lunes, 10 de julio de 2017

Sock it to them | MercatorNet | July 10, 2017 | MercatorNet |

Sock it to them

| MercatorNet | July 10, 2017 | MercatorNet |







Sock it to them

Justin Trudeau wears Muslim themed socks to a gay pride parade.
The Iona Blog | Jul 8 2017 | comment 



Justin Trudeau is the insufferably trendy, attention-seeking, virtue-signalling Prime Minister of Canada. One of Trudeau’s gimmicks is wearing specially made socks designed to draw attention to whatever is on his mind on any given day.
For example, on May 4 he wore a pair of Star Wars socks because apparently May 4th is ‘The Force be with you’ Day because people can say ‘May the Fourth be with you’, or something like that. In fact, he wore his Star Wars socks when meeting Enda Kenny. You wouldn’t catch a stuff-shirt like Enda wearing socks like that. Never mind that they distracted from the whatever it was they were discussing. The point is that Justin could look cool again.
In any event, while at the Toronto Pride Parade Trudeau decided to wear another set of specially minted socks, this time to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid Mubarak, which marks the end of Ramadan.
This struck me as Justin trying way too hard. Again. But in fact, his choice of socks at that particular event highlighted inadvertently some of the internal contradictions of multi-culturalism. If there are two movements on the planet today which are further apart in terms of many of their core values than Islam and the LGBT movement (a branch of the sex revolution and liberal individualism), I would like to see them.
Islam is even further away from the sex revolution than Christianity is in terms of its attitudes to women, to homosexuality, and to sexual relations and the family generally. In places like Iran and Saudi Arabia homosexual conduct can be punishable by death.
Iran is the most important Shia country in the world. Saudi Arabia is the most important Sunni country. So they are not marginal to Islam. On the contrary, they are at its heart.
When Justin Trudeau wears those socks he wants us to ignore inconvenient facts like this, and to pretend that deeply contradictory cultures can live peacefully, side by side without ever clashing now or in the future. To point this out would be regarded as grossly impolite. Instead we are invited to cheer.
If Trudeau wore socks bearing a Christian symbol at such an event, I doubt people would be so forebearing. Why the difference? The reason is that Muslims are a minority in countries like Canada, and Christians are not so regarded, even though in Canada practising Christians are, in fact, a minority.
Once you are classified as a minority, your beliefs no longer come into the picture and the way the beliefs of one minority can totally contradict the beliefs of another must be passed over in silence. All minorities are equally good. This is why Justin Trudeau can wear his Eid Mubarak socks to a gay pride parade and expect that no-one (or no-one who matters) will question his decision.
PS. On Twitter, with tongue-in-cheek, I wondered whether he will wear Easter socks next year, just to be consistent, and was criticised for the suggestion, and also for bothering to draw attention to his socks at all. But Trudeau wanted to draw attention to his socks. That was the point of them! Let him wear his specially minted socks anywhere he wants, but he wears them as political statements and they deserve comment as such.


MercatorNet

July 10, 2017

A steady stream of news headlines this year has informed the world that Venezuela's economy is in meltdown, its people are suffering and their anger against the government is spilling out onto the streets. Why is an oil-rich country that was once hailed as a beacon of democracy for Latin America in such a mess? 
According to an article today by Henkel Garcia U of Andres Bello Catholic University, it's not just because of the the late Hugo Chavez's disastrous "21st-Century Socialism". Garcia U says that chaos has been brewing there since the early 1970s because of "the fragility of an economy heavily dependent on a single resource – and one rather poorly managed." I found the piece helpful, but perhaps those closer to the scene will have some comments to add.


Carolyn Moynihan 
Deputy Editor, 
MERCATORNET



Modernity eats the apple
By John Robson
And fools itself about the consequences for meaning and human freedom.
Read the full article
 
Inside Venezuela’s economic collapse
By Henkel Garcia U
The weaknesses of a patrimonialist state a centralised planning pre-date Chavez.
Read the full article
 
Sock it to them
By The Iona Blog
Justin Trudeau wears Muslim themed socks to a gay pride parade.
Read the full article
 
The global scale of internal displacement
By Marcus Roberts
And the country affected the most.
Read the full article
 
The legacy of a World War II nuclear site
By Karl D. Stephan
The collapse of a tunnel draws attention to how ethical sensitivities have changed.
Read the full article


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