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Iran Sentences Cartoonist To Be Flogged For Insulting Politician

Iran has long been flog-happy in its imposition of medieval Sharia laws. Now, it has sentenced cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraye to receive 25 lashes for drawing a caricature of Iranian MP, Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani, that the MP found insulting. As you can see, it is a pretty mild cartoon but Iranian officials stand by the punishment.


Ashtiani is depicted in a football stadium with a congratulatory letter in one hand and his foot resting on soccer ball. The MP’s forehead has a dark mark of a pious Shia Muslim. Ashtiani is unpopular with many for his interference with the country’s sports teams.

Esmail Kowsari, a member of the parliamentary committee on national security, explained: “[A cartoonist] should be persecuted if the cartoon is not ordinary and ridicules someone … Any crime has its own punishment, including lashing, imprisonment or being fined.”

I suppose it is only appropriate that a legal system that is little more than a caricature of the real thing should concern itself with flogging cartoonists.

Source: Guardian

53 thoughts on “Iran Sentences Cartoonist To Be Flogged For Insulting Politician”

  1. Otteray Scribe:

    “Iranian culture is charging headlong into the fifth century, ready or not”

    I think that would be a marked improvement. Dont you nean the 7th or 8th century?

  2. “It is a poor accurate assumption to think that I have not studied Social Compacts and other aspects of sociology”.

    There. That’s better, hskiprob.

    If you did understand them, you wouldn’t have said something as patently ridiculous as “[i]t appears that once you aquisce to even minimal rights, your left testicle is on the chopping block.” Social compacts are the underlying fundamental dynamic in any society and all government. They are the process by which groups agree to limit their absolute freedoms found in the state of nature for mutually derived benefit gained through society. You will never have a society where the individual retains the absolute freedoms inherent in the state of nature. Why? Because that is what is known as anarchy.

    The rest of what you say is argumentum verbosium devoid of any proof.

    I also suggest to you that my unwillingness to accept the bad alternatives presented by Libertarianism does not translate into an unwillingness in general to consider options. I’m all for viable options. The sad truth of the matter is I have considered the Libertarian option and found it not only lacking, but a recipe for disaster based upon false assumptions about human nature, a lack of understanding of the theory behind government (as illustrated by your lack of understanding of the basic dynamic of a social compact as evidenced by your ridiculous statement) and fantasy-based economics.

    1. When you think about it any type of war causes humans pain, misery, and death giving fear.too. The Iranians do things that make us cringe, but so does the military armies, and police in the world too. We can’t just single out the Iranians.

  3. Why 1900 says the friend of order. Well the Bolsheviks inherited a repressive system. And they were first good, and then terrific in refining it.

  4. Frankly,

    N. Mandelstam confirms the Soviet fear of poets, ca 1900-1934 (current period covered). Poems can be memorized, they speak to the heart, they can be passed on.

    But at a certain level of terror (1934), no one dares open their mouths. No one even talks to their neighbor, their friends, their children. All is hunched shoulders and hurried backs dashing for home, for less terror.

    1. Humans all of them have the punishment of death because the body dies. Don’t show mwercy to humans, and the soul will die in the one not showing mercy. Jesus is all about showing mercy. In other words the one not showing mercy does not care about themselves.

  5. Cartoons: = Threat
    Video Camera: = Contraband
    Public Records Request: = Subversive Act.
    Being / Existing: = Crime
    Talking: = Inciting Violence
    Loving: = Blasphemy
    Killing: = Piety
    Opression: = Justice
    Liberty = Gone

  7. Remembering that sent me to the great gazoogle to look up Mr. Harburg. I learned a couple of things. First I messed up the first line it should be “Im not afraid of atom bombs”

    Second was this beauty – I had forgotten but it is more true today that ever before:
    We’ve licked pneumonia and T.B.
    And plagues that used to mock us,
    We’ve got the virus on the run
    The small pox cannot pock us.
    We’ve found the antibodies for
    The staphylo-strepto-coccus.

    But oh, the universal curse
    From Cuba to Korea,
    The bug of bugs that bugs us still
    And begs for panacea!
    Oh, who will find the antidote
    For Pentagonorrhea?

    1. The reason humans think those names don’t mock us is because humans have not pulled them out of the filing cabinet to broadcast the names of them with convincing imagery to panic the masses.

  8. For some reason this bit of doggerel from EY Harburg just came to me this morning. to paraphrase his comment on the arrest of a poet in the Soviet Union:
    “I’m not afraid of anything” says Khrushchev (the Imam)
    And don’t we know it
    “I’m not afraid of anything”
    “Except, perhaps, a poet” (cartoonist)

  9. anon nurse 1, May 11, 2012 at 12:00 pm

    “A decade and two wars after the fact, and only after they got caught.

    Do you believe that propaganda?”

    ========

    Jesus, Dredd. Wrong side of the bed??

    If you don’t know the answer to your question after all the posting that I’ve done here (which you may or may not have read), I’m not gonna spell it out.

    But I do want them to get caught, no matter how long it takes. These folks need to be held to account, at some point. It may never happen and I may not live to see it, but it won’t keep me from doing my small part.
    *******************************************************************************
    Ok cool. Here is an update:

    The class in question was canceled in April and Dempsey noted the instructor responsible for the course, army lieutenant colonel Matthew A Dooley, is “no longer in a teaching status”. Dooley, however, is still employed at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

    Linda Sarsour, executive director at the Arab American Association of New York, said the course is merely the latest example in a proliferation of anti-Muslim teaching materials in law-enforcement agencies. “It’s part of a much larger problem,” Sarsour said, pointing to similar controversies involving the FBI and the New York police department.

    (Guardian).

    1. The Muslims are the way the Muslims are. They are offended if the things they call holy are contested to not be holy. God alone is holy.That’s why Mosses could not look into the face of God. Have a Muslim know the truth, and they will want to rock you.

  11. He should be counting his blessings as he is only being flogged….and not stoned by the entire assylum or is that assembly….

    1. The Muslims Flog themselves in a grope for the fun of it sometimes. They are a nutty group of humans. They are totally over the edge. No matter which way you look at it the cartoonist should be left alone.

    2. The Muslims Flog themselves in a group for the fun of it sometimes. They are a nutty group of humans. They are totally over the edge. No matter which way you look at it the cartoonist should be left alone.

  12. f whoever does not want to be flogged whoever should not flog. Cartoonist did not even do evil. Why is he getting evil ? Jesus teaches to not even give evil when evil is given. That means the evil given the cartoonist is evil way worse than the garden variety of evil commonly given.

  13. If whoever does not want to be flogged whoever should not flog. Cartoonist did not even do evil. Why is he getting evil ? Jesus teaches to not even give evil when evil is given. That means the eviul given the cartoonist is evil way worse than the garden variety of evil commonly given.

  14. Anon nurse,
    I as usual enter other’s discussion unasked.
    As I see it, Dredd knows in all likelihood of your position and your constant pursuit of this sickness, said pursuit which even I have seen and admired openly. He, in his seldom ired mood, wished to see a military style execution, ASAP. But if LBJ could lie, why not JCS chief?

    This course is I presume, just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Where does the sickness begin is a major
    question. Effective hygienic measures must begin there.

  15. While your concern for my testicles is touching if somewhat troubling and unappreciated, hskiprob, all you have demonstrated by that comment is that you don’t have a clue as to how social compacts work or the theory underlying governments. It appears to be a common affliction among Libertarians. The not knowing how social compacts work thing and lack of knowledge of underlying theory that is, not the overtly creepy concern for my testicles.

    1. Gene H. It is a poor assumption to think that I have not studied Social Compacts and other aspects of sociology? What I find Gene that just about everything the average person believes in life, especially the very important things is wrong. Our major institutions are a mess. Let’s take the Catholic Church. An organization dedicated to improving the moray of mankind, has been harboring pedophiles for perhaps centuries. Almost every major Archdiocese was involved. In the Civil war, both sides claimed to have been fighting in Gods name, as in most wars. An entire society who’s primary foundation was the protection of individual rights, has usurps almost all of them over its 235 year history. Except for suffrage and slavery, our imnportant rights are gone and has been replaced with economic slavery.

      Actually, the late John David Garcia did some very interesting studies on group dynamic and decision making. Bob Podolsky, a good friend of mine and son of the late Boris Podolsky, the famed scientist, has in my opinion made additional improvements to his work. You would than understand why many of our larger institutions today suffer so much in their ethos and creativity. We call it bureaucracy. Podolsky’s “The Borg Wars” and his other books, will give you great insight into the problems of our world and some possible cures.

      I am not claiming that I have the cure, but it is easy to claim that the existing govenrment systems and other majorit institutions can not cure our world social ills. I suggest to you that staying in bed with this system and not look at the alternatives is not the wisest thing.

      1. The Catholic Church has sex like any animal on the planet.The problem comes when they act superior bad mouthing other sexuality names. The devil is in his own jail a slave to that jail. Jesus is not a part of it. Satan in humans made servant into slave. Please teach all the truth. The devil is behind economics too. Had God be part of it money would literally grow on trees.

  16. OS,
    You inspire only: so don’t take it personally or against your argument per se.

    I say, this is but two tribes meeting at the river, to poison it for each other by casting dead bodies of the condemned in it.

    Who the other tribe is, I can leave to your guessing.

    1. I could deal with limited govenment but how do you keep government limited. It appears that once you aquisce to even minimal rights, your left testicle is on the chopping block.

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