"With all due respect, ma'am, you can go jump off a bridge,"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/11/16/pledge_of_allegiance/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/feature

I used to live in the US once. More than 10 years ago now. I was, in essence, also sent to the principal's office when I both refused to recite the oath, and when I didn't want to stand. I got out of reciting the oath, what with me not being a citizen and all, but I had to stand, because the other students were jealous of me sitting down when they were all forced to stand.

Welcome to civilization

I just came across this little piece of news from Saudi Arabia.
According to CNN, some woman met with a guy, and as a result of her being at this meeting, 7 met converged on her and the guy and gang-raped them.
Why Saudi men would rape another man is unknown, but apparently, that's what happened.
Anyway, the gay rape is not what is at issue here. What we are talking about is the atrocious treatment this woman received from the government.
Her rapist got sentenced to between 10 months and 5 years in prison. I don't know how that stacks up to other international rape convictions, so I will not pass judgement.
The woman, however, the rape victim got, get this, 90 lashes as punishment for meeting with an unrelated male. Not only did she get raped by 7 dudes, but she's getting raped by the Saudi government as well.
As could be expected, she and her lawyer appealed both her sentence (and presumably ruling) and the sentences of the rapists.
The court increased the sentence to the rapists to 2 - 9 years.
What the court also did, and this is where I start getting nervous twitches, is that they sentenced the raped woman to 6 months in prison and 200 lashes!
What the fuck?!
Not only that, but they disbarred her lawyer in the process, so now she has no legal representation.
The reason for her increased sentence was apparently:

The judges more than doubled the punishment for the victim because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media," according to a source quoted by Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.

So, not only do we do horrible things to women in general, but we stifle any and all forms of public outcry.
I've blogged about weird religious laws and getting lashes previously, but this is just ridiculous.
How the hell do they expect to be accepted as equals (and not just oil suppliers) in modern society when they pull shit like this in a regular basis?
It's supposed to be the cradle of civilization, but apparently someone got dropped on the head several times by some evil proverbial stepmother, and we end up with this.
Seriously people, it's time to get your shit together. It's stuff like this that makes me think that the atrocities that the US commits against both its citizens and the rest of the civilized world on a daily basis is nothing to be worried about.
I would never live in the US, but I would sure as hell never live in a country with laws like this.
This is one of the few cases where I can honestly say "go team America - world police!".
I don't care what you say about equality, but sentencing anyone, especially a 19 year old rape victim to 6 months in prison and 200 lashes warrants a serious carpet bombing.

Now the UK is also off-limits for me.

For the longest time (basically since the introduction of the PATRIOT act) the US has been off-limits for me. Not because I've committed any crime punishable under it, but rather because it gives law enforcement the legal right to do whatever the fuck the want to people without having to prove anything.
Now, after a long line of similar atrocities, the UK is also on my no-fly list. Almost once a week I read about new legal development in the UK (usually on Slashdot and on Bruce Schneier's Blog) that gives the police similar freedoms there. You'd think that people in an EU country would be more resilient to big brother-ness like this, but apparently law makers don't listen to the people anymore (when have they ever, right...).
One could argue that the big grey mass of people would like to give up liberty to gain security, which doesn't actually work, but the reality is that the big grey mass of people probably don't vote anyway, should something like this actually be voted on via referendum.
The US and UK are now right up there with North Korea and China on the list of countries that don't give a flying fuck about the liberties of their citizens, and will do anything to bring about a police state much in the same way that Germany worked back in the day (can someone say Gestapo?). Bush seems intent on finding a final solution to the liberty problem, but other than the problem statement, there are a lot of similarities between him and some other guys in history I can think of.

Shooting Blind

Literally. Apparently if you live in Texas and have a hunting license, you're allowed to go hunting even if you can't see. (Ok, so the article is about an aid they can use, but it's what got my attention)

...

So, let me get this straight. You can be out in the woods. Where other people are. Carrying a loaded weapon, and also be allowed to fire said weapon.
Am I the only one who finds this terribly frightening? I'm all for hunting; game tastes good, and if you go way back, people hunted their food, but blind people do not hunt out of necessity. They never did. They either died, or someone else hunted for them. More to the point, blind people do not have any reason to shoot guns.
Seriously, what's wrong with people. How the hell would you get a hunting license in the first place if you are blind?

I'm all for people with disabilities being able to do most, if not all, of what other members of society can do, but there are certain limitations, and people should respect them.

It's not like they're letting blind people drive. Hell, I don't even know if deaf people can drive.

And according to the article, there's now some sort of laser aiming device to help them hit what they're (supposedly) aiming at.
What the hell? How do you aim if you are blind? How do you do it? Deaf people can't listen any more than blind people can see. I realize that you might be able to cook up some sound device for aiming, but I doubt we're quite there yet.

Stuff like this just makes me even happier that I'm never ever living in that absolute horror of a country.

I like shooting guns just as much as the next guy (I mean, we're men here, who hasn't played guns or cowboys and indians when they were kids), but that doesn't mean that anyone should be allowed to own or carry one, let alone walk around with them loaded anywhere they damn well please.

Getting a license to own a gun is fine, or if you have an actual reason for owning a gun. Waiting 7 days to get a hand gun isn't responsible gun ownership, it's just postponing the inevitable.

Jesus Fucking Christ

Seriously, I might as well just quote slashdot here.

MSNBC has up an article discussing the results of a Newsweek poll on faith and religion among members of the US populace. Given the straightforward question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', some 48% of Americans said 'No'. Furthermore, 34% of college graduates said they accept the Biblical story of creation as fact. An alarmingly high number of individuals responded that they believe the earth is only 10,000 years old, and that a deity created our species in its present form at the start of that period.

I'm speechless. Really. Stupidity comes in all shapes and sizes, and apparently from almost half the population of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Even the people with a so-called "higher education" are on the band wagon. Absolutely fucking nuts.

Where's Darwin when you need him?

FBI

I guess the FBI thinks they are above the law, and they're not afraid of telling people about it either. Apparently, pesky things like subpoenas shouldn't have to bother anyone, just do what we say instead. We'll (not) deal with the legal stuff.
Seriously, how much longer will this continue? There's a reason why people in the US are allowed to own guns, and that's to overthrow an oppressive government. You're living under one of the most oppressive regimes in the world people, it's time you unlocked your gun cabinets and did something about it! One day the people of this world are going to wake up, and it'll be 1984 times a million. George Orwell might have been off on the date when he wrote the book, but not by much. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of thought crime was made illegal within the next 20-30 years. Maybe even sooner. This is fucking nuts. This shit makes cold war Russia seem like Disney land.
The only thing separating the US from North Korea is the fact that most us citizens have running water, and there's not an import restriction on iPods.

Only in America

Teens beating homeless people (to death) for sport.

Claiming anything other than stupidity as a reason for random violence is a fucking lie. Sure, a lot of violence is triggered by a disagreement of some sort (money, drugs, sleeping with your friend's wife, you name it), but random acts of violence like these can't possibly be fueled by anything else than pure, unadulterated stupidity.

As I've claimed for so long, someone should make stupidity more painful, but I guess in this case being the victim of stupidity is what was painful. (Ok, being the victim of stupidity, yours or others, is usually painful too, but often not to this extent).
Sure, doing 15-to-life in a house of corrections might earn you a rogering or two, but you definitely earned that...