History is My Witness ... War has not Solved Conflicts...

Islamic Jihadist groups  have made a propaganda campaign out of spreading the most gruesome images: cutting off the head of a man. And in doing so, they have horrified millions and propelled countries to go to war against them. 

But sadly, perhaps the only thing new in what they have done is to use social media to broadcast these barbaric and grotesque scenes.

The death penalty and the "art of killing" is as old as human history... The Cain and Abel nerrative in the Bible attests to that fact...

Indeed it is sad...but that how we have evolved... up to the point that most of us are scandalized by the "death penalty" and we have outgrown it... 

But,

Indeed it is sad that we have not outgrown the cause of killings...we have not outgrown wars...because individual GREED is reigning supreme and GREED is dictating our actions and wars ...

The Death Penalty and our History

From the sword to the stoning deaths...to the  lynching mobs and to the legally sanctioned murders by the electric chair...
Yes, the death penalty has inspired even artists and they have produced though provoking and challenging art ...

The firing squads...

Dostoevsky was lined up for the firing squad... The attempted Execution of Dostoevsky

Andrea Mantegna’s blunt and forceful Crucifixion from 1456–59 (Andrea Mantegna)

Jesus is a prime example of judicial executions for political or all kinds of fabricated reasons...

Julius Caesar Murdered in Ides of March...

Mark Anthony exhibiting the body of Caesar...

Very Similar to the public beheading of the journalists by Islamic Jihadists...

Public display and public media are powerful tools of propaganda and the Jihadists have learned it well...

Brutus running on his own sword...suicide of Brutus...

The Sword has always been portrayed as honourable ...

History has the legend of the Excalibur...

Execution of Mary Queen of Scots...

Executing by the sword was honourable and regal too...

Execution of Charles I...British King...

The murder-execution of Samuel Becket...Archbishop of Canterbury  

...And of course  Socrates...The jury-ordered suicide of 

Socrates as depicted by Jacques-Louis David 

Artists have immortalized the "chair"...

Andy Warhol, Little Electric Chair,  1965 

History is rich with suicides and murders and stabbings of community leaders and political opponents… and the Islamic Jijadists are repeating the history on social media…

Mark Anthony used the blood stained body of Julius Caesar for propaganda… Jesus was publicly humiliated and crucified… for propaganda…

A picture of the mob preparing to lynch Jesse Washington from a tree in front of Waco city hall taken by Fred Gildersleeve on May 15, 1916.

Washington hanging from a tree after being severely burned....

Check the smile on the faces......

The lynching mobs used lynching to brutalize the African American communities… The public executions in the U.S. Wild West…were organized to subdue the public…

And the Jihadists learned ...

A leading commentator/thinker/reporter Farid Zakaria suggests...

But let's be honest: Islam has a problem today...There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today. A small minority of Muslims celebrate violence and intolerance, and harbor deeply reactionary attitudes towards women and minorities. And while some moderates confront these extremists, not enough do so and the protests are not loud enough. How many mass rallies have been held against ISIS in the Arab world today?

But now the caveat, Islam today, is important.

Indeed Islam is important... and Indeed the West and the World has to reconcile themselves with the Islamic civilization in the Middle East and ... around the world... if they are important for only GREED and economic reasons and OIL...then we will see wars and destinations... and if it is not the Islamic Jihadists of today...then it will be another group tomorrow...
The world has to understand Islam and has to live with them peacefully ...
Because of the oil and because of the GREED of the 1%...the Big Brothers and Sisters...the atrocities in places like Saudi Arabia and Turkey should not be neglected...
The Shia and Sunni conflict is very similar to the struggle between Protestant reformists and Catholic Church in Europe ... 
But we should have learned from the conflicts in history...in Europe and acted accordingly...
We should not condone the Royal violence in Saudi Arabia... We should not let Turkey close the border for Kurdish fighters and let the Kurds be massacred by the ISIS hordes...

This is a shame...and Saudi Arabia and Turkey are not Allies of the Civilized World...
Read below...

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr supported only peaceful protests and eschewed violence

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr to death, his family says.

Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr's brother said he was found guilty of seeking "foreign meddling" in the kingdom, "disobeying" its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces.

The cleric was a vocal supporter of the mass anti-government protests that erupted in Eastern Province in 2011.

Radical Muslims – Islamic jihadists cite the Quran Chapter 47.4 as the rule for execution: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks until you have crushed them.”

In order to smite the neck, the sword is required, once again giving it the old-fashioned role it has played over the centuries. 

May be the radical Muslims - Islamic Jihadists have studied History more than the Big Brother leadership that we are stuck with...and stagnating in kind because of that...

The students in Hong Kong are showing us the way...

The Hong Kong protesters are now in their third week of occupying key parts of the city in a bid to pressure authorities to implement reforms in the territory. They are demanding fully free elections in a vote for the territory's leader in 2017.

China, which has control over Hong Kong, says residents can vote - but it will vet which candidates are eligible to stand.

....

The stance of the Chinese government parallels the electoral system that we have adopted...
1. The established parties do the vetting....
2. The 1% does yet another vetting...The 1% will not donate any monies to the candidate that they disapprove...
3. Millions for elections is a vetting of candidates by the money-elite...
Our democratic norms are based on MONEY and GREED... and that is not any different than the Chinese government vetting or Russian elections vetted by Putin...

The Big brothers are the same all over the world... in elections or in the battlefield...

We should learn from History...and ban wars...
We should learn from Hong Kong students and demand more democratic rights...