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In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death
An anonymous reader writes "In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam) and armed robbery are already punishable by death, but a new bill in Iran aims to add to the list 'establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,' effectively giving the government a free hand in silencing bloggers. The internet is widely used in Iran, despite its previous attempts at censorship. Will this change as the censorship grows more rampant?"
When every single Iranian I meet traveling abroad, without exception, apologizes for the actions of their government and expresses their shame for the theocrats in change, I wonder how long things can stay the way they are there. Doesn't Iran have an unusually high proportion of young people, and doesn't that often bode revolution?
Separation of church and state anyone?
Yeah, it's almost as if the First Amendment doesn't apply to Iran...
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
This can't end well... well, for HIM anyways. I imagine it will end very well for the people of Iran.
http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/
It is time people start learning and using Freenet more.
Everywhere you look, politicos are pushing freedom-restricting legislation for the intertubes.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Yeah, killing thousands of people and destroying their country will help establish a peaceful democracy!
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I'd like to point out the irony of this post being submitted by Anonymous reader
In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam)...
Because you know, there are so many non-islamic states that murder their population for leaving the state religion.
I notice you had to qualify your statement with "in the Middle East".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Separation of church and state anyone?
Non-separation of church and state is not necessarily bad but most (if not all) "states" which do not have the separation are also dictatorships therefore giving non-separation movements a bad connotation. Despite what many want and think, the U.S. was never intended to institute a true separation of church and state, at least that's not what the U.S. Constitution says we should be doing. If a state punishes its citizens for not conforming to state religion then, yes, it is bad and should be dealt with. That isn't freedom, especially freedom of religion, and it isn't separation either. Making laws to ban all public display of religion is also not freedom of religion which is what proponents of separation in the U.S. are fighting for. But there is nothing wrong with a state *having* a religion which is what our (U.S. that is) Constitution was trying to accomplish.
Those who chastise the U.S. for not keeping a separation of church and state do not know what true separation is. We now have yet another example with this story about Iran who wants to kill those who do not conform to the state religion. If those who chastise the U.S. would live in Iran for a year they would realize that what the U.S. has is not the same and was never intended to be a state-sponsored religion (the Founding Fathers knew they didn't want that because they were escaping that) but yet a country *with* a common religion (with some minority religions too, which is fine). That is true freedom of religion. People are always quick to chastise the U.S. government and hail other, foreign governments as better, but yet I don't see anyone such as celebrities, who are famous for criticizing the U.S), moving to Iran or Venezuela. I mention Venezuela because some celebrities in the last year or so were giving props to Hugo Chavez for his dictatorship.
Mod me flamebait or troll or whatever makes you feel better just because you may disagree.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
It would work out of we bombed them all at once and didn't put any troops in.
After that, we'd wait for the dust to settle. If none of them are left then we go in and take the sweet, sweet oil while we thumb our noses at OPEC and turn the rubble into the world's largest Hedonism resort. Or, the ruins of the middle east could consolidate into some kind of Islamic mega-state, of which we will again bomb into oblivion when WWIII begins. That'll solve the ol' existentialist crisis.
..simply because I've had a boyfriend, I don't think this is particularily surprising. It is a supressive theocracy. Like other theocracies it has no qualms with torturing and even killing innocent people in order to silence criticism. This is common in dictatorships religious or not. The fundamental problem is the dictatorial rule and the regime's complete lack of limits in terms of what lengths it will go to in order to protect its own survival. Soviet was the same. Zimbabwe is the same. The only difference is what excuse these regimes use to justify their crimes. In soviet it was political ideology. In Iran it is religion. In Zimbabwe it is skin colour. What they have in common is that they kill and torture people in order to make the public afraid of organising opposition, their official reasons (religion,economics,race,culture) for doing so have little to do with their actual objectives. It's all about supressing dissidents, all other reasons is smoke and mirrors trying to obscure the true nature of the regime.
Yeah, that'll work. The mullahs want kill their own people for posting things to the internet (and for women dressing in Western clothes...) and some naive TWIT thinks we can TALK to them. Dumbass.
It very well may not work, however, are you prepared to pay $15/gallon for gasoline (assuming you are in the U.S.) if Iran is attacked by the U.S. military? Iran has stated they will respond with military action and one of their actions is to block oil exports through the Straits of Hormuz. If that occurs you know damn well commodity traders and actual purchasers of crude oil will pay $200-$250/bbl which will cause obvious increases in gasoline prices. We must talk to them first and if that fails then do we go in militarily to solve any problems. The problem with that though is it will have a ripple effect, one of which is the price of oil. There is no winner in the battle with Iran. Everyone loses. Iran may be destroyed but they know we survive on oil and they are the 4th largest exporter so economically we could be destroyed too. If the U.S. goes down economically (moreso than we already are recently) then world markets follow suit because of the economic interdependencies of world gov'ts.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
That's what the Iranian wants you think happened.
I'd have no objection to Iran applying Shariah law. My objection is that they go far over and above Shariah, subverting Shariah and instead practicing "Bid'ah law."
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Dictators usually use the technique of identifying a terrible enemy that only their regime can save country x from.
Not only dictatorships actually, but generally its what dictators do.
The fact is that if Iran stopped saying things like they want Israel to be wiped off the earth, and threatening the west, the problem almost certainly would go away. That's not going to help the regime stay in power though, so they won't want that.
Note that if they really wanted a way to end the tension, Ahmadinejad could have gone another way then declaring that the holocaust was a lie in a worldwide broadcast speech. They want this tension, it serves them well.
They almost certainly realise that the US is extremely wary of invading them, so they know that this technique may serve them for generations to come. The exact same method worked in North Korea. Sure the country's fucked, but the ruling faction are seriously rich, and quite powerful locally.
Unless of course some trigger happy nation or president decides its time to end the argument with a few large nukes. I *really* hope that doesn't happen, because the result may well be bad for the entire worlds population, but sooner or later some jerks going to think its the only way out. Then the question will be who is able to hold said jerk in check.
What worries me is that if the Islamic states continue down this fundamentalist route, they are going to cripple their countries economically as well as scientifically. Given that they were the originators of most of our mathematics and astronomy, that's a tragedy of epic proportions.
As it stands there hasn't been any meaningful scientific research from a middle east nation for decades. Thats bad news for them in so many ways.
Mankind will never advance to the stars if we have two civilisations on the planet. One technologically advanced, and the other technologically illiterate, with each hating the other. That is an untenable situation.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
In america we sometimes have suicide by cops, but I wonder how suicide by blog would work out?
The new bill proposes death penalty for "disturbing the nation's psychological security", a broad, catch-all phrase that also specifically includes "establishing websites and blogs distributing un-islamic and indecent material" (i.e., porn, or anything that can be tagged 'un-islamic').
The bill already has 180 signatures on it (including that of the Speaker of the House), and with the current parliament's setup, is guaranteed to pass. Even the minority so-called 'reformists' are likely to vote for it considering the consequences of not doing so.
Fact: Already, Iran has the second highest rates of capital punishment after China, and by far the highest rate of capital punishment per capita in the world.
Fact: The Islamic regime still executes children (i.e., those under 18). At times, it waits until they are 18 before carrying out the execution, at times (like last month) it even doesn't follow that.
Fact: After years of pressure, the Islamic regime still carries out capital punishment by the mediaeval and inhumane way of stoning the condemned, for certain crimes such as adultery.
Fact: Ethnic minorities (Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs) are heavily discriminated against in Iran. They absolutely have zero representation in the government, even in the local governments of the provinces where they form the majority of the population.
Fact: Iran, despite artificial appearances, is NOT a representative democracy. All candidates for all elections are vetted by a 12-member Council of Guardians, which defeats the purpose of an election. That is how the regime has kept power in its grips for the past 3 decades.
The international community (including the ineffective and outdated Security Council) which claim to have adopted the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect in 2005, need to define the criteria that would trigger a response from the international community. Does this doctrine only apply to cases where hundreds of thousands of people die? (i.e, Darfur? even in that case the international community is only grudgingly and hesitantly acting). Isn't jailing, torturing and killing of hundreds of journalists, labour union leaders, students, ethnic minorities, EVERY YEAR FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS, enough to trigger a response? (I am not in favour of bombing ANY country, as that will not solve any problem, but surely something has to be done, no?)
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic quasi-communist authoritarian rule of a select few with military and economic might and power, over the a population of 70 million which have been suffering with no respite. We need to put aside our 16th century nation states ideas and stop turning a blind eye to such cases of cruel injustice. It is the duty of each and every single one of us, as citizens of this world, to actively seek to terminate the ruling arrangements in countries such as Iran, Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe. A a democratic and prosperous Iran is a key to a long-lasting Middle East solution. A well-governed Zimbabwe is an absolute ingredient of the global fight against HIV. We need to realise that we are citizens of the same world, that we all face the same problems, including climate change, proliferation of nuclear arms and fundamentalist terrorism, to name a few. We need to realise that it is our responsibility, as citizens of this world, to act in cases of humiliation (Iran) and starvation (N.Korea) of a nation by its corrupt government.
We need to remind the Republicans, that military operations are not the only solution, and we need to remind the Democrats, that isolationism is a self-defeating answer.
--
Maybe it's just because I'm getting old and cranky, but I'd say for about 90% of the blogs I happen upon these days, I wish the death penalty were the punishment for blogging in the rest of the world, too.
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
Shariah is the only laws that hasn't changed since the time of Prophet Adam (peace and blessings be upon him and his family).
Unfortunately, the world those laws are applied in has changed. They are in desperate need of an update.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Our meddling is the reason for their current situation. I would encourage you to read up on the events that brought about the Iranian revolution for starters.
That country is something WE ALREADY FUCKED UP. Perhaps it's our responsibility to fix it.
So true. I wish we could get rid of this idea of "bringing Freedom" to countries that don't have the cultural prerequisites of freedom already growing within them. We might not have won the American Revolutionary War without the help of the French, but we started it on our own. Now if there is sufficient desire by the people of Iran (or any country) for democratic freedom, then they will fight for it. When that fighting starts it would behoove us to aid those fighting for freedom, but forcing freedom upon a nation is such an obvious oxymoron that I am appalled at the way such actions are paraded around like good deeds. If anything, the outside intervention cuts short any building cultural movement towards a democratic state. The Cold War is over, could we please not start another one.
We are all just people.
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all of his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. "
Thomas Jefferson
The Founding Fathers very explicitely set up a secular state, a state with complete religious freedoms and a state free of any potential government religious coercion. That means that a Jew, atheist or Hindu has equal rights before the law and has a right not to have any particular religion pushed on him by the government. Attempting to redefine what the Founding Fathers meant is a pretty weak tactic, particularly when their views on religious freedom and on the noxious mix than religion and politics make is so well known.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That was at times contradictory and at others, incoherent i think.
Your challenge is to "move to iran" if we complain? Why? Because we should shut the fuck up and take what we can get and be happy? No.
I also question your various claims about the intent of the constitution with regards to separation of church and state. There are some choice quotes from the time period from various figures involved in the forming of the U.S government who hint and in fact come out and say that there was an intent to keep church and state separate, and that it is reflected if not outright stated in the first amendment.
Poster - when talking about Iran:
I for one am sick and tired of Xian twats going on and on about the "end times." Tell you what - we'll ship you ALL to one spot, and you can kill each other to the glory of your individual gods.
What we REALLY need is a cure for religion.
OK, I know that the subject line is trolling but look at it this way, it almost seems at times if some actions of the world and even own our politics are just the opposite of whatever Bush declares just to be "opposite of Bush".
Regimes like this exist for the same reason that Iraq existed for so long. Western nations don't necessarily have the stomach to put an end to them. We have lapsed back into the thirties where people were more concerned with their well being and as long as the rest of the world left them alone they couldn't care what happened to these "other" people. See it costs nothing to ignore other people "over there". Works the same for Europe as well as the United States.
Life is grand with our cellphones, computers, lattes, and satellite TV. Why should they care? Oh, because festering wounds like this breed organizations who see nothing wrong with targeting civilians. Countries like this focus the ire of their people outward so they continue the oppression internally. All the while declaring it is to crack down on people looking to harm them.
No uprising? Gee, go figure. We can't even get enough people to peacefully kick out the Democrats and Republicans from office here and yet if you read blogs, message boards, and sites like this you would think the world is ending. The difference there in Iran and similar countries is that the government has already shown its willingness to kill its own people.
Here is a better question that needs to be asked of world leaders, why in the hell is China hosting the Olympics? Constant threats to Taiwan, which they will probably overrun in a few years, trampling rights in Tibet, and needless to say that little incident a lifetime ago in a certain square.
Simple answer. Its far easier to turn away. Its far easier to look inside our own borders and pretend the world of bad people really doesn't exist. Yes, there be monsters and covering your head under the sheets only works for so long. Then again occasionally that pesky world gets enough gumption to do something drastic like flying planes into buildings. It will happen again because while we don't have the stomach for wars these people do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The question is whether or not this is a casual relationship. Given that the elements in the USA which seem to be the ones advocating chipping down this barrier even just a little bit pretty much want to do that to other civil rights, I think there probably is. Religion, ultimately, wants to base its existence on "things are this way because we said so", which is ultimately incompatible with human-centric, rational governance.
No argument, of course, about USA versus Iran. We're talking level 2 versus level 100000. The Iranian theocracy are nothing but a bunch of murdering thugs.
More proof we need to go in there and help them to be more like us. Then they will be happy and free, just like we did in Iraq when we helped them back in 2002.
This was a triumph
I'm making a note here
HUGE SUCCESS
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Neoconservatism
we do what we must because we can
for the good of all of us except for the ones who are dead
but there's no sense crying over every mistake
you just keep on trying until you run out of oil
and the polics gets done and you make a neat Middle East
for the people who are still alive
I'm not even angry
I'm being so sincere right now
even though you broke my heart and voted me out of office
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Oh, I'm sure we'll be bringing Democracy to them soon.
It's not about fate, it's about character.
there be no shelter here, the frontline is everywhere!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ideally I have no objections to a sovereign country being run by whatever system they like, with one important caveat; the freedom of anyone to leave if they so desire. A necessary component of that freedom would of course be the ability to gain accurate information about the rest of the world. The only governments that must force it's people to stay are governments that know they are inherently inferior to the governance in other countries. Iran knows that it's power structure is based on a shitty way to live, it knows that it is culturally inferior. That is why it makes such reactionary laws. Of course the Iranian people are beginning to notice how much better life is in the western world, which is why they are making such criminally dangers blogs.
We are all just people.
Separation of church and state anyone?
Yeah, it's almost as if the First Amendment doesn't apply to Iran...
Just like it applies less and less in the US.
You're kinda wrong about what the Founding Fathers intended. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, if read in the context of the times and the meanings of philosophical/theological terminology then, were radically anti-Church and deliberately non-Christian. Jefferson called most of the New Testament dross, including describing the Book of Revelation as "the ravings of a maniac". Read Alan Dershowitz's "Blasphemy" for a very detailed and interesting account of this.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
The CIA, you mean?
In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death
Wrong. Bloggers who set up blogs to promote apostasy, promiscuity or "corruption" may be opened up to the joys of the death penalty in future, not anyone who's "blogging."
The headline as factual as saying, "In the USA, Touching Another Person May Be Punishable By Death." There are lots of other situations in which you can touch people than in the act of killing them.
The United States and Great Britain have only themselves to blame for the current troubles with Iran. If they had left the democraticly elected govenment inplace instead of overthrowing it in the 1950s and puting a 'tin pot dictator' in charge we would not have this problem today.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Many or all of these things are already punishable by death in Iran if you do them without the internet. Go over there and start distributing literature trying to convert people from Islam to another religion, and you've got a potential date with the executioner.
Hence, it is not blogging that they are making punishable by death. They are simply closing a loophole that may have let yo escape punishment by using blogs instead of, say, print or radio.
If we are going to be upset, we should be upset at apostasy being a capital crime at all, not that they have noticed that blogs can be used for apostasy and are closing that loophole.
Separation of Church and State is by definition secular, since the definition of secular State is one that is not entangled with religion. But if you are implying that it is contrary to or not based on religion, I disagree. The concept in the U.S. developed when the country was almost entirely Christian. James Madison credited Martin Luther's two kingdoms concept, but that was a development of the general two swords approach that was traditional in Western Christianity.
Certainly the modern U.S. version has much more separation than the original medieval one. But the justification is at least as much religious as secular. I'll be speaking from the Reformed perspective. Reformed Christianity is particularly concerned about the impact of sin on human lives, and finding ways to structure society to best protect against it.
Separating religion from governmental power protects both the Church and the State from corruption. In Christian understanding the need for governments is because of human sin. While real Christianity is based on love and proper intent, because of sin we can't rely on these motivations entirely in ordering our society. In order to safeguard human life, we need to set up structures to protect each other. In setting up governmental structures, we need to be aware that members of government are themselves sinful humans, and thus set up the structures in ways that minimize temptations and potential for abuse, and which provide for the maximum degree of accountability for power.
Separation is a key element of this. In areas that do not do have separation, you can see religious leaders who become more politicians than true religious leaders, and politicians who become hypocrites, and do things that are ill-considered in order to curry favor with powerful religious elements. Separation of Church and State is ultimately a protection for the Church. It is also essential for the Church to be able to call the State to account. Basic principles of auditing say that the auditor has to be independent; he can't be overly involved in the authority being audited. For the Church to play its proper prophetic role, holding the State accountable, it has to be reasonably independent of the State.
There are examples of the problems that occur from lack of independence in both Christian and Muslim-majority countries.
The other major concern is religious freedom. Both Christianity and Islam hold that there is no compulsion in religion. Both have also honored this more in the breach than the practice, some to the extent of finding creative interpretations to deny the principle entirely. But setting up structures to protect religious freedom is something that has justification in both of our religions. HIstory is pretty clear that when you give religious leaders too much power, they soon abandon their principles of freedom, finding it too tempting to use force to keep people from making what they see as religious mistakes. You can see this change happen in the lives of famous people such as Augustine and Luther. To avoid controversy I will not cite Muslim examples, but they are certainly there. The safest thing is not to let religious leaders get political power.
Sure, one can argue a lot about the aftermath of the Iraq war, but at least you can' deny that the US got rid of Iraqi state terrorism and that human rights are much better there now.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is accept that something is broken and your attempts to fix it will just make it worse. America can't "fix" the dictatorship in Iran, just like it couldn't "fix" the dictatorship in Iraq. People hate living under a dictatorship, but they hate living under foreign occupation even more.
What is necessary is that religion have no power over the state. Denmark has an official church, many European countries do, but the church has no power to enforce its doctrine through the state so the countries are relatively free at least as far as religion is concerned.
The blogging software blogs you.
No, they are the reason they are in their current situation. They have a ridiculous, violent religion they serve, and they chose to radically overthrow their own government to put that ridiculous religion into power. And, suprise suprise, it turned out not to be a good idea and their government enslaved them the same way all the other middle eastern Islamic states were already doing. Because of their actions, they remain enslaved by their government to this day.
At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own actions. The US didn't like being ruled by a king, so we overthrew the king and took the risk of instituting democracy. It turned out well, in this case. Other countries are ruled by dictators and people do not choose to rise up and remain enslaved. Or if they do rise up, they don't always install a democracy when they throw out the government (in Iran's case, they picked a theocracy instead). That's their choice, the consequences are theirs, and the blame rests on their shoulders. The US is not responsible for what people in other countries choose to do with their governments.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
OK i guess this will be modded as flamebait, but perhaps it's US's responsibility to just stop messing with other countries altogether, no breaking, no fixing, just leaving them alone.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
weren't all that upset over living under Saddam. Granted, a lot were, but most were not, and ownership of full auto AKs, and even RPGs, was a normal as owning an ipod are here. Walk into any gunstore there, throw down the cash, and walk out, yet no large scale mass revolts. As your general dictators go, he was well down the list, nothing like that cretin in north korea or the so called zimbabwe leader, he was modernizing his nation, the infrastructure was a lot more intact then than now and public works were common, women had more rights than in most moslem nations today (he just wouldn't put up with radical jihadists at all, that's why a lot of the other moslen leaders didn't like him, he was more secular than most of them), and so on. He just committed the ultimate crime of threatening the petrodollar by insisting on taking only euros for oil, and also was blatantly in support of native Palestinian rights over imported European rights in the occupied zionfascist nation-zone. Those two are the primary reasons the invasion started, plus the oil idiots thought it would be a cakewalk and back to normal stealing the oil in a few days. They didn't count on actual nationalistic resistance there. All the other excuses are pure neocon horsecrap. They used 9-11 and illusory "nigerian yellow cake" and "dangerous aluminum tubes" and "omg he has a radio controlled plane and will be spraying the entire nation with biowarfare agents" and all those other fairy tales as a poor excuse to fake out the mouth breathing drooling beer guzzling football addicted public and their boo ya! mercenary forces. Ya, he had chemical weapons, the vast bulk of which were gotten originally from the US illegally. We weren't supposed to ship them anyplace, we were supposed to be destroying them all, but we did while he was on "our side" during the iran/iraq war, they were official old US army stocks for the most part. They were blown in place in bunkers during desert storm and made a ton of army guys and iraqis sick as can be, although they still deny it to this day even though back then you could find pictures of it and you heard a lot of firsthand accounts of it from returning vets who were there and participated in it. And that is a lot-not all, but a lot- of the "gulf war syndrome", they were just forced to breath chemical weapons residue and then told it was all in their heads.
I generally agree with the sentiment of your post but I'm not convinced it's that clear cut. Also it's just a shame with the likes of Zimbabwe where the population voted overwhelmingly for freedom the international community still refuses to act.
I don't think it's as simple as you say though, it's arguable Afghanistan has gone a fair bit better than Iraq because there was more will amongst the population to be freed from the Taleban than for the Iraqi people to be freed from the Iraqi regime but I think that's only a small part the story. The issue in Iraq isn't that the people didn't want the Iraqi regime removed, it's that there are two factions with a strong hate for each other that the Iraqi regime kept supressed in more violent ways than are acceptable by Western forces, despite the methods applied by the Iraqi regime leading to greater overall stability and lesser overall deaths.
I think you'd be fine to go into somewhere like North Korea and overthrow the government with no real problems in the aftermath not just because the people want to be freed but because the people are all in the same boat and don't really have any qualms with each other - even the majority of the north korea armed forces are only in the armed forces because they want the food it brings and not because they have some allegiance to Kim Jong Il that puts them with opposing opinions to the general population. If however you went into Iran you'd struggle much more because you do have a lot of large factions with opposing views that they're willing to shed blood over. Whatever country you go into there's always going to be a few rebels who will attack the occupiers who have gone in to free the country as a whole but the difficulties in Iraq really are not because of a hatred for the Americans and freedom and a love of Saddams regime but because there were no plans to prevent the warring factions from well, warring.
I suppose it comes down to how you define the cultural prerequisites you mention. North Koreans are hardly creating a revolution to overthrow their government but it doesn't mean they don't want freedom, it just means they're too busy fighting for survival and avoiding starvation to take down their government. Similarly, Afghans for the most part have no problems with freedom, in fact, before the soviets went in they were a pretty free nation, the problems there stem from a minority still holding out against freedom, a minority that unfortunately were the ones who used to hold all the guns. Zimbabwe is another decent example, the people want freedom, they used their vote to show they wanted it, but unfortunately again the government and pro-government mobs are the ones with all the guns again. There's certainly more to deciding whether a nation has the cultural prerequisites for freedom than whether the citizens are fighting for it that's for sure, because sometimes, they're just too busy fighting for their lives instead. In these cases I think we should still intervene because I think there's evidence enough the people want the help.
For the record, I do not think Iran is oppressed enough to justify military action to free them. I do however think North Korea, Burma and Zimbabwe where tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are dying due to neglect by their government do justify military action to free the people. I also think the people would welcome that freedom, unfortunately, those nations just don't have enough oil to earn the attention of international community. I think it's far more cruel, far more inhumane to let hundreds of thousands die through inaction than to cause tens of thousands to die through action. That's not to say Iraq was justified of course because similar to Iran I do not believe Iraq was unstable enough nor were the people oppressed enough to justify intervention.
We tried that. Seemed to work from 1918 until December 6th, 1941. But by that point the rest of the world was so broken it needed to be fixed with a crowbar.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Wait a minute. What's the actual problem necessitating even talking to Iran in the first place? Why can't we just leave them the hell alone?
I won't mod you down or troll but I will respond with article 11 of the 1796 treaty with Tripoli
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
and on a side note, Why am I hearing about loyalty oaths in the USA, loyalty oaths have no place in a free society.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The only governments that must force it's people to stay are governments that know they are inherently inferior to the governance in other countries. Iran knows that it's power structure is based on a shitty way to live, it knows that it is culturally inferior.
But one is not the consequence of the other, and "cultural inferiority" is a rather inflammatory term to be throwing around in an international forum.
The reason countries like Iran have such brutal laws and maniacal dictators is because they're full of religious extremists hell-bent on killing each other over disputes going back centuries. Every time western society is introduced or imposed upon middle-eastern civilization all hell breaks loose, never moreso than this decade.
Apparently it takes a tyrant to keep the tyrants at bay. Writing about it doesn't solve anything anyway. Obviously I don't condone mortal censorship, but they've got bigger fish to fry.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Actually, Iraq had fairly good womens right given that it was a Muslim country. Even if Saddam did rule there.
Today however it is a different story, the womens are being threatened by religion fanatics how kill them if they don't cover there face up or work. The list goes on in this matter.
What you are speaking about is Afghanistan, before 2001 it didn't have women rights at all. In many parts of it still doesn't. Even today women rights are almost close to zero, even in the main capital of Afghanistan.
Human rights in Iraq are no better then when Saddam did rule there, thanks to corruption and a broken government that is currently in place there.
U.S can do good, but it can also do bad. Like any other power on the planet. The problem with the U.S is the corporation greed that is currently in place there. Sad to say, this greed has also infested Europe and EU. It is taking it's time on destroying the EU from the inside, but I hope that it is stopped before it does a big damage.
Wait a minute. What's the actual problem necessitating even talking to Iran in the first place? Why can't we just leave them the hell alone?
Well the problem is nothing related to what the article submitted is about if that's where your confusion lies. We *could* leave them alone but if they do something stupid then we *will* have to do something about it. Ahmadinejad continuously makes threats against the U.S. that are not shown in the mainstream media. He continuously makes threats against Israel too. Israel may do something unprovoked that could spark WWIII and we would be required to join the battle. It definitely wouldn't be pretty as someone else said. The Straits of Hormuz may not get blocked but when idiot traders and speculators get spooked about oil supply when a hurricane is way over near Africa you can imagine what they would do if shots were fired and Iran was involved. Crude has already gone up about $10 in the last week or so partly because of Iran being in the news again. When idiots determine the price of crude oil, nothing has to actually happen in the world for prices to go up. They just do and strangely enough when the "dust" settles the prices never seem to go back down. That, my friend, is pure speculation at consumers' expense.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Well, you got to admit, if your culture can't stand up to Hollywood culture, then it definitely is inferior to western culture.
Philosophically speaking, it applies to all people, not to just our government; which is why it's appalling when this administration seems to want to apply it only to Americans..and not even all of us.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"without US taxpayer's dollars"
Not much of that left, even if leftists wanted US taxpayers' dollars (which they don't, you're just trolling or have no concept of geopolitics, I cant decide which it is) they won't be getting any as they are being spent to exhaustion in Iraq. So take comfort that your dollars are being wasted responsibly.
I hate printers.
There's a beautiful book for you non-muslims if you want to understand the issue of man-made laws vs shariah (divine laws)
Your laws are divine? I would say that my feces are divine too. The problem with you fundamentalists is that you don't realize that your saying your laws are "DIVINE" is an act as subjective as my saying that my feces are divine.
The whole idea of secular laws is to remove this subjectivity. That is the ideology behind secular laws. (Is it too much to ask for?)
If you don't like it you can claim, subjectively, that Islam is the truth, and you can fight senseless over it with us infidels. We can kill each other, if you want. Or we can make do with secular laws.
Russia won WWII for Europe - not the US. You might need to rethink what sources you use in your life.
it's in my head
http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/20061020.html