Punishable by being wobbled to death by high impact bass bins.
The Death Penalty – What’s All the Fuzz About?
- Thread starter Guybrush
- Start date
Punishable by being wobbled to death by high impact bass bins.
N
nomadologist
Guest
You mean like the men in AIDS/TB ravaged Africa whose governments deny AIDS is an STD who have taken to raping babies because their logic goes "you can't get AIDS from a virgin"
I wish this were an exaggeration or isolated incident, but it's a huge social problem.
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Yes, the epidemic of child rape in many African countries is no exaggeration: in South Africa, for example, it seems to have originated from the belief that 'sex with a virgin -- even a child or baby -- can cure HIV/AIDS', so 'fueling what is already one of the highest child sexual exploitation rates in the world,' a tragedy that is then matched by 'the growing phenomenon of black babies with AIDS being thrown away in dumps around the nation.' A situation hardly likely to improve by having a South African president , Thabo Mbeki, who is still an Aids dissident.
But elsewhere, like in the Congo, the reason is an older and more predictable one: war.
"But when they brought me this young child, eighteen months, with broken legs, who was raped for two months, then I knew, my goodness, there's a problem going on in Congo. And, of course, she died. It was impossible to save her ... But there's another form of very violent war with sexual terrorism going on in Congo. We are talking about more than -- in all eastern part of Congo, more than 200,000 women, children and babies being raped every day, and now, right now, I am talking to you, thousands of women are taken and children into forests as slave sex."
Or, "Some of these girls, barely teenagers, are raped in front of their parents and have their private parts poked with bayonets and pieces of wood. In one case, a group called the rastas by virtue of their dreadlocks, bashes babies with pestles or burns them."
[Some BrassEye-type outfit should really do some satirical piece on that 'One Laptop Per Child'/'Buy one, give one free' racially-based patronizing nonsense: 'One Child On Every Laptop!', 'Give a laptop, get a child free"', etc].
N
nomadologist
Guest
All of this makes my stomach turn. I had even forgotten that it's touted as a "cure" to AIDS.
Why can't we do something about this instead of wasting manpower and tax dollars on things like chasing down everyone who owns a copy of "Pipe Bombs for Dummies"??
Why can't we do something about this instead of wasting manpower and tax dollars on things like chasing down everyone who owns a copy of "Pipe Bombs for Dummies"??
what is wrong with the death penalty is in part to do with what is wrong with the justice system, which is in part to do with what is wrong with society in general.
incidentally just heard a harrowing tale (from This American Life) of 5 teenagers who spent 15 years in prison because the authorities needed "fall guys". the statistic of over-turned death-row sentences since the advent of DNA evidence is astounding. something like 1 in 5 are found innocent.
and even the guilty ones who did commit crimes... what is needed is compassion (probably unrealistic i realise). it is all too easy to point fingers and judge those who, much more often than not from entirely extraneous, random circumstances, find themselves on the wrong side of the law. I am a firm believer of the "if you were in those shoes you'd probably do the same thing" school, and i'll defend this stance 'till the end.
yeah "off with their heads". why don't we bring these back too while we're at it.
incidentally just heard a harrowing tale (from This American Life) of 5 teenagers who spent 15 years in prison because the authorities needed "fall guys". the statistic of over-turned death-row sentences since the advent of DNA evidence is astounding. something like 1 in 5 are found innocent.
and even the guilty ones who did commit crimes... what is needed is compassion (probably unrealistic i realise). it is all too easy to point fingers and judge those who, much more often than not from entirely extraneous, random circumstances, find themselves on the wrong side of the law. I am a firm believer of the "if you were in those shoes you'd probably do the same thing" school, and i'll defend this stance 'till the end.
yeah "off with their heads". why don't we bring these back too while we're at it.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Were these the black kids who were in central park right after that white man raped and strangled a white woman who was jogging? The cops, with 5 easy-to-manipulate teens on their hands who admitted to being near the scene of the crime around the right time, and an NYC public thirsty for bloody vengeance, forced confessions out of all of them by telling them "if you speak up now, you won't go to jail, we'll use your testimony to put your friends in jail" and then slapped them with conspiracy and accessory to commit when they finally "testified against" their friends.
Okay that was an absolutely horrifying read. Just...FUCK
absolutely everything happened exactly like that, i mean exactly, with the race issue, the forced/manipulated confessions/turning them against eachother, all of it; except the one i heard wasn't in central park, it was detroit i think. i'm sure very similar incidents probably happens on a weekly basis in america.
they interviewed one of the kids and he told stories about how his entire family, girl friend, friends, just abandoning him when he was convicted of rape and murder at the age of 15, all of them taking the side of law and order, no one believing him. and about how he was attacked countless times in prison, once stabbed 12 times in the cafeteria... and the appeal process took years and years, and it was a total fluke that some attorney actually read his letters and took it seriously, and an even bigger fluke that they were able to prove their innocence. just crazy...
N
nomadologist
Guest
It does happen all the time, literally. It's insane.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
"First they came for the teddy bears, but I did not speak out because I did not have a teddy bear..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7121025.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7121025.stm
this shit is on CNN every hour for the past week.
the media's tireless repeated coverage of this incident is so obviously politically motivated, such transparent, vile propaganda inciting hatred and whipping up anti-islamic sentiments in the west. (and people like Teabag eats it right up) it is just disgusting how they show that adorable photo of the woman and repeat "40 lashes..."
can't you just see overweight tabloid reading mothers gossiping in the supermarket? "how can those muslim monsters do such a thing to such a poor sweet teacher? i mean she's there trying to help these animals in the first place!" (and people like Teabag eats it right up)
fundamentalist christians do much worse than this every fucking day and you don't see it on the news. i have lived in Texas for 3 years, and have experienced the ways Baptist bible bangers make people's lives miserable for not believing.
this shit makes me sick.
the media's tireless repeated coverage of this incident is so obviously politically motivated, such transparent, vile propaganda inciting hatred and whipping up anti-islamic sentiments in the west. (and people like Teabag eats it right up) it is just disgusting how they show that adorable photo of the woman and repeat "40 lashes..."
can't you just see overweight tabloid reading mothers gossiping in the supermarket? "how can those muslim monsters do such a thing to such a poor sweet teacher? i mean she's there trying to help these animals in the first place!" (and people like Teabag eats it right up)
fundamentalist christians do much worse than this every fucking day and you don't see it on the news. i have lived in Texas for 3 years, and have experienced the ways Baptist bible bangers make people's lives miserable for not believing.
this shit makes me sick.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
I suppose intolerant religious fuckheads with no sense of humour are the same the world over. That doesn't make it OK.
of course not. but the issue here concerns which specific part of the global problem is chosen to be made public, by whom, and to what ends.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
If it highlights the problems and allows a form of perhaps intervention in the Sudan - if the death of a white woman is what it takes - then, frankly I hope she dies.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Of course there is bias in the media and it is manipulated to political ends, we all know that. But really - something like this is always going to get coverage because it resonates strongly with people. If you call what she did a 'cultural faux pas', then what the heck is throwing someone in jail because of what they allowed some kids to call a toy bear? You know from some perspectives that looks pretty ridiculous too. So yes i highlights 'cultural differences' and everyone is now using it to bolster their own agenda. Are they even claiming that she was being deliberately provocative or malicious in her actions? Is this a case of the Sudanese government baiting 'the west'?
I am interested in how people react to this news story. I note that Mr Tea did not in fact make any actual comment, he just posted a link.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh fuck right off you great twat. When was the last time there were mass protests by Christians - even those mental right-wing American ones - calling for someone to be KILLED over something as trivial as this?
Vile propaganda, indeed. How is it 'propaganda' to draw attention to the horrifically unjust persecution of an innocent woman by religious fanatics? How is it you can blind yourself to the beliefs and actions of mediaeval-minded bigoted savages anywhere in the world, as long as it's not in the Big Bad West?
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Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Tea, you posit this media spectacle as the fault of the religion. Islamaphobia caught red-handed -- you've fallen into the trap Zhao outlined. You really don't think that people have drummed up this outrage and counter-outrage to serve their own ends? This is the Mohammed cartoon all over again -- one side gets its Westerners-as-deliberately-offensive-and-bigoted show, the other gets its Muslims-as-irrational-and-violent-savages-opposed-to-freedom show.
Christians protest stupid shit all the time [10 Commandments in court rooms, prayer in school, abortion, homosexuality, evolution], threaten death even (check blog comments ever?), but it doesn't turn into a media spectacle. Why do you think that is?
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/professors-in-c.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0513,mondo3,62472,6.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
The Danish cartoons were a deliberate attempt to rile Muslims (which is about difficult as breathing at the moment, rendering it all the more pointless and stupid); this is about a woman who accidentally offended some fanatics' sensibilities, so it's not by any means comparable.
Furthermore, she's currently in jail, as a result of a sovereign country's laws, and crowds of thousands of people have called for her to be executed. I'd say that's a bit different from a few 'blog comments'!
And what's that about 'Islamaphobia'? Anyone who can't see that a very large part of the Islamic world is run by some spectacularly unsavoury people is deluding themselves, plain and simple.
Furthermore, she's currently in jail, as a result of a sovereign country's laws, and crowds of thousands of people have called for her to be executed. I'd say that's a bit different from a few 'blog comments'!
And what's that about 'Islamaphobia'? Anyone who can't see that a very large part of the Islamic world is run by some spectacularly unsavoury people is deluding themselves, plain and simple.
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mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Look! I can cut and paste too! Thought this might be interesting in that blog arguments are synchronous.
"If you actually believe that Islam is the direct and only reason a teacher is getting lashed for having a class vote on a name for a teddy bear that ends up being Mohammad then more power to you. As you pointed out yourself though, Islam can be compatible with democracy as in Turkey, or it may not, as in Sudan. So in terms of productive analysis it does not seem likely that root cause of the problem is Islam, but Islam as it’s specifically practiced by Sudanese as opposed to Turks. Call Sudanese Fundamentalist if it suits you but I don’t see any strong evidence to support your leaps of logic: “Islam lends itself well to authoritarianism”, is that really true more so than any other religion? Frankly, that is sophomoric, and since you felt the need to start with the playground taunts and name calling (I’m a retard?) I feel free to move on to the negative connotations. Here’s an alternative hypothesis, authoritarian regimes will use whatever means possible to enhance their legitimacy by appropriating or co-opting other social constructs hence Juche in North Korea, Singapore’s highly restrictive Confucianism, and the Chinese Communist Party’s co-option of capitalist means of production within the strict confines of state control.
Ayatollah Sistani, a Muslim and in the strictest sense a fundamentalist, was a major player in getting the general Iraqi population or at least the Shiite portion to participate in the first Iraqi election. There were, and are, Islamic parties both opposing and supporting the Iraqi government. There are both Sunni (Al Qaeda in Iraq as well as a host of larger organizations) and Shiite (Mahdi Army) forces acting in opposition to the government and Sunni (mostly the relatively secular ones like Chalabi) and Shiite (SCIRI) forces allied with the Iraqi government. They are all Islamic to one degree or another and they are all over the map politically, because their actions are influenced not only by their religion but by their specific histories. Call it sophistry if you like, but Islam, or even Fundamentalist Islam, is too broad a category for useful analysis, it is only one of many factors in Middle Eastern and North African affairs and one needs to understand how it interrelates with other specific factors about the region in question. So while stating Sudan’s problems are specific to Sudan’s situation may appear to be sophistry at first glance, it’s also a warning that not paying attention to Sudan’s actual history but rather drawing overgeneralized conclusions from weakly supported prejudicial assumptions lead to a lack of understanding.
As with the Hutu versus Tutsi issues in Rwanda (and Burundi which is often forgotten) violence in Sudan, both in Darfur and in Southern Sudan, is partially the result of national borders which combined hostile people groups within one nation. Although the Janjaweed are referred to as Arabs, to most European observers they are physically indistinguishable from the other Nilotic peoples of Sudan because in Sudan the word Arab has come to be applied both to the Semitic people of the region and those Nilotic people who practice Islam. And that is why I say Sudan’s situation is specific to Sudan, if you don’t know how the word Arab is applied in that country you may mistakenly believe that people from the Arabian peninsula are invading Darfur instead of it being a war largely between Nilotic (and some Bantu) people groups who have been in Sudan since before recorded history, some of whom are Islamic and some of whom are not. That is not to say Arabs (the Semitic people mostly found on the Arabian peninsula) aren’t involved, Saudi Arabia is a major sponsor of the Sudanese government, but there is a long history of war between various Nilotic peoples (Somalia for example) both within and between (such as cross border skirmishes between Karamajong and Masai between Kenya and Uganda) nations. Sometimes the groups differ in religion, as in Sudan, and sometimes they don’t, as in Somalia, but the religious difference is incidental to the root causes, usually resource distribution and government favoritism to one group or another. In that sense Darfur is similar to Rwanda, or the Congo or even Northern Ireland, in that borders that cause friction over resource allocation and government favoritism result in violence. That Islam is involved in Darfur is tangential to understanding the nature of the conflict."
from here
http://fretless.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/teddy-bear-named-mohammad/
but don't go there.
It doesn't look as good as HMLT's cut-and-pastes though
"If you actually believe that Islam is the direct and only reason a teacher is getting lashed for having a class vote on a name for a teddy bear that ends up being Mohammad then more power to you. As you pointed out yourself though, Islam can be compatible with democracy as in Turkey, or it may not, as in Sudan. So in terms of productive analysis it does not seem likely that root cause of the problem is Islam, but Islam as it’s specifically practiced by Sudanese as opposed to Turks. Call Sudanese Fundamentalist if it suits you but I don’t see any strong evidence to support your leaps of logic: “Islam lends itself well to authoritarianism”, is that really true more so than any other religion? Frankly, that is sophomoric, and since you felt the need to start with the playground taunts and name calling (I’m a retard?) I feel free to move on to the negative connotations. Here’s an alternative hypothesis, authoritarian regimes will use whatever means possible to enhance their legitimacy by appropriating or co-opting other social constructs hence Juche in North Korea, Singapore’s highly restrictive Confucianism, and the Chinese Communist Party’s co-option of capitalist means of production within the strict confines of state control.
Ayatollah Sistani, a Muslim and in the strictest sense a fundamentalist, was a major player in getting the general Iraqi population or at least the Shiite portion to participate in the first Iraqi election. There were, and are, Islamic parties both opposing and supporting the Iraqi government. There are both Sunni (Al Qaeda in Iraq as well as a host of larger organizations) and Shiite (Mahdi Army) forces acting in opposition to the government and Sunni (mostly the relatively secular ones like Chalabi) and Shiite (SCIRI) forces allied with the Iraqi government. They are all Islamic to one degree or another and they are all over the map politically, because their actions are influenced not only by their religion but by their specific histories. Call it sophistry if you like, but Islam, or even Fundamentalist Islam, is too broad a category for useful analysis, it is only one of many factors in Middle Eastern and North African affairs and one needs to understand how it interrelates with other specific factors about the region in question. So while stating Sudan’s problems are specific to Sudan’s situation may appear to be sophistry at first glance, it’s also a warning that not paying attention to Sudan’s actual history but rather drawing overgeneralized conclusions from weakly supported prejudicial assumptions lead to a lack of understanding.
As with the Hutu versus Tutsi issues in Rwanda (and Burundi which is often forgotten) violence in Sudan, both in Darfur and in Southern Sudan, is partially the result of national borders which combined hostile people groups within one nation. Although the Janjaweed are referred to as Arabs, to most European observers they are physically indistinguishable from the other Nilotic peoples of Sudan because in Sudan the word Arab has come to be applied both to the Semitic people of the region and those Nilotic people who practice Islam. And that is why I say Sudan’s situation is specific to Sudan, if you don’t know how the word Arab is applied in that country you may mistakenly believe that people from the Arabian peninsula are invading Darfur instead of it being a war largely between Nilotic (and some Bantu) people groups who have been in Sudan since before recorded history, some of whom are Islamic and some of whom are not. That is not to say Arabs (the Semitic people mostly found on the Arabian peninsula) aren’t involved, Saudi Arabia is a major sponsor of the Sudanese government, but there is a long history of war between various Nilotic peoples (Somalia for example) both within and between (such as cross border skirmishes between Karamajong and Masai between Kenya and Uganda) nations. Sometimes the groups differ in religion, as in Sudan, and sometimes they don’t, as in Somalia, but the religious difference is incidental to the root causes, usually resource distribution and government favoritism to one group or another. In that sense Darfur is similar to Rwanda, or the Congo or even Northern Ireland, in that borders that cause friction over resource allocation and government favoritism result in violence. That Islam is involved in Darfur is tangential to understanding the nature of the conflict."
from here
http://fretless.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/teddy-bear-named-mohammad/
but don't go there.
It doesn't look as good as HMLT's cut-and-pastes though