokemon Go”
We previously discussed how Turkey’s rising dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was likely to use the failed military coup to complete his objective to become a virtual dictator (backed by Islamist parties). That dire prediction appears to be fast becoming true with a roundup of thousands and the declaration of a state of emergency. Turkish academics have also been banned from leaving the country. Of course, Erdogan has offered his usual Orwellian rationization for the three-month state of emergency as necessary to protect civil liberties by suspending them “to eliminate the threat to democracy in our country, the rule of law, and the rights and freedom of our citizens.” With that, and the support of his Islamist allies who passed sweeping new powers for the budding Sultan, Erdogan suspended civil liberties in Turkey. In the meantime, women have reportedly avoided the streets because of being targeted by Erdogan’s Islamist supporters.
Connor Lloyd, 20, is someone who has as little judgment as he does self-control. That would explain first taking police on a high speed chase in Cambridge and then, after he escaped, he posted his route and bragged on social media. He is now going to jail.
Continue reading “Englishman Takes Police On 100MPH Chase and Then Posts Route On Social Media”