Friday, February 20th, 2009
There was a marching protest today in front of the White House where activists shouted out for President Obama to “help us”; meaning to take the Tamil Tigers off the terrorist list.
The Tamil Tigers, according to Wikipedia:
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, Tamil: தமிழழவிடுதலைப்புலிகள் ISO 15919: tamiḻ iiḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, is a militant terrorist organization that has waged a violent secessionist campaign since the 1970s to secede from the Sri Lankan state in order to create a separate Tamil state in the north and east of the island. This campaign has developed into the Sri Lankan Civil War, one of longest running armed conflicts in Asia. Due to the tactics employed by the Tamil Tigers, including the extensive use of suicide bombing and their recruitment of child soldiers, they are currently proscribed as a terrorist organization by 32 countries. The Tamil Tigers are headed by their founder, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The Tamil Tigers are notorious for their well-developed militia cadre, atrocities against Muslim and Sinhalese civilians, and high profile attacks, such as the assassination of several high ranking Sri Lankan politicians, and the former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi. They also have the distinction of introducing suicide bombings as a tactic, and have carried out more suicide bombings than Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda combined. The LTTE have repeatedly been accused of recruiting child soldiers. The LTTE are the only rebel organization with aircraft.
In January 2009, Canada and the EU notably refused to take the group off its terrorist list, even while the EU agreed to remove the Mujahideen Organization of Iran. The U.S. has had the Tamil Tigers on its terrorist list since the 1990s.
European states agreed on Monday to remove exiled Iranian opposition group the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) from an EU list of banned terrorist groups, an EU official said.
The official confirmed that EU foreign ministers approved a decision to take it off a list that includes Palestinian Hamas and Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers.
The PMOI is the group which exposed Iran’s covert nuclear program in 2002. It began as a leftist-Islamist opposition to the late Shah of Iran and has bases in Iraq.
Waving today in the march were the flags of the U.S. and Canada, among others.
(link to short video clips of part of the procession)
Tamil Tiger Protest
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(Thanks to sanhedrin and waxpoet at Reddit for corrections/suggestions)
Tags: accused, activists, Asia, ban, bomb, campaign, Carrie, English, Europe, India, Iran, Iraq, islam, Islamic, minister, Muslim, Obama, president, Qaeda, suicide, war
Posted in Government | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
That was what we were told by our elected and/or appointed leaders when we invaded foreign countries. The United States is “spreading democracy”. Exactly how do we do that?
I realize that members of Al Qaeda plotted to attack symbols of the United States (World Trade Center, Pentagon) in the attempt to undo the foundation of our country, and that the controller of the plot was a potentate located in Afghanistan. Our invasion of Afghanistan was for the purposes of finding Osama bin Laden and for weeding out the taleban who ruled Afghanistan and who afforded bin Laden a safe haven. Spreading democracy was not likely the first or second goal we had, but how is it doing as a third goal?
In our primary goal to capture Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice, we have failed completely. We continue to be mocked by bin Laden whenever he chooses to issue a video update. His exact whereabouts may or may not be known, but the longer we go in capturing him not only points to our own impotence but bleeds time, energy and money from other things that could actually help our country. In our secondary goal to weed out the taleban from Afghanistan, we have largely failed. Sure, the taleban may not be in direct control of the government any longer, but the taleban cannot be eradicated. The taleban, however organized, represent a thought process. They can control from the top down, the bottom up or from the side. Apparently, the taleban continue to control Afghanistan from the side. A deep thought process still alive and well.
In the examination of our third goal, the spreading of democracy, we have failed once again. Today, we have in the news the story of Parwez Kambakhsh, a college student in Afghanistan who has been prosecuted for … guess … no really, take a guess. Oh, c’mon, what do you think he could be prosecuted for? Rape? Drugs? Theft? Securing materials to make bombs? No, no, no — nothing that exotic. No, today we have learned that Parwez was convicted of free speech. That’s right! What we consider the bedrock of democracy, the right of free speech as granted by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, has completely passed by the Afghan courts. They have convicted Parwez of blaspheming Islam because he asked questions about womens’ rights within Islam in a university class. I know what you are thinking — Parwez must have done something else, something more extreme? Well, yes, he did. He printed an article from the Internet that asks many of the same questions and [illegally] distributed that article.
What the hell is happening here? Our government spends billions every month to occupy two countries for the purpose of spreading democracy and we have yet another example of how the basic tenets of democracy that we cherish are flagrantly ignored by the courts of another country. We have been in Afghanistan for seven years — just how long does it take to instill in another culture the basic civil rights and basic premises of democracy? Worse, and as a matter of high protest, the courts in Afghanistan can take action on a blasphemy of religion. That’s not just a violation of the First Amendment, it’s a repudiation of it. This is what religion offers. There is no equality in religion. It is impossible. The Afghan courts are essentially arms of the taleban — we didn’t weed out the taleban, we just moved them over to the side and put them in a place where they can control the law.
We need to get out of Afghanistan (and Iraq) as quickly as possible. We obviously are completely incompetent in meeting any of our goals and we are wasting money that we could desperately use for ourselves. A friend of mine used to say frequently when faced by an impossible circumstance, “You can’t teach a pig to sing. It just frustrates you and it annoys the pig.” Let’s stop trying to teach the pig to sing.
Spreading Democracy
Tags: Afghan, Afghanistan, Amendment, Asia, ban, blasphemy, bomb, Civil Rights, CNN, Constitution, Democracy, First Amendment, foundation, free speech, Government, Iraq, islam, journalism, Law, legal, Qaeda, rape, Religion, rights, United States
Posted in Atheism, Government, Morality, Religion | 9 Comments »
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
If you keep up on the latest travel destinations, chances are you’ve heard the name “Dubai” popping up a lot more often. The most populous city of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai has lately been on the front line of cultural growth, with new hotels popping up all the time where tourists can enjoy free-flowing alcohol before heading off to the beach in skimpy bikinis. Sometimes called the Las Vegas of the Middle East, Dubai has been selling itself as the latest and greatest party hot spot, a liberal oasis among such conservative countries as Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is forbidden and even foreign women are required to wear enveloping black robes when in public.
What you’ve probably not heard, however, is that beneath the coat of shiny, liberal paint lies a legal culture based on strict Muslim laws. Two Britons, Michelle Palmer, a Dubai resident, and Vince Acors, a visiting tourist, have recently been made painfully aware of this fact. The two met at an all-you-can-drink champagne brunch and later made their way to the beach, where an unidentified resident reported them to the police for indecent behavior. After spending a night in jail, they were released but forbidden from leaving the country until a court could determine their fate. Though they both maintain they did not have intercourse, in Dubai, even holding hands, hugging, and kissing in public are against the law.
Under charges of having sex before marriage, public indecency, and drunkenness, a Dubai judge today sentenced them each to three months in jail, a $350 fine, and deportation from Dubai after serving their sentences. Ms. Palmer has already been fired from the job she has held for several years in Dubai’s publishing industry. The judge faced pressure from all sides in deciding this case, which could have potentially carried sentences of up to two years imprisonment. On the one hand is the indigenous population, which has long raised objections to what they consider to be the city’s culture tipping in favor of foreigners. Although Emiratis make up only 15 to 20 percent of the population of Dubai, which is primarily comprised of Asian migrant workers, Western expatriates, and tourists, they feel that their religious values ought to be enforced on everyone, and the laws currently stand in their favor. On the other hand is the government, which doesn’t want to deter tourists from travelling to the area. The possibility of being arrested for holding hands with someone doesn’t exactly look nice on a travel brochure.
The government, however, have themselves recently been bending to the pressure placed on them by the indigenous population. A few days after Palmer and Acors were arrested, the police force stepped up its efforts, detaining dozens of people, the vast majority of whom were tourists, for topless sunbathing and other acts deemed “indecent.” The government has also tightened its immigration rules, visa policies, and work permits. What this essentially boils down to is this: Dubai cannot have its cake and eat it, too. If they want to be on the cutting edge of liberal tourist destinations, they are going to have to reform their laws. The extremely unfortunate Ms. Palmer and Mr. Acors have brought Dubai’s strict Islamic laws to light, and the glittery paint on the city has been tarnished. In a way, perhaps this is a step in the right direction, as the public eye is now focused, not just on the fancy hotels and sunny beaches, but on the potentially serious consequences of participating in what would be normal, everyday behavior in many cultures. Dubai’s tourism economy will likely suffer as a result, and perhaps I’m being optimistic, but maybe they will be forced to examine their laws and how other cultures are affected by them. I, for one, will not be travelling to Dubai anytime soon.
-Laura
Tags: Acors, Arab, Asia, Asian, Britons, Carrie, conservative, economy, Government, islam, Islamic, Law, legal, liberal, MSNBC, Muslim, NBC, police, rules, Saudi, sex, Vegas, war
Posted in Government, Morality, Religion | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 17th, 2008
The 23rd World Youth Day celebrations are currently being hosted in Sydney, Australia from the 15th to the 20th of July. The official World Youth Day (WYD) 2008 site describes it as “the largest youth event in the world… attended by the Pope and hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the globe… to celebrate and learn about their faith on a more regular basis”. It is the religious equivalent of a week-long music festival, complete with services, entertainment acts, a welcome from the Prime Minister, and Pope Benedict XVI’s first official public appearance in Australia ever to an anticipated crowd of 500,000.
The estimate of the taxpayer cost for this event is currently at AU$160 million with AU$86 million coming from the NSW state government, well beyond the proportion of funds contributed by past host cities. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is putting forward only AU$115 million, with AU$75 million expected to be recouped from attendance fees. The number of people converging on the CBD is expected to go well beyond that experienced in the 2000 Olympics. Road closures and disruptions are expected to exceed the inconveniences caused during the 2007 APEC summit, and the lead-up to the event was beset by anxieties over the ability of Sydney’s underfunded infrastructure to cope with the load of so much human traffic.
While this all might suggest that Australia is quite fond of organised religion, particularly Roman Catholicism, the statistical data evinces a different scenario. Though Catholicism is the largest denomination in Sydney, it is still only a minority of less than 30%. This year, an international study revealed many striking features of religion in Australia, including the significantly high rate of nominalism in Catholics. 31% of Australians said they lacked a belief in any god, making Australia the fourth least religious nation out of 21 in the study. General interest in religion and religious issues also recorded significantly low. Unsurprisingly, youth were found to be the least religious of all.
In such an unsuitable environment for an event promoting religion to the masses, the clandestine introduction of special police powers for World Youth Day has proved to be widely unpopular. Using a cleverly arranged legal loop-hole that bypassed parliamentary scrutiny, the deputy Premier gazetted new regulations on June 25, that allowed for a AU$5,500 fine to anyone who “causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event”. The word “annoyance” was vague enough to endanger people’s right to demonstrate and campaign during the event. Members of Broken Rites, a support group for church sex abuse victims, reported being approached by police to have their banners and placards pre-approved for their intended demonstration. The NoToPope coalition expressed concern that they would not be allowed to hand out condoms and protest papal doctrines on sexuality. The consequence of this law that was most widely publicised was that merely wearing a shirt with an anti-catholic or anti-WYD slogan could result in fine or arrest. In response to this, the NoToPope coalition staged a “fashion show” in front of State Parliament, displaying a range of potentially offensive shirts.
The government attempted to justify these laws as nothing out of the ordinary, comparing them to the sort of controls used at sporting events, but as Stephen Blanks of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties has pointed out, normally such laws would apply to all sports spectators, not just those supporting the visiting team. It seems that the state government is eager to avoid a repeat of last year’s embarrassment during APEC, where a comedy team made it through two police checkpoints in a fake motorcade, carrying one of their members dressed as Osama bin Laden. They were let off on all charges due to the role that police complacency played in the incident.
Finally, on Tuesday this week, a court ruling deemed the term “annoyance” to be invalid, due to its propensity to outlaw almost behaviour as trivial as tying a shoelace. However, it did not remove the term “inconvenience” from the law, which the Premier claimed was good enough to embue police with the power to suppress undesirable behaviour.
With growing mass dissent and a lack of religious zealotry, it is puzzling to many why Sydney was made to bear this burden at all. Premier Iemma’s main incentive to the public is a promised boost of AU$200 million to the local economy. Retailers don’t seem convinced, however, including the CEO of Myer who predicts losses around $20 million dollars due to their business. NSW Trainers Association says that the AU$41 million compensation deal that had to be struck in order to re-locate 700 horses from Randwick Racecourse will not cover all costs, nor will it justify the risk of a new outbreak of equine influenza which saw last year’s Spring Carnival cancelled. There have been reports that the sex industry can expect a surge in business thanks to non-catholic visitors accompanying World Youth Day, but even that prospect seems to be unsupported speculation.
Another proposed justification is as a sort of reciprocation for the contribution the Catholic Church makes to the community through hospitals and schools. State-funded hospitals contracted to the Catholic church often do not refer rape victims to rape counseling (because such services offer emergency contraception to victims), will not perform procedures such as vasectomies and abortions, and will often refuse to host IVF facilities. Like these hospitals, Catholic schools also receive significant amounts of public money- the government gives Catholic school students 73% as much funding as public schools – and really only provide education opportunities to children whose parents are willing to subject them to doctrines of the Catholic church from as young as 5 years old. Considering how few people in NSW subscribe strongly to the particulars of Catholic morality and superstition, it is more plausible to say that these services are being co-opted by the Catholic church for its own agenda, than to say the church has invested its own funding into meeting the interests of the broader community.
However, there is a positive side to all this controversy. Threats of strike action during WYD08 forced the government to settle a long running pay dispute with the transport union. The gazetting of anti-free speech “annoyance” laws has revived the debate over whether Australia needs a Bill of Rights, and the succesful challenge of these laws has been a blow for the government’s attempts to subvert democratic processes. The inconveniences and injustices of World Youth Day have united businesses, unions and the general public in a way that is rarely seen in politically moderate Australia. As much as the church expects to boost its numbers from this event, many activist groups can expect an increase in support flowing on from the publicity they’ve received. Most of all, many previously complacent citizens have been forced to recognise the importance of vigilance over the powers entrusted to political leaders.
It is clear that rational activists and civil libertarians will not let this mass mobilisation of youth in the name of superstitious dogma go unanswered.
Editorial note: Bishop Anthony Fisher, a World Youth Day coordinator, has lately been criticized for his remarks regarding Catholic victims of sex abuse. “Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying [and] delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people and the hope for us doing these sorts of things better in the future, as we saw last night, rather than dwelling crankily – as a few people are doing – on old wounds.”
Tags: Abortion, abuse, activists, Amendment, Arjun, Asia, Asian, association, Australasian, Australia, ban, belief, Benedict, Bertelsmann, Bishop, bless, bureau, campaign, Catholic, census, children, church, citizen, Civil liberties, corporation, Democrat, demon, doctrine, dogma, economy, faith, foundation, Franklin, free speech, god, Government, human, Law, legal, libertarian, Mass, Matthew, minister, moral, Morality, Parliament, police, political, Pope, Powell, Premier, rape, rational, Religion, rights, Roman, school, sex, Sexuality, Sydney, tax, war, World Youth Day, WYD
Posted in Atheism, Government, Religion | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
This article is part of the series: Secrets of Christianity: Unearthed
“Today’s East-West dynamic began when Europe first invaded the Holy Land.”
That was the sub-heading for this article in the U.S. News and World Report. I found this set the tone for the rest of the article, which essentially set out to prove that Muslims are filled with hate and distorting reality in drawing comparisons between the Crusades and modern events.
The author states, “In the Arab and Muslim world, the Crusades have made an unfortunate rhetorical comeback.” He posits that their views have been “distorted almost beyond recognition by rhetoric and misunderstanding.” He accuses “angry Muslim nationalists” of adopting the Crusades as a “convenient metaphor.” He quotes historian Jonathan Riley-Smith, who claims the Muslims “turned the Western memory of the Crusades on its head and demonized it.” But what of the West? What of today’s Christians? After September 11th, George W. Bush told the nation, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile.” When Jerusalem was captured from the Turks in 1917, British general Sir Edmund Allenby proclaimed, “today the wars of the Crusades are completed.” Surely the author would have similar criticism for statements such as these? No, instead he insists, “Undoubtedly, George W. Bush had a different sense of the term in mind.” And as for Sir Allenby? Well, it was understandable, since the colonial powers considered the Crusaders to be their “ideological forebears.” Besides, according to the author, the Crusades weren’t very important to the Muslims before Sir Allenby’s time: “Before Europe’s colonial expansion into the Middle East, Muslim chroniclers paid little attention to the Crusades.” I see little reason to believe that anyone, from East or West, cannot plainly understand the horrible atrocities committed by Christians during the Crusades, yet according to this article, the East is primarily to blame for “demonizing” our conception of them.
The article refers to the Crusaders as “faithful,” “united under the cross” and “motivated by genuine religious feeling.” Riley-Smith is again quoted: “West European Catholics believed they could aid their salvation by fighting the infidel in the East. [Crusading is] as much a penance as fasting on bread and water.” In researching Jonathan Riley-Smith I found, unsurprisingly, that his views are greatly at odds with many other scholarly perceptions of the Crusades. He believes the Crusades were primarily a response to the aggression of Islam, and that the Crusaders were sincere and pious and demonstrated great personal sacrifice. The author obviously agrees when he refers to knights Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred as “deeply religious.” He claims the belief that Crusaders may have been motivated by greed or land has been overturned. Yet, the history itself tells another story.
In 1095, the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, sent his ambassadors to Pope Urban II to request help in taking Asia Minor from the Seljuk Turks. The Pope then called for the Council of Clermont, and there preached the First Crusade. Alexios met each leader personally to secure an oath that any conquered lands would be handed over to the Byzantine Empire. Yet, not one of these leaders intended on keeping their oath to Alexios. One by one, they each took the captured territories for themselves, and many of them became the leaders of these territories. Tancred actually refused to take the oath at all. So, were these knights “deeply religious” as U.S. News claims? Probably. But was their faith a replacement for greed? Absolutely not.
In one final jab at the Muslims, U.S. News purports that the industry, education, and culture that the Europeans gained as a result of their contact with the Arab world actually overshadows the atrocities they committed. He quotes Georgetown University’s John Voll: “Violent interactions were paralleled by economic and conceptual exchanges. In some ways the Crusades’ positive intellectual dimensions outweigh the negative impact.” He then quotes author Janet Abu-Lughod: “The Crusades…did integrate European travelers and traders into an ongoing world system. By stimulating an interest in the goods of the East, they had a double-back effect on the development of European economics.” U.S. News even takes these two comments a step further: “Even the Europeans’ increasing sophistication did little to redeem them in the eyes of the Muslims whose land they occupied and controlled.” I can’t think of a single reason why it should. Their families had been murdered, their holy sites destroyed, their land and homes stolen, but the author expects them to have been in awe of the Christians’ increasing “sophistication”? It’s hard for me to believe that U.S. News cannot recognize that the only people positively impacted in any way by the Crusades were the Christians, not the Muslims. For the East, the negative most certainly outweighs the positive, but that is not being considered in this article. I would implore anyone to consider the bias displayed here before giving any type of support to the U.S. News and World Report.
-Laura
Tags: Arab, Asia, ban, belief, bio, Bouillon, British, Bush, Byzantine, Catholic, Christ, Christianity, colonial, Crusade, demon, emperor, empire, encyclopedia, Europe, faith, Georgetown, god, history, Holy, infidel, islam, Jerusalem, Logic, Muslim, Pope, Religion, Review, terrorism, UK, Unearthed, war
Posted in Religion, Review, Unearthed | No Comments »
