Read this, and my comment to it.
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Central Asian Elections
First hat-tip here. The NYT is not allowing perma-links on the issue. Try to check out their coverage. Tajikistan, the country with which I’m most familiar, has a great deal of potential in terms of human capital. It would be a shame if the corruption of the government kept it from realizing its potential. While the initial blush of post-Soviet headiness in the international community has faded, I believe there is enough aid and interest in Tajikistan that it still has a short window in which it could develop a sustainable economy.
Would you like a cup of urine with your anal rape? #torture
The hits just keep coming. h/t noufel The next time I hear some idiot refer to Jack Bauer in defense of torture, I want to ask him what he thinks of Jack Bauer rogering terrorists with a broomstick. You’ve never seen that in the hours of not-so-subtle pro-torture TV drama we’ve seen since 2001, have you? Never saw Andy Sipowicz cornhole a skell on NYPD blue? Or Michael Chiklis on The Shield making a suspect drink his pee? Me neither. Something tells me that might have hurt their ratings.
Prisoner Treatment, Morality, and #Torture
Juan Cole is brilliant in his analysis of how the US lost the moral high ground on prisoner treatment, in part because of our torture polices. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won’t take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say…
2 thoughts on “Idolizing the big 10”
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I agree with your comments. Asra Nomani in her book points out that the Saudis are hardcore about pictures of people being idolatrous, but that hasn’t stopped them from plastering Mecca with pictures of the ruling caste. Apparently, not looking directly into the camera is the key difference between idolatry and a halal snapshot.
It’s hard to believe that Ten Commandments cases are still litigated, but there you go. I’ll predict a split-the-baby (but hardly Solomonaic) decision that will generate litigation (and legal fees) for years still. Here’s my prediction: on a 5-4 vote, displays of the Ten Commandments on public property will be held not to violate constitutional principles of separation of church and state. However, the court will refuse to establish a bright line rule but instead hold that in each case, the question will be whether the display is, in the “totality of the circumstances” for a secular or religious purpose. One “prong” of the test will be how prominent the display is. So a display the size of a house in a public park is out, but a small display in a courthouse along with, say, a display of a copy of the constitution or the magna carta is not. Sometimes, this is as intellectual as constitutional analysis gets.
But this court is not about to invalidate the countless examples of religious iconography that has always been present in American public life, like prayers before legislative sessions, or even the Court’s baliff’s cry of “God save this Honorable Court” before the Nine take the bench. The last two examples are not implicated directly in the present cases, but you can seen the “slippery slope” that the examples present. On the the hand, I don’t think this Court is prepared to say that it’s ok to have laser light shows over the Capitol building featuring the Ten Commandments and Cecil B. DeMille’s voiceover.
But of course, I could be wrong. Allahu alam.
Oddly enough, I think I would be OK with the laser light shows. You could argue about the ephemerality of life (Buddhism), the cyclical nature of life (Hinduism), techno-wizadry (Atheism), of course you make the Abrahamics happy. Although I was thinking James Earl Jones for the voice.