"Human Rights Watch cannot be accused of being a right-wing organization fostering Washington’s imperialist agenda. Thus, its recent report bluntly condemning Hugo Chávez for the erosion of democracy and the gross violation of civil liberties in Venezuela is creating shockwaves. The first reaction from the government in Caracas has been to expel HRW director José Miguel Vivanco.
"In 236 pages, the report, titled “A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela,” details Chávez’s abuses against opposition groups, the media, organized labor, civil society, and his assault on the Courts. It’s a worthwhile read." [from the blog of the Cato Institute.]
Criminal Charges for Insulting Muhammad,
Offending "Honor" of Pope?
"In Italy, a prosecutor wanted to bring criminal charges against Sabina Guzzanti for making a joke about Pope Benedict XVI. In Lebanon, a prosecutor is trying to bring criminal charges against Danish citizens for "insulting" Muhammad. In both cases, religious believers are trying to bully outsiders into being too afraid to say the "wrong" thing about revered religious leaders lest this lead to jail, fines, and of course threats from other private citizens.
"[M]aybe this isn't so much about 'insulting' the pope as it is about 'insulting' power — i.e., making open, deliberate, and mocking challenges to the people in power. Dante doesn't do that anymore because his popes are all dead..." Austin's Atheism Blog
The End of the Secularity of Western Law:
Brief Introductions to Sharia in England, followed by an analysis by CEC
Sharia courts operating in Britain"Five sharia courts have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The government has quietly sanctioned that their rulings are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings were not binding and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims."The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2957428/Sharia-law-courts-operating-in-Britain.htmlAnarchy in the U.K.?"The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through county courts or the country’s High Court, a part of its Supreme Court system. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims." The New York Times
Britons Will Have A Religious War
At Their Front Doors--Commentary
Britain is a separate nation from all other nations, including the United States. This needs to be said, because the rights of other nations are sovereign laws unto those nations, where such sovereignty does not violate basic human rights. Even then, in places like Ghana, China, North Korea, Iran, and others, violations are often brutal and inhuman and must be stopped by the international community when it can do so.
Sometimes even here in the U.S., laws are often anti-individualistic, and we have a system of rule-by-law that can be checked, by the independence of the third branch of our government, the courts, when anti-libertarian laws are passed and an attempt is made to enforce those anti-individualistic laws.
(This is the case, notwithstanding the truth that the laws of the U.S. are no longer based on the sovereignty of the individual to be protected by the government, to whom the individual grants away certain of his rights to the common sovereignty. "Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Joseph J. Ellis http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm
(Since the inception of the "citizen of the United States" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, individual sovereignty has been virtually wiped out, to be replaced by creeping nationalism of the sort fought against by the Federalists. And as many libertarian thinkers have elaborated upon, the American public has come to see this nationalism as natural and as what the Founders had planned all along. This public has gotten the idea of "common sovereignty" whereby the government rules from the consent of the governed, mixed up with modern social liberalism whereby the governments' sole purposes are to literally provide for the common good.)
But in very-liberal Britain's attempt at being "multiculturalists [seeking] the hegemony of the West" [see "20th Century" article above] the mis-guided allowance of sharia law courts to be held and upheld under English law is a breach of the idea of "common sovereignty" given to us by Locke, Hobbes, and others. It is a breach of the abstraction made by America's Founders from that concept of "common" into "individual" sovereignty.
"Lawyers have issued grave warnings about the dangers of a dual legal system," states one of the articles on sharia law, above. It was not intentional that England allow this dual system. A sheik found a hole in English law big enough to drive his truck full of society-destroying ideas, and Parliament has yet to fill the hole and destroy sharia courts within the jurisdiction of the English Common Constitution.
Not to mention that if this is allowed to continue, radical (and I don't mean terroristic) Muslims in the United States will someday attempt the same; but it means the destruction of the secularity of America's closest political ally. What will become of that alliance if such dualism is allowed to continue? Will the U.S. be able to count on England if it comes time to go to war against another terrorist nation that happens to be Muslim?
It cannot be said for certain that such a day will never come in the life of American jurisprudence. Liberals here are more radically bent on multiculturalism because they are thwarted at their efforts of introducing it lawfully. They are, however, very capable of introducing it into the minds of Americans through the liberal educational process, where individualism is not politically correct unless the purpose of allowing it is to allow multiculturalism to destroy the authority of the political body that is trying to allow individualism (to whatever degree it sees fit or is able to appropriately manage.)
School boards all across the nation are bombarded by suits brought by individuals and organizations, suits which are intended only to prove that the "rights" of the student are violated when he/she cannot wear a shirt that says "God Is Dead" as a response to a shirt worn earlier by someone else that said "God Rules!" Or, rightfully, when a school board prevents the association on compas of a gay organization when other organizations including religious-based groups are allowed.
Secular tolerance demands that both shirts, or neither, are to be allowed into the school, that no extra-curricular groups are allowed, or all groups are allowed that fit within the context of civil associations. But multiculturalism's claims that "diversity" demands one side be allowed to speak without being argued with by the other side is contrary to civil association and speech, and therfore to individual sovereignty. Besides, there is no "rule of multiculturalism" ensconced in the history of our laws in the way that such things as "the wall of separation of church and state" are ensconsed. School boards are allowed to make policy that says all students must dress alike to prevent taking attention from education where attention is allowed, so it is not focused instead on the poorly dressed v. the richly dressed; the hippie from the preppie; the religious students from the atheists; the skin heads from the Jewish students; and to cell phone or iPod use--just to name a few examples.
Dualism in American regulations are un-American, which has the proud distinction of meaning "anti-individualistic." We don't allow it where we find it; we could not allow it in our own court system.
England must take action to deny the dualism of having two separate-but-equal systems of jurisprudence within its jurisdiction, before the secular Muslim community there is unjustly involved; before this dualism rallies the radical Muslims into an unstoppable cohesion; and before that unstoppable cohesion becomes an anti-social force against the secular common sovereignty of the British people who are themselves being unfairly blind-sided by a Euro-multiculturalism that will eventually bring a religious war right their literal doorsteps and in their streets.
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