“THAT’S what the people wanted to hear – not just the demise of one evil madman, but the end to all the killing.”

Here are some words I didn’t expect to see myself typing: I agree with Michael Moore. That’s an excellent piece on the Bin Laden killing, particularly on the importance of trials if you really want to defeat extremists – with the second World War as an example. (The headline quote is in relation to when people really started celebrating that victory – it was at the declaration of peace, not the earlier announcements of Hitler’s death or Hiroshima.)

ELSEWHERE: The copyright parasites in that country try to trademark the name of the SEAL team that took Osama down. Trademark it. Seriously.

Records show that just two days after bin Laden’s killing, Disney Enterprises, Inc., filed paperwork to trademark the name “SEAL TEAM 6.”

And Disney is pretty confident the utterly broken IP system that they dominate will let them.

Pakistan, 2011, seriously

Confessed murderer given a garland of roses by barristers, and a platform to incite the mob by police – the “law” apparently being represented in Islamabad by people so filled with religious extremism that they think homicide is something to celebrate.

If Pakistan doesn’t want to be regarded as a miserable, dangerous backwater filled with nutcases, the sane parts of the country had better stage a counter-protest damned quickly:

More than 20,000 people rallied in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi on Sunday, police said, to protest against proposed amendments to blasphemy laws…

The blasphemy law allows the death penalty for defamation of the Prophet Mohammed and was used recently to sentence a Christian woman to death.

Banners at the event included some supporting Mr Taseer’s presumed killer, police commando Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, who has been praised by religious conservatives for shooting his boss outside an Islamabad coffee shop.

“Mumtaz Qadri is not a murderer, he is a hero,” said one banner in the national Urdu language.

What goes on in a person’s head that they could think someone should be executed for blasphemy? And there were 20,000 such people at that rally? What year do these fanatics think it is?

UPDATE: Perhaps it’s fortunate that, if they’re going to sentence someone to death for blasphemy, they’ve picked a victim who’ll inspire sympathy in parts of the rest of the world that wouldn’t have cared otherwise: a young Christian woman. Does anyone seriously think the same pressure would be being brought to bear by the West if she was an atheist?

ELSEWHERE: In the other nutcase-shooting-politician story, Fox News works hard to protect Sarah Palin from any criticism arising from the fact she called for the attacked politician to be “put in the crosshairs” before she was shot.

On Boing Boing – Why the [shootings] Mean That We Must Support My Politics.

ELSEWHERE #2: In moderate religious people standing up against the extremists news – Muslims in Egypt act as a human shield to protect Christians from the bombs of the fanatics.

BACK ON PAKISTAN: They’ve been unable to find a lawyer to prosecute the murder of Taseer. With the police openly supporting the murderer, I’m not surprised few are lining up to be put in the quite literal firing line – but isn’t it the state’s job to prosecute murder? How is “not prosecuting it” even an option? Why don’t they have a state prosecutor whose job it is to enforce the law? What kind of legal tradition do they have in that country, anyway?

What do we want? The brutal state murder of those who don’t share our religion! When do we want it? Now!

What sort of absolute nutters protest in favour of punishing “blasphemy” with death? A disturbingly large number of religious fundamentalists in Pakistan, it appears.

Sod that kind of religion, and sod anyone who thinks someone who doesn’t hold their beliefs should be treated as a second-class citizen or, you know, murdered by the state.

ELSEWHERE: Fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians are outraged by the end-of-year Top Gear special. But not because it was unnecessarily silly.

AND CHECK THE INSANITY: An American rightwinger writes, apparently without irony, that “in a variety of contexts, American Muslims are treated better than American Christians”. Oh, the persecution!

UPDATE (5/1): Murdering psychotic dickhead shoots dead a prominent Pakistani politician who’d stood for reforming the blasphemy law.