So much for the suicide part of the plan.
There are these guys who were convicted in 2003 of helping to plan and carry out the October, 2002 suicide bombings that targeted two busy nightclubs on Bali island, Indonesia. These guys didn’t die in the process, but 202 other people were killed. So much for the suicide part of the plan.…
Article comments
26 - Jordan Richardson
*sniffles and shuffles away*
27 - Baronius
Jordan, don't feel bad that Dread didn't count you among the "regulars". Some of us have been avoiding personal commitments and life improvements for years. You're still kind of new at it.
28 - Jordan Richardson
You've all given me so much to aspire to! :-)
29 - Baritone
Bar,
"Although, to be fair, Ruvy thinks that everyone should be killed."
LOL :)
B
30 - Dr Dreadful
Jordan, please don't take offense. My census was of the Politics regulars, whereas you're something of a social gadfly! ;-)
Although, to be fair, Ruvy thinks that everyone should be killed.
Ruvy may have a point...! But it's the Sabbath. I'm sure, if he were allowed to comment right now, that he'd vehemently argue that no-one at all should be killed until Saturday dinnertime.
31 - Dave Nalle
Ooh, dinner AND a show...why it's like being in the borscht belt!
Dave
32 - Jet
I'm against capital punishment Doc...
33 - Dr Dreadful
I stand corrected, Jet.
[walks to scaffold, refuses hood]
34 - Jet
Well I'm not a fanatic about it, I mean if someone cuts up in line in front of me at Wal-Mart, or someone scratches my car...
I mean I'm willing to be reasonable...
35 - Dan Miller
Doc,
I plead guilty as charged.
The death penalty seems, to me, to be entirely appropriate in cases such as the one with which the article deals. There is no question but that the Bali bombers were guilty of murdering, intentionally, two hundred and two people who had done absolutely nothing to warrant it, aside from being in a popular tourist place at the wrong time. Many of those who were wantonly murdered most likely experienced substantial discomfort as they died.
There is no suggestion that the Bali bombers felt even a faint tinge of remorse. To the contrary, according to Comment #9, they were "sneering in court, and saying they wished they'd killed more."
Societal vengeance is necessary on occasion, and this strikes me as one of those rare occasions. Civilized societies do not lynch people without a fair trial, and Bali is not doing so here. Such societies should, however, exact extreme vengeance in extreme cases. This is one of them.
As to expiring without pain, that is a luxury which many if not most of us won't have. I can think of no valid reason why these miscreants should be granted the sort of painless euthanasia denied to many guilty of no crime at all but whom society nevertheless condemns, for allegedly religious reasons, to a prolonged and quite painful death.
Dan
36 - Dr Dreadful
My outrage with this case is not that the death penalty is being used so much as that the defendants seem to think they should somehow, on the grounds of their faith (in a Muslim country, mark you!), be exempt from the legally prescribed punishment for their crimes.
BTW, everyone, unless a fix can be found you're not likely to hear from me again until Monday due to Akismet blocking any comment I try to make from home.
[cue wild street parties]
However, I am still able to edit comments in my capacity as Mr Rose's assistant, so you'd all better watch it!
[picnic tables are folded, beer kegs are rolled sullenly back into garages]
Have a great weekend, y'all.
37 - Dan Miller
Doc,
Just as a point of minor interest, Bali is not predominately Muslim; it is predominately Hindu. True, it is a part of Indonesia, which is predominately Muslim and the laws of Indonesia almost certainly apply.
My wife arranged for us to go there for a vacation on the day after I retired back in 1996, as a way for me to chill out. We spent ten days. It was a delightful, tranquil place where tolerance seemed ubiquitous. Every morning, in Ubud, the "cultural center" of the country, flower offerings were placed on the sidewalks. My wife accidentally stepped in one, and twisted her ankle. We hobbled across the street to a small restaurant, where the waitress brought her ice and insisted on taking her (on the back of the restaurant owner's motorbike) to her blind uncle, who massaged her ankle and did a lot of good. Then she (the waitress) took her back to our hotel -- a cottage on what had been the grounds of a royal palace ($20.00 per night, as I recall, including an excellent breakfast). The waitress and her uncle refused payment.
We had many other very pleasant experiences there, and no bad experiences. One day, we hired a taxi to take us to the other side of the island to a black sandy beach the next day. He was at the appointed place at the appointed time, but apologized that he had to go to his house to retrieve his drivers license. Actually, what he wanted to do was to show off his family compound (he was of the royal family, third class, or something like that). His wife fed us cakes after he had shown us his orchid plants, of which he was very proud. Then, a nephew took us to our destination.
The few Muslims, the Hindus and a fair number of Buddhists seemed to live in wonderful peace and harmony.
These and many other pleasant experiences doubtless color my views on what should happen to miscreants who try to upgefuck such a wonderful place.
Dan
38 - Ruvy
I see someone tried to pigeonhole my views. As a rule, I'm against the death penalty. I believe in punishment that forces the convicted offender to repay society or his victims in some way. In addition, there is always the possibility of an innocent being executed by error. Being turned into a corpse will not repay society or bring any sense of retribution unless the crime has been a particularly heinous one.
Here we come to the Bali case, and terror incidents of its ilk.
Indonesian law prescribes death by firing squad for this crime, if convicted. And this crime was a case of mass murder, done with malice aforethought. There is no mitigating circumstance involved here. Period.
Those victimized by these criminals may seek their own vengeance in having done to these killers a death penalty that prolongs their pain and terror in facing death. I can think of a number of ways this could be accomplished even within the constraints of using only the firing squad, but I'll abstain from posting details here. The point is this: deliberately prolonging the pain of the killers in facing their death sentence is the sign of a society that is cutting loose from its legal moorings and which is respecting the person more than the law. This is a bad sign for all involved.
My opinion on this case is simply this: the killers deserve all the special consideration in their own deaths as they gave to the 202 victims they murdered. No less and no more.
So, whatever pain they must suffer from a multitude of bullets piercing them, with certain death as the result, let them suffer. It is the least the families of the victims of this heinous crime deserve. But there should be no additional cruelty - and certainly no mercy should be shown the merciless.
He who is kind to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to the kind.
[from the Talmud]
shavua tov have a good week,
Blessings from the mountains of Liberated Samaria,
Ruvy