Kuwait is reportedly developing a test that it says will be able to “detect” homosexuals to prevent their entry into that country and other Gulf nations. It is perfectly bizarre, but Kuwait believes that it is possible to have some type of anti-gay detection system. It is not clear what type of test it would be since, despite stereotypes, leaving a Barbra Streisand album in the middle of a rope snare on the floor of the terminal may not catch all gay men. (Indeed, as a Broadway show fan, I would be the first hanging upside down in the Kuwait airport clutching a copy of Funny Girl). I have long wondered where all of those phrenologists went after the collapse of their “science” in the detection of criminals from head shapes.
Category: Religion
We previously discussed a lawsuit against retailer Abercrombie & Fitch over a rule barring the wearing of religious headscarves in their business. Now the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has handed down an important decision in favor of the store involving a woman in Tulsa Oklahoma who said that she was passed over for a job due to her religious dress. The federal government supported Samantha Elauf, 17, in her claim of discrimination, but the court ruled 3-0 against the arguments of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Continue reading “Abercrombie Wins Appeal Over Employee’s Right To Wear Headscarf”
The effort by Muslim countries to curtail free speech in the name of their religion continues. While the Obama Administration has sought to appease these countries in developing an international blasphemy standard, this case shows how even the more modern Islamic countries (as well as Western countries) are finding blasphemy to be a useful vehicle to control speech and silence critics. The latest attack comes from Qatar which has proposed a ban that would allow for the prosecution of people in other countries. That’s right, our allies are creating laws to allow them to prosecute people for insulting religion outside their own countries.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
That was the answer from a Hobby Lobby employee when asked where the Hanukkah goods were. The response was explained with a call to the Marlboro, New Jersey store: “Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.” Hobby Lobby is an Oklahoma-based private company founded by David Green, who is known for applying “Christian values” in the running of his company. Christian hatred of Judaism and Jews has many origins, one of which can be found in the New Testament. While the Romans actually crucified Jesus, it is the Jews who have gotten the blame. The Gospels turned out to be good news for the Romans.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
A lynchpin of the idea of America has been the meme “freedom of the press”. It is specifically mentioned in the First Amendment and many have declared it essential as a bulwark against tyranny. The Constitution, however, was written at the time when it took little expense to produce a newspaper or a one sheet broadside informing the people about one’s point of view. It was a time that had no media except for the print media and so “the press” as it existed then played a central role in informing the citizenry about the important issues of the time. From 1704 on the regular newspapers and magazines in the colonies had begun to charge for advertising, but the price of a paper still was the most significant revenue stream. While press freedom always was impacted by the major advertisers a paper had, the impact was quite minimal for more than 150 years, most importantly because each newspaper reflected its publisher’s point of view and that was the raison d’etre for the publishers. Then too, one could publish independent leaflets (broadsides) that could also sway the public discourse. Print media, which mainly included newspapers and magazines held sway as the conduit through which most Americans learned of the doings of the world and from which they formed their opinions politically. This “monopoly” last until the late 1930’s when the CBS and NBC radio networks started developing correspondents to go overseas and cover the world descending into war.
Depending on which side you were on the tradition of American journalism was a long and proud one. It played a significant role in the American Revolution and continued to do so for long afterward. The “free press” almost always took sides in that certain publications were known for their views and from what point on the political spectrum they saw the world. Investigative reporting was a proud American tradition, protected in the main by our Constitution and exposing the dark underside of America’s dream. The reader either is aware of, or can easily find instances where such reporting made a difference in the “people’s view” of a given issue and so I won’t detail the history except broadly. Sometimes, such as in William Randolph Hearst’s manufacture of the “The Spanish American War”, this press freedom was used in service of private interests. At other times with journalists like Lincoln Steffens; Ida B. Wells; Ambrose Bierce; Upton Sinclair; and Jacob Riis; to name a few, the public was informed of corruption both public and private in a long tradition dating back to the founding of this country. Whether one agreed, or disagreed with the information source, one could depend on the fact that given the already obvious point of view of the journalist/reporter, what they were reading was indeed a nuanced version of the facts that at least properly developed one side of the issue. The advent of first Radio and then Television supplanting the print media as the source of information for most Americans led to a trend in so-called “objective journalism” that has resulted in reporters/journalists/newsreaders presenting “both” sides of a dispute, without insight or context. Its’ my contention, as I’ll explain, that this has become very dangerous to the idea of an informed electorate and has resulted in sensationalistic bombast on a given issue, rather than intelligent debate allowing the public to make informed judgments as to where they stand. Continue reading “The Decline of Journalism”
The Saudi legal system is back in the news today with another report of an abomination from the Sharia-based courts in the Kingdom. It appears that Saudi judges do not want to be outdone by the punishment against woman videotaped dancing in the rain. According to this report, a Saudi court has sentenced four men to up to 10 years in prison and 2000 lashes for the crime of dancing “naked” in public. Like the women in Pakistan, the men were left exposed due to a posting on YouTube. The medieval Sharia legal system took it from there.
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Arkansas will soon be called to be witnesses of a different kind for John Baldwin, 35. Baldwin is charged with aggravated assault after firing 13 times at the Jehovah’s Witnesses who approached him in his front yard. After Baldwin told Laura Goforth, 47, and Rachel Boshears, 55, to get off his lawn, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were leaving when one of them heard Baldwin tell his wife “Get me my 9.” (A referenced to his Springfield XDM-9). While Isaiah 43:10 may proclaim “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen,” these pious folk will soon be called by a more earthly authority to bear witness.
Al Arabiya is reporting a bizarre warning issue by a leading Muslim cleric that women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and pelvises and birth defects. The announcement from Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan comes as women continue to demand to be able to drive in the Kingdom and international pressure is growing for Saudi to make fundamental reforms. Judging from today’s other Saudi story, I thought the greatest danger was the religious police on the roads.
We have long covered the abuses of the Saudi Arabian religious police known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. These are the religious fanatics who reportedly forced girls back into a burning school in Mecca because they were not sufficiently covered in public — 15 died as a result. When they are not apparently burning girls, they are forcing women to cover up “attractive eyes” or shutting down dinosaur exhibits or shutting down lingerie stores or arresting women having coffee. When it comes to their own crimes, however, they appear less committed to harsh Sharia punishment. A young Saudi was killed in a car chase last week trying to flee the religious police. After he crashed, the police fled the scene.
The hatred for educators by Islamic extremists is well-known. It is difficult to keep people in a pre-historic mindset if they attend schools that open them up to the world and different ideas. For that reason, students and academics are routinely targeted in various Muslim countries for acid attacks, bombings, and shootings. However, even with this history, the slaughter last week in Nigeria is breathtaking. Some 50 students are dead, including some burned to death in the name of Islam by these extremists who use religion as an excuse for murder.
Continue reading “Islamic Militants Kill Dozens Of Students and A Priest in Nigeria”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
You may be wondering who is this person named Rouhani and why would it be hard to call him/her on the phone? Would you think differently if you knew that Rouhani is Hassan Rouhani and he is the current President of Iran? As reported this past week, after President Obama and President Rouhani had both spoken at the United Nations in New York City, it was rumored that the two might actually meet in person.
While that meeting did not take place, it was reported that President Obama actually called President Rouhani on the telephone. As you can imagine, it was considered a big deal in the media that the Presidents of the United States and Iran had actually spoken on the telephone. On one level, I can understand the importance of the first direct contact between the heads of these two countries since 1979. Additionally, in light of the level of sabre rattling over Syria recently and Iran constantly, I guess it is a big deal..sort of. Continue reading “Was It Really So Hard To Pick Up The Phone And Call Rouhani?”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 83. Adjunct professors at Duquesne make between $3000 and $3500 per semester per course. In the best of times, Margaret Mary, teaching three course, wasn’t even clearing $25,000 a year with no benefits and no job security. After Duquesne reduced her to one course, Margaret Mary couldn’t afford to pay the electricity bill and her home became uninhabitable in the winter.
Continue reading “Duquesne University Professor Dies In Abject Poverty”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
When 1965 dawned I was about to be twenty one years old and in my Junior Year in college. My parents were dead years past and I lived in a furnished room off campus, supporting myself by working 35 hours per week in a liquor store. The Viet Nam War was heating up and the civil rights of Black people, then called “negroes”, was the big issue of the day thanks to the inspired leadership of Martin Luther King. My parents had been Leftists in both words and deeds, which of course influenced my political leanings, because I loved and admired them greatly. JFK had been the great hope for a country recovering from the conformity of the 50’s, but he was murdered. Yet working and going to school full time, dating and hanging out with friends, gave me little time for political activity. The year before I had attended the organizing meeting for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) on my college campus, but while I found the ideas stimulating, the organizer from national SDS seemed to be quite full of himself and an ass to boot. My economics professor had discussed Viet Nam disparagingly and predicted a costly war being pursued because of mineral rights off the coast of that country. His foreboding about the War proved to be correct. People peacefully demonstrating for an end to “Jim Crow” were being beaten and being murdered. The seamy underpinnings of our “exceptional” society were being exposed and the hypocrisy of it all was running rampant
Musically, the Beatles had pushed Folk Music somewhat to the side, yet there was still great popularity for it among the “intelligentsia”, or those who thought themselves “intellectuals”. The “enfant terrible” of folk music was of course young Bob Dylan, who scandalized the “folkies” when he moved to electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in Forest Hills Stadium. He released a song that year becoming his first single record to hit the “Top Forty” charts. I think this song ranks among his most prescient works and that I’ve used part of it to title this piece. The song was listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as the 332nd “Greatest Song of All Time”, but in my life it has had much greater influence. I was a young adult orphan, without the guidance and love of my parents, living in a world of ever-increasing complexity. Many of my generation, myself included, turned to popular music for guidance. The Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” not only offered guidance for navigating this ever stranger land that America was becoming, but also predicted many of the “changes” to this country that we discuss here on this blog and to my mind achieves greatness because of Dylan’s foresight. Let me explain. Continue reading ““You don’t need a weatherman, To know which way the wind blows””
http://www.contactmusic.com/video/bob-dylan-subterranean-homesick-blues
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Author’s Note: Grace Under Pressure is an on-going series of posts honoring everyday people who courageously make positive differences in their own lives and consequently in the lives of others. It is my own personal affirmation that unexpected heroes reside among us and that they serve as quiet but unshakable proof that virtue really is its own reward – and ours, too.
4-year-old Meredith was heartbroken over the loss of her dog, Abbey. The dog,a black lab, was a member of her family for a decade before Meredith was born and became a fixture in her young life. The day after the tragedy, Meredith’s mom came up with a wonderful way to console her daughter. She and Meredith decided to send a letter to Heaven announcing Abbey’s homecoming. Meredith wanted to make sure God recognized her friend amid all the new arrivals:
Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? Abbey died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I ‘m happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. I hope you will play with her. She likes to swim and play with balls. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.
Love, Meredith
Continue reading “Grace Under Pressure: The Letter From God”