Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: PmbPhy on 01/10/2014 08:59:21
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The thought of beheading someone as a means to kill and humiliate the enemy as some middle eastern people do infuriates me to no end. I sometimes feel that such murderers themselves should meet their death in that exact way should they be sentenced to capital punishment for beheading someone. Does anybody here feel the same way? What are your thoughts on the subject?
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The beheadees seem to be noncombatants, not the enemy. And one-on-one isn't a particularly efficient means of killing, though in this case obviously very effective. So the appropriate response is to track down the family of the beheader and kill a few of them by whatever means comes to hand. No moral justification or appeal to a higher authority, just a random, automatic and inevitable response to a pointless attempt at provocation. There's probably a biblical or koranic precedent, but who cares?
If you can then capture the beheader and hang him upside down from a lamp post, so much the better - he will die eventually, at very little cost to his captors, and in the meantime the local populace can express their contempt in the usual ways. A martyr covered in urine and faeces is unlikely to gain much of a following, or appeal to his celestial virgins.
Better still, reduce the West's dependence on "islamic" oil. When the money runs out, so will the enthusiasm for jihad.
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The beheadees seem to be noncombatants, not the enemy. And one-on-one isn't a particularly efficient means of killing, though in this case obviously very effective. So the appropriate response is to track down the family of the beheader and kill a few of them by whatever means comes to hand. No moral justification or appeal to a higher authority, just a random, automatic and inevitable response to a pointless attempt at provocation. There's probably a biblical or koranic precedent, but who cares?
If you can then capture the beheader and hang him upside down from a lamp post, so much the better - he will die eventually, at very little cost to his captors, and in the meantime the local populace can express their contempt in the usual ways. A martyr covered in urine and faeces is unlikely to gain much of a following, or appeal to his celestial virgins.
Better still, reduce the West's dependence on "islamic" oil. When the money runs out, so will the enthusiasm for jihad.
I like the way you think, Alan. I have zero respect for the life of someone who beheads another human being for the reasons they've been doing it. The only justifiable reason is for revenge of someone who did it first.
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You guys are kidding, right?
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If people need to be taken out, it should ideally be done humanely without them even knowing it's going to happen - they should just fall asleep and never wake up. We're typically dealing with dangerous individuals who are actually mentally ill and if we suffered from the same condition (or had been turned bad by being abused ourselves), we could behave in every bit as disgusting a way as they do. There is nothing evil about them, so it is really very sad that they are the way they are - they simply cannot help but abuse others.
Having said that though, there are some cases where their behaviour could be modified through fear of the consequences, and if that results in less suffering it's worth doing, so mass-murdering dictators maybe should be tortured to death slowly on TV as a warning to others instead of merely hanging them. The idea is disgusting, but if it results in a reduction in the number of other people being treated that same way by despotic regimes, it's hard to argue that it shouldn't be done. In the case of the killers mentioned at the top of this thread, I suspect that they are happy to behead people because they know that the same will not be done to them by any namby-pamby Western side that captures them, so again it may be worth torturing them to death slowly when they're caught as a lesson to others. Everything depends on whether it reduces suffering or not.
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Okay, so who do you hire to carry out this torture, and do you not worry about the psychological effect on them, or if they actually "enjoy" their assignment along with the torture-porn viewing audience, does that not concern anyone?
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The irony of beheading the beheader is that you are essentially acknowledging and agreeing that a barbaric act of that nature is sometimes justifiable if your reason is "good" enough. In the twisted mind of the first beheader, (unless he's just a psychopathic sadist who enjoys torturing anyone for no reason at all) is undoubtedly the belief that his reason is good enough, that he is "saving" his people, that he is getting "retribution" for certain crimes or assaults, and that he is "deterring" the West from further evil actions, real or imagined. You can't help but lend a degree of credence or legitimacy to his action, or at the very least the possibility of its justification, if you commit the same act, even as retribution.
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If it reduces suffering overall, that calculation will have been made by taking into account all the psychological harm done to the torturers of torturers. Not to do something nasty when it would reduce suffering is to maintain a higher level of suffering, and that would make you one of the baddies.
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You guys are kidding, right?
Not me, ma'am. Summary execution of relatives and humiliation of the offender may be more effective and affordable than a disciplined military offensive. Call it terrorism if you like. It works. I don't think I used the word "justify" anywhere in my script.
And I'm really serious about the oil.
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Not me, ma'am. Summary execution of relatives and humiliation of the offender may be more effective and affordable than a disciplined military offensive. Call it terrorism if you like. It works. I don't think I used the word "justify" anywhere in my script.
And I'm really serious about the oil.
Yeah, revenge killings of innocent people have worked really well in the past. It never results in more of the same But I agree about the oil.
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It's not quite revenge, which is probably pointless. It is a demonstration to others that if they intentionally harm a noncombatant, their innocent relatives will suffer aribtrary and unexplained violence. Torturing a loved one is often more effective than beating up the person you are trying to interrogate, and I think the principle is worth exploring further. Voltaire thought it a good idea - pour encourager les autres.
The principal offender will be punished anyway, under pretty much any system of justice, if he can be caught. Knowing that they are at risk of death may just persuade his relatives to help find him.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is "left as an exercise to the reader", but I think it is answerable.
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You're assuming they care about their relatives. Most of them probably don't and their relatives probably hate them too, which is why they've run away to do evil.
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Murder, sexual molestation, and introduction to religion, are nearly always the fault of close relatives.
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We must not forget that in many cases of these radicalised murderers, their families are as shocked as the rest of us, perhaps more so. Ask yourself, how would you feel if your offspring suddenly turned up on screen as a blood crazed monster?
How must honest decent Muslims feel when they see an innocent man tortured and murdered in front of the world and in the name of The Prophet and even in the name of Allah Himself?
Surly these people commit the greatest blasphemy of all, to presume to know the will of Allah and to commit murder in His name.
We can only hope that these vermin will so disgust Muslims around the world that they threaten to bring down Islam itself, thus causing a revolt against them and their like which will bring about an end to extreme fundamentalism, not just in Islam but in ALL religions.
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Why get bogged down in theology? It's like wrestling with a pig in mud: after a few minutes you realise that your opponent actually enjoys it. Just kill a few innocent relatives and see what happens.
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Religions would be a lot safer if people who believed in them asked themselves why there is more than one religion and why they contradict each other. They should look at the world and at history and ask themselves how their god could make many people have access only to a false religion instead of the true one. The obvious conclusion they should come to is that all religions come from the same god, and once they've got that idea, they should realise that not everything in any religion should be taken as true - they are all filled with traps designed to trap evil people, inviting them to follow bad rules so that they can show their true nature to God in such a way that he can justify sending them to hell. If you follow any religion to the letter, God will send you to hell. You have to judge every part of your religion for yourself and have the courage to reject the parts of it that are not good - that is the way to pass God's test and to get into heaven rather than going to hell. The atheist who judges everything on its own merits and who lives a moral life will be welcome in heaven even though he denied God, but the zealot who follows a Holy Book to the letter will be condemned to eternal fire.
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Religions would be a lot safer if people who believed in them asked themselves why there is more than one religion and why they contradict each other.
Because they are all lies concocted by demagogues. You can't rule a gang unless you can invent a common enemy. Sometimes the symbiosis is mutual: protestants and catholics have been killing each other for centuries so that the scum who organise the gangs can live on the proceeds of crime.
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Religion has always been used by vicious bastards to rule over others, and of course it's always the invention of man, but many people believe in gods none the less, so the issue is, how can they be steered away from fundamentalism where they end up doing extreme harm by trying to do their religion properly. My previous post shows a possible solution - an auxiliary mind virus to bolt onto any religion to make it safe.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/isis-confirms-and-justifies-enslaving-yazidis-in-new-magazine-article/381394/
Excerpt from the Atlantic article above:
" 'ISIS spokesperson Mohammed al-Adnani threatens, "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.' But ISIS is also boasting about what its members see as the revival of important institutions such as slavery. 'Before Shaytan reveals his doubts to the weak-minded and weak hearted, one would remember that enslaving the families of the [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of Shariah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narrations of the Prophet, and thereby apostatizing from Islam,' the article says. '... May Allah bless this Islamic State with the revival of further aspects of the religion occurring at its hands.' "
In almost any historical conflict I can think of, there has probably been some fundamental difference in how the two sides view the world, a difference about what a group of people are entitled to, or have the right to obtain by force - land that should belong to a group, or allegedly did in the past but was lost. But those differences seem to me like a difference in perspective, a conflicting historical accounting of the facts.
When I read an article like the one above, if I am not just a victim of war time propaganda, and everything in it is true, I really am at a loss to see this current war in anything like those terms. There does not appear to be any room for reasonable negotiation. I don't see how this could be resolved other than eliminating the persons making those kind of statements and demonstrating that they will act on those beliefs. It forces one into a position, that one doesn't really want to take. It reminds me almost of "death by cop" even though ISIS isn't intent on losing.
Also, is it just a group of psychopaths who have managed to grab the reigns? Or is it entrenched and inseparable part of the culture, a smoldering element that will keep reigniting over and over?
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Sounds like the usual bullshit, going back to the Rape of the Sabines and the behaviour of marauding chimpanzees. There is no cure other than that clearly stated by General Patton:"No goddam sonofabitch ever won a war by dying for his country. You win a war by making the other goddam sonofabitch die for his country."
I've modified my thinking on the prevention of religious wars. Identify the priests, mullahs, or whatever, who preach for the aggressor, and kill a few every time one of your fellow citizens is killed by the soldiers who claim to be doing the work of that particular god. No question of guilt or innocence, combatant or not, just call it collateral, or treating the cause rather than the symptom.
is it entrenched and inseparable part of the culture, a smoldering element that will keep reigniting over and over?
There is an old story about a scorpion and a frog. Scorpion wants to cross the river but can't swim, so he asks the frog for a lift. Frog says "no. you'll sting me" Scorpion says "I'll sting you if you don't help me" so he does. Halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog and they are both about to die. Frog says "why did you do that?" Scorpion says "because I'm a scorpion and you're a frog". I think the story is at least as old as Islam, possibly older than Judaeism.
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Your story also makes me wonder if it is really a religious or moral conflict, or something even more basic. A clash between one group who still holds that you are what you are - you are your gender, your race, your religion, your caste, etc. That these identities are permanent, unchanging, irrevocable, and your only loyalty is to other people who are these things as well.
The second group sees these things as secondary traits or characteristics, no different than being left handed or tall or liking sports or being a doctor or belonging to Habitat for Humanity. They are malleable, plastic, ever-changing, facets of identity. They only have the meaning we assign to them. And loyalty has no inherent value when it's divorced from the moral aspects of each act or choice.
Maybe the conflict isn't about religion at all, unless you see the "you are what are" belief as intrinsic to religion itself.
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Part of ISIS's strategy is to try to make us blame Islam so that we discriminate against Muslims in gerneral, thereby pushing more of them into the extremist camp. Most Muslims are moderate and do not approve of the extremists at all, but when the extremists have power over them, they have no choice other than to conform. The best cure is to leave extremists in control of territory where they only have their own people (race, tribe and sect) under their control, because they will teach them to hate extremism while not actually killing them (apart from adulterers and the like, while thieves will lose hands, including a few people who are falsely accused).
You could potentially kill extremism by killing all the extremists, but it would be a hard task to get enough of them without killing less extreme ones at the same time, thereby encouraging more to become extreme and merely multiplying the number of people you have to kill until you get to the point where you have to wipe out the whole population, including all the moderates. It's much better to let the extremists make themselves unpopular instead, and only kill the ones at the very top if you can get at them without taking out any innocent people along with them. The point of killing the leaders is not to try to wipe out the extremists, but to disrupt their organisation and ensure that the only people willing to take over as leaders are stupid ones who will make lots of mistakes, but you can also take out the more murderous ones in order to discourage the ones who follow them from carrying out so many murders. Everything should be aimed at minimising harm to innocent people while making sure that any harm that is done to them is placed firmly at the door of the extremists.
The other thing to do to fix Islam is to remove the biggest obstacle to peace - the Palestine problem, or perhaps it should be called the Israel problem, needs to be solved. The "two state solution" idea is not intended as a solution at all, but as a way of maintaining the problem forever. What's really needed is a single state in which everyone can live together in peace, but that can't happen while there are so many extremists around. Perhaps a deal could be done though by which a single state called Israel Palestine could be set up to be shared 100% by the two populations, including a right of return for all refugees, on condition that all the extremism stops for twenty years. Well, it would move through a series of stages to take it to that place with changes made every few years to open things up more and more until there are no internal borders left. A plan of that kind needs to be put in place so that the Palestinian side can see the way clear to liberation and recovery of all stolen land and property. They are the victims of a massive theft and it needs to be put right.
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Part of ISIS's strategy is to try to make us blame Islam so that we discriminate against Muslims in gerneral, thereby pushing more of them into the extremist camp. Most Muslims are moderate and do not approve of the extremists at all, but when the extremists have power over them, they have no choice other than to conform. The best cure is to leave extremists in control of territory where they only have their own people (race, tribe and sect) under their control, because they will teach them to hate extremism while not actually killing them (apart from adulterers and the like, while thieves will lose hands, including a few people who are falsely accused).
You could potentially kill extremism by killing all the extremists, but it would be a hard task to get enough of them without killing less extreme ones at the same time, thereby encouraging more to become extreme and merely multiplying the number of people you have to kill until you get to the point where you have to wipe out the whole population, including all the moderates. It's much better to let the extremists make themselves unpopular instead, and only kill the ones at the very top if you can get at them without taking out any innocent people along with them. The point of killing the leaders is not to try to wipe out the extremists, but to disrupt their organisation and ensure that the only people willing to take over as leaders are stupid ones who will make lots of mistakes, but you can also take out the more murderous ones in order to discourage the ones who follow them from carrying out so many murders. Everything should be aimed at minimising harm to innocent people while making sure that any harm that is done to them is placed firmly at the door of the extremists.
Definitely agree with this.
The other thing to do to fix Islam is to remove the biggest obstacle to peace - the Palestine problem, or perhaps it should be called the Israel problem, needs to be solved. The "two state solution" idea is not intended as a solution at all, but as a way of maintaining the problem forever. What's really needed is a single state in which everyone can live together in peace, but that can't happen while there are so many extremists around. Perhaps a deal could be done though by which a single state called Israel Palestine could be set up to be shared 100% by the two populations, including a right of return for all refugees, on condition that all the extremism stops for twenty years. Well, it would move through a series of stages to take it to that place with changes made every few years to open things up more and more until there are no internal borders left. A plan of that kind needs to be put in place so that the Palestinian side can see the way clear to liberation and recovery of all stolen land and property. They are the victims of a massive theft and it needs to be put right.
I never understood why the idea of two cultures sharing the entire territory with a constitution that protects the rights of both, was so unfathomable. It works in Canada. I hope that isn't a ridiculous comparison, but the French and English do have a different language, differences in religion, etc. And while there is not the history of extreme violence and retribution, there have been terrorist groups, kidnappings, bombs, and murder of political leaders. In a discussion forum in Harpers Magazine on the Israeli Palestinian issue ( http://harpers.org/archive/2014/09/israel-and-palestine/ ) one participant said simply getting rid of the travel restrictions would be helpful.
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Canada is a rare phenomenon, caused by being colonised by the French, who care passionately about their language and culture (even to the extent of despising francophone Canadians), and the British, who don't give a damn about anything as long as it doesn't contain garlic. There was a bit of tension until Britain received a friendly invasion of Indian and Chinese restaurants, at which point we realised that garlic isn't that bad after all, and chicken tikka replaced fish and chips (which the arrogant French claim to have invented anyway) as the national dish. The final catalyst to tolerance in Canada was the imposition of the hamburger diet on everyone. Can't wait for my next visit - love the place.
Now it happens that Kosher food is also considered Halal, and most Muslim feasts and fasts are closely aligned with Jewish ones (being lunar). So there's hope.
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The French gave us Tourtier, a spiced meat pie, and poutine. Poutine comes close to being a national dish. That perhaps and Tim Horton's donuts. Poutine, if you haven't tried it is fries, gravy, and cheese curds. You can hear your arteries slamming shut. (I once heard that in Quebec they serve it in school cafeterias but you have to have a note from your mother to eat it more than 3 times a week.)
I wish more ethnic groups would settle outside Toronto. Almost anything is an improvement on Scottish cooking. "Chinese Night" at the diner in town used to make me weep.
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Almost anything is an improvement on Scottish cooking. "Chinese Night" at the diner in town used to make me weep.
Hae ye no' tried haggis fin soup? Or haggis nest soup? Sweet & sour white pudden wi' battered rice?