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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."

15 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Goodwin be Damned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Islam is shaping up to be the modern day Nazi movement. Intolerant and bent on world domination.

    1. Re:Goodwin be Damned by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Funny

      Execute the code, not the coder.

    2. Re:Goodwin be Damned by zarlino · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Religions are often just a "cover-up" ideology for economical interest and can be interpreted in many different ways. From the peaceful mystical one to the nationalist and revolutionary one.

      --
      Check out my cross-platform apps
    3. Re:Goodwin be Damned by mathmathrevolution · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Are you talking about the most recent Iraq War? Do you imagine your brutal invasion and occupation of a foreign nation premised upon falsified claims of WMDs to be merely "resistance to subjugation"? Do you consider the million Iraqi deaths caused by America's actions to be "fuel for Muslim's bullshit sense of victimhood"?

      So typical of Muslims. We must be destroyed and subjugated, and if we resist, we fuel your bullshit sense of victimhood.

      What a perfect exhibit of the Orwellian mindset that has taken over so many Americans. No matter how many Muslim nations Americans are occupying, bombing, and threatening, most Americans imagine themselves to be the victims. And then they portray the world's Muslim community as idiotic and belligerent in what amounts to a textbook case of psychological projection.

    4. Re:Goodwin be Damned by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Take a look at the history of Islam. Mohammad specifically prohibited converting people by force. Two years later, armies under his command attacked a city (that he had a peace treaty with, by the way) and gave everyone a choice: convert to Islam or die.

      Christianity started to be used as a justification for atrocities shortly after the Roman emperors converted. Islam was like that from the start.

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:Goodwin be Damned by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that the US is not ordering any drone strikes against programmers whose software is used on pornography websites. The US may have slipped from its founders' ideals, but we are not quite at the level of Iran.

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      Palm trees and 8
    6. Re:Goodwin be Damned by mathmathrevolution · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In other words, there is no such thing as a true, fixed interpretation of a religion or ideology. Ideologies emerge from a surrounding geopolitical and economic reality and are always in flux with that surrounding geopolitical and economic reality subject to individual interpretation. It is bogus to say "Christians believe in X, and Buddhist believe in Y, while Muslims believe in Z." Distinct individual agents are constantly reinventing their interpretation of their religious experience.

      Their is divide in human culture between those who believe in peace and those who don't. There are Christians and Muslims and Jews and Atheists in both camps, but the majority of people in all religions want peace. I saw this in my graduate program which had a good mix of Jews, Atheists, Muslims, and Christians in it. This was an educated crowd and everybody there wanted to get along. The trick for the human race is to not let our belligerent minorities set us against each other. They are eager to spark conflict and set us against each other for their own gain.

  2. reagan begs to differ by decora · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.

  3. Re:Confessed then took it back by TheLink · · Score: 4, Informative

    Easy for you to say, Coward. In some places it's common to beat the confession out of suspects, sometimes to death.

    Even in supposedly more civilized places, the innocent often get coerced to pleading guilty: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/When_the_Innocent_Plead_Guilty.php

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  4. Re:America would never kill a programmer for this. by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Right, the American legal system would only destroy someone's life if they wrote a circumvention for a copy-right protection system.

  5. I wonder how the RIAA/MAPP feels? by kurt555gs · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am guessing they are for executing anyone that writes a program to upload anything to the interwebs. I'll bet they even discussed trying to put this provision into ACTA.

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    * Carthago Delenda Est *
  6. That doensn't change the facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. A Matter of Perception by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    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
    1. Re:A Matter of Perception by gd2shoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm sorry, but you are a blind ideologue, and dangerously so.

      Any time you have a shift in the fundamental construction of social values and institutions there will be those opposing the change, and there will be those pushing for change in unwise directions. American politics currently reflects that.

      Equating any mainstream American Christianity with middle eastern Sharia Law Islam makes you look positively stupid. Compare your "encroaching" on "civil rights" to the Saudi practice of capital punishment for being raped. Or even this article of writing a program to upload photos...

      To draw the inequality sign the wrong way is just sick.

      Middle eastern radicalization (on the political level) is far more dangerous. If you want Americans to blame, blame the wealthy elite who buy laws and act with impunity abroad. They're the ones driving the real civil liberties crisis here and who stirred up the hornets nest over there.

      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.

      You can go ahead and believe that, but be careful. The moment you start tarring all religion with the same brush, you become a bigot.

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      I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
    2. Re:A Matter of Perception by mathmathrevolution · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, intolerance is the problem. There are tolerant religious people like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. There are intolerant religious people like Bin Laden and Benito Mussolini. There are tolerant atheists like Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel. And there are intolerant atheists like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.