Tortured to death for saying no
ISIS on Thursday executed 19 Yezidi girls by burning them to death, activists and eyewitnesses reported.
The victims, who had been taken by ISIS terrorists as sex slaves, were placed in iron cages in central Mosul and burned to death in front of hundreds of people.
“They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants,” local media activist Abdullah al-Malla said.
“The 19 girls were burned to death, while hundreds of people were watching. Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment,” an eyewitness said in Mosul.
We’re a mistake. Human beings are a mistake. We must be, or we wouldn’t be capable of that kind of thing. All that brain power, and it’s not enough to prevent us from doing things like that.
The Independent also reports the story as do other news sources.
Bloody Hell!!!
If this isn’t proof there is no omnipotent benevolent god, I can’t imagine what would be.
Yes, we are a mistake. Human beings are capable of such horror, so easily. For me, none of the uplifting “noble” things people trot out to paper over humanity’s violence even come close to making up for the misery we inflict on ourselves and fellow humans.
Can’t remember which thoughtful whomever said the surest evidence for intelligent life elsewhere is: it has never tried to contact us.
(/Realistically, aliens: nuke us from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.)
Allah says women should be modest and chaste.
Unless someone with a smidgeon of power wants them I guess.
I don’t glorify war, nor soldiers. Honest. But, Yazidi women are fighting back against the ISIS monsters. Here’s a story from Reuters.
Some of them are fighting for revenge, others are fighting to protect their fellow Yazidi women from rape and mutilation. One woman’s husband fled to Germany while she stayed behind to fight.
I don’t like war. I think that humans are savages with technology; but some savages such as Daesh and Boko Haram? I don’t know of any alternative. They’re not fighting for something that could have otherwise been negotiated. They are fighting for absolute control under the command of their god.
Cruelty doesn’t happen by mistake. It takes effort. We have to take a run at it. And we do. All the time. The easy path is not being cruel but there are still always a hundred people going out of their way to tell people off if they aren’t cruel enough. Love and compassion are second nature to us, they turn up whether we want it or not. But we prefer cruelty, which we have to actively work at.
I can’t stop thinking about what went through the minds of the hundreds of people who watched.
“Healing the Believers’ Chests” never ends, does it?
In one opinion piece I found a suggestion that burning people alive is not merely meant as an intimidation but also as a recruiting tool. It’s not just about scaring the spectators. No, the aim is also to make them feel, deep inside, that they had abandoned the path of true religion. The aim is to fascinate, mesmerise and seduce them into joining.
Burning girls alive as an efficient recruiting tactic? Yes,of course. How could it be otherwise? After AJ Milne’s aliens “nuke us from orbit”, the survivors – if any – will want to join the victors not just for opportunistic reasons but with full belief and perhaps with a new religion. After all, as Josh said, “we are a mistake”.
But all those people had to assemble in the first place. Presumably they knew what they were there to watch.
Radical Islam is by far the most retrograde force on the planet. These aren’t just acts committed by ‘humans’. This particular set of humans is motivated by, and steeped in, an ideology of theocratic fascism that views the *other* (which includes women) as having absolutely no value whatsoever.
To describe the perps merely as ‘human’ is of no help at all when it comes to doing something concrete to stop this. In fact, it’s a rather cowardly approach, one which squints at the problem.
When a tornado destroys your house, you don’t react by saying ‘the weather’ blew my house away.
“Warm-and-sunny-with-a-high-of-80” doesn’t blow a house away.
But a tornado will.
Presumably they knew what they were there to watch.
Yes, of course they were. Just like those primitive medieval Europeans at a witch burning.
The trouble is, latsot, is that not being cruel is not the easy path. In many ways, alas, I think the other path is easier. Can I recommend an extraordinary little play, originally written for young people, called ‘At the Inland Sea’ by the great English playwright Edward Bond? It has a wonderful understanding of what reality is and a wonderful moral toughness; it takes a look at the worst, and seeks to comprehend it and to build on that comprehension.
John, don’t call me a coward. You comment here regularly so you must be pretty familiar with the kind of thing I post about – you can’t really think I shy away from saying harsh things about Islamism and Islam itself.
Yes of course Islam is the ideology that “justifies” this shit in the minds of the IS fascists, but that wouldn’t work if humans weren’t what humans are. Islam isn’t the first or only murderous othering ideology there’s ever been. Islam in this instantiation (and all the others of its kind) is a feature of human evils – our aggression and propensity for hating other tribes, groups, classes, identities, parties etc etc along with our lack of sufficient compassion and conscience to STOP US DOING THIS SHIT.
I wasn’t being “cowardly” in saying that. Fuck off.
I apologize for the use of that term. My language was very maladroit and my thoughts poorly expressed.
You often take on subjects that many other progressive won’t touch with a barge-pole for fear of offending some in the PC crowd.
I remain an optimist and am convince that far more humans do good than do evil. Were that not the case humanity would have been an evolutionary dead end long ago.
Once again, my apologies
Thank you; accepted.
I agree with you in a way about the more good than evil. But the depths of evil like this kind of thing are way too common, and too easily plunged into.
Speak for yourself ;)
Are you sure? I can only speak for myself but I feel tremendous anxiety whenever I make a decision that might – even in theory – result in someone being harmed. And I’m widely acknowledged as not being a very emotional person. For me, being cruel is much harder than not being cruel. I’m not assuming it’s the same for everyone, but I have a difficult time believing that cruelty comes without emotional cost. It’s obvious that people can – at the very least – ignore such cost but I think the cost is still there.
I’m as capable of cruelty as everyone else but I always regret it. I can’t lie to myself. I worry about thoughtless things I did decades ago.
Perhaps it’s the case that cruelty is easier at the time but more difficult later. We’re all experts at mortgaging our future, after all.
Well, I’m much like you, I think, latsot – I’m not fond of hurting people and, like you, worry about thoughtless things I did and said decades ago. But a look at human history… Oh, dear.
This is a puzzler though. It’s hard to wrap the mind around wanting to stand there and watch people burning to death – yet we know many have done it throughout history.
When channel-surfing last night I watched a few minutes near the end of the Godzilla remake, and I could not stop myself feeling sad for Godzilla tangled up in the Brooklyn Bridge being hit by missiles, despite knowing perfectly well that Godzilla was CGI. Cause Godzilla to cry out in pain and fear as the missiles hit and I will duly feel sorry for poor CGI Godzilla.
I haven’t even seen that movie and I feel sorry for CGI Godzilla now.
We humans are easily manipulated.