The Washington Post is reporting on the repressive policies of Turkey toward Christian missionaries.
"Actually, the state might be secular, but it's not making that distinction in its activities," said Isa Karatas, spokesman for Turkey's perhaps 80 evangelical Protestant churches.
Until religious minorities succeeded in changing the law, Turkey required Christians and Jews to study Islam in the religion classes that are compulsory in Turkish schools from the fourth grade. The state has confiscated hundreds of church properties, only recently returning portions under pressure from the European Union, which Turkey is trying to join.
With perhaps 100,000 Christians in a population of 70 million, Turkey officially tolerates and protects faiths other than Islam. Unlike Afghanistan, which last month threatened to execute a Christian convert, the country has no laws barring Muslims from leaving the faith or against attempts to lure them away.
Yet Turkish police charged 293 people with "missionary activity" from 1998 to 2001, a state minister told parliament recently. People who place calls to Christian groups operating inside Turkey are warned against uttering the word "missionary" on an open phone line.
(Posted by Trask)
Categories: Culture · Law · Politics · Theology
The Washington Post is reporting that the French government is literally apologizing for attempting to reform France's economy.
French President Jacques Chirac's government Monday withdrew a controversial youth employment law that had ignited more than a month of protests and violence on the streets of Paris and other cities.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the author of the law, announced he was backing down from the measure, saying that he believes both unions and businesses misunderstood his intentions. "I'm sorry about that," he said in an announcement. Villepin said the upheaval over the law "reveals a social anxiety" in France and said the government will work with unions and businesses to "prepare for the future of our country."
France is a nation without hope. It has a social infrastructure, which is heading toward collapse. However, it is impossible for the government to reform that social infrastructure because even the most insignificant reform produces mob violence. Some governments would correctly see the mobs as a threat to their authority, and they would rightly use their authority to severely punish those who are engaging in such activities. However, since the French government has the backbone of a tooth pick, it instantly caves under any pressure and apologizes for even bringing up the subject. France is a nation without hope because there is absolutely nothing that can be done to correct this situation. The French economic and social welfare policies could not be maintained under any situation, but the social infrastructure is only going to get worst exponentially faster because France cannot repopulate itself with enough people to fund these systems.
So there are two possible courses for France. In course number one, the French government will not deal with any of the economic problems no matter how bad they get and the French economy will completely collapse into a depression. The economic depression will then ignite intense internal violence in France. In course number two, the French government will not deal with any of the problems until the collapse of the French economy is imminent, then the French government will make a futile last minute effort to implement reforms, which will produce a massive revolution in France against the reforms, and the economy will collapse into a depression anyway since the reforms will come too late to have any effect.
The problem for France is that it is just a tinder box ready to ignite with violence because the competing ethnic groups in the country that will use any bad situation to scapegoat the other ethnic group i.e. Islam vs. Secular French. Therefore, when either of these two scenarios go down it could produce intense ethnic violence in France on a level that has not been seen in Europe since WWII.
(Posted by Trask)
Categories: Current Events · Politics
