Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.
The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.
Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.
Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.
What is there to say?
The caption asks: “Do the undead demons of hell still arise to terrorize the world?”
And the answer is yes, we call them religious fundies.
“Yet, I never hear atheists taking any sort of responsibility (for that in a collective sense or otherwise).”
But you already answered your own question.
“we were often the victims of communism”
That is correct. Communists did it, in the name of Communism, to solidify the grip of Communist political control.
Therefore, the group which bears the responsibility is Communists, not atheists. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al, were all males. By your logic, men, ‘in a collective sense or otherwise,’ should take responsibility. The fact that they were men is as irrelevant to their motives as their atheism. They did what they did not from male motives, or atheist motives, but COMMUNIST motives. So – that’s who you need to look to for your admissions of responsibility.
• • • • • •
Ah_Yea
Well, I’m only speculating – it could very well be I’m barking up the wrong tree – it may indeed be that some of the subversive elements seeking a new Caliphate exist within the royal family itself. Who could know? Those people have such a long history of diabolical intrigues, betrayals, cabals, etc, that are often stranger than any fiction. I put nothing past them…
#32–3HC==I agree with the point you are trying to make, but your example isn’t a good one. You don’t think war is a male expression?
Bobbo, If i may interject… the most basic reason that men historically dominated the fighting in wars is because of their physical ability. Advances in technology have allowed women to participate more and more, which they do. Add to that the fact that women have historically been subverted in politics, its hard to say whether they are more or less war mongering than men if given the chance.
Get Hillary elected President, and then have Pratibha Patil call her a fat bitch and see what happens.
#35 – Mister Uncle Ben
“…even if you killed all the religious, suppressed all superstitions, and created a world with no religion at all, you’d still get things like witch hunts, just under fancier names like ‘un-American activities’ or ‘counter-revolutionary’ or ’sedition’ or whatever…”
Yes, you would. That’s not hard to understand – it isn’t a particular religion as such, or a given political slant as such – it’s that each of these things that people will fight for to the death, AND fight to impose upon others – who are defined automatically as being “wrong” – are NOT beliefs that they arrived at through learning and logic; they are things to which they are EMOTIONALLY attracted – and attached – to! They are IDEOLOGIES. They resist reason. They are the objects of pathological emotional investment. They are connected to the individual’s ego and sense of self-worth.
They appeal to the lowest common denominator. They, as opposed to purely intellectual beliefs, are enforced out of feelings, not thought, which is what makes religion and bogus political philosophies so attractive to those who wish to manipulate and exert power over their fellow man.
Follow the chain of causation back to the source and you find that when groups of people adopt beliefs that resist logical analysis, out of putting greater faith in their feelings than in correct reasoning, they can be made to accept anything, no matter how outrageous.
As I have noted elsewhere, until people grasp – and ACCEPT WHOLEHEARTEDLY – that knowledge and reason always trump emotion, no matter how strong or sincere, then society will remain susceptible to mental infection by malicious ideologies and the full evil panoply of human conflict will remain in action.
#36–JimR==interject at will. Men are warmongers. We are agressive. We dominate, its our genetic makeup to be so. Sure, some women are and with cybernetic implants, they can lose their way just as men.
Heres my best proof as it removes the constraints (but not the training?) of society so that women might tend to act naturally: put men in prison, and you get gangs establishing and controlling territory. Put women in prison and you get families.
Not for you JimR, put for others that require real logic==not all the time, just a strong tendency.
With all due and proper respect to you, bobbo and JimR, you are indeed correct, as regards males’ physical and political dominance as factors in their overrepresentation among warmakers.
Yet I feel you have inexplicably neglected the single entity which is, not coïncidentally, the primary factor in most M/F behavioral differentials; testosterone. Responsible for so much of humanity’s greatest advancement and achievement; likewise responsible for so much of humanity’s worst miseries and horrors.
The Man said, on February 14th, 2008 at 11:16 am
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Newts can’t type. I’m thinkin’ you got better.