Human Rights Groups Push To Save Condemned Programmer In Iran 244
First time accepted submitter debiangruven writes "Human rights Groups are making one final plea to save the life of Canadian programmer, Saeed Malekpour, who was sentenced to death for writing a program to upload photos to the Internet. From the article: 'Malekpour's supporters have created Facebook pages and websites in his support dating to at least 2009. Amnesty International has requested on its website that concerned individuals write Iranian authorities inside and outside the country to demand that Malekpour not be executed."
Iran's many self-inflicted wounds (Score:4, Interesting)
reagan begs to differ (Score:5, Interesting)
i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.
Re:Goodwin be Damned (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look at the history of Islam. Mohammad specifically prohibited converting people by force. Two years later, armies under his command attacked a city (that he had a peace treaty with, by the way) and gave everyone a choice: convert to Islam or die.
Christianity started to be used as a justification for atrocities shortly after the Roman emperors converted. Islam was like that from the start.
Re:Goodwin be Damned (Score:1, Interesting)
It certainly has. Imagine allowing Negros to vote, rather than enslaving and raping them!
I am grateful that we have grown beyond the "ideals" of the American "Founding Fathers" who foresaw an agrarian, slaveholding, class-stratified society. When we talk about freedom, let's not appeal to the Founders, ok?
Re:Goodwin be Damned (Score:4, Interesting)
Not all Americans are ignorant "Christians" my friend. Hell most christians I've met here don't even really understand what it is they believe and regularly get facts about their own faith wrong. They know they love Jesus and hate Muslims though.
Our government feels that basic human rights only apply to Americans while in America when it's convenient and non-embarrassing for them. When it's not convenient, they do whatever they feel like and claim it's a national security secret and therefore above the law and the fact that you even want to know makes you look suspicious.
Hell, Obama even tried to claim sending drones to kill folks in another country is not even a "Hostile Act" or "Act of War". Sorry, I consider telepresence to be the same as actually being there pulling a trigger.
Re:A Matter of Perception (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A Matter of Perception (Score:2, Interesting)
No, intolerance is the problem. There are tolerant religious people like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. There are intolerant religious people like Bin Laden and Benito Mussolini. There are tolerant atheists like Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel. And there are intolerant atheists like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.
Correct, but intolerant atheists include those that are intolerant precisely because they fight intolerant religious people and don't accept their right to be intolerant.
For instance a lot of the motivation behind many anti-Islamic groups are the behavior of the Muslims. Not only have they rallied behind exterminations attacks against a then peaceful nation of Israel. These continued attacks have hardened Israel and made them intolerant which unfortunately is the obvious and unavoidable result of never-ending threats backed up by violence and terrorism. And the Muslims have taken terror to whole new levels actively seeking to hurt and kill westerners for no other reason that we have opinions or freedoms they don't like.
There's more than a dozen independent people/groups jailed for terror (attempts) against the Mohammad cartoonists and they quite literary did nothing wrong and hurt nobody. They made a drawing meant for a local newspaper, a drawing nobody would find offensive for any reason other than it depicted Mohammad. But still they went bananas and rallied to kill and hurt people. That's intolerance intruding on pure insanity and we should never tolerate that.
I support intolerant atheism like that. I don't mind people practicing a religion in their home, but keep it out of the public space in any way, shape or form. No religious symbols or clothing, no missioning, no public indoctrination of children, no visible praying. Basically we need to exterminate religion in all its forms within a generation or two. Religion has caused enough damage on every level for many thousands of years and enough is enough. We need to get rid of it now and it can only happen too slowly.