As The World Turns Wobbly
Fascinating news that never fails to grip the imagination. And make one exceedingly glad to be living in a liberal democracy, where security, personal safety, human rights and just and equal treatment under the law is guaranteed. A pluralistic society that for the most part sees people from various ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds exercise social tolerance for one another.In Libya, for example, four foreigners have been detained on suspicion of proselytizing Christianity. They have also been accused of espionage, a charge that quite startles the Swedish-American, South Korean, South African and Egyptian being held. What a quartet, determined to spread the good word in a society where to do so is forbidden, and where converts can be hounded unto death.
Arrested in Benghazi with tens of thousands of Christian books, booklets and stickers, mostly, the news story indicates, to be directed toward children. How improvident of them, how interfering, how absurd. Better they be objects of gentle ridicule than arrested on such charges, but then this is an Islamist country, albeit considered moderate by comparison to say, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And if the readers and devourers of international news are not by now convinced that the two rogue states, the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are not fully integrated in education, technology-sharing and political skullduggery, another little item, aside from collaboration in missile-launching and nuclear-weapons-production has surfaced.
A North Korean-educated former Iranian military official who holds a doctoral degree in state management from Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang has been nominated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the post of Minister of Communications and Information Technology, in parliament. Imagine: a doctorate in state management from a university in a country that devotes its treasury to munitions and nuclear devices, eschewing the need to properly feed its population.
Oh, and here's another dandy. A Belarusian court has given a two-year prison sentence to a border guard. He is accused and has been found guilty of failing to protect the nation from a dangerously unforgivable foreign teddy bear invasion. He failed to report an airspace intrusion of a light plane dropping hundreds of teddy bears wearing parachutes and slogans supporting human rights.
What a dastardly deed.
Oh yes, Papua New Guinea police have now charged two people with the murder of a woman burned alive in front of hundreds of observers after being accused of witchcraft. The 20-year-old mother was stripped, tortured with a hot iron rod, doused in gasoline and set alight on a pile of car tires and trash by a mob earlier in the month, accused of sorcery in the death of a 6-year-old boy who died in hospital.
Labels: Human Relations, News Media
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 20, 2013
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