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News The Sticks and Mud

Posted by on April 19 at 10:10 AM

The day after a day of bashing America (its shortsightedness, its weak perspective, its weak gun laws), let’s turn and bash Iran. From the New York Times:

The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of six members of a prestigious state militia who killed five people they considered “morally corrupt.”
Now what is this nonsense? You can kill a person because you happen to believe they are “morally corrupt”? Yes, in Iran you can!
According to the Supreme Court’s earlier decision, the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran’s Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.

The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers claimed were walking together in public.

Members of the Basiji Force are known for attacking reformist politicians and pro-democracy meetings. President Ahmadinejad was a member of the force, but the Supreme Court judges who issued the ruling are not considered to be specifically affiliated with it.

Iran’s Islamic penal code, which is a parallel system to its civic code, says murder charges can be dropped if the accused can prove the killing was carried out because the victim was morally corrupt.

This is true even if the killer identified the victim mistakenly as corrupt. In that case, the law requires “blood money” to be paid to the family. Every year in Iran, a senior cleric determines the amount of blood money required in such cases. This year it is $40,000 if the victim is a Muslim man, and half that for a Muslim woman or a non-Muslim.

Now that there is some real primitive shit. These people are nothing more than worms living in the mud. Even the 4th century Greeks had come to the conclusion that the execution of the law must not be in the hands of the house (oiko) but in the hands of the public (agora). Does Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia, have any other meaning? And here we are in the 21st century, reading on the internet that there are still places on this interconnected planet that allow individuals to take the law into their own hands, their own house—the locus of divine law and other such inhumane mysteries/miseries. It’s utterly amazing.

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1

Thats truly some scary business over there. Cho and others like him who hate society , alchohol, women, and the arts would have been very happy over there. Most of them would not have to kill themselves, they would be heros. Thats efft up.

2

But it would prove real handy if the goal was to maintain an army of brownshirts to keep everybody in line.

3

I guess you missed Dan's post on this exact subject. This proves my theory that Charles only reads his own posts.

4

actually we composed the posts at the same time.

5

the fact that persians are retarded, medieval, old testament misogynist idiots doesn't mean they're our ENEMIES.

we need to help our brothers into the light.

6

i agree, max. by help i'm guessing you don't mean bomb. otherwise, i don't agree.

but the same can be said for many an american: we need to help other fundamentalist americans into the light.

7

@5: why don't you try making a distinction between the people of Iran and the government. that's something that mature people make, including the average Iranian in Iran. sheesh. the persians as a people and a culture are incredibly diverse and, like all cultures, bring a lot of good. like, in the case of the persians, the first charter of human rights.

8

@5: why don't you try making a distinction between the people of Iran and the government. that's a distinction that most normal people make, including the average Iranian in Iran when thinking about Americans as distinct from the US government. sheesh. the persians as a people are incredibly diverse and persian culture, like all cultures, brings a lot of good to the world. like, in the case of the persians, the first charter of human rights over 2000 years ago.

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