Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[Prodromos]

“As the UAE brazenly promotes itself as a tolerant and rights-respecting state, Ahmed Mansoor, the man who stood up for so many people unjustly imprisoned before him, stands to mark his 50th birthday in solitary confinement in deplorable conditions,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

Artur and Ahmed: Prison Mates in UAE Hell | Human Rights Watch

On this September morning, Artur sits in a small apartment on the east side of the Vistula River in Warsaw and shares his story of a falling-out with a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family and his subsequent arrest, life sentence, and months in prison before Polish authorities secured his release. Now free, what he wants most of all is for the world to know about his friend, Ahmed Mansoor, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) highest-profile dissident, who hasn’t been heard from since his enforced disappearance in March 2017.

Prior to his arrest, Ahmed was the last activist standing in the UAE, and the last glimmer of light in a country that has become a black hole for human rights activism. The UAE authorities have no tolerance for critics, and a raft of repressive laws designed to quash dissent ensures that little criticism gets out. For years, Ahmed refused to be cowed, and eventually the UAE authorities moved in on him. Ahmed suffered the same consequences as the Emirati men and women he long fought for: a late-night visit from the state security apparatus in blacked out 4x4s, and whisked off in shackles to prison.

Though he is now free, Artur bears the scars of his traumatic experience. He is now seeing a specialist to deal with the post-traumatic stress disorder he attributes to the brutality he saw in prison and for the rape by prison guards he says he experienced. Now back in Poland and trying to rebuild his life, he paints a picture of Ahmed’s life that is grim but tinged with hope.

Artur managed to keep a notebook of his time in prison and on page 150 is a sketch of his cell: a dank, insect-infested hole, four meters square, with a hole in the ground for a toilet.

Ahmed somehow managed to survive these conditions without breaking until December 2018. By that point, it had been nearly 2 years since his arrest, and 7 months after a court sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment for insulting the “status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols,” including its leaders. He’d survived a great deal before that too – a seven-month spell in jail in 2011 for calling for political reform, public death threats, two physical assaults, the suspicious theft of his car, and the mysterious disappearance of thousands of US dollars’ worth of life savings from his bank account. Through it all, he persisted.

But in December 2018, when the Federal Supreme Court upheld his 10-year sentence, the news shook him. “I remember the day when he lost the appeal,” says Artur. “He came [back] to the isolation ward and he start[ed] to shout.” Shortly after, Ahmed decided to go on hunger strike. Artur, who unlike Ahmed was allowed to leave the isolation ward to go to the canteen, caught glimpses of Ahmed’s physical deterioration as he passed by the tiny window to Ahmed’s cell. “He lost immediately a lot of weight. Changed color of the face.”

When news of Ahmed’s hunger strike went public, things got slightly better for Ahmed, recalls Artur. He was able to leave his cell to go to the canteen, call his mother, and go outside. “I remember he was crying like a baby.”

Before the interview ends, Artur relays one more remarkable snippet of information about Ahmed’s case: prison authorities told Ahmed that they had no control over his conditions and that all instructions came direct from the Presidential Palace. Ahmed has picked one hell of a fight.

The story of how the lives of the Polish businessman and the Emirati engineer, poet, and rights activist Ahmed Mansoor became intertwined is a tragedy for both men. One man free but shattered, another in limbo, disappeared, locked up in a dank, squalid cell and deprived of his freedom because he had the courage to fight for the freedoms of others. Yet there is hope. Even in an isolation ward in one of the most repressive countries imaginable, Ahmed managed to make a human connection and get his message out. He’s still here, and he’s still fighting.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

A black retired Police Captain was murdered defending his friend’s jewelry shop from looters. RIP David Dorn

[Gaidin]

Could the inclusion of the ANTIFA be a Machiavellian move of the Turkish authorities?

Well. What else is going to be done when there's no US Domestic Terrorism law.

There's a reason federal agencies are finessing it to whatever crimes they're committing while doing what they're doing.

[Prodromos]

In my country we need freedom and rights: Stories from Cuba - CSW

Pastor Alain Toledano Valiente is a church leader who has experienced over 15 years of intimidation and abuse from the Cuban authorities. His church and home have been destroyed twice, he has been charged with the crime of ‘disobedience’ for holding church events, and been banned indefinitely from leaving the country. ‘They want me to stop being a pastor,’ he says. But he has no intention of stopping.

The government has been abusing freedom of religion for years. Yet the people of Cuba are standing strong, and their courage is truly inspiring.

Targeted: children

Children from faith communities are frequently harassed. Last December a 12-year-old Jewish boy, Liusdan, was forbidden from entering his school while wearing the kippah (skullcap). In another case a pastoral couple chose to home-school their children rather than send them to state-run schools, because their children were experiencing severe bullying at school. This is the situation for Ruth and Joel Rigal, whose parents are now serving sentences in maximum security prisons.

When no one is watching, governments can get away with anything. But the international community is starting to acknowledge the situation - the United States recently added Cuba to its Special Watch List for countries that have ‘engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.’ This sends a warning to the government, and Cuban church leaders have been calling for this for years, so we’re very pleased that their voices have finally been heard.

...

Back in Cuba, February 2019 saw the adoption of a new constitution that weakened protections for religious freedom. A few months later the seven Protestant denominations, including the five largest in terms of membership, joined together to launch a new Cuban Alliance of Evangelical Churches. This kind of interdenominational unity has not been seen since the 1959 Revolution.

The Ladies in White is a protest movement comprised of the female relatives of political prisoners; every Sunday after attending Mass they march peacefully through the streets. For this they are regularly prevented, often violently, from attending any church services.

Berta de Los Ángeles Soler Fernández, leader of the Ladies in White, said, ‘[We] are very conscious that in my country we need freedom and rights, especially for the men and women who are in prison just for demanding this and promoting and defending the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With respect to religious freedom, we have been meeting at Catholic churches for Mass for over 15 years now, first to be near Christ and [secondly] to ask Him that He intercede and give us strength so that our men and women in prison would be free and that the heart of the government would listen.’

[Coughdrop addict]

https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-...m-is-not-true/

Good to know Trump is concentrating on what's really important.

[Gaidin]

https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-...m-is-not-true/

Good to know Trump is concentrating on what's really important.

Trump's tendency to lose focus aside. I think you're missing the point that it's the campaign here. And on top of that the campaign is lying.

[Prodromos]

Memorial Day & General Kroesen - Providence

General Frederick Kroesen, veteran of three wars and survivor of an assassination attempt, died last week, age 97. Six years ago I sat next to him at a luncheon. I greeted him with his first name, until I realized who he was, a retired four star general and former U.S. Army vice chief of staff. We discussed his WWII service, about which I posted later that day on Facebook:

Had the pleasure over lunch of sitting next to this 91 year old retired USA Army general and veteran of WWII and Vietnam, serving from 1942-1982. He was a platoon commander 1944-1945 in France and Germany, starting with Allied invasion at Marseilles. I asked if he fully realized how evil the Nazis were before war’s end. He said no, they were just enemies who needed killing, and then his unit came upon one of the camps. I told him about watching the new Brad Pitt movie FURY last eve in which Pitt as tank commander orders an underperforming new recruit to shoot a German prisoner. The General said some of his men didn’t want to take prisoners but he as an officer had to restrain them. I asked if all soldiers, as portrayed in movies now, used the F word like a machine gun. He said absolutely not, they cussed but not like that. I asked if FDR were universally admired or seen as mostly a politician. He said admired up to a point, but the military agreed the war effort required his reelection. I asked if as a young man at the war’s start he ever doubted America would win the war. His answer: no, but most did not realize then how unprepared we actually were.

But there’s a wider lesson in Kroesen’s life and military career, which is the near permanence of conflict. He served the U.S. Army for 40 years during which the three wars in which he fought together killed over half a million Americans. All of them, and the wider Cold War, were struggles against totalitarian powers with sinister master narratives dramatically at odds with Western and biblical notions of human dignity, equality and justice.

The assassination attempt on Kroesen, it was revealed after the Cold War ended with the Soviet Bloc’s collapse, was facilitated by notorious East German spy chief Erich Mielke. We often forget today that the 1970s and early 1980s were their own epic of terror, including Mideast groups, but also European Marxist groups like the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, which kidnapped U.S. Army James Dozier not long after the attack on Kriesner, plus the Irish Republican Army. These terror groups and others collaborated with assist from the Soviet Bloc, Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi, the PLO and others.

Kroesner lived to see the end of the Soviet Bloc and most of its terror network, and to see the rise of a new terror network, mostly rooted in Islamism, not Marxism, but which learned important lessons from earlier terrorists, with whom they shared the same enemies: Western democracies. Kroesner told me he never as young man doubted America would prevail in WWII, despite its unpreparedness. No doubt he believed the same about America’s current enemies.

Kroesner’s death announcement via his funeral home concluded:

General Kroesen departs this life leaving the world a better place, and his legacy of service to the people of the U.S. and other nations will endure for generations.

And:

Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him. Amen.

[Abdülmecid I]

Statue of 17th century British merchant thrown into the Bristol harbour.

Quite an embarrassing move, in my opinion. Slave trade is irrelevant to George Floyd's death and, in any case, we can extract much more useful lessons from controversial figures like Edward Colston than childishly vandalising their monuments, a contradictory gesture, whose message is as meaningful and accurate as a hypothetical sanitised hagiography of him.

[Gaidin]

I'm sure Britain will live without its slave trader statue.

[Aexodus]

The desecration of our statues and monuments, including Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and the damn Cenotaph makes me inclined to resent the protestors even if I appreciate the broad brush of their cause.

[Cope]

Statue of 17th century British merchant thrown into the Bristol harbour.

Quite an embarrassing move, in my opinion. Slave trade is irrelevant to George Floyd's death and, in any case, we can extract much more useful lessons from controversial figures like Edward Colston than childishly vandalising their monuments, a contradictory gesture, whose message is as meaningful and accurate as a hypothetical sanitised hagiography of him.

You're wrong. Such an out pouring of quasi-religious zealotry is both stunning and brave.

[Aexodus]

This is British, and in one case, local Bristolian history of a merited son of the city. These hooligans who tore down our statue want their way with or without a reasoned discussion.

[Vanoi]

One less slave trader statue. Guess you guys gotta find something to put in its place.

[swabian]

How about George Washington?

Yeah, it's depressing, isn't it.

[Vanoi]

They tore down a George Washington statue?

[PointOfViewGun]

Would it be OK to keep statues of Hitler because of his contribution to developments in rocket technology?

[swabian]

Err... no? How very witty of you

[Vanoi]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/robe...162640688.html

Lots of statues being taken down lately.

[Prodromos]

The 'religious right' ousts Steve King

Steve King calls his loss in Tuesday’s primary a victory in the “effort to push out the strongest voice for full-spectrum constitutional, Christian conservatism.”

But the election results tell a different story. It was, to use a slightly dated term, the religious right who threw King out in favor of state Sen. Randy Feenstra.

Sioux County is Iowa's most Republican county by almost any measure. As a result, King always did well there in all his past elections, and it was Donald Trump’s best county in Iowa in the 2016 general election.

But here's a telling detail: Sioux County was also Trump’s *worst* county in the 2016 Iowa caucuses. Trump finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses in Sioux County, with 11% of the vote. He didn’t win a single precinct.

Sioux County rejected Trump in the 2016 caucuses and King the first time he faced a real primary for the same reason. It isn’t because Sioux County Republicans are *moderate*. It’s because Sioux County is so *conservative* in the way the word was used before Trump changed its meaning.

According to the Association of Religious Data Archives, Sioux County has the highest portion of evangelicals in the state, and its rate of mainline Protestants is even higher...

Sioux and Lyon counties are also the two counties with the highest portion of residents with Dutch ancestry. That’s not a coincidence: What makes these communities so strong are the Dutch reformed churches and affiliated institutions.

King was no squish on abortion. He had a pro-life record and was mostly conservative on economic issues with some farm-area and Trumpian exceptions. But he was most widely known for his strident anti-immigration views, and he eventually got tossed overboard for his proximity to racist groups and racist ideas.

If strident on immigration and racially caustic sounds familiar, it's because King was a Trumpian conservative probably even before Trump. But some of you may be old enough to remember when that wasn't the only type of conservative.

The Dutch Reformed churches tend to be very conservative on marriage and abortion, and, in a Christian way, very welcoming to refugees. Love of neighbor is a higher good than nationalism — or than owning the libs. All of these make Trump and King's style and priorities out of whack with the Christian conservative voters of northwest Iowa.

Following in the footsteps of John Calvin? (and Jesus, I guess)

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

But for Calvin only those were welcome, who supported his religious views and helped him to force out his opponents in Geneva:

The turning point in Calvin's fortunes occurred when Michael Servetus, a brilliant Spanish scientist, discoverer of Pulmonary circulation and polymath and a fugitive from ecclesiastical authorities, appeared in Geneva on 13 August 1553. Servetus was a fugitive on the run after he published The Restoration of Christianity (1553), Calvin scholar Bruce Gordon commented "Among its offenses were a denial of original sin and a bizarre and hardly comprehensible view of the Trinity."^[56][57] In July 1530 he disputed with Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel and was eventually expelled. He went to Strasbourg, where he published a pamphlet against the Trinity. Bucer publicly refuted it and asked Servetus to leave. After returning to Basel, Servetus published Two Books of Dialogues on the Trinity (Latin: Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo) which caused a sensation among Reformers and Catholics alike. John Calvin alerted the Inquisition in Spain an order was issued for his arrest.^[58]
Calvin and Servetus were first brought into contact in 1546 through a common acquaintance, Jean Frellon of Lyon; they exchanged letters debating doctrine; Calvin used a pseudonym as Charles d' Espeville and Servetus used the moniker Michel de Villeneuve.^[56] Eventually, Calvin lost patience and refused to respond; by this time Servetus had written around thirty letters to Calvin. Calvin was particularly outraged when Servetus sent him a copy of the Institutes of the Christian Religion heavily annotated with arguments pointing to errors in the book. When Servetus mentioned that he would come to Geneva, "Espeville" (Calvin) wrote a letter to Farel on 13 February 1546 noting that if Servetus were to come, he would not assure him safe conduct: "for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive."^[59]
In 1553 Servetus published Christianismi Restitutio (English: The Restoration of Christianity), in which he rejected the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the concept of predestination. In the same year, Calvin's representative, Guillaume de Trie, sent letters alerting the French Inquisition to Servetus.^[60] Calling him a "Spanish-Portuguese", suspecting and accusing him^[61] of his recently proved Jewish converso origin.^[62][63][64] De Trie wrote down that "his proper name is Michael Servetus, but he currently calls himself Villeneuve, practising medicine. He stayed for some time in Lyon, and now he is living in Vienne."^[65] When the inquisitor-general of France learned that Servetus was hiding in Vienne, according to Calvin under an assumed name, he contacted Cardinal François de Tournon, the secretary of the archbishop of Lyon, to take up the matter. Servetus was arrested and taken in for questioning. His letters to Calvin were presented as evidence of heresy, but he denied having written them, and later said he was not sure it was his handwriting. He said, after swearing before the holy gospel, that "he was Michel De Villeneuve Doctor in Medicine about 42 years old, native of Tudela of the kingdom of Navarre, a city under the obedience to the Emperor".^[66] The following day he said: "..although he was not Servetus he assumed the person of Servet for debating with Calvin".^[67] He managed to escape from prison, and the Catholic authorities sentenced him in absentia to death by slow burning.^[68]
On his way to Italy, Servetus stopped in Geneva to visit "d'Espeville", where he was recognized and arrested. Calvin's secretary, Nicholas de la Fontaine, composed a list of accusations that was submitted before the court. The prosecutor was Philibert Berthelier, a member of a libertine family and son of a famous Geneva patriot, and the sessions were led by Pierre Tissot, Perrin's brother-in-law. The libertines allowed the trial to drag on in an attempt to harass Calvin. The difficulty in using Servetus as a weapon against Calvin was that the heretical reputation of Servetus was widespread and most of the cities in Europe were observing and awaiting the outcome of the trial. This posed a dilemma for the libertines, so on 21 August the council decided to write to other Swiss cities for their opinions, thus mitigating their own responsibility for the final decision.^[69] While waiting for the responses, the council also asked Servetus if he preferred to be judged in Vienne or in Geneva. He begged to stay in Geneva. On 20 October the replies from Zurich, Basel, Bern, and Schaffhausen were read and the council condemned Servetus as a heretic. The following day he was sentenced to burning at the stake, the same sentence as in Vienne. Some scholars claim that Calvin and other ministers asked that he be beheaded instead of burnt, knowing that burning at the stake was the only legal recourse.^[70] This plea was refused and on 27 October, Servetus was burnt alive at the Plateau of Champel at the edge of Geneva.^[71]
After the death of Servetus, Calvin was acclaimed a defender of Christianity, but his ultimate triumph over the libertines was still two years away. He had always insisted that the Consistory retain the power of excommunication, despite the council's past decision to take it away. During Servetus's trial, Philibert Berthelier asked the council for permission to take communion, as he had been excommunicated the previous year for insulting a minister. Calvin protested that the council did not have the legal authority to overturn Berthelier's excommunication. Unsure of how the council would rule, he hinted in a sermon on 3 September 1553 that he might be dismissed by the authorities. The council decided to re-examine the Ordonnances and on 18 September it voted in support of Calvin—excommunication was within the jurisdiction of the Consistory. Berthelier applied for reinstatement to another Genevan administrative assembly, the Deux Cents (Two Hundred), in November. This body reversed the council's decision and stated that the final arbiter concerning excommunication should be the council. The ministers continued to protest, and as in the case of Servetus, the opinions of the Swiss churches were sought. The affair dragged on through 1554. Finally, on 22 January 1555, the council announced the decision of the Swiss churches: the original Ordonnances were to be kept and the Consistory was to regain its official powers.^[72]
The libertines' downfall began with the February 1555 elections. By then, many of the French refugees had been granted citizenship and with their support, Calvin's partisans elected the majority of the syndics and the councillors. On 16 May the libertines took to the streets in a drunken protest and attempted to burn down a house that was supposedly full of Frenchmen. The syndic Henri Aulbert tried to intervene, carrying with him the baton of office that symbolised his power. Perrin seized the baton and waved it over the crowd, which gave the appearance that he was taking power and initiating a coup d'état. The insurrection was soon over when another syndic appeared and ordered Perrin to go with him to the town hall. Perrin and other leaders were forced to flee the city. With the approval of Calvin, the other plotters who remained in the city were found and executed. The opposition to Calvin's church polity came to an end.^[73]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin

Calvin's government also punished "impiety" and dissent against his particularly spare vision of Christianity with execution. In the first five years of his rule in Geneva, 58 people were executed and 76 exiled for their religious beliefs.


https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/john-calvin

Calvin the witchhunter:

By literally following the statements from Ex 22.17 EU, "You should not leave a witch alive," Calvin advocated the persecution of the witches and their execution. He called for "witches" to be tracked down and "exterminated" mercilessly. In his sermons on the first book of Samuel, he therefore reprimanded those who refused to burn the witches and demanded that they be banished from society as despisers of the divine word.

Calvin's stance in Peney's witch trials is particularly well documented. [46] Calvin believed that men and women in Geneva spread the plague through magic for three years, and believed all the tortured self-accusations to be true, but subsequent revocations were untrue. In 1545, 34 unfortunates were burned after horrific tortures in front of the houses they allegedly had plagued with plague.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann...exenverfolgung

Calvin is not the best example for the human treatment of refugees and dissenters.