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To Flog, or not to flog?
Topic Started: 13 Oct 2015, 10:57 AM (502 Views)
SuffolkRoyal
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Lots of debate going on about whether its right to flog this British bloke or not, for being found in possession of alcohol in Saudi Arabia.

My personal view is that if you go to other countries, particularly those with barbaric punishments for criminals, you abide by their laws. This guy has lived in Saudi Arabia for 25 years, so he should know right from wrong, and the consequences for breaking the law. No good his family whinging about it now just because he's been caught.

The probability is that he won't be flogged because our Government will do some sort of deal, but it won't do him any harm to sweat for a bit longer. And if he does end up receiving the punishment, then so be it.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34513096
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Bahamoth

I can't imagine why anyone would want to be in Saudi Arabia for that long. You can really make a ton of cash there but I'd do 2 years max. As a teacher, you could teach there 10 years and leave a millionaire. If only they weren't so effing backwards with their views on women it might be a decent place to take the missus and do the first few years of raising a family there in an ex-pat community. Sickening attitudes there though. Wouldn't want to support it with my presence.
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SuffolkRoyal
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I knew a bloke, a plumber, who worked there a few times back in the 70's. He made enough money to pay off his mortgage at a very early age. It set him up for the rest of his life.
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Darlington
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I am with you Suffolk.
I have always been of the opinion that if "you can't do the time don't do the crime". The same applies abroad or anywhere.
If you aren't prepared for the punishment then should not have done it.
I also don't care how old he is or how many types of cancer he may or may not have had. He should not have done it and knew what to expect so tough luck.

I am that strong on it that I think the British Government should back off as it is nothing to do with us. It is between Saudi Arabia and him.
If he is guilty then shut up and take what's coming.
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SuffolkRoyal
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A quote from the latest BBC report about this says:

"Saudi officials say they are baffled by the headlines suggesting that an elderly Briton, Karl Andree, may face flogging for possessing alcohol.
They say that was never even a possibility because of his age and ill health."


So I wonder why his family are making so much noise about it if it was never even a possibility?
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daib0
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SuffolkRoyal
13 Oct 2015, 04:30 PM
A quote from the latest BBC report about this says:

"Saudi officials say they are baffled by the headlines suggesting that an elderly Briton, Karl Andree, may face flogging for possessing alcohol.
They say that was never even a possibility because of his age and ill health."


So I wonder why his family are making so much noise about it if it was never even a possibility?
making a pressure group, facing fear and it came out like that, who knows ...
even so, as others say, you gotta live according to the laws of the place where you are ...
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Bahamoth

Darlington
13 Oct 2015, 12:10 PM
I am with you Suffolk.
I have always been of the opinion that if "you can't do the time don't do the crime". The same applies abroad or anywhere.
If you aren't prepared for the punishment then should not have done it.
I also don't care how old he is or how many types of cancer he may or may not have had. He should not have done it and knew what to expect so tough luck.

I am that strong on it that I think the British Government should back off as it is nothing to do with us. It is between Saudi Arabia and him.
If he is guilty then shut up and take what's coming.
I'm in two minds. Firstly, are you breaking a law if the law is unjust? There have been unjust laws throughout the history of the world that no one should have to bear. Secondly, it was either Gandhi or MLK Junior who said that it was your duty to break unjust laws, but you had to be prepared to face the consequences.

Alcohol prohibition should, itself, be illegal. It's messed up that someone could be punished for this. However, if you live in a country where it IS illegal, MOVE or don't do it (would be my instinct). Vote with your feet, as they say. Additionally, I know that many, many people regularly break this law throughout the Arab states. It's possible that he is just being made an example of, and if that is the case, then that is unjust just by itself. It's like in my old home, The Bahamas; it's illegal to drink and drive but everyone does it. Cop pulls you over and you're drunk? Better make sure you have a spare beer to give to him... No one gets done for this there. Period. But if some old guy DID get done for it, that would be outrageous - not because he was drink driving (which, of course, is terrible) but the fact that he would be targeted unreasonably so. Either charge everyone for the same crime, or charge no one. You can't cherry pick your criminals... That's corrupt.
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Darlington
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The problem Bahamoth is your entering the moral debate on laws with the unjust laws argument. Who decides what is unjust? I do see your point that some laws even in Britain seem stupid but surely that is no defence for breaking them. Isn't the right way to protest about them and use the correct channels to try and get them changed?
I do accept though that in a dictatorship rather than a democracy that it may well be harder but as you have said in your second point move and vote with your feet where possible.

As for the second one "Lots of people do it so it's unfair on just me to be punished" is personally a poor argument in my opinion. It is what's called the luck of the draw that you were caught it doesn't make it any less wrong or that you didn't know the consequences. In life you always get things that seem unfair but there is little you can do but just pick your self up and get on with it.
It is also hard to compare the laws of one country against another as there are different circumstances in that country.

As for your it's corrupt to cheery pick criminals, I would agree with you but throughout history you can see that his been the case. Do you not think that if a policeman stops another in a car for speeding etc. They let them off. I think they do and is that not corrupt and cherry picking?

You can argue the right and wrong and the leniency case for all crimes by anyone but at the end of the day the old boy knew what he was doing and he knew it was a crime in that country so he has got what's coming be that the prison sentence he has served or the flogging as well.
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Bahamoth

Darlington
14 Oct 2015, 10:01 AM
The problem Bahamoth is your entering the moral debate on laws with the unjust laws argument. Who decides what is unjust? I do see your point that some laws even in Britain seem stupid but surely that is no defence for breaking them. Isn't the right way to protest about them and use the correct channels to try and get them changed?
I do accept though that in a dictatorship rather than a democracy that it may well be harder but as you have said in your second point move and vote with your feet where possible.

As for the second one "Lots of people do it so it's unfair on just me to be punished" is personally a poor argument in my opinion. It is what's called the luck of the draw that you were caught it doesn't make it any less wrong or that you didn't know the consequences. In life you always get things that seem unfair but there is little you can do but just pick your self up and get on with it.
It is also hard to compare the laws of one country against another as there are different circumstances in that country.

As for your it's corrupt to cheery pick criminals, I would agree with you but throughout history you can see that his been the case. Do you not think that if a policeman stops another in a car for speeding etc. They let them off. I think they do and is that not corrupt and cherry picking?

You can argue the right and wrong and the leniency case for all crimes by anyone but at the end of the day the old boy knew what he was doing and he knew it was a crime in that country so he has got what's coming be that the prison sentence he has served or the flogging as well.
As Thomas Jefferson said, if a law is unjust, it is your obligation to break it. As Martin Luther King Junior said, accept your punishment for breaking unjust laws willingly so it highlights your plight to the public.

The 'right way' to protest unjust laws is debatable. As many Americans know, protesting laws doesn't always have the most immediate impact. Many people protested Jim Crow laws to little effect. It wasn't until people started disobeying these laws, civilly, that change started happening.

With regards to 'voting with your feet', unless it has a monetary impact, it's worthless. It worked in Montgomery, Alabama, and it worked in India with Gandhi's Salt March, but that's not quite the same thing as just leaving town cos you don't like it.

People who stand up to unjust laws should be lauded. I just don't think that I, personally, would risk this in Saudi Arabia. I'm not that courageous. I suspect that he wasn't trying to change an unjust law, just ignoring it. He probably felt the same injustice that Rosa Parks felt, though at a far lighter degree. She just got sick and tired of an unjust segregation law and made a stand (or sit) and paid the price. This guy just wanted a drink, and so I hesitate at even mentioning them in the same sentence, but still, injustice should be stood up to wherever or however it appears.

We are probably all in agreement that Sharia Law is not exactly 'just' and it doesn't take a great moral leap to claim as such. I feel very secure in my ability to identify just and unjust laws even if societies at large are not.

Regarding my absurd 'lots of people do it so it's unfair for me to be punished', you are making an assumption about 'the luck of the draw' being applicable in the situations described. We're talking corruption, plain and simple. This is not possible in England, of course (anymore), but is still widespread across the globe, sadly. If you were to live in a system wherein police and governmental corruption is more than commonplace - it's a part of the culture - then you would recognize the injustices of being 'cherry-picked'.

Take the US, for example. How many times have we seen, in the news, police pulling over black men? They are not acting judiciously. This is unjust.

How about I reduce the argument to terms that you'd have, no doubt, experienced. Schools are places FULL of laws and full of people who break them all the time. Have you ever been in a class where there was one student who tended to get picked on by a teacher? That teacher would witness the same behaviour from more than one student, but punish the one student. That is, essentially, what I'm talking about. You cannot expect a public to respect a system in which they see people getting away with law-breaking all the time. That is a broken system.

I am talking about how this old man broke the law in a way that, undoubtedly (when I listen to my colleagues who have worked in the Middle East) so many other people do, and how the police must be aware of all those who ARE breaking the law, and yet chosing only to punish a very small number. They are making examples out of an unfortunate few. This is a broken system. When laws are being flouted so regularly as they are in these places, one of two things needs to happen: re-education or rule change.

Think about marijuana smokers in the US. Is your moral compass so bi-polar as to suggest that it was wrong for people in Colorado (or the other states wherein it's now legal) to smoke pot one day and fine the next? The law was unjust - plain and simple. It got changed. The act was never wrong, only society's view of it. Society's view changed, and the law eventually followed.

In the Middle East, if society were to have a change of heart about the whole 'being a Muslim' thing, then the law would change. That isn't going to happen any time soon, but when it DOES happen, it will have been a result of people breaking unjust laws.

That's how it works.

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Darlington
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I am not going to respond to all your points mate as we will get off track of the original question of flogging.

I am not saying there are unjust laws here in UK, USA or anywhere in the world. There always has been and probably always will be.
I do agree that someone who stands up to them like for instance racism should be lauded but this isn't quite the same thing in my book. Put aside not being allowed to have a drink if you want as an unjust law as that is a separate debate on this flogging issue.
This here is a man who has gone to a country, for what ever reason, and he may not have known all their laws but certainly knew this one. He also knew the consequences of breaking that law no matter how archaic you believe it to be. Now caught there is suddenly isn't unfair to flog him campaign? Now whether the campaign is right or wrong is not at issue here. He knew what he was doing and the outcome if caught.

If you want to complain about their laws then that's fine and if he has done this to highlight that, which I very much doubt, then that's up to him but he still knew the consequences.

Knowing something is wrong and doing it even if you view it an unjust law does not entitle you avoid the consequences or punishment.

That is the debate here and they can flog him for me it's his own doing.

It appears now he wont be flogged and I will say my friend came up with a valid reason for not flogging him, he said it appeared to him that the guy would be getting punished twice for his crime. He got his prison sentence and now a year later they talk about flogging him which is a second punishment. If flogging was the punishment then it should surely be done at the beginning after the crime and sentence, not a year later.
I thought he had he point there.

Edited by Darlington, 15 Oct 2015, 09:43 AM.
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