Challenging Opinions >>

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David Introcaso is a healthcare policy consultant based in Washington DC.  He worked for then house majority leader Stenny Hoyer and at Department of Health and Human Services, and he has consulted for the American Heart Association, the American Public Health Association and United Health Group.  He has taught as a adjunct at the University of Chicago and at George Washington University.

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I was reading a piece called Unholy Alliance: Why Do Left-Wing Americans Support Right-Wing Muslims? by Yasmine Mohammed. She’s a former Muslim who, in her own words, ran away from the religious far-right world in which I was raised, and … made [her] way left towards values … like gender equality, free speech and LGBT rights.

And she continued,

Now, try to imagine the shock, betrayal and sadness I feel seeing fellow liberals celebrating right-wing, conservative aspects of Islam. On February 1, I was so upset over World Hijab Day that I spent the day in bed with a migraine. Hijab Day? … Is there a Mormon underwear day? What about a chastity belt day? I risked my life, and my daughter’s life, to escape from the darkness into the light — only to find the light celebrating and fetishising darkness.

That’s what she said, and I think she has a point. I know that many Muslim women want to wear the hijab, and do so without harassment, but for many others, it’s a symbol of oppression and submission. And, let’s be real here, for many women, it’s a bit of both.

Now, I can sympathise with the feeling that women who don’t want to leave the hijab behind, or don’t want to do that yet, they shouldn’t be victimised, they shouldn’t be treated badly on that basis, and them wearing the hijab shouldn’t be used as  a proxy, an excuse for racist or ethnic victimization. So, yes, defend the right of people to wear silly religious garb if they want to do that, and it doesn’t restrict the rights of others.

But there is a whole world of difference between that and saying that wearing the hijab is a good thing, that it should be encouraged or celebrated. Sure, some women in the west wear the hijab because they were brought up with it, and they wouldn’t be comfortable going out without it, and to an extent that is their choice.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the hijab springs from a virginity hysteria in the deeply misogynistic culture that it comes from. Yasmine Mohammed is right that it is absolutely absurd for American liberals to be supporting it, or any other of the bronze-age traditions that make up Sharia law.

But they aren’t the only ones who are being hypocritical. Let’s look at many of the people who are setting themselves up who are loudest about keeping the evil influence of Islam out of the west, the Breitbarts and the Tommy Robinsons, the Nathan Damigos and the Black Pigeon Speaks, and all the alt and not-so-alt right. Why do they want to do that? To preserve western values, that’s why. To defend the enlightenment.

The only problem is that the people who are so anxious to keep out Muslims for the sake of western values and the enlightenment are the same people who care least about western values and the enlightenment. Between them they have attacked everything from due process and the rule of law to religious freedom, universal suffrage and democracy, and every individual liberty that has made the western world what it is. There’s an awful lot of hypocrisy out there. I can understand Yasmine Mohammed being disappointed with otherwise-liberals doing the apologetics for the equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church. And I hate to have to make the choice, but when I do have to make the choice between silly liberals being too tolerant of a totalitarian religion on one hand, and on the other hand, knuckleheads with keyboards dressing their racism up as concern for something that I am actually concerned about … I hate to have to make that choice, but I think I’d tip the balance in favour of people believing in freedom and getting it wrong sometimes, than people believing in totalitarianism and getting it wrong sometimes.

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Jennifer Briney is the host of the Congressional Dish podcast.

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A lot of people are kidding themselves.

We have two rival presidents in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro, the elected president, the successor to Hugo Chavez. I won’t go so far as to say democratically elected, but … elected.

And Juan Guaido, the speaker of the national assembly who has declared himself interim president; he’s been supported strongly by the current US administration, despite the fact that he has no constitutional legitimacy at all, and to a lesser extent by the EU and other western countries.

People on the left have been calling this just another US-backed coup in Latin America, and there is some reason to say that, but they are kidding themselves if they think that is the only thing going on here. People like UK Labour Party leader tweeted in 2013 “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world”.

Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 5, 2013

Maybe not quite. Whatever about the aims of Chavez and his successor, their economics have been a catastrophe for the country. 90 per cent of people live in poverty, and the average Venezuelan lost 11kg, that’s 24 pounds, in 2017. Get that, the economy is in such a mess, people on average lost enough weight to make themselves a weightwatchers star, just because they can’t afford food.

That’s a disgrace in any country but for the nation with the world’s biggest oil reserves, that’s an outrage. It’s said that no society is more than two missed dinners from anarchy, so with years of the whole population going hungry, anyone saying that the current crisis is all down to American propaganda or destabilisation is kidding themselves.

But they’re not the only ones. We’ve had a lot of guff about free elections and democracy, but anyone who thinks that the only motivation the west has is fostering democracy, is really kidding themselves. Marco Rubio let the mask slip a little when he tweeted about how important Venezuelan oil is to Valero Energy and Chevron, and, perhaps as an afterthought, to oil refining jobs in Gulf Coast.

The natural resources of #Venezuela belong to its people.

But the Maduro crime family steals it & uses the cash from oil exports to buy the “loyalty” of top military elites.

But all bad things must also come to an end… pic.twitter.com/MpfK1dozBp

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 28, 2019

The US administration is bending over backwards to encourage a military coup against Maduro, and I’ve no doubt if he falls, a lot of people, most people, in Venezuela will cheer. A new government might even make life better; it could hardly make it much worse.

But the US strongly supports murderous authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, which are ranked much lower than Venezuela on the world democracy index. They’re not encouraging the people in those countries to rise up and overthrow their government; they’re not openly inciting a military coup. The difference is, as Marco Rubio said, the importance of keeping the Venezuelan oil flowing to US oil companies. If you think that the motivation is democracy, then you’re kidding yourself.

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Maxim A. Suchkov is a PhD political analyst, Russia Editor at Al Monitor, and a fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

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A little more than a year ago, on 27 December 2017, a woman climbed on top of a utility cabinet, one of those boxes you see in the street for telecom equipment, she took off the headscarf that she was wearing, she tied it to the end of a stick and she waved it like a flag.

That might not seem noteworthy, just a little strange, except for the fact that the woman who did it was Vida Movahed, and the utility cabinet she stood on was on Enghelab Street, which means Revolution Street, in Teheran, the capital of Iran.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, wearing a hijab, a headscarf covering the hair and neck, is required by law for all women in Iran. Vida was arrested almost immediately and is currently on bail awaiting trial.

Within a couple of days, several women posted images on social media of them doing the same thing. One of them, Narges Hosseini, was arrested and charged with openly committing a sinful act which carries a penalty of 10 years in prison and up to 74 lashes; she is also on bail pending trial. Since then many other girls and women have followed Vida’s example, despite dozens of them being arrested and some beaten by police.

Reports indicate that Iran’s hardline Islamic government is unsure whether to crack down hard on these protests, or turn a blind eye – they fear that either strategy could lead to them spreading. Some of their attempts to prevent the protests have been pathetic, such as fixing obstacles on top of utility boxes.

Iran is different to Saudi Arabia, where women were only recently given the right to get a driving licence, and still can only go to university, or even go shopping, with the permission of a male guardian.

The place of women in Iranian society is complex. There are female members of the Iranian parliament, some of whom have expressed something akin to grudging support for the Girls of Revolution Street, as the protestors have become known. Before that revolution, women had comparatively much more freedom. In 1979, thousands of women protested in the streets at the introduction of this very law, making the hijab compulsory.

The courage of the women in the recent protests cannot be overstated. They protest, often alone, often in a street full of hostile men. They are well aware that rape, and torture, including sexual torture, are common Iranian prisons, particularly for prisoners protesting against the regime.

And, should they try to escape and claim asylum, every single one of them is banned from entering the United States under Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban.

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Michael Pento is a president and founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies. Michael is a well-established specialist in the Austrian School of economic theory.

His steadfast advocacy of free markets has been broadcast on radio programs throughout the country, and he is a regular guest on CNBC and FOX Business News and Bloomberg, and his writing has been published in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and others.

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Rob Fein is the legal director for FreeSpeechforPeople.org. He is a constitutional lawyer who previously served as Assistant Regional Counsel in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he received the National Gold Medal for exceptional service. He is the Co-Author of The Constitution Demands It: The case for impeachment of Donald Trump.

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Bill Warner is an author and the editor of Political Islam.

Bill, as he promised in the podcast sent me his sources for some of the claims that he made, including this about attitudes to Sharia Law, He also sent this link from the Gatestone Institute, an organisation that claims to be a think tank, but in reality is just a fake news mill, cranking out stories that are either gross misrepresentations of the facts, or just plain false.

I actually covered one of their claims on podcast 66 and it’s notable that one of the sources that the Gatestone Institute cite is, in fact, from a BBC journalist, Ruth Alexander, who produced a piece with a whole slew of statistics, and she’s saying the exact opposite of what the Gatestone Institute claimed she was saying.

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As I’m recording this, the UK government is preparing fora vote on Theresa May’s deal with the EU to do Brexit in an orderly way. She is certain to be defeated, most likely by a huge margin. What happens next is almost impossible to say, because the House of Commons is split into multiple factions, with MPs of various parties wanting to stay in the EU, take May’s deal and leave, or leave the EU with no deal.

There is a large majority against every possible outcome,and a very real chance that May, or her entire government will fall out of office, and there is no obvious successor who can do any better at uniting either the MPs or the population, so there is sure to be instability. The UK has long since given up on trying to pursue any other policy goals, they have been preoccupied by this for nearly three years, and there is no end in sight.

Across the Atlantic, President Trump seems to be staring down the barrel of Robert Mueller’s prosecution for campaign finance violations and possible more serious charges. Observers of the White House have various opinions of Trump, Mueller and any possible charges, but nobody disagrees that this is the sole focus of the administration at the moment. As in the UK, almost everything else is on hold.

There is strong evidence that Russian military intelligence put a lot of resources into promoting the Brexit vote in the UK, and the candidacy of Donald Trump. You might have different opinions as to why they did that, and whether it made any difference, but we can certainly see what Putin wanted, even if we don’t agree on anything else.

But consider this. Think of a point sometime in the near future. The UK is struggling to appoint a new prime minister. President Trump is all-consumed by fighting criminal charges. If you were Putin and you wanted to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or the Baltic states, or Poland,what moment would you choose to do it?

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Graham Elwood is a comedian, actor, podcaster, and writer.

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So here’s a bit of what I said at the top of the podcast a little over a year ago.

Yeah, so I guess that MBS is getting a bit more name recognition now than he was a year or so ago.

There are a couple of things to remember about Saudi Arabia. It’s not a country in the normal sense. It is the only place on earth without a constitution or basic law of any type. The will of the prince, literally, is law. Its name, ludicrously, is that of the al-Saud ruling family. It is literally a personal fiefdom.

And they make extensive use of capital punishment, beheading people whenever the mood strikes them, and they’re not too picky about due process. So it’s not too much of a stretch to think that a troublesome journalist, who would be dispatched without a second thought while in the country, would be a target while outside the country.

So, yes, I still think that Mohammad Bin Salman will be much more of an influence on Saudi Arabia than his recent predecessors. Exactly how that will work out, I really don’t know, but he was high-fiving and bear-hugging Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires last week, so I’m not holding my breath for liberal democracy any time soon.

And speaking of democracy, in July, I talked about an electoral system that the state of Maine confirmed by popular ballot, and I gave a brief explanation of how it would work in a piece that I recorded outdoors on holidays.

So this system was tested in the elections in November, particularly in Maine’s second district. Maine has two House members. The race was very close, Bruce Poliquin the incumbent Republican member, in the first round polled very slightly more than Jared Golden, the Democratic challenger. But, as I said it was very close, there was less than a one per cent margin, both got around 46 per cent of the vote. The rest of the votes went to two minor independents.

Because nobody got more than 50 per cent of the vote, those two minor candidates were eliminated, and counters went to look at the votes of those minor candidates. There were about 23,000 of them, and of those 23,000 voters over 10,000 had given their second-preference vote to Golden, and less than 5,000 to Poliquin. This put Golden about one percentage point ahead of Poliquin on the final count, with about 50.5 per cent of the vote.

The bottom line is that more voters preferred Golden, and so he won. Poliquin made threats of court action against the count, saying that only the first-preference votes should be counted, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, which isn’t so surprising, I’m not really sure how he would like to explain to a judge how the electoral system should be changed after the votes have been cast, and the votes should be counted in a different way to the one that the voters expected.

But in all the other Maine races, and almost always with Ranked Choice Voting, the candidate who wins the first count goes on to win the election, even if they have to wait for the lower preference votes of minor candidates to be distributed.

The point of the system isn’t to change who gets elected, it is to change how they get elected. It requires the winning candidate to get at least 50 per cent of the vote, so riling up a small base with negative campaigning is less successful. As Jared Golden – congressman elect Jared Golden – discovered, it’s important to appeal beyond your base, and that’s something important these days.

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A quick message to everyone asking where the podcast is, and where I am and whether I’m still alive.

Unfortunately I got swamped by work commitments and I nearly caught up, and then some other things caught up on me. But I’m getting on top of it all, so I’ll be back shortly with lots more guests and podcasts. So if you are subscribed to the podcast, that will show up in your feed soon – but if you not and you want to be informed, you can subscribe to the podcast by email – just enter your name and email address to the right.

Back soon!

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Owen Poindexter is a freelance writer and a presenter of the Basic Income podcast. He’s also a former Democratic candidate for the California Assembly. We talked about his article 18 Reasons to Support Basic Income.

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Lori Price is the editor in chief of Legitgov.org, Citizens for a Legitimate Government.

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Vladimir Putin is either very stupid or very clever.

Yes, I’m talking about the Russian affair again. No, not that one, the other one – try to keep track. Continue reading “CO091 Lori Price on Alternative News Values”

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Greta Zarro describes herself as a vegetarian sociologist-environmentalist, and she is the organizing director of World Beyond War. We talked about this article she wrote, and in the podcast I also mentioned the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, UK, and the Haska Meyna wedding party airstrike.

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I was looking through the Reddit politics subreddit thinking about what I would talk about at the top of the show, and it sure wasn’t giving me much inspiration. Continue reading “CO090 Greta Zarro on a World Without War”

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Dave Lefcourt is an author, writer and left-wing activist since the 1960s.

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Dr Joseph Zernik is a writer, a researcher and a Human Rights activist based in Israel.

Submissions which he wrote on behalf of the organisation Human Rights Alert – NGO have been incorporated into UN Human Rights Council Periodic Reports.

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Iona Italia is the sub-editor of Areo Magazine and we discussed this piece that she wrote about Sarah Jeong. 

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This is turning into a political correctness bumper edition, so sorry about that but I wanted to comment a bit about the controversy that blew up in the Continue reading “CO087 Iona Italia on the Rights and Wrongs of Sarah Jeong”

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Gary Kebbel served as dean at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In the podcast, I mentioned my previous interview with Professor Henry Jenkins of USC.

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George Marlin is the author of Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy published by St Augustine’s Press. George also served two terms as Executive Director and CEO of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and he is chairman of Aid to the Church in Need. Continue reading “CO085 George Marlin on Defending Persecuted Christians”

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Henry Jenkins is the Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at USC Annenberg, and previously of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also presents the How Do you Like It So Far podcast. Continue reading “CO084 Henry Jenkins on Future Media”

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Helen Raleigh is an immigration policy Fellow at the Centennial Institute and she is a leading voice for a free market based legal immigration reform. In October 2016, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights appointed Helen to the Colorado State Advisory Committee. In November 2016, she was recognized as a “distinguished toastmaster” (DTM) by Toastmaster International for her achievement in both communication and leadership.

We also talked about the book When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques. 

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Dr Ed Gogek is a psychiatrist and a specialist in treating addiction.  He’s also the author of Marijuana Debunked: A handbook for parents, pundits and politicians who want to know the case against legalization.  Continue reading “CO082 Ed Gogek on the Case Against Marijuana”