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Human Rights Groups Push To Save Condemned Programmer In Iran
First time accepted submitter debiangruven writes "Human rights Groups are making one final plea to save the life of Canadian programmer, Saeed Malekpour, who was sentenced to death for writing a program to upload photos to the Internet. From the article: 'Malekpour's supporters have created Facebook pages and websites in his support dating to at least 2009. Amnesty International has requested on its website that concerned individuals write Iranian authorities inside and outside the country to demand that Malekpour not be executed."
Islam is shaping up to be the modern day Nazi movement. Intolerant and bent on world domination.
Right, the American legal system would only destroy someone's life if they wrote a circumvention for a copy-right protection system.
It doesn't matter if you've got relatives there, or if the only archaeological remnant you want so see of some civilisation lies there, or it has the best undisturbed nature reserves... just don't go there. As soon as you go to such a country, your life is theirs. Before you go on holiday, check if your destination is a democracy with reasonable laws and institutions. If not, don't go.
I am quick to criticize the US government for drifting away from protecting our rights and freedoms, but there is really no comparison with a country like Iran. In the US, when the government considers establishing a national firewall, the citizens criticize the government without fear; in Iran, protesting the firewall that is already in existence can result in being arrested or beaten up by the police. The fact that we can even compare the US to an enemy like Iran, without worrying about angering the censors, shows you just how many freedoms we still have in this country.
Palm trees and 8
Execution does not fit the crime of making software that uploads images. The US government would not execute someone for doing this, and no government should, because the right to draw a breath is a basic human right which should only be denied in the most extreme of cases (which this does not remotely qualify).
Arguments about political or religious relativism do not apply, in this case, for several reasons:
1: We aren't talking about a fine, some community service, or a few months in jail. The stakes are much higher.
2: We aren't talking about a person who deliberately exercised civil disobedience while within a country that has such punishments, he was just passing through after having done something harmless in a completely separate country.
3: We aren't talking about laws that make a good attempt to balance the protection of safety and commerce against personal freedom; we are talking about the legislation of a code of morality based on ancient myths.
While it is true that all governments, including America, wrongly impose their own interests on others, it is also true that these laws are oppressive and backwards and entirely based on a religion that is equally oppressive and backwards. We are entering an era, as a species, where we will not be able to function while simultaneously abiding such deleterious nonsense.
People who are stuck in the past like this, to the detriment of those around them, should be ridiculed for it, and should be called to account for it. The harm they cause should be stopped.
American citizens ARE the victims, but our enemy is not Muslims, or some nameless and faceless turban-sporting brown person. In fact, Christians pose more of a threat to our way of life than any foreign government. Need proof? Read up on proposed policies by Santorum or Romney.
Our enemy is our government. They are the ones taking away our civil rights, encroaching on our free will, intentionally unbalancing poverty and wealth levels to maintain the status-quo. They are the terrorists - not some fictional enemy Muslim.
On a level of personal opinion, I think all religion is entirely bullshit, and the world as a whole needs to focus on reality and planning for the future instead of arguing over some unimportant stories of the long-distant past.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Since when does spouting your passionately negative and rightfully angry views warrant robotic execution? They couldn't even give him the dignity of getting shot in the face by a CIA agent?
They actually treat drone attacks as being more legal and humane than using real people to carry out assassinations. This WAS an ILLEGAL assassination, plain and simple. Their views that human rights don't apply to those that renounce their citizenship is plain backwards. Human rights and freedom apply to well.....HUMANS.
What they did to this guy was no better than executing a group of folks here for saying we need another armed revolution.... ya know.... since voting and playing by rules that have been turned against us has been completely ineffective.
Incidentally, I think you need to read your philosophy coursebook a little more closely. An "atheist" is someone who does not believe in the existence of any gods. That is *it*. Rejection of belief in gods does not, in and of itself, require acceptance of the postulate "you should just be rational."
While it is true that many atheists would probably agree with the statement "you should just be rational," most will have very different ideas about what constitutes "rationality" in any given circumstance and some may object entirely. And in any case, accepting even this statement doesn't reject the possibility of making and honoring laws. Doing so could be considered a very rational behavior (the argument is left to the student).
Being an atheist also does not, in and itself, require rejection of a religion. Many sects of Buddhism, for example, deny the existence of any gods and as such are atheist. New-age weirdos can deny the existence of god as well and still believe in auras and energies and what-not. Again...many atheists might also reject these belief systems, but it is not a requirement of the word.
Some might try to argue that there is a chain of reasoning at work...something like rejection of god means rejection of religion which means rejection of religious codes of morality which means rejections of any code of morality which means acceptance of the only possibility left which is "you should act rationally," but such a chain of reasoning is philosophically sloppy with incorrect assumptions each step of the way. Though being an atheist doesn't automatically make someone a rigorous philosopher, so plenty of atheists might think this way.
I am also curious about how it has been "mathematically proven that there never are any rational course[s] of action." Mathematics generally deals with the modeling of quantifiable relationships, whereas "rationality" is more in the domain of psychology, sociology, economics, and perhaps philosophy. Does the proof look like this?:
Let x = .33333... (repeating infinitely)
let y = 1/3
therefore: x = y
therefore 3x = 3y
therefore (3)(.3333...) = (3)(1/3)
therefore (.9999...) = (3/3)
therefore (.9999...) = 1
therefore there is never a rational course of action.
Seems pretty unlikely to me.