A 25-year-old American woman appeared in a Dubai court
recently on misdemeanor charges for allegedly insulting the United Arab
Emirates in public while waiting for a taxi at the Abu Dhabi International
Airport. (Chill out, assholes, the U.S. routinely and ‘un-allegedly’ gets
insulted by various people and entities around the world, but we can take it). This isn't the first incident of its kind. In 2013, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen from Minnesota was tried under a
cyber-crimes law and accused of defaming the country’s image abroad for posting
a spoof video online about youth culture in the U.A.E. He spent nine months in
prison before being deported and fined $2,700.
What should happen is this: Every American
citizen traveling through the Middle East and/or communist countries/
dictatorships should receive a blanket amnesty from the president of the United
States clearly stating that it is permitted for the named individual to make
fun of, mock and “disrespect” the President of the United States and otherwise
have fun at the expense of said states without any significant repercussions whatsoever. They already have
that right, in essence, thanks to the First Amendment. Therefore, we expect
that in the interest of reciprocity, international comity and world peace, they
will be granted the same license in all foreign lands. This won’t be the case,
of course, as many tyrants/governments are so pathetic, tyrannical and cowardly
that they will refuse to do so for fear of…hearing things that they don’t want
to hear.
A good
litmus test is this: if your king, Emir, president or government wants to Kill or imprison somebody simply for
“making fun” of them or it, then they- or it- don’t/doesn’t deserve to hold
power.
And
that’s no joke.
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