Switzerland Defends Ban on Mosque Minarets

[Loghead]

So, a hands-off approach is better? Which laws would be better for women to live under? A Sharia law or the law of the land where they live in a non-Islamic country?

Oh? So you are saying that Switzerland banned Minarets in order to show their displeasure with the way Shia Muslims treat women?

Can you say :topic:?

 

[Reba]

It still limits people from being able to fully practice their religion.

How so?

What does Switzerland not being the same kind of melting pot as the U.S. have to do with the topic of this thread?

They are more protective of their culture from the influences of other cultures.

 

[Loghead]

Just because someone disagrees doesn't mean they need to enforce their way on others. There's a difference between disagreeing with a belief system/not practicing it and banning it.

 

[Reba]

I take your non-answer to my question in post #10 as an admission to endorsement of McCarthyism and FDR's Executive Order 9066 (ordering Japanese-Americans to relocation camps)... both of which were later ruled as unconstitutional.

What does FDR's executive order have to do with McCarthy?

 

[Jiro]

What does FDR's executive order have to do with McCarthy?

fear and paranoia.

 

[kokonut]

Oh? So you are saying that Switzerland banned Minarets in order to show their displeasure with the way Shia Muslims treat women?

Can you say :topic:?

It could be one of the many reasons why voters voted against any new minarets. It's very much on topic here.

Here it discussed about Sharia law and minarets in Switzerland
BBC News - Switzerland votes on Muslim minaret ban

And about Sharia law in Europe
Sharia's Inroads in Europe - Italian Court: 'Beaten Up for "Her Own Good"' - Hudson New York

Now, again, whose law should one follow? Should Sharia law be somehow incorporated into a westernized legal system and law?

 

[Lighthouse77]

It's surprising to see such a high number of ethnocentric people on Alldeaf. Sad, really. It's a form a racism.

This is just a question. I don't live in Switzerland so I don't know their situation, so they may have a good reason. but I do believe we should build whatever we want as long as the community is ok with it. (maybe they should build a BIG BAPTIST CHURCH and have some Gospel Thumping preaching and loud hymns! right next to it :P )

BUT I just wonder if you are willing to live comfortable in Iran? or places like that?

 

[Jiro]

This is just a question. I don't live in Switzerland so I don't know their situation, so they may have a good reason. but I do believe we should built whatever we want as long as the community is ok with it. (maybe they should built a BIG BAPTIST CHURCH and have some Gospel preaching and loud hymns! right next to it :P )

BUT I just wonder if you are willing to live comfortable in Iran? or places like that?

Europeans are usually known to exhibit xenophobic attitude. ie - look at Dutch politician - Geert Wilders

 

[Reba]

if it takes paranoia and fear to protect this country and be called as a great American patriot for that, then I have lost faith for this country.

Are you saying that McCarthy should have ignored the Communist agents who were working in the American government?

 

[kokonut]

Tsk...

 

[Jiro]

Are you saying that McCarthy should have ignored the Communist agents who were working in the American government?

no the question is - should McCarthy be allowed to cast a wider nest out of fear and paranoia that included law-abiding American citizens and deny them of their constitutional rights? There are right way and wrong way to fight the Communism. To justify the wrong way in the name of democracy and security is.... :roll:

 

[Reba]

fear and paranoia.

McCarthy wasn't paranoid about the Communist agents; they really existed.

 

[Jiro]

McCarthy wasn't paranoid about the Communist agents; they really existed.

so you're telling me that ALL people who were arrested/interrogated/imprisoned in this commie hunting game were guilty?

 

[kokonut]

Just as there are/were jihad elements/agents in the U.S. today. No sense in imagining they're not here.

 

[Jiro]

Just as there are/were jihad elements/agents in the U.S. today. No sense in imagining they're not here.

so we should ban all mosques in USA and place all American Muslims under investigation or corral them into relocation camp?

 

[sallylou]

There's a mosque near my home. It's not fancy. I frequent the area and shop there. I've never had a bad experience with any of the Muslim people in the area. I can tell which women are Muslims because they wear the hijab. It wouldn't bother me if they built a fancier, more prominent structure. It makes an eclectic city and I like that.

 

[Reba]

AIM Report: Joe McCarthy Was Right

July 3, 2003

The release of transcripts of closed-door hearings conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy gave the media another opportunity to charge that the Wisconsin Senator made reckless charges about communists that destroyed the lives of innocent people. But many of the stories about the hearings and McCarthy were far more reckless, inaccurate and misleading than anything he ever said or did.

The media have had 50 years to get the story straight but still can't present the basic facts to the American people about the communist threat that McCarthy tried to expose-and which still exists today in a different but equally deadly form...

McCarthy was quite specific in his charges, having cited 59 suspected communists in the State Department. He produced that list, plus 22 others. McCarthy helped uncover a communist spy ring involving Foreign Service officer John Stewart Service and Philip Jaffe, the editor of Amerasia, a pro-communist magazine. He targeted Owen Lattimore, a key State Department adviser and a Communist. McCarthy's charge against Mary Jane Keeney, a Soviet agent who served as a State Department employee at the U.N., was proven correct. McCarthy was right about Annie Lee Moss, an army code clerk who was proven to be a member of the Communist Party.

In addition to Service, other State Department China hands who gave aid and comfort to the Communists were John Paton Davies, Edmund Clubb and John Carter Vincent. Soviet agents in high positions included Harry Hopkins, who was so close to FDR that he lived in the White House, Laughlin Currie, an economist who was a top Roosevelt aide, and Alger Hiss, a high State Department official who was at FDR's elbow at Yalta and a key figure in getting the U.N. started.

On May 5, NBC News correspondent Pete Williams aired a report about the transcripts of the closed-door McCarthy hearings. He focused on another alleged innocent victim of the senator. Williams claimed that McCarthy had unfairly singled out composer Aaron Copland for scrutiny. Williams said that Copland, when asked about Soviet policies replied, "I spend my days writing symphonies, concertos, ballads, and I am not a political thinker." Williams said Copland "was never called to testify in public," suggesting he was completely innocent of charges that he had Communist connections.

Red Tunes

But writing in National Review, historian Ronald Radosh noted that Copland had "a record of a vast amount of cooperation with Communist front groups." Radosh said that Copland was "thoroughly dishonest" in claiming he didn't have Communist connections and that his attendance at a Communist "peace" conference was for the purpose of investigating the Communists.

Radosh said that Copland, who swore under oath in 1934 that he never knew a Communist, was in fact a member of the Composers Collective, an affiliate of the Workers' Music League of the Communist Party. Copland even wrote a May Day song for the Communists, "Into the Streets May First," whose music and text were featured on the cover of a Communist Party cultural magazine, New Masses.

An AP story of May 10, 2003, said that FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI "wanted to prosecute Copland for perjury and fraud for denying he was a Communist." No such prosecution ever took place. It said Copland's music was pulled from President Eisenhower's inaugural concert in 1953 because of concern about his Communist ties. AP quoted Terry Teachout, a New York-based music critic and commentator, as saying, "He was involved with the Communist Party up to his ears. Whether or not he was an actual card-carrying member of the party, nobody knows."

Professor David Schiff of Reed College says that the Depression transformed Copland "from an alienated aesthete into a politically engaged populist. Most of his friends turned to communism for solutions to the economic crisis. Howard Pollack reveals that on two occasions in 1934 Copland actually got on the stump to support Communist Party candidates..."

The news stories about the five volumes of McCarthy hearings released by the Senate were all alike, reporting that McCarthy accused people of being Communists who were not, and saying that he bullied them. Lacking time to peruse 5 thick volumes, reporters wrote what Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian who edited the published hearings, told them.

M. Stanton Evans, author of a forthcoming book about McCarthy, contacted reporters for Roll Call newspaper, the Washington Post and Reuters in a fruitless attempt to get the name of one innocent victim of McCarthy. They all told him to contact Ritchie. Ritchie asked Evans to send him a letter...

But Ken Ringle, in a Washington Post story about the release of the hearings, still insisted that Annie Lee Moss was "a frail file clerk in the State Department [sic] who had no idea who Karl Marx was…" He and John W. Dean, in a column posted by CNN.com, made the claim that the derogatory term "McCarthyism" was coined by Washington Post cartoonist Herblock, when, in fact, Romerstein points out that the term was actually introduced by the Communists to discredit their opposition.

Joel Brinkley in the New York Times said McCarthy did not hesitate "to destroy reputations and lives." In fact, some in the media wanted to destroy McCarthy. The Washington Post was preparing to publish major allegations of illegal conduct against McCarthy until it learned at the last minute that its source was a con man....

AIM Report: Joe McCarthy Was Right

 

[Jiro]

Victims of McCarthyism

McCarthy's Victims

A few of the people on McCarthy's list were actually spies for the Soviet Union. However, many of the listed suspects were merely left-leaning public figures, liberal Democrats The list also included those who used to or never work for the State Department. Even being drunk or incompetent while working for the State Department could land a person on the list.

During hearings, McCarthy often asked extremely detailed questions involving what the person did 10 years ago. When the accused invoked the Fifth Amendment to protect themselves, McCarthy said this act is "the most positive proof obtainable that the witness is Communist."


Owen Lattimore

Born and raised in Shanghai, Owen Lattimore was the former editor for the Institute of Pacific Relations Journal. He was the United States government liaison to Chiang Kai-Shek before the Nationalists' defeat in their civil war with China. From 1938 to 1950, Lattimore was directed the Page School of International Relations a Johns Hopkins University.

Lattimore's outspokenness, liberal views and acquaintance with Chiang Kai-Shek made him an easy target for McCarthy's anti-Communist campaigns. In 1950, McCarthy accused Lattimore of being the number one spy for the Soviets. After facing 12 days of intense questioning by McCarthy and his committee, Lattimore was charged with seven counts of perjury. Even though these charges were dismissed three years later, Lattimore's reputation and credibility among people was destroyed. Even after his death in 1989, many still questioned his loyalty to his country.
Val Lorwin

Val Lorwin was a State Department employee who had served in the labor section. When Joe McCarthy first brandished his list of alleged Communists, Lorwin was number 54 on the list. At this time, Lorwin was working as a labor economist in Paris.

Lorwin landed on the government's radar when his old friend Harold Metz testified that Lorwin had shown him a red card for the Communist Party and had hosted some "strange-looking people" at his house. Metz had actually made a mistake. Lorwin was later cleared in 1952 by the Loyalty Board when he testified that the red card was for the Socialist Party and the "strange-looking people" were Socialists.

Despite this, Lorwin was still indicted before the State Department for perjury. It wasn't until two years later did the Assistant Attorney General dismissed these charges. By then, Lorwin's reputation was tainted and Lorwin even said he felt like "several years of my own and my wife's life" were taken away. He even wrote, "I was thankful that we have no children".

 

[Jiro]

Alleged victims of McCarthyism

Persons who were alleged to have been victims of McCarthyism were either denied employment in the private sector or failed government security checks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some of those alleged to have been blacklisted were:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

* David Bohm, Physicist
* Charlie Chaplin, Actor
* Aaron Copland, Composer of modern tonal music
* Dashiell Hammett, Author
* Lillian Hellman, Playwright and left-wing activist
* Arthur Miller, Playwright and essayist
* Paul Robeson, Actor, athlete, singer, writer and political and civil rights activist and winner of Stalin Peace Prize
* Waldo Salt, Screenwriter, government employee & CPUSA member.
* Paul Sweezy, Marxian economist and founder-editor of Monthly Review

The nature of some of these people's involvements in the Communist Party has changed in light of the opening of Comintern Archives, KGB Archives and NSA Archives.

 

[Grummer]

i'm blacklisted lol