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From Reuters:
A Pakistani counter-terrorism court has sentenced to death a man who allegedly committed blasphemy on Facebook, a government prosecutor said on Sunday, the first time someone has been handed the death penalty for blaspheming on social media.
[...] Shafiq Qureshi, public prosecutor in Bahawalpur, about 500km (300 miles) south of provincial capital Lahore, said Raza was convicted for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammad, his wives and companions.
"An anti terrorism court of Bahawalpur has awarded him the death sentence," Qureshi told Reuters." It is the first ever death sentence in a case that involves social media."
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Pakistan Sentences Man to Death for Blasphemy on Facebook
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 12 2017, @10:02AM (8 children)
How slow should I have been to reach that inevitable conclusion?
Saying that doesn't make it so. Again, this is the moral equivalence of which I speak. What's different about the "environment"? Does a more arid environment lead to more executions? I'll note here that the heavy prevalence of the belief system, Islam is one of the key differences in environment between the US and Pakistan.
Who is "we"? The US doesn't do so (there are technically situations where drug trafficking can result in the death penalty currently, but it hasn't happened yet). It's worth noting here that apparently there are over 100 people on death row in Pakistan for drug trafficking/smuggling charges as of 2015 and by now, it is likely some of them have been executed.
I think you would be better served actually paying attention rather than asserting falsehoods.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Monday June 12 2017, @12:37PM (7 children)
This is why I hate that fucking term so much. It's such an easy way out of looking at yourself in the mirror and meditating on history when it doesn't even mean anything with the way it's used beyond "No, this country's different. Therefore your comparison is invalid".
1) The United States are not morally superior. I really don't know how I can explain this further. Pakistan spends more on killing those people (and you seem to think the US is better for killing less? I don't get it) than they do their own school systems. The direction the US is heading in terms of military buildup will make us closer there though. We would do the same thing they do because the favorite religion superset already has plenty of atrocities and legal killings written right into the book. I know it's a go-to excuse that the Old Testament somehow doesn't matter. Because God wrote a new version. Hah. No. Not unless you're willing to give the pakistanis a fresh slate if they wrote the New Koran that excluded the instructions to kill unbelievers.
2) You're so attached to this term in order to escape your shared responsibility that you seem to have gotten the impression my post is asserting something positive or in defense of Islam. I am not. Re-read the post, or perhaps actually read it this time and note what I said about it being another religion of blood and skulls for a dead god and crazy sect-ridden. And uh... Basically everything in it. Also the part about the main point of the post being more of a critique towards the politics that got us to such a situation. You know, where I said it's a serious problem to prop up these religions because they serve as a stage prop or some vague rationale of acceptance and inclusiveness. Then will inevitably do this. Because they're a murderous cult. I am also saying that americans would do this too if we only knew military rule and theocracy and remember that before you stroke your missiles.
3) We have congressmen in the year 2017 that are in all likelihood basing their healthcare legislation on a quote from the Farmer's Almanac that people misattribute to the bible. (God helps those who buy less iPhones)
4) Though I find your "legal" qualifier amusing because you know damn well we kill people as an open secret and secret trials used to be a semi-regular news item. Come on. Come. On [wikipedia.org]. COME ON [thenation.com]. :p
5) Yay we only have like 3000 people on death row. Pakistan has 8000. I can't level with you on that if you see people as numbers to this degree. Especially when America is supposed to not be about that kind of thing according to "patriots".
6) Environment: Hello, my name is South Asia. I have a troubled past. This is my stepson. He's also troubled. [dawn.com]
Doesn't it ever get tiring pissing yourself in terror over Islam when you've got people who would snap if Trump did something that kind-of-sort-of looks like he made the white power symbol or odin's cross - because they've been waiting for the excuse - living around you? I mean I guess maybe I fail at these posts because I think of skin color last. But all I can say is that I've never seen a pakistani with a 16 gauge tell my "wetback" friends to get off their property. (true story I swear, was a kid at the time, yes AZ)
Also I recommend looking at the US as it is: A young country. We have inertia, development and education as a huge advantage.
Oh, also our soldiers that are in the coalition like to capture people who may or may not be insurgents and hit them on the shoulder so it gets red and irritated. Like it would if a guy had a sling on all day. Because they know damn well he's going to get tried and executed.
But yeah, murika doesn't legally condemn any one person to death domestically for explicitly termed blasphemy. I feel better about our place in the world now.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @06:42PM (1 child)
It has been a pleasure to see someone else take people to task for their bullshit. Well done.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 12 2017, @11:50PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 12 2017, @11:49PM (4 children)
It's an easy way to dismiss bullshit. As I noted earlier no one in the US is being put on death row for blasphemy nor for drug trafficking. Further, it is ridiculous to claim on that particular item that the US is just as bad because some people might have beliefs extreme enough that they might support death sentences for blasphemy. In your next reply, you claimed the US also executes people for drug trafficking - which is false. I think the following quote is particularly telling:
In other words, you blame the "environment" for immoral decisions. But if there's anything to learn from human history, it's that we have tremendous ability to shape our environment both physical and social. Physical laws aren't very different between Pakistan and the US, so we must look elsewhere for why the environment supposedly shapes the two societies in such different ways.
As an aside, if your environment is leading you to make such terrible arguments, then that's a strong case for changing your environment for the better. Maybe you ought to do that first and then get back to us when you have some perspective on the matter.
I'm quite aware that this is a retarded "blame America" post with gratuitous religion bashing. I don't think better of you for it.
What profoundly stupid drivel. Do you not think that Pakistan is far worse for such things? Let us keep in mind that they committed a nasty genocide in the 1960s in what is now Bangladesh. Under what laws was that legal? The instigators were never punished for it. It makes no sense to complain about evil when you can't distinguish between lesser and greater evils.
And I notice your "illegal" things are selective hearsay. Such as:
Cool story, bro!
So less people on death row is not better? If the US quadrupled the number of people on death row to reach the same per capita rate as Pakistan did in a few short years, it'd be no more evil than it is now? Numbers matter a hell of a lot.
My point here is not to pretend that the US is somehow without moral flaw, but to nip in the bud this ridiculous moral equivalence - where the US is compared to every evil of the world and somehow found equal to the worst of it in everything but deed. There's not much point to moralizing when you can't distinguish between lesser and greater evils.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday June 13 2017, @11:26AM (3 children)
Well holy crap I didn't think you'd do it again but you gave yourself away in the first sentence. I'm sure it works well to easily insulate you from things that uncomfortable. Oh I'm sorry, things that are "bullshit".
That's alright though. I chose to be on the side of history that learns. If you don't want to be I certainly can't force you. And honestly I'll just stop trying to argue too. You kind of derailed it from moment 1 but I liked where it was going anyway so played along. (My point was actually about the identity politics and all that shit resulting in a reaction to the completely insincere acceptance people will claim for Islam because it happens to be politically convenient. Which is a domestic issue)
Oh and sorry for my hearsay [youtube.com]. I was wrong in my recollection of it actually being an American. Rather than this being a tactic taught by Americans. My mistake.
and by the way, the US is compared to every evil of the world because it's one of them whether you want to start believing it 20 years late or not. It's people are great, but so are the people in Pakistan. And Iraq, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Having a facade of being more "civilized" because our majority religion happened to become flexible enough to realize crap like the Old Testament is unworkable garbage. By historical chance most likely rather than any inherent superiority I'm sure a lot of people would like to desperately believe is true about America.
By the way the doc cited in the video is actually really good and I feel for these guys. It's also mostly sympathetic to them. Also I recommend Dirty Wars because there's no fucking way I'm investing more energy in this thread when you couldn't do the smallest bit of original research in turn. If you want rampant illegality it's right there for like 1.5 hours (been a year since I saw it, might be 2).
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 13 2017, @12:22PM (2 children)
You don't seem to have learned from it despite your claim to be on the side of learning.
"Most likely"? Maybe you ought to read up on history before speaking in probabilistic terms about things you clearly don't have a clue about. Further, this isn't about some "inherent" property of Americans or a hapless response to an "environment" we have no control over. No one in this thread is arguing that God is sending good souls to be born to the US and bad ones to Pakistan. Nor did the US get all the good rolls and just happens to be better off in so many ways due to blind luck. We are speaking of the systems, including those of religions, not the people. Those can be better and worse, because we made them so!
And the bottom line here is that by the very things you've described as moral problems such as religious nuttery, putting people on death row for frivolous offenses, secretive black ops, and torturing people on the streets, Pakistan is worse on all counts than the US. This brings up the obvious question raised by your argument so far: why bother improving things, if it's all the same? If the US is just as evil for having a quarter the per capita death row inmates as Pakistan, then it'll be just as evil having a sixteenth the Pakistani per capita rate, or four times the rate. Meh. Your worldview is ridiculously broken.
Morality is not a bit you set. Two evil actions aren't equal just because they are both evil. I'm not arguing here that the US is virtuous. Far from it. But when you argue that all evil actions are equivalent, then that's an argument against bothering to change. Why bother listening to "Dirty Wars" or whatever when we're just speaking of stuff that's like jaywalking except maybe the imprisoning and killing innocent people. No big deal, right? We're no more evil no matter how many people we butchered today.
Why do I need original research when your argument came out of the oven horribly broken? This is the typical endgame of such kookery. A staunch insistence that you're right because you finally choose to embrace, for a paragraph or two, some of the rituals and procedures of reasoned argument. But you know, if you had paid attention to my posts way back when, you wouldn't be making this appeal to reason now because you wouldn't need to.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday June 13 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)
Heh. Yeah you got me. I actually want people to see the US like Pakistan for propaganda purposes. Anyway, that was a pretty ungraceful attempt to discredit my statement just because I was honest about my recollection of south/west asian history. You like to do this shit early on in your posts don't you? Alright well again not going to waste more energy on arguing if you're not going to. I will waste energy to get you to expand upon your transparently cowardly murikan mindset by writing posts like this that have the same content density yours do. We can do that if you want. Figures that even on a tech site there's going to be one of you. Critical thinking is officially passe.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 13 2017, @11:03PM
You have already been successful in that task. I'll even expand on my transparently cowardly murikan mindset a bit here to waste more of my time. For example, we spoke of numbers earlier in the thread. I believe that reducing the number of victims of evil is good even when it is far from complete. Second, I believe in the usefulness of accountability. It matters who is doing how much evil rather than some blanket statement that doesn't really apply or matter to anyone. Moral equivalence undermines both these beliefs.
Finally, there are plenty of belief systems, not just religions, that have sanctioned coercion and reality distortion for the purposes of spreading these belief systems. These are thus the most dangerous ideologies one has to deal with since they both encourage forcing people into the ideology and isolate believers from reality. Once they have a taste of power, they are capable of rationalizing any evil. Islam like many religions has a history of such coercion and delusion. But what makes it worse is that this manifests today at the state level (examples: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia) in a way that analogous religious beliefs don't in the Western world, including the US.