Blame the Muslims: how government and media stoke the fires of Islamophobia, Lindsey German, The Age of Blasphemy, February 12, 2015
Why are the approaches to different groups of terrorists so different? Part of the reason is racism: Muslims are portrayed as fanatics and extremists, caught in a clash of civilisations where the good guys are representatives of western civilisation while the bad guys are identified with backwardness, superstition and barbarity.
This dichotomy conveniently ignores western lack of civilisation, whether through two world wars and a holocaust or through the creation of empires which ruled over whole peoples – many of them the same who are being demonised here. It also ignores the record of Muslim culture historically.
There is one overwhelming reason why this happens however: the wars themselves. There is a refusal to link terrorism with the wars which have taken place over a decade and a half, and a refusal to see that one of their outcomes is a rise in Islamophobia.
There is a hideous symmetry in this: as the wars involving Britain and the US have become more mired in failure, so civil liberties have come under greater attack and the rise in Islamophobia has become more pronounced.
“The bills! The bills!”: A Japanese woman’s experience giving birth in the United States, Fran Wrigley, Rocket News 24, February 13, 2015
Receiving any kind of medical treatment in a foreign country can be a daunting experience. And when one of the writers from our sister site Pouch gave birth to her second child in the United States, where she was living at the time, she was naturally expecting the procedures to be different from her native Japan. But there were a number of things that shocked, amazed and downright confused her about giving birth in the US – not least the incredible cost incurred.
CNN host destroys Roy Moore in epic interview: ‘Our laws do not come from God and you know that’, David Edwards, Raw Story, February 12, 2015
According to Moore, Alabama’s gay marriage ban provided equal protection because LGBT people had a right to marry members of the opposite sex like everyone else.
“Our rights do not come from the Constitution, they come from God,” Moore opined.
“Our laws do not come from God, and you know that,” the CNN host said. “They come from man… Our rights do not come from God. That’s your faith, that’s my faith. But that’s not our country. Our laws come from the collective agreement and compromise.”
“You’re citing that marriage is about a divine institution,” Cuomo continued. “You’re putting God before the laws of man. You’re making it about that. And it’s about your ideas of your faith about what marriage is.”
