Honor killing in Pakistan

[Antiquehunter]

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I agree with AH's idea of linking foreign aid with conditions. One condition I would push for is to allow NGOs to operate safe houses with no interference.

As a consultant vs an NGO person, while I would say NGO's by and large do a lot of good, they also need to be regulated and brought in line. I would agree if you changed the sentence to read 'with limited interference'.

Don't help set up theocracies -- require separation of church/mosque and state in the laws.

Yes - and no. Iraq was largely rebuilt with a secular vision, and Afghanistan as an Islamic Republic. I always maintained secular government was the answer in Afghanistan, but this would have required a much different war in order to instill.

Require these countries to allow in missionaries, to allow their citizens to convert to other religions and for both missionaries and converts to be given protection.

I disagree with this. I don't think replacing one set of fairy tales with another is any sort of answer. PNG is crawling with Christianity in all its most vile flavours, and they are no better off here than if they were worshipping the sun & animals as they were 100 years ago.

(I was told by a former co-worker from Bengal, that the biggest damage to the caste system came from the missionaries who converted members fom the lower casts. )

Again, I'm not sure you need missionaries to achieve this. Another way to break down a 'caste system' is through economic empowerment. No saviours required.

To enforce this, foreign businesses operating mines and construction projects should be required to have their premises and some of their records open to 3rd party observers.

To be specific - I would consider changing the above to state 'build governance and strength within the public service, to enforce laws and regulations, guiding businesses responsibly'. I see this '3rd party observer' role very much as the role of the host country government - not the UN, not consultants (you see - I'm putting myself out of work) not do-gooder NGOs. Build a Ministry of Mines that regulates & enforces. Rather than one that lines its own pockets.

 

[Kaylee]

Certainly, we could demand conditions for foreign aid. I'm not sure to what degree we can impose radical changes on them, such as allowing missionaries in. That might be too much like imposing change by force.

The USA has been in Afghanistan since 2001 and NATO since ??.

There's been up to 140,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan at one time.

The http://costofwar.com/ to the USA alone has been $586 trillion dollars. (Since we don't all count the large numbers the same way ... that is a trillion USA style with 9 zeros.)

And the cost to Afghanistan's citizens? How do you quantify the cost of living in a war zone?

Afghanistan has been mostly under other countries rule and/or invasion since the time of Alexander the Great.

I've read many articles that say the countries that tend to be stable, at peace and least likely to fight with each other are the republics with a large middle class that trade with each other. I think that is obvious, but if asked I will try to dig up a link or two.

Maybe its time to really help make Afghanistan a republic with a large middle class that significantly trades in things besides opium ... so that we can all get a little peace in that part of the world.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Ban polygyny.

I can get behind most of your other suggestions, albeit for different reasons (missionaries, imo, will only be trying to replace one bigotry with another, but forbidding them would be the greater evil and a nasty precedent). But the quoted bit I can't really see as anything but trying to push our own moral scruples onto others. Are there any moral arguments against polygamy that don't boil down to slippery slopes, guilt by association or ad populums?

 

[Kaylee]

As a consultant vs an NGO person, while I would say NGO's by and large do a lot of good, they also need to be regulated and brought in line. I would agree if you changed the sentence to read 'with limited interference'.



Yes - and no. Iraq was largely rebuilt with a secular vision, and Afghanistan as an Islamic Republic. I always maintained secular government was the answer in Afghanistan, but this would have required a much different war in order to instill.



I disagree with this. I don't think replacing one set of fairy tales with another is any sort of answer. PNG is crawling with Christianity in all its most vile flavours, and they are no better off here than if they were worshipping the sun & animals as they were 100 years ago.



Again, I'm not sure you need missionaries to achieve this. Another way to break down a 'caste system' is through economic empowerment. No saviours required.



To be specific - I would consider changing the above to state 'build governance and strength within the public service, to enforce laws and regulations, guiding businesses responsibly'. I see this '3rd party observer' role very much as the role of the host country government - not the UN, not consultants (you see - I'm putting myself out of work) not do-gooder NGOs. Build a Ministry of Mines that regulates & enforces. Rather than one that lines its own pockets.

I can't really engage in debate on this because I have no first hand knowledge.

But just curious about your last point -- what if the government is corrupt?

ETA: Or just doesn't care about some issues. For example, what would be the result if Saudia Arabia agreed, under diplomatic pressure, to set up an office to regulate household employees to prevent involuntary servitude?

I would predict an office set up for window dressing only, that would not solve the problem.

 

[Antiquehunter]

But just curious about your last point -- what if the government is corrupt?

ETA: Or just doesn't care about some issues. For example, what would be the result if Saudia Arabia agreed, under diplomatic pressure, to set up an office to regulate household employees to prevent involuntary servitude?

I would predict an office set up for window dressing only, that would not solve the problem.

Well of course corruption/incompetence are issues - but the actual roles SHOULD be played by local government. So it is a delicate balance (and this is where people like me come in as advisors) - we need to build capacity and support governments to build that capacity. It takes time, and it takes dedication. But the flipside, imposing some sort of 3rd party engagement a la UN is undesirable from my perspective. You are looking at the symptom, not the problem when you do that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Your dichotomy is saying 1) that humans are nice to start with and have to be programmed to kill and 2) that "without a law or religious rule against killing people would have no reluctance to kill", which is a strawman. I find it odd that you can't see any other option.

"Nice" is too broad. Lots of people are not 'nice'.

I said we are born (with the exception of some people who are born with some brain defects) with an inhibition to kill other human beings. Laws and religious tenets are not the primary motivating factor that keeps most people from killing.

Let's go back to the posts that started this.

But if you think without a law or religious rule against killing people would have no reluctance to kill, that's a naive position.

False dishotomy.

So what is/are the other variable/s then if not laws against and a fear of punishment by the state or a god?

I mean, those aren't the only two options I may hold. Namely, yours and your strawman.

Perhaps you misunderstood my post. I asked you what was your position, I didn't say there were no others. You say those aren't the only two. I have no problem with that. Except, I asked you to clarify just what your position was. I don't see that you have.

we do not have blank moral slates at birth

You're moving the goalposts, now. That's not what you said originally. You said that humans must ignore their instincts in other to kill, which is ridiculous, and you implied that those who don't need to are defective, which you later said you didn't mean. Now you say we're not blank moral slates at birth, something no sane person could disagree with.

I didn't move any goalpost. That is exactly what I said and it is not a contradiction to "humans must ignore their instincts in order to kill [other humans]".

Both you and westprog are misunderstanding my position.

Let me try again. We start with an established moral framework. That framework includes a preset inhibition to kill other humans. Defective people I'm referring to would be sociopaths and psychopaths. For others who do not start out as sociopaths or psychopaths, people express a range of inhibitions to kill from weak to severe. And nurture can distort that natural inhibition to kill other humans.

You can quibble with my view of what is normal or abnormal. I believe I noted even psychiatrists cannot agree on where on the continuum the dividing line should be.

My only goalpost (the one you think is moving but isn't) is that people have a natural inhibition to kill other humans. If one is born without that inhibition that person is defective.

I find it odd anyone would be arguing that guilt free killing is the norm for some humans and doesn't represent a defective person. Getting back to the OP, do you think those parents were 'normal'?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

So Skeptic Ginger has still posted nothing that supports this:



Particularly the hilited part...

I posted a study documenting a genetic effect on moral decisions. You ignored it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's a response to your insistence that either people accept your version of morality, which just happens to correspond to the religious version in essential respects but is supposedly science based

You're going off into left field here.

You agree morals are a combination of nature and nurture and then say it doesn't matter. If morals are part nature, how is that unscientific?

As for religion, I'm an atheist so I fail to see your point. As far as I see it, religion reflects peoples morals, it doesn't direct them. (The few behavior rules, like gays shouldn't marry, mistaken for morality excepted.)

What does "special" even mean? How can we discuss whether morality is a scientifically coherent subject when the discussion is being phrased in terms which have no particular scientific meaning - or indeed, any particular meaning that I can figure out.

"Special" and "magical" in this context is essentially applying a non-naturalistic cause for something. Even within scientific circles we have yet to drop the historical perspective which has been deeply mired in 'humans are special' compared to the animal kingdom. Past components of this perspective are mistaken claims only humans used tools, have language, and in this case have moral thinking. But examples of moral thinking has been demonstrated in animals.

A theory of morality based on personal experience with most people you happen to know forming some kind of well-meaning western liberal consensus on what would be nice is about as far from scientific rigour as I can imagine.

Your claim sounds like all nurture and no nature. The evidence which demonstrates children and animals have moral thinking regardless of 'learning' contradicts that.

Your assumption that I view morality through Western tunnel vision couldn't be more wrong. I've been to dozens of other countries and one thing I came away with from that experience was that people are people all over the world. All the warnings I had about this place is dangerous or that place is crime ridden turned out to be false. People live the same day to day lives all over the world obviously with some exceptions.

 

[Kaylee]

I can get behind most of your other suggestions, albeit for different reasons (missionaries, imo, will only be trying to replace one bigotry with another, but forbidding them would be the greater evil and a nasty precedent). But the quoted bit I can't really see as anything but trying to push our own moral scruples onto others. Are there any moral arguments against polygamy that don't boil down to slippery slopes, guilt by association or ad populums?

I have come to my conclusions mostly by reading, years ago:

* an in-depth article by the NYTs the effects of a population boom among young men in the Mideast

and

* a few threads, here at the JREF, on the effects of Mormon polygyny.

In both societies, polygny is correlated with repression for women, child marriages, poverty, and lower marriage rates for young men.

Additionally, in the in the USA its correlated with dependence upon Govt programs such as food stamps and "throwing away" "extra" young teenage boys who are unprepared to be left on their own.

The NYTs article speculated that because of the uneven marriage rates for young people (not enough women for the men to marry in a polygynous society), that this increases the liklihood of violence among young men, and the likelihood of repression for women and increased forced marriages and prostitution.

Here's an interesting web site that shows the marriage statistics for Afghanistans by sex and age. Not as uneven between the sexes as I had thought it would be, but still significantly uneven:


http://marriage-statistics.findthedata.org/d/d/Afghanistan

Single women between 25-29 and 35 - 39 years: 2.84% and .89%
Single men between 25-29 and 35 - 39 years: 35% and 9.03%

(I don't know why there's no statistics between 30 and 34 years, but this was the best site that I found)

I think in this case, correlation is also causation especially when you consider that there is very little in common between those American Mormons following a polygynous lifestyle and Mideastern Muslims .. outside of polygyny.


As an aside, FWIW, I'm not a Christian. My cultural background is Jewish, and while I would be pleased to find out after death that there is a powerful God that is loving, friendly and likes humans -- I would label myself as agnostic. Regardless, I do my best to live ethically.

While institutionalized religion seems to have done a lot of harm, it has also done a lot of good. Probably the best way to prevent abuse by institutionalized religion and to take advantage of the good that it can do is to have as many different sects as possible, all with about the same amount of political power under secular government control.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The USA has been in Afghanistan since 2001 and NATO since ??.

We were there before 2001. In the 80s we were supporting Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan because he was fighting Soviet occupation.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I have come to my conclusions mostly by reading, years ago:

* an in-depth article by the NYTs the effects of a population boom among young men in the Mideast

and

* a few threads, here at the JREF, on the effects of Mormon polygyny.

In both societies, polygny is correlated with repression for women, child marriages, poverty, and lower marriage rates for young men.

Additionally, in the in the USA its correlated with dependence upon Govt programs such as food stamps and "throwing away" "extra" young teenage boys who are unprepared to be left on their own.

The NYTs article speculated that because of the uneven marriage rates for young people (not enough women for the men to marry in a polygynous society), that this increases the liklihood of violence among young men, and the likelihood of repression for women and increased forced marriages and prostitution.

Here's an interesting web site that shows the marriage statistics for Afghanistans by sex and age. Not as uneven between the sexes as I had thought it would be, but still significantly uneven:


http://marriage-statistics.findthedata.org/d/d/Afghanistan

Single women between 25-29 and 35 - 39 years: 2.84% and .89%
Single men between 25-29 and 35 - 39 years: 35% and 9.03%

(I don't know why there's no statistics between 30 and 34 years, but this was the best site that I found)

I think in this case, correlation is also causation especially when you consider that there is very little in common between those American Mormons following a polygynous lifestyle and Mideastern Muslims .. outside of polygyny.


As an aside, FWIW, I'm not a Christian. My cultural background is Jewish, and while I would be pleased to find out after death that there is a powerful God that is loving, friendly and likes humans -- I would classify myself as agnostic. Regardless, I do my best to live ethically.

While institutionalized religion seems to have done a lot of harm, it has also done a lot of good. Probably the best way to prevent abuse by institutionalized religion and to take advantage of the good it can do is to have as many different sects as possible, all with about the same amount of political power under secular government control.

So just the association fallacy, then?

 

[Kaylee]

We were there before 2001. In the 80s we were supporting Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan because he was fighting Soviet occupation.

Thanks for helping to put the 'E' in JREF at the forums.

FWIW, I also enjoyed reading your links on the various science studies in this thread.

I don't always agree with everything you say, but I usually get something out of your posts.

 

[Kaylee]

So just the association fallacy, then?

When it comes to sociology and other demographic studies, what else can we use besides associations?

When it comes to the hard sciences I agree that associations are not enough to draw conclusions -- but we have other options.

When it comes to the "soft sciences", what else can we rely upon? If there is nothing else, should we give up on the soft sciences and not try to draw any conclusions?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Thanks for helping to put the 'E' in JREF at the forums.

FWIW, I also enjoyed reading your links on the various science studies in this thread.

I don't always agree with everything you say, but I usually get something out of your posts.

Thank you. [sidetrack] When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan my boyfriend at the time said it was going to be their Vietnam. I said no because it wasn't a jungle. He was clearly right and I was wrong.

Sad thing is here we are again. [/sidetrack]

 

[Kaylee]

As an aside - the acid attack is not a once-off incident. That is a frighteningly regular form of terror used in Afghanistan. I would have to go through my security reports, but I would say that reported assaults with acid on women/schoolgirls occurs probably monthly. Add in unreported assaults, and you get the picture. I can't comment if there has been a significant reduction between 2010-2012. But when I left, while there were probably fewer such incidents as compared with prior years, there were still far too many.

I don't know if anyone can answer this question -- but is it possible to make acid difficult to get? How easy is it to make acid from an old car battery? Would a cash for old batteries program work?

 

[Antiquehunter]

I don't know if anyone can answer this question -- but is it possible to make acid difficult to get? How easy is it to make acid from an old car battery? Would a cash for old batteries program work?

I'm not sure that limiting access is really the issue here. The broader issue is trying to crack down on its use as an assault weapon. I have no idea what kind of acid(s) are used to disfigure someone.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

When it comes to sociology and other demographic studies, what else can we use besides associations?

When it comes to the hard sciences I agree that associations are not enough to draw conclusions -- but we have other options.

When it comes to the "soft sciences", what else can we rely upon? If there is nothing else, should we give up on the soft sciences and not try to draw any conclusions?

Who gives a crap? We're not talking about the soft sciences here, we're talking about the law, which is ostensibly based on a code of ethics. You're suggesting outlawing something for no reason other than it being present in other cultures with sordid histories of misogyny and female abuse. That's not enough justification on its own.

Ban the abuse, enforce the ban, provide channels for the abused to escape safely, otherwise leave as much of their culture intact as possible. We shouldn't be trying to mold them into the generic western culture we happen to stem from, it won't work and they'll just resent us for it.

 

[Brainache]

A thing that puzzles me about this subject of "Honour Killing" is why is the act of killing your family members seen as more honourable than letting them have sex? How does turning yourself into a killer of your own children elevate you in the eyes of your community?

And to follow on from that, how can we deal with people who would rather kill their daughters than let them go their own way?

Can attitudes like these be changed through propaganda? Get Bollywood churning out film after film about how bad such stuff is (with car chases, melodrama and dance numbers thrown in too, obviously)?

 

[Kaylee]

I'm not sure that limiting access is really the issue here. The broader issue is trying to crack down on its use as an assault weapon. I have no idea what kind of acid(s) are used to disfigure someone.

Countries often take a multi-prong approach towards solving problems.

For example in the USA gun owners have to be registered and, in many cities, people under 18 are not allowed to purchase spray paint (to help deal with the graffiti problem, a far more minor problem but still serves as an example).

Gun registration and prohibiting minors from purchasing spray paint are not the only tactics taken of course.

 

[Kaylee]

Who gives a crap? We're not talking about the soft sciences here, we're talking about the law, which is ostensibly based on a code of ethics. You're suggesting outlawing something for no reason other than it being present in other cultures with sordid histories of misogyny and female abuse. That's not enough justification on its own.

Ban the abuse, enforce the ban, provide channels for the abused to escape safely, otherwise leave as much of their culture intact as possible. We shouldn't be trying to mold them into the generic western culture we happen to stem from, it won't work and they'll just resent us for it.

Countries pass laws for different reasons all the time, not just ethics. Just one example, in many western countries children are required to go to school.

Nations affect each other all the time. I've no qualms about trying to influence cultures that are greenhouses for terrorism.