Civilized
I think Brendan O'Neill is correct when he questions why anyone would link to a story like this. Usually with a one line post like this one THIS IS JUST SICK I don't even have the words to comment on this and nothing more. Is it a mostly right-wing phenomena as he seems to suggest, or is it simply human nature? I'm not going to post a link to the story but here is Brenden's take on it. An interesting read.
Update: A response from THIS IS JUST SICK
Many webloggers are linking to this sordid story about a Pakistani girl who was allegedly gang-raped as punishment for her brother's flirtations with a girl from a higher social class.
The truth is, this story has no 'meaning' and has nothing to tell us, which is precisely why so little can be said about it. It looks like being a strange, one-off occurrence, so shocking precisely because it is so rare. But the way in which elements of the right have latched on to the story is revealing. When gruesome incidents like this are paraded before us, with little comment or insight, they become little more than a form of pornography, a way for us to get off on how much more civilised we are than those in the third world.
It is even sadder when some in the West point to these kind of events to assert the difference between right and wrong, as Andrew Sullivan does. In our post-traditional, relativistic age, where there is little consensus about what is good or bad and what is right or wrong, many attempt to assert 'universal values' in negative terms - by saying we might not be 100-percent certain what is good, but we know that gang-raping a young girl for her brother's wrongs is definitely bad.
