Posted on 08/11/2018 8:56:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
Is it any of Canada's business whether Saudi women have the right to drive?
Well, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland just made it her business.
Repeatedly denouncing Riyadh's arrest of women's rights advocate Samar Badawi, Freeland has driven the two countries close to a break in diplomatic relations.
"Reprehensible" said Riyadh of Freeland's tweeted attack. Canada is "engaged in blatant interference in the Kingdom's domestic affairs."
The Saudis responded by expelling Canada's ambassador and ordering 15,000 Saudi students to end their studies in Canada and barred imports of Canadian wheat. A $15 billion contract to provide armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia may be in jeopardy.
Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has been backsliding on his promises to modernize the kingdom, appears to have had enough of Western lectures on democratic values and morality.
A week after Pope Francis denounced the death penalty as always "impermissible," Riyadh went ahead and crucified a convicted murderer in Mecca. In Saudi Arabia, homosexuality can get you a death sentence.
Neither President Donald Trump nor the State Department has taken sides, but The Washington Post has weighed in with an editorial: "Human Rights Are Everyone's Business."
"What Ms. Freeland and Canada correctly understand is that human rights ... are universal values, not the property of kings and dictators to arbitrarily grant and remove on a whim. Saudi Arabia's long-standing practice of denying basic rights to citizens, especially women -- and its particularly cruel treatment of some dissidents -- such as the public lashes meted out to (Ms. Badawi's brother) -- are matters of legitimate concern to all democracies and free societies. CARTOONS | Ken Catalino View Cartoon
"It is the traditional role of the United States to defend universal values everywhere they are trampled upon and to show bullying autocrats they cannot get away with hiding their dirty work behind closed doors."
The Post called on the foreign ministers of all Group of Seven nations to retweet Freeland's post saying, "Basic rights are everybody's business."
But these sweeping assertions raise not a few questions.
Who determines what are "basic rights" or "universal values"?
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has never permitted women to drive and has always whipped criminals and had a death penalty.
When did these practices first begin to contradict "universal values"?
When did it become America's "traditional role" to defend women's right to drive automobiles in every country, when women had no right to vote in America until after World War I?
In the America of the 1950s, homosexuality and abortion were regarded as shameful offenses and serious crimes. Now abortion and homosexuality have been declared constitutional rights.
Are they basic human rights? To whom? Do 55 million abortions in the U.S. in 45 years not raise an issue of human rights?
Has it become the moral duty of the U.S. government to champion abortion and LGBT rights worldwide, when a goodly slice of America still regards them as marks of national decadence and decline?
And if the Saudis are reactionaries whom we should join Canada in condemning, why are we dreaming up an "Arab NATO" in which Saudi Arabia would be a treaty ally alongside whom we would fight Iran?
Iran, at least, holds quadrennial elections, and Iranian women seem less restricted and anti-regime demonstrations more tolerated than they are in Saudi Arabia.
Consider our own history.
From 1865 to 1965, segregation was the law in the American South. Did those denials of civil and political rights justify foreign intervention in the internal affairs of the United States?
How would President Eisenhower, who used troops to integrate Little Rock High, have responded to the British and French demanding that America end segregation now?
In a newly de-Christianized America, all religions are to be treated equally and none may be taught in any public school.
In nearly 50 nations, however, Muslims are the majority, and they believe there is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet, and all other religions are false. Do Muslims have no right to insist upon the primacy of their faith in the nations they rule?
Is Western interference with this claim not a formula for endless conflict?
In America, free speech and freedom of the press are guaranteed. And these First Amendment rights protect libel, slander, filthy language, blasphemy, pornography, flag burning and published attacks on religious beliefs, our country itself, and the government of the United States.
If other nations reject such freedoms as suicidal stupidity, do we have some obligation to intervene in their internal affairs to promote them?
Recently, The Independent reported:
"Since last year, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in northwest China have been unjustly arrested and imprisoned in what the Chinese government calls 'political re-education camps.' Thousands have disappeared. There are credible reports of torture and death among the prisoners. ... The international community has largely reacted with silence."
Anyone up for sanctioning Xi Jinping's China?
Or do Uighurs' rights rank below those of Saudi feminists?
Obviously she really gets off on lecturing.
Lost a helicopter deal to the Philippines too.
>>In a newly de-Christianized America, all religions are to be treated equally and none may be taught in any public school.
>>In nearly 50 nations, however, Muslims are the majority, and they believe there is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet, and all other religions are false. Do Muslims have no right to insist upon the primacy of their faith in the nations they rule?
They believe that their allah is real and only a fool would not insist on the primacy of their faith in a God they believe is real.
I got flamed on FR sporadically for two weeks after stating that I would not rule out Six Day Creation and Catastrophism as a possibility because I wanted to believe in the total sovereignty of God.
She looks like Geddy Lee in drag.
Remember this: With God anything is possible. Why not a six day creation?
Some have postulated that current thinking———the Christian-taught distinction between “right and wrong”——— is the rejection of Manichaeism which introduced the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness, thinking that has transcended the ages.
Other scholars have suggested that Manichaeism influenced the development of some Christian ideas found in the teachings of St Augustine, such as the nature of good and evil, the idea of hell, the separation of groups into elect, hearers, and sinners, and the hostility to the flesh and sexual activity.
These influences of Manichaeism in Augustine’s Christian thinking taught that mankind, in particular, as having a Divine core, rather than a ‘darkness’ at its core.
Homosexuality and Saudi women driving can both get you a death sentence.
The house of Saud spends billions of dollars to spread its religion all over the Earth. Or at least wherever it is allowed to enter. The competition of ideas is a form of free speech. Sometimes free speech is allowed. Other times it is not. The AIDS virus enters a white blood cell via a CCR5 receptor. Some white blood cells do not have the CCR5 receptor. Those white blood cells (with no CCR5 receptor) are better able to defeat the AIDS virus. With the competition of ideas the verdict is for each individual to decide. Who says there has to be a One World Government?! I surely don’t want such an evil thought process.
Like so many barroom brawls.
It’s some woman’s mouth that starts the fight.
when women had no right to vote in America until after World War I?
Pat Buchanan.
That is unfair to Geddy Lee.
female supporters of muslim brotherhood are above the laws.
It happens in America.
Mrs.Weiner, and her boss Hillary.
Admit it Noob and don't deny it.!!!
I guarantee you that you are wrong
>>Some have postulated that
>>Other scholars have suggested that
What do you say?
Sorry, she’s right on this. And it’s laughable for Saudis to whine about anyone interfering in their internal affairs. They have funded and provided psychological support for 900 new mosques in America since 9/11. They demanded that the FBI remove references to Islam. If they don’t want to get screwed with, maybe they need to stop screwing with others.
LMAO.
Maybe her job isn’t to sell helicopters. I wish we would get that mentality. We dance like a monkey on a stick if we think we can make a buck from the camel jockeys.
Canada will be fine in this. First of all they’re in the right. Second of all they’re the 10th largest economy in the world and very dversified. Their economy is almost three times as large as the Saudis, who come in 19th, and are a one-trick pony. They have equal sized populations roughly speaking, except the Canadians are productive intelligent hard-working people. The Saudis are the laziest most inbred human beings God ever put on this planet.
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