A march against the killings
The article has links to the videos if you want to see the girl die. As retaliation, 23 men on a bus were machine gunned to death. And for these people, our soldiers are dying.
Video Captures Stoning of Kurdish Teenage Girl
According to the Kurdish website Jebar.info up to 1000 men from the Yezidi Kurdish community of Mosul killed a teenager who’s only crime was running away to marry a Muslim man whom she loved and converting to his religion.
For four months the girl had been given shelter by a local Muslim Sheik. It was reported that in the last few days her family persuaded her to return home, convincing her that she had been forgiven by her parents and relatives for her mistake.
In a short mobile video clip which appears to have been taken by locals at seen of the murder, the girl is seen being ambushed on her way home by a group of up to 1000 men who were waiting for her to return; the men killed her in the most brutal way possible, by throwing large stones on her head. The following clips show that while she is alive and crying for help she is taunted and kicked in her stomach until someone finishes her off by throwing a large stone on her face.
From the clips it appears that the girl was first stripped naked to symbolize that she had dishonored her family and her Yezidi religion. She is lying on the road naked while her smashed face is covered with blood and still breathing.
According to the website and footage from the clip a number of armed local police officers were present who in fact helped the crowd to kill the woman rather than preventing the crime. Sometime later the Iraqi army arrived at the scene and refused anyone entry, including the press.
It’s just sad and pathetic that these things still happen in the 21st century…. (sigh)
Sad and pathetic? Barbaric and medieval.
why is it that there is still men who enjoy this violent expression of sexual power?
Why sexual? How else would you explain that they strip her first?
This must be a very deep running thing in our male souls, as it has happened over and over again today there, long before that in the wich-hunts in medieval europe. It’s so disgusting.
And this time, I can’t really rant about religion that much. True, religion was a welcome reason to start the riot, but this is something deeper. Homo homine lupus est.
pj
There went breakfast. Not to criticize, Uncle Dave, and I realize that most of this blog is about controversy, but this one’s just too much for me. I see your point – we’re over there losing lives defending this junk? Good Grief, Charlie Brown.
Let’s temper this with the knowledge that many Christians burned, tortured, crushed and drowned many woman over centuries. All mobs are dangerous, especially with a monolithic belief.
The men doing the killings are not Muslims but Yezidis. This proves that it is not Religion that should be blamed. It’s the middle eastern people who are naturally fucked up in the head. Not to be anti-semitism or anything, but they do have an attitude problem. Dislike something – stone them to death! It’s the tradition of the people from that area.
Bastards!!!! Sons of bitches!!!!! Barbarians!!!! If hell exists, I really hope they burn forever down there. How dare they!?!? What crime did she commit!?!? Fuckin’ apes!!!
This kind of thing has been happening for thousands of years. But there is something very different about just the last few years. Techology means that the whole world can see. Technology is shining a light into some very dark corners of our world.
So now we (the human race we) need to work out what we are going to do about it.
Its tempting to argue this is not religion. In these regions of the world it is impossible to seperate religion from culture and morality. Though I tend to think religion underpins culture, morality and those other things. So I blame religion. Which is not going to be easy to fix.
Americans don’t do anything like this.
The lynchings of blacks in the South apparently didn’t appear in your history books?
The murder of gays was not covered in any of the media you allow in your home?
The torture of “prisoners of war” condoned by Bush, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al never penetrated your consciousness?
Are these people barbaric? Of course. All of those who commit these crimes and everyone who condones it by their silence are little more than animals.
#6: how does the fact that they’re not Muslim prove it’s not to blame to religion?
It’s two things, actually:
Religion and a lack of modern education.
Those people grew up in a patriarchal society with a clearly defined belief system. Both, the society and it’s religious code set the stage for such things to happen.
None of the religions grown out of judaism and it’s predecessors value women particularly high, just think of how many reasons there are for a woman to be “unclean” and how many there are for men.
It is a fucked up belief system, if you want to use this term, that makes those things possible. Just read the “Hexenhammer”, the book that provided the reasoning behind the witchhunting.
I remember a line from a priest witnessing a witch burn. He wrote “we were watching how her beautiful young body wound and bent as the flames licked on it, and we all heard the devil scream inside of her”.
So in short: somehow, it seems to be not uncommon for men to have a link between sexual enjoyment and torturing women (specifically nude women). It’s obvious, that this has made it’s way into the major monotheistic religions (which, as I said earlier, are one anyway) and has for many centuries been legalized and sanctioned by them.
This God is male, expect it to have inherited the worst of the male character over time.
pj
This kind of story illustrates how incredibly clueless and hapless are the neo-cons, like William Kristol, when believed that Iraq would automatically become a shining Jeffersonian democracy — and all the other countries in the region would follow!
No kidding.. guys like Wolfowitz, Bill Bennett, Richard Perle are more ignorant than the average illiterate toilet cleaner or street sweeper in the Middle East.
Yet, these goofballs still have an audience. The neo-cons DESERVE to have their head paraded around on pikes but I would be happy to seem them shamed and driven from the public arena.
What does this have to do with the war? They would have stoned her to death even if the troops were in Maui sipping coconut drinks. People get killed in our “democracy” every day. Search youtube for gang fight and post those vids, you glass house living in mutha fucka’s
-Erik
“How Can We Bring Democracy To A Country That Still Stones Girls To Death?”
How can a country still using torture and death penalty bring democracy?
#11. Don’t forget Doug Feith, called the “stupidest fucking guy in the world” by the commander of CENTCOM.
Their world-view is adequately summed up by the line from Full Metal Jacket – “inside every gook, there’s an American, dying to get out.”
Look at these swines how they can handle their mobile cameras. Stone age combinded with high tech.
Why does this mean Iraq is incapable of democracy? At its core democracy is just mob rule.
#16: right! freedom does essentially also include the right to do things that we think are barbarous or inacceptible. Therefore, just bringing democracy won’t automatically turn some places into societies like we would want to see them. The difficult thing is to figure out how much freedom, how much “being different” we are willing to accept. This, however, must remain way outside the acceptable envelope of human behaviour. No animal would behave like this.
pj
oh, for good measure, I should have added: this should be just as inacceptible as torture and death penalty.
pj
yep, societal acceptance of stoning is abysmal, and everyone here is right to be appalled
but far worse happens daily, in wholesale fashion, in darfur.
but the world just turns its collective head away.
why is that?
#2
its “homo HOMINI lupus est”
All of you complaining about “barbaric”, “medieval”, “uncivilized cruelty of those people and their religion: well, you can say you want, but sane arguments or even scientific facts have never won any battle in the mankind history.
Youre sure your way of live is better? You want others to follow your way, or your religion, or want them to stop following their religion ? (for whatever reason – medieval cruelty, barbaric behaviour, etc etc)
You simply have to FIGHT for it to happen.
Talk always was and is cheap.
As history proved zillion times, no one responds to no-matter-how-smart but only vocal arguments…
Grog, it’s not in America’s interest to be in Darfur. Whether it is in America’s interest at this point to be in Iraq is another question. I’ll add that a withdrawal will turn IRaq into Darfur which as you say is much worse.
#12, Eric,
…Search youtube for gang fight and post those vids, you glass house living in mutha fucka’s
-Erik
Comment by Erik Blazynski — 5/7/2007 @ 6:02 am
Are your hemorrhoids acting up again? Shoot man, you know how to be a pain in the butt. Can’t post anything sensible either.
3. I would not automatically assume sexual. It’s probably a bit more than just that. It’s probably a combination of the culture, religions, and overall traditions in that area. Some facets of what you say are probably true, but I would conclude it as general answer.
4. Well, you could judge an entire campaign or war based on a few carefully picked videos. The liberal-biased media is doing a great job of painting a skewed picture for all of Iraq. I wonder how the rest of the world would picture the U.S. if all we showed were the daily results of gang fights in L.A. day in and day out to represent everything that is going on in the U.S.
5. Don’t forget the Atheists too! You can’t exclude them. Hitler, Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, etc all do a pretty good job of killing people too. And quite arguably more than any religion.
9. POW “tortures” done by are somehow morally equivalent to this? Shame on you. This video should just be a sampler of what our people are put through in foreign POW camps. What we do to POWs is pretty G-rated stuff. Besides, if you were objective, you wouldn’t blame POW torture on Bush, Gonzales, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Every U.S. president has been pretty much guilty of this. But I guess that wasn’t your point. Somehow only this recent administration is guilty of this “atrocity”.
10. I agree with you up to a point… it seems to me more anchored around tradition, whether religious or not in origin. Lack of education certainly seems to play a significant factor. But happens when education goes up and traditions remain strong? Unlike the U.S., things are relatively homogeneous in culture. There is no drive to change from tradition even for minority groups over there.
11. Kristol’s mistake it seems was believing that the Democrats wouldn’t make such a concerted effort to hose up the whole campaign in the name of politics, as Lieberman has pointed out.
12. Not only that, but more people are murdered in the U.S. in one year than we have had in U.S. casualties since the start of this war, but you won’t be hearing any of that. It doesn’t bode well for the anti-Iraq front.
13. As opposed to what? Rationalizing a violent criminal’s past so as to let them off the hook? I suppose all the 9/11 terrorists are just misunderstood.
16, 17: You guys are taking “democracy” too literally. It was known from the start that the new Iraqi government would be a representative democracy like ours and not a true democracy. You might also want to note that the Iraqi Congress has a higher % of females than our own Congress. If change is going to happen, it will have to happen with this initial Congress. It’s rather naive to think change will happen overnight when you’re dealing with hundreds, if not, thousands of years of tradition. But regardless, this is a representative democracy of Iraqi values, not American values. Just because we’ve helped established a representative democracy over there does not mean they will follow us in every way shape and form. You only need to look at Japan and Germany as two examples, and I don’t think either country is doing too bad after we started occupying them either. In the end, Iraq can flourish but they will have every democratic right to give us the finger and run things their way as long as it is their way and not ours.
#20: Sanctimonious claptrap.
This is the biggest example of Evolution.
Although I find it disgusting and unforgivable that these men were able to carry out what they did to this teenage girl, I am more disgusted with what continues to happen right here in our country where fathers, uncles and caretakers rape, beat up, and kill infants and toddlers almost every day of the week. Will we every be rid of this kind of mentality??? Please, Let’s first look at what we can do right here in the U.S. about this kind of treatment.
#11 – Hey Greg, despite Global Warming (TM) Hell must be freezing because I at least partially agree with you. 😉
While there’s nothing wrong with America blowing the snot out of someone when it’s necessary – basing the post-war plan on the assumption the general populace would vote and conduct themselves as though they were informed, civilized residents of the 21st century was seriously foolish.
The Dark Ages live on in many parts of the world.
Just another example that humans have a LONG WAY to go in regards to evolving beyond our animalistic tendencies. My bumper sticker says it all: “EVOLVE ALREADY!!!”
There are many things to blame for such behavior, including culture and religion. Believe it or not, the fact that you could see all those cell phones out recording the situation, is a GOOD SIGN. For so long, this kind of thing was reported, but the fact that we have a mobile video that shows so many were holding modern technology proves that modernization and western culture is continuing to propagate, regardless of the radical actions of those who wish to remain in the barbaric past in regards to culture and human rights. It just takes time and persistence.
It is also true that Bush’s blunders in the middle east have set us back in this regard, so the sooner his kind are pushed out of power the sooner we can get back to helping the rest of the world evolve. This is best done by example, rather than force. We need to get back to setting good examples…kicking Bush out of office would be a good start.
I think it’s important to notice that YouTube is censoring this video. I would expect them not to. It’s important for the whole internet that a free YouTube exists. Apparently we’re being warned that this is not the case! It’s important that the world sees this!
Guyver
Is murder different when done en masse?
Do you suppose the POWs and Iraqi civilians we’ve killed with our bombs and bullets are any less dead than that woman? Was ours truly a more righteous cause than a mistaken sense of manhood?
As to Americans being death dealers, there is no question we not only are in the business, Dwight Eisenhower pointed out that unless citizens were diligent, the military-industrial complex would come to dominate our democracy/capitalistic system. A prescient observation that fully manifested itself with the Iraq debacle where greed justifies slaughter. The current administration is on target to rival the largest civilian casualties in modern times as a direct result of their trumped up fiasco. And unless the smirking chimp & his pals are impeached in response to the protests of the American people, everyone of us is a party to carnage.