by Heather Hastie | Dec 8, 2015 | Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Middle East
I’ve written about the appalling justice system in Saudi Arabia before in The Injustice of Sharia in Saudi Arabia and also specifically about the case of Raif Badawi, a blogger serving a sentence of ten years and 1,000 lashes simply for disagreeing with the type...
by Heather Hastie | Nov 22, 2015 | Auē a Tau Kē, Middle East, Terrorism, Women
On Friday I spent a couple of hours going through the latest issue of Dabiq, DAESH’s on-line magazine. They released it last week to boast of the murders, injuries, and terror they have inflicted anew on the world. The events in Paris and the downing of the...
by Heather Hastie | Nov 1, 2015 | Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Middle East, Winners and Worries
It was announced on Thursday that Raif Badawi won the European Union’s Sakharov human rights prize. The Guardian reports : Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger and activist sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, has won the EU’s Sakharov...
by Heather Hastie | Oct 27, 2015 | Middle East, USA
I’ve just watch the first segment of today’s episode of Fox New’s The Five (5pm Monday EST, 10am Tuesday NZT). The segment was about the operation where US soldiers helped in the rescue of DAESH hostages, who, intelligence suggested, were about to be...
by Heather Hastie | Oct 4, 2015 | Middle East, Russia, Winners and Worries
In reality, Syria has been a worry for years. Bashar al-Assad took over the presidency, the role of commander-in-chief of the Syrian armed forces, and the leadership of the ruling Ba’ath party on his father’s death in 2000. For several reasons, including...
by Heather Hastie | Sep 27, 2015 | Democracy, Human Rights, Middle East, Winners and Worries, Women
For my Worry of the Week, I’d like to draw your attention to a film that was brought to my attention by Dermot C., a commenter on the Why Evolution is True website. It’s called Women on the Front Line and was produced last year by Sheema Kalbasi, directed...
