When Free Speech and Islam Collide
February 24, 2012 by Rob L. Wagner
Internet café in Saudi Arabia. Image via Kami ArabianEye/Redux
Demands for religious and speech freedoms in Saudi Arabia have taken a heightened tone of urgency in the Western media following Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari’s ill-advised tweets allegedly denigrating God and the Prophet Muhammad. Imaginary conversations with the Prophet, deemed an insult in Islam, landed Kashgari in jail pending trial for blasphemy. Kashgari’s remarks have sparked outrage in the West over how a man’s seemingly crisis of faith could lead to a death sentence. Yet there is little to debate in Saudi Arabia: Blasphemous statements require harsh punishment.
Kashgari had the poor judgment to tweet imaginary conservations with the Prophet with statements that included, “On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.”
Congressman Kingston’s Irresponsible Letter on Sri Lanka
February 24, 2012 by Gibson Bateman
Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) far right. Image via Talk Radio News Service
U.S. Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA) recently submitted a bipartisan letter to President Barack Obama. Cosigned by eleven other members of Congress, it effusively praises the Sri Lankan government for all of its accomplishments since end of the country’s twenty-six-year civil war.
The short note is heavy on rhetoric and light on reality. It talks about the enormous potential for a strengthening of US-Sri Lankan relations, going on to use words like “post-conflict,” while congratulating Rajapaksa’s semi-authoritarian regime for doing such a good job of resettling IDPs, among other misperceptions. Perhaps the most absurd part of the letter is the following:
Trouble in Euro Zone Paradise?
February 24, 2012 by Marshall Auerback
Deutsche Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann in London. Image via Chatham House
The Europeans evidently thrive on instability and the ongoing threat of systemic risk.
There is nothing else to explain the renewed hardline stance adopted by both Mario Draghi of the ECB and the German government on fiscal policy, just as the markets appeared to be calming down again. In response to the question as to whether Greece was a “one-off”, or a deal which would presage similar claims on the part of the other Mediterranean debtor nations, there has been a growing prevailing belief that either the terms demanded of Greece would be so punitive (“pour decourager les autres”) or that, if Greece were to default, a sufficiently large firewall would be constructed by the Troika to ensure that the contagion wouldn’t extend to other countries.
The Post-WWI Years and the 21st Century
February 24, 2012 by William Eger
Cpl. Theodore Criswell, with 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines, stands guard at a checkpoint in Helmand province, Afghanistan, on March 10, 2012. Criswell is assigned as the vehicle commander and fire team leader during the mission conducted in order to talk with local Afghans
The world today and the world immediately before the Second World War are strikingly similar. The military and foreign policy of the United States today is comparable to the close-minded introversion of isolationism. European countries are teetering on the brink of economic collapse. The German industrial juggernaut has reignited. The announced rearmament of Russia resembles that of the former Soviet Union, during and immediately after the First World War.
Finally, we observe a tedious relationship between the West and those of the Middle East and Africa. The situation could result in the same dire consequences as it did some seventy-five years ago.
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