In case you’ve forgotten just how awful the countries of the Gulf are, there are two stories that should remind you. The first is about Iran. Apparently, they’ve just publicly hanged a man for the crime of being a homosexual:
The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he was found guilty of charges related to violations of Iran’s anti-gay laws, according to the state-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency.
The unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of Kazeroon based on criminal violations of “lavat-e be onf†– sexual intercourse between two men, as well as kidnapping charges, according to ISNA. Iran’s radical sharia law system proscribes the death penalty for gay sex.
while Saudi Arabia jailed and tortured a woman for advocating women’s rights:
M.B.S. isn’t a great reformer, and he isn’t coming clean about Khashoggi’s murder.
Nor is he releasing Hathloul, who, along with others, had peacefully and persistently campaigned for years to allow women the right to drive.
In 2014, she was arrested when she tried to drive into Saudi Arabia with a driver’s license from the United Arab Emirates, nominally valid also in Saudi Arabia. Then in 2015, Hathloul was one of the first women to run for a seat on a municipal council. (She lost.)
She moved to the emirates. But in 2017, Saudi security forces effectively kidnapped her and her husband and returned them to the kingdom. The couple have divorced, and while accounts differ, some believe this is because of pressure the government placed on the husband.
Shortly before women were allowed to drive last June, the government rearrested Hathloul, along with other women’s rights activists who had fought for the right the government was about to grant.
“She said she had been held in solitary confinement, beaten, waterboarded, given electric shocks, sexually harassed and threatened with rape and murder,†her sister, Alia al-Hathloul, who lives in Belgium, wrote in a searing Op-Ed in The Times this month, recounting what Loujain had told their parents when they saw her. “My parents then saw that her thighs were blackened by bruises.â€
Presently, we reckon Iran as our adversary and Saudi Arabia as our ally. I don’t see a lot to choose between them. And it’s not just Iran and Saudi Arabia and it’s not just the countries of the Gulf. I could produce similar stories about just about every country from the Bosporus to the Pacific, from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Rio Grande to the Cape Horn.
This sounds like a good opportunity to remind you of John Quincy Adams’s remarks on American foreign policy:
America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.
She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.
She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.
She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
As I have remarked and documented in the past when people come to the United States to live they may not bring their possessions but they do bring their political and social views.
I don’t care about the colors of the skins of the immigrants who will come here in the coming years but I do care about their political and social views. Most of the people coming here now aren’t “yearning to breathe free” but for a raise. Being human they will long to rebuild their old lives here. We need to be free to criticize those old lives without being charged with bigotry.
I’ll see your John Quincy Adams and raise you a Franklin Roosevelt:
About a Central American dictator – “He may be a son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch”.
In what universe are the Saudis “our sons of bitches”? It’s more like we’re their bitch.
Also note that the present situations in Central and South America are after well over a century of American subversion of Central and South American governments. The solution to the problems of Venezuela is not for the U. S. to overthrow its government.
Note that I’m not saying that we’ve caused all of Central and South America’s problems but emphasizing that there’s history there. We are not trusted nor should we be.
http://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/IMG_5286.jpg
Five categories, we don’t discriminate. Do your thing, whatever it is, we’re cool with that.
But different beliefs and cultures bring different behaviors. And we do discriminate. We smile and say welcome to all, then vote with our feet. Moving away from those we can’t bring ourselves to criticize. We put our children in private schools, encourage them to marry up. And leave the rednecks and less educated to deal with real diversity head to head on the street level. Self serving pretentious liberal lies and fairy tales.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Somalia and Daesh are the 5 nations/nation entities that have recently carried out death sentences for gays. Our President goes dancing with one of these countries.
https://76crimes.com/10-nations-where-the-penalty-for-gay-sex-is-death/
Steve
“Saudi Arabia is America’s No. 1 weapons customer”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-arabia-is-the-top-buyer-of-u-s-weapons/
It’s more the tyrants of Persia chose as their enemies rather than the other way around. Haters always need someone to hate. We just happened to be the big dog in the world and had supported the guy Khomeinei overthrow until Carter decided to go all cultural relativist on us.
It was a bit more than that. Kermit Roosevelt puffed out his resume by bragging about his (the U. S. role) in overthrowing Mossadegh. That the U. S. had overthrown Mossadegh became part of the Islamic Revolution’s creation myth.
You had better care about skin color. All characters of all organisms have a genetic component, often dominant, and that includes human behavior, political preferences and intelligence. And these are correlated with skin color. If our immigration comes from Africa, we will become Africa. If it comes from Mexico, we will become Mexican. If it comes from Switzerland, we will become Swiss.
Choose your poison, but don’t be delusional about the choices.
One of the differences between human beings and goldfish is that in addition to their genetic makeup human beings have language and culture and IMO language and culture are more important determining factors than heredity and that’s why my emphasis is on language and culture. We need to have the conviction to insist on and promote our own language and our own culture.
And you’re too late. I already am Swiss. And Irish—like most Americans I’m a mutt.