The UK government has created a scheme in which e-petitions about anything that the government is responsible for may be created, and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be eligible for debate in the House of Commons.
Among the most prominent is one calling for legislation allowing child killers and those who murder on-duty police officers to face execution. It has been presented by Paul Staines, who writes the libertarian Guido Fawkes blog, and has already been backed by several MPs.
If it is signed by the required 100,000 supporters or more, then the cross-party Backbench Business Committee will decide whether it will be debated.
Sir George played down fears about airing the subject - which was effectively abolished as a sentence for murder in the UK in 1965.
"The site has been widely welcomed as a realistic way to revitalise public engagement in Parliament," he wrote.
"But there have been some who have been concerned by some of the subjects which could end up being debated - for example, the restoration of capital punishment.
Conservative MP Priti Patel said such a debate was long overdue and that she favoured restoring capital punishment "for the most serious and significant crimes" - a position echoed by party colleague Andrew Turner.
Another Tory, Philip Davies, told the newspaper he would like to see all murders punishable by death.
"The last time this was debated - during the passage of the Human Rights Act in 1998 - restoration was rejected by 158 votes.
"But, if lots of people want Parliament to do something which it rejects, then it is up to MPs to explain the reasons to their constituents. What else is Parliament for?
"People have strong opinions, and it does not serve democracy well if we ignore them or pretend that their views do not exist."
#2
The people get what the ruling class allows them...
Ah yes, "Eat your peas!" Also recall ObamaCare was not favored by nearly around 70% of the people in the U.S. Also passing Tarp and raising the debt-limit were also not favored by about 70% of the people.
At what point do we say we are taxed enslaved by our political class without representation?
#3
Petition may force British MPs to have meaningless debate on restoring capital punishment.
Because first the UK would have to de-obligate themselves from the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as various EU treaties, before reinstatement could even be considered. Fat chance.
And even then, I would imagine the cultural prejudices to be insurmountable. After all, only barbarians - like the Chinese, Saudis, and Americans - still countenance such a medieval view of justice.
#3
aka cannon fodder. However, they'll be popular once again in the West because they're cheap, not very effective compared to trained professionals, but cheap.
[Dawn] On 28 May 2010, two Ahmadi "places of worship" were attacked simultaneously during Friday prayers in Lahore. As the siege went on for hours, news channels across the board were strewn with live footage from the scene of attack. For the first time in Pak history, Ahmadi community, and the persecution they had faced since the time they were declared non-Mohammedan in 1974, started being discussed openly on television. Sane people watched the drama unfold amidst increasing horror. In the middle of all this mayhem, a friend at a news channel overheard a colleague begrudgingly say "its live television, so we can't do anything about it. But we will make sure the issue dies by tomorrow."
It took only two days for electronic media to shift their focus. The botched attempt by hard boyz to free the only tossed in the clink assailant from the hospital got another day.
It happens in Pakistain. There is so much happening in rapid succession that sometimes the harshest of news (kabooms and such) have very short cycles. More blasts, murders, political drama, omnipotent energy/food crises take its place. Sure enough, within two days of the 28 May attacks, the outrage and rants had found another focus: the Gazoo-bound flotilla which was intercepted by Israeli forces and the detainment of Pak journalist Talat Hussain.
The uncomfortable truth in Pakistain is that we (the general population, including the media) don't like to talk about minorities. Some English newspapers do try their best to highlight the issue regularly, but considering the overall readership, it is primarily preaching to the choir. The very dominant Urdu press and electronic media, however, are conveniently inflicted with the ostrich syndrome.
It's not like we don't acknowledge the minorities' existence. Sure we do. We have the white portion on our national flag to prove it. We try (and fail) to remain on the correct side of the fence at least where Christians are concerned. Every media outlet carries greeting messages on their religious celebrations; politicians make appropriate statements of solidarity. In their subconscious it buys them enough room to ignore them for the remaining year. But the rest of the minorities including Hindus and Ahmadis are quite easily ignored -- that is, when we are not killing them, imprisoning them under false allegations of blasphemy to serve personal vendetta, or disparaging them with mindless religious slurs.
Think I'm painting the picture too dark? Here is the reality check. Last month the Sikhs of Lahore were barred from holding an annual ceremony at the Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Taru Singh to commemorate the martyrdom of their saint Taru Singh. The reason was that Shab-e-Barat was falling two nights "after" the Sikh ceremony was supposed to be held and the Gurdwara technically fell under the "courtyard" of Badshahi mosque. The officials concerned were convinced by some local men, who according to some media reports belonged to Jamat-ud-Dawa, and the Sikhs were asked to postpone their ceremony. Can anyone imagine Mohammedans in a non-Mohammedan country being asked to delay Eid Milad un Nabi?
Unfortunately this was only one of the numerous incidents which either go unreported or are so under reported that the purpose of "informing" the public is lost. How many of us know that a Hindu MLA who resigned from Sindh's provincial assembly and migrated to India because he felt too insecure here? Who cares about the 131 Ahmadis who flew to Thailand in the hope to appeal to UNHCR in Bangkok for asylum and ended up spending months in detention under horrific conditions? Who remembers Qamar David, a convict of blasphemy, who suddenly died of a "heart attack" in a prison?
A few days ago, I emailed the ever understanding editor of Dawn blogs that I would be writing my next post on interfaith harmony. But when I sat down to write, the paragraphs felt a chain of random words bouncing off the walls of futility. I kept thinking that the people who matter in this equation are the majority who will never read these words -- or if a few do, they will brush me off as another infidel. This majority is of the non-English speaking class who routinely uses religious slurs as an everyday abuse, the middle class small shop owners who put anti-Ahmadi stickers on their counters, the rural cultivators who do not use the utensils used by a Christian. These are the majority of this country -- mostly silent but extremely vocal and reactionary when they sense the risk of being ousted from the circle of Islam.
This constant paranoia of becoming infidels, of their nikahs (marriage certificates) getting void, owing to the righteous guardians of the "Islamic fort" has crippled their intelligence. It has deprived them of the ability for any kind of productive discourse. The rigid definition of "virtue" with an all-or-nothing approach has narrowed down the concept of "good" follower of faith to a suffocating extent. This is the reason common people shrugged off Salman Taseer's liquidation with the usual justification clause: "What happened was wrong but Taseer himself was a man." It is but one example of how unforgiving and intolerant we really are.
That's why you need to excuse me if I discard two unfinished drafts extolling religious harmony, drawing on the oft repeated speech of Jinnah to the first constituent assembly, calling out for Paks to at least acknowledge the right to life of fellow citizens. When I reflect on how we have taken a step back from fighting for civil rights to pleading for human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... (of life), such posts become harder to finish.
My dread, this almost resigned rant, comes from a position where I see things getting worse, not just for the religious minorities, but also for those who are in a minority owing to their dissenting voice and alternate vision. And I'm afraid there's not much we can do to stop it. So let's have a (non-alcoholic) drink to mourn the battles we are constantly losing and reminisce about the war we have already lost.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/04/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
the pak constitution has a section that degrades ahmadis to a "non-muslim minority." Hence the occasional slaughter.
#3
The Ahmadis are regarded as either heretics of apostates by many Moslems. This is considered worse than being an infidel. An infidel may pay the jizya and be subdued but heretics must be killed asap and apostates must be killed unless they publically repent.
The reward in the afterlife is greater for killing a heretic than for killing either an apostate or an infidel.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/04/2011 13:27 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Professor Abdus Salaam, the only Muslim to win the Nobel prize in Physics, was Ahmadi.
He served as science advisor to several Pak governments yet is not mentioned in Pakistani textbooks, unlike AQ Khan, who isn't even a physicist. Pak television cut an interview where he recited the Kalima, an act which would have gotten him imprisoned. General Zia Ul Haq was simply embarrassed to have him around.
When Salam visited India to see his old primary school teachers he met Indira Gandhi who gave her chair to him and sat at his feet, so in awe of him was she.
His gravestone read: "the first Muslim Nobel Laureate". A Pakistani magistrate and a contingent of Police defaced the gravestone, chiseling out the "Muslim" from it.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/04/2011 17:59 Comments ||
Top||
#5
"His gravestone read: "the first Muslim Nobel Laureate"."
I 'spect it should read "the only" - at least in the hard sciences.
Posted by: Barbara ||
08/04/2011 20:22 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Don't get too gushy for them.
I'm sure they are just as f-ed up as the rest of them in their own respect. Maronite christians from the ME are a fairly cock-eyed bunch too.
It's just that part of the world and their perpensity for inbreeding that require a closer examination for any group. We've been suckered in to feel sorry for "groups of beleaguered ethnics" in that area before only to learn later that they were freaks.
We protect the evil living and dismiss the innocent dead.
Quite often a brief news story sums up the collective pathologies of postmodern American society. Here is a recent tragic news item from my local paper, followed by some commentary:
Police call slaying of Hanford woman a random act
Posted at 06:04 p.m. on Thursday, July 28, 2011
By Paula Lloyd / The Fresno Bee
A woman found slain at a Hanford car wash this week was killed randomly when a 17-year-old gang member happened to see her while taking a walk, Hanford police said Thursday.
Denise McVay was washing her car something she did several times a week early Tuesday morning before work.
The teen was wandering the streets after leaving a party when he saw McVay at the Royal Car Wash on Garner Avenue at about 5 a.m. and decided to kill her, police said.
The teen simply wanted to kill somebody that night and McVay, 49, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Capt. Parker Sever said. It was a purely random act.
The teen stabbed McVay several times and slit her throat.
The teen took McVays money and her car, Sever said, and drove to the home of a fellow gang member, Mauricio Ortiz, 18, of Hanford. Sever said the teen was covered with blood and told Ortiz what he had done.
Ortiz helped him ditch the car at Tachi Palace Casino and went with him to Visalia Mall, where the teen used McVays money to buy clean clothes, Sever said.
The teen, whose name was not released because of his age, was booked into the Kings County Juvenile Center on suspicion of murder. Ortiz was booked into the Kings County Jail on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact.
Walk through this story to learn something about our confused American society. First, note the discrepancy between the employed Ms. McVay washing her car in the early morning hours on her way to work, apparently intent on having a clean automobile when she arrived and the unidentified youth who, we are told at first, was taking a walk, later expanded into wandering the streets after leaving a party. How did we go so nonchalantly in a mere two paragraphs from taking a walk to wandering the streets after leaving a party?
In our present society, an able-bodied young man of 17 has leisure to walk about at 5 a.m. after a night of partying, while a hard-working woman squeezes in such an early morning moment to wash her car in order to appear presentable at work.
Note, furthermore, that our society has no compunction about letting the world know the identity of Ms. Denise McVay, who was horribly murdered and left dead on the pavement of a car wash. But it is worried that we might learn the name of the 17-year-old gang member, also known as an anonymous teen. Yet why are we, as a society, more sensitive to disclosing the identity of a gang-member and suspected killer than of a slain productive worker?
In the transition from a shame culture to a guilt culture, America has become a confused society that values the sensitivities of the felonious living far more than respect for the law-abiding dead. Could it not simply waive anonymity protocols in cases of capital crimes? If 16- or 17-year-old would-be murderers knew that their names, addresses, and photos would be published on commission of a crime, would that create any deterrence to their viciousness or at least provide solace to the community that barbaric killers do not slide so easily through the special exemptions afforded to immature teens?
Unfortunately, the story only becomes more depressing. We next read that the anonymous teen simply wanted to kill somebody that night, and, unfortunately, Ms. McVay, 49, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So a Capt. Parker Sever goes on to characterize the fact that the teen stabbed McVay several times and slit her throat as a purely random act.
The law-enforcement officer, who no doubt means well, nonetheless describes a productive worker, striving to clean her car, as in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in fact, it is the anonymous teen who is in the wrong place at the wrong time as if civilization could possibly continue if the majority followed his wrong hours and wrong behavior. Ms. McVay, in fact, was in the right place at the right time, and she should have had every expectation that that she could go to the car wash before work without worry that a murderous gang-banger would slit her throat.
What sort of abjectly amoral society have we become when we metaphorically reduce a productive life to being in the wrong place at the wrong time only to worry that the teen murder suspect and his family might suffer from the disclosure of his identity? Perhaps our civilization and our police forces, in fact, are in the wrong places and at the wrong times when we cannot ensure Ms. McVay the humane expectation of basic safety.
Nor do I think that the killing was quite a purely random act, for two reasons: (1) I suspect any gang member, as is the wont of such thugs, has had prior brushes with the law, so the latest may well have been a logical escalation of accustomed gang-related behavior. And (2) the teen stole Ms. McVays car and cash. That suggests that the murder was in some sense a means to an end as well. Apparently law enforcement terms it a purely random act because the unidentified killer, or his post facto accomplice, savvy to the legal consequences of premeditated violence, claims that he saw Ms. McVay and abruptly decided to kill her. But why believe a murderer or his associate, when it is at least as likely that the gang-banger left his all-night party looking for somebody to rob and commit violence against?
In truth, the teen was an opportunistic predator, on the prowl for an easy victim, which translated into profiling a woman alone. His killing was random only to the extent that had he encountered instead three large men washing down a truck at 5 a.m., he surely would have kept his blade sheathed and passed on by with no thought that he simply wanted to kill somebody that night. In short, he did not want to kill just anybody that night: He wanted instead to stab an easy somebody, who might offer little resistance, and perhaps cash and car as a bonus.
Examine what happens next: The murderous teen then drove to the home of a fellow gang member, Mauricio Ortiz, 18, of Hanford . . . the teen was covered with blood and told Ortiz what he had done. Ortiz helped him ditch the car at Tachi Palace Casino and went with him to Visalia Mall, where the teen used McVays money to buy clean clothes.
The bloody murderer shows up unexpectedly at the home of a friend. Mr. Ortiz apparently decides that such gore is not all that shocking, and so does not suggest that the teen turn himself in, but rather, almost by second nature, helps him to hide the crime. Both gang members apparently know well both the parking lot of the Tachi Palace Casino and the Visalia Mall, where they respectively ditch the car and buy new clothes with the deceaseds hard-earned money. The familiar haunts of a casino and mall do not readily suggest elemental poverty. And did the murderer and his accomplice really go to the mall to buy clean clothes? I think it would be more accurate to suggest new clothes given that both undoubtedly had existing spare clothing. Why must we be insulted by taking at face value any such tale, gleaned from either the killer or his accomplice?
It leads us to wonder how many Mauricio Ortizes there are in our area, who at the first suggestion of lucre are quite ready to try to cover up a bloody murder and spend the victims cash. If the time comes when there are more of them than there are Denise McVays, civilization is finished.
We end this morality tale with societys now-standard self-righteous declaration, The teen, whose name was not released because of his age . . . as if we have evolved morally from a hundred years ago, when the suspect would have enjoyed no such exemption. But what really was his age, and did it matter whether the anonymous suspect killer who butchered the hard-working Ms. McVay was chronologically 17 or 50? The original intent of the law was apparently to protect the immature pre-adult, but it has now the effect of directing societys empathy to a sophisticated anonymous killer and away from his publicly identified victim. Note as well that the murder suspect himself earns only Juvenile Hall; his post facto accessory rates the harder county jail another of a sick societys messages that we calibrate age far more than savagery.
I have no doubt that in the next two years a good deal of societys capital will be invested in this unidentified youth and his named accomplice. Preliminary hearings, state-paid public defenders, an array of psychiatrists, and periodic proclamations from the defense team about particular childhood traumas suffered by the killer all to be followed by years of legal counsel, further psychological examinations and treatment, and of course, if there is a conviction, nearly $40,000 a year in incarceration expenses as our fast-paced society races onward and upward, without much thought of one productive citizen, Denise McVay, washing her car in the early morning on her way to work. None of us are exempt from such terrible arithmetic, and we now must live with the realization that tomorrow morning any one of us could be written off as either unlucky or unwise in our demise, while the rights of our killer would be obsessed over.
You see, it is characteristic of a morally bankrupt society to be absorbed with the evil living without much remembrance of the more noble dead. The former gang member and his family by all means must not be embarrassed; the dead woman is reduced to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
