Saudi punishes gang rape victim with 200 lashes

[Felix_Nietzsche]

This little tramp swayed six good Saudi men off the path of righteousness. This harlot....this temptress...this Jezebel deserves the full weight of Saudi justice.... These poor Saudi men will need a lot of counciling to get them through this ordeal. I will be praying for them...

If the USA were to adopt the wisdom the Saudis have towards women, then the USA would be a much better place...

[AzDesertRat]

Seriously, having lived there for a while, this type of cr@p does not surprise me. The woman in that country are not much better off than the woman under the Taliban. They take our perceived ignorance and take it to a new level.

[Moseley]

"You don't need formal agreements or treaties in order for your citizens to freely trade with whomever they please."

WTO & NAFTA brought about trade with China, they didn't just start shipping it over here.

"By accepting the paradigm that you suggest above, it merely reinforces the legitimacy of "bad" regimes and makes our own country dirtier in the process (not to mention that we cede more liberty of our own)."

I agree with you, however, we don't take issue with China's lack of environmental, consumer protection & labor laws. Japan only imports goods from China because they made it clear to the Chinese government that Japan will require the right to freely inspect all aspects of the production of goods shipped from China to their country. The U.S. could have done the same, however, Big Business wasn't interested in that. I would assume the average American doesn't care either, since Wal-Mart is so FREAKIN HUGE.

I also don't see how the U.S. Gov't., trading with China despite it's violations, in order to get cheap goods, or with Saudi Arabia, in order to keep a foothold in the oil rich Middle East has an effect upon my liberties. Maybe you could explain that to me.

What I do see: is us being nothing more than an isolationist nation otherwise, along with (in the case of not keeping an alliance with oil nations) failing to defend our national interests.

[Kaj]

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I keep having this nagging question, why is Iran our enemy and the Saudi's are our allies? Doesn't make an iota of sense to me. Maybe some of the folks defending having the Saudi's as our allies could explain this to me.

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The easiest way to fix this is to stop dividing up the world into enemies and allies and just let your citizens be free to trade with whomever they please. Any other solution in effect makes your own people the enemy by imposing trade restrictions on them.

[Kaj]

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I also don't see how the U.S. Gov't., trading with China despite it's violations, in order to get cheap goods, or with Saudi Arabia, in order to keep a foothold in the oil rich Middle East has an effect upon my liberties. Maybe you could explain that to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

The US govt doesn't trade anything with anybody. It's citizens trade with other people from other nations. Any trade agreement or embargo is a restriction on its own citizens who are the ones doing the trading. Think about it. If you still don't get it, go try and buy a Cuban cigar.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I keep having this nagging question, why is Iran our enemy and the Saudi's are our allies? Doesn't make an iota of sense to me. Maybe some of the folks defending having the Saudi's as our allies could explain this to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

The easiest way to fix this is to stop dividing up the world into enemies and allies and just let your citizens be free to trade with whomever they please. Any other solution in effect makes your own people the enemy by imposing trade restrictions on them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Doesn't Ron Paul basically advocate dropping all the trade restrictions? I should know the facts of this better but I believe that England actually did this in the middle of the nineteenth century and realized tremendous economic growth. Correlation or causation? Don't know. The idea that trade partners don't want to kill each other seems to make a lot of sense on the surface anyway. And of course dropping trade retrictions means people are free to trade with anyone so the idea of "partners" goes out the window. Everyone's your partner [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

[Kaj]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I keep having this nagging question, why is Iran our enemy and the Saudi's are our allies? Doesn't make an iota of sense to me. Maybe some of the folks defending having the Saudi's as our allies could explain this to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

The easiest way to fix this is to stop dividing up the world into enemies and allies and just let your citizens be free to trade with whomever they please. Any other solution in effect makes your own people the enemy by imposing trade restrictions on them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Doesn't Ron Paul basically advocate dropping all the trade restrictions? I should know the facts of this better but I believe that England actually did this in the middle of the nineteenth century and realized tremendous economic growth. Correlation or causation? Don't know. The idea that trade partners don't want to kill each other seems to make a lot of sense on the surface anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

In general, libertarians are for free trade. For a lot of reasons. One of which you correctly point out.

[Moseley]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I also don't see how the U.S. Gov't., trading with China despite it's violations, in order to get cheap goods, or with Saudi Arabia, in order to keep a foothold in the oil rich Middle East has an effect upon my liberties. Maybe you could explain that to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

The US govt doesn't trade anything with anybody. It's citizens trade with other people from other nations. Any trade agreement or embargo is a restriction on its own citizens who are the ones doing the trading. Think about it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that without the type of restrictions Japan put on China, major corporations would allow China to pollute to their delight while the corp. reap the profits.

I love RP's strict constitutionalists viewpoint, however, there is no way they could have had any idea what the world would be like today. Heck, they were dead before the Industrial Revolution which brought with it the first prominent signs of pollution.

In addition, it was natural for us to stick a 12 yr old in an assembly plant back then.

The U.S. Gov't doesn't give Musarraf 150 million dollars a month for his military because they love him, they give it to him because we don't have anyone else we would like having control over their nukes.

Our Founding Fathers wrote their prose of intellect when the cannonball was a powerful weapon.

[Kaj]

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I think that without the type of restrictions Japan put on China, major corporations would allow China to pollute to their delight while the corp. reap the profits.

[/ QUOTE ]

If people don't want China to be polluted, they can avoid trading with Chinese companies which pollute. I don't need the US govt to forbid me to trade with anybody to make my own moral choices. I try to avoid Chinese junk products for this very reason, although I have no hard rule and will compromise this stance if I value the product/price more than the alternative. I can also avoid owning stock or buying products from American companies I disapprove of. An excample of this is the fact that I will never buy any product hotlinked from Yahoo because of my disgust over their actions in outing Chinese dissidents. I'll use their services when in my interest so long as they don't profit off me. The more we realize that our own personal choices do in fact shape the world, then the better off we will be. Assuming that government is the answer usually doesn't solve anything and in fact may make things worse because government action is highly correlated with powerful special interests. This is easy to say in theory but harder in practice. But I believe little will change for the good until we all start accepting a little more personal responsibility which comes with greater economic freedom.

[ QUOTE ]
The U.S. Gov't doesn't give Musarraf 150 million dollars a month for his military because they love him, they give it to him because we don't have anyone else we would like having control over their nukes.

[/ QUOTE ]

We as Americans would have little to fear regarding Pakistani nukes if the US govt wasn't meddling all over the world for the last 100 years. It strikes me as circular logic to use the situation caused by our meddling as justification for never-ending meddling. It's also a very inefficient approach, as supported by the fact that the US spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. And that doesn't even include the military aid you allude to.

[Moseley]

"Considering that oil is $90+ a barrel and considering that Saudi's are accused of funding radical terrorist activities; spending U.S. taxpayer money and blood to defend the Saudi power structure isn't much of a bargain methinks."

According to news reports, the true value of oil is $70 per barrel. The other $20+ comes from speculation of what Bush might do to Iran now that Congress has given him the green light.

Any intelligent person had to forsee this. It happened prior to Bush's dad going to war and it happened when it became apparent Bush would invade Iraq. Not after we invaded and the oil supply was reduced, but before the decision was even made to invade.

"The idea of comparing the U.S. legal system and citizen'rights to the Saudis and saying they're more or less the same is either stupid or an admission that a credible argument for supporting such system can't be made."

I am not comparing the U.S. legal system to that of the Saudi's. I am demonstrating how one cannot protect their own interests when they put human rights first. If you could, the industrialized nations would have washed their hands of the United States until they stopped executed minors.

"I keep having this nagging question, why is Iran our enemy and the Saudi's are our allies? Doesn't make an iota of sense to me. Maybe some of the folks defending having the Saudi's as our allies could explain this to me."

We don't support Iran's government because they have swore to destroy Israel, who has 250 nuclear weapons. Can you read the tealeaves?

Over 80% of the Iranians do not hate Americans, despite the fact they have all had a relative, somewhere in their bloodline, who was persecuted by the Shaw after we overthrew the elected President they loved.

Trust me. The United States of America is no better than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is worse than us in some cases, as in the 200 lashes, however, the United States, when it talks about human rights is nothing more than a sham.