Might the liberal champion of civil rights, Joseph Muscat, care to decorate any more of these Saudi savages?
Published:
January 22, 2015 at 1:49am
Turned out to be a liberal environmentalist’s dream, didn’t he – championing real estate developers, hunters, Chinese communists, Azerbaijani despots, Ukrainian dictators, and Saudi savages.
The factor common to them all (apart from gross human rights violations)? They have lots of money. And he’s a bit of what, in the olden days, they used to call a fortune-hunter or gold-digger, though it applied mainly to women.
Except for the hunters, of course. They have other ways of keeping him in power.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/21/middleeast/saudi-beheading-video/index.html
Wasn’t he employed with an investment consultant company? Seeing all that money must have gone up to his head.
Savagery, indeed.
Executions should be condemned worldwide, irrespective of execution mode or executing state, however “humane” they profess to be.
Does it matter whether the victims are going to be beheaded, electrocuted, poisoned, or fill-in-whatever-creatively-named-execution-method-of-your-choice?
Does it matter whether their execution is being held in public or in private viewing by invitation only?
Does it matter whether their execution is just going to be another entry in the executions log or it’s going to be captured on a mobile phone and put on youtube within minutes after they’re dead?
Whatever the means, whatever the publicity, their life is going to be cut short, and I think this is the only point worthy of discussion; the rest is just noise.
And I thought CNN only broadcast false news about Islamic Sharia law violence , and that it is a loving caring religion .
Even Joseph Calleja is singing the beauty of Malta which, you – Daphne, seem unable to appreciate.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150121/local/sky-tv-films-joseph-calleja-singing-in-valletta-square-for-documentary.552813
[Daphne – Malta isn’t even remotely beautiful, Joe. Please be realistic and objective, and don’t confuse affection (‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’) with factual reality. It is possible to regard it with affection nonetheless.]
I was being ‘very’ sarcastic and was expressing my disdain at (1) this servile puppet who is not only ridiculous, but clearly also a PL boot-licker (the arts serving a regime…nothing new there!) (2) the Maltese people’s parochialism and navel gazing.
Malta had potential, after all, it shares a lot of natural features with Israel and Sicily, but the brainless twits have transformed it into a dump. Sod your Sole Mio, Joseph Calleja!
So we should all resign ourselves to the fact that Muscat will remain in power?
Yes.
How times change: on this very blog, I used to get no support at all when I used to criticise Saudi Arabia for its brutality towards women.
In fact, I distinctly recall one co-reader berating me for not knowing what it is really like there and how liberalism is coming along nicely, thank you.
As long as she says so, that’s all right then.
Context is everything, Mr Ripard. One might praise Saudi Arabia for increasing economic liberalism, for example, but there is certainly no room for human rights praise.
The gong given to a Saudi Prince puts Malta’s relationship with Saudi Arabia in a new light. That’s why the criticism is now intense.
I challenge you to find a blog entry in which Daphne championed Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
[Daphne – I don’t think Chris is talking about me.]
Dear Matthew S, in what context is public beheading of women anything but abhorrent?
As for Daphne, my main gripe with her is that she doesn’t see Islam as much more malevolent than Christianity (numerous posts testify). I find this reasoning incredible.
Let me give you one final example before I quit the argument: did you hear about the girls’ boarding school in Saudi which caught fire? Yes, the firemen wouldn’t rescue the girls because according to Islam it was more important that they didn’t dishonour them by entering their bedrooms.
[Daphne – Don’t confuse religion with interpretation of religion by some secular authorities for their own ends. And don’t forget for one minute that Roman Catholicism has routinely put women in second place after men, reflecting society that’s true, but the barring of women from the priesthood, the administration and the higher echelons of the Catholic Church is not a reflection of society today. The Catholic marriage rite? The woman vows to obey the man.]
Unfortunately pretty much the same statement could be made if Muscat were to court the USA.
With its horrendous track record in South America and Mexico as well as its shocking (and ever-growing) prison population, its gun laws and last but not least, its capital punishment, it is hardly the finest example of western democracy.
The USA has become (maybe always was) a pseudo democracy.
No, the same statement could not be made.
The USA may not be perfect (capital punishment is particularly odious) – but to suggest its human rights records is in anyway comparable to Saudi Arabia’s is frankly, dumb.
Firstly the US doesn’t lock up its citizens for criticising the government (or flog them) – and it has a series of basic constitutional rights which are policed by an independent judiciary.
It has free elections, doesn’t stop women from driving and.. well…..the list really goes on and on and on and on.
Even on capital punishment (which I reiterate, I deplore) – whereas this occurs in Saudi Arabia via a sword, the US at least attempts to exclude especially painful executions.
The idea that the two are morally equivalent is just plain wrong.
I am not going into a long anti-US diatribe, however things in the States are very far from rosy.
Police have a right to do all sort of things (including taking any large amounts of money they may find in your car – take care Manuel Mallia:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html) has the largest non-violent prison population http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Trends_in_Corrections_Fact_sheet.pdf
As to free and fair elections, it’s not just women who don’t get a right to vote:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/voting-rights-november-voter-suppression-states
Not to mention the fact that most elected representatives are in the pockets of the major corporations. And please let us not talk about painful executions:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/30/us/oklahoma-botched-execution/
And which country is Saudi Arabia’s closest ally? You guessed it: the US of A. So perhaps you are right – the two are not morally equivalent; the US may be worse because of its hypocritical stance.
Money talks and always will
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7068616.stm
A Saudi wedding. Spot the lovely traditions, twieqi tal-enemilju and all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_uYKV0LPi0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4shiO7d5vEY
Saudi nightlife. The ladies just can’t get enough.
Do you remember the DIG FOR VICTORY campaign in Britain during World War II?
[Daphne – Jozef is not that old, though he may have found out about it more recently.]
How about DIG FOR SHALE OIL AGAINST ISIS? (MLP/PN leaders please note, especially the latter who seems to have an antipathy for shale oil.)
I’d go for both that and its contemporary American craze for riveted polished aluminium.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/5c/e2/8c5ce23db0b89ea41c83a47a1dcd5e4f.jpg
Bling and silicone passe’. Back to the original Betty Page.
Below is Confederate Motorcycles’s official pin up; she built the bike.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/81/65/b1/8165b193b7810c57d31036052aa412f7.jpg
The European equivalent.
http://preview.netcarshow.com/Morgan-3_Wheeler-2012-1600-0a.jpg
The Jap version.
http://www.superdry.com/blog/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/single-images/morgan-superdry-3-wheeler-goodwood-festival-of-speed-side.jpg
Italians meantime, rediscover the electric bicycle.
http://pandacycles.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/marco_craig_02i.jpg
Who needs Saudi oil to express a freedom?
“Don’t just consume. Create.”
That’s what Obama told high-school pupils a few weeks ago.
Saudi Arabia is the ultimate expression of a consumer-not-creator economy. Oil was first discovered there in 1938. After 77 years, the oil industry accounts for 90% of the economy.
Now Europe was a creator before it was a consumer. Shall we let the Americans beat us at our own game?
Oh and by the way, the US has just overtaken China as the best investment destination, according to a survey among the world’s top CEOs.
Create. Don’t just consume. Touché.
This is what I meant when I said that history is leaving us behind.
“Ir-rizorsa umana.” Yes, right.
The current piteous state of human rights in Saudi Arabia is known all throughout the civilized world.
That the President of Malta, on the advice of the prime minister, chose to decorate a Wahhabi prince from the House of Saud with a fancy gong is an abomination.
The fundamentalism of the Wahhabi House of Saud is a blasphemy in the eyes of Allah Himself because the House happens to be the custodian of the holiest shrines of Islam where millions travel every year for the obligatory once-in-a-lifetime Hajj.
Human rights at their best “there is no way of knowing whether the Saudi Arabian authorities will disregard the medical advice and allow the flogging to go ahead”, according to Said Boumedouha, Amnesty’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director.”
This after a committee of several doctors carried out a series of tests on Raif Badawi at a Jeddah hospital on Wednesday and recommended against a new session of caning.
http://news.sky.com/story/1412836/saudi-arabia-holds-off-flogging-raif-badawi