# Another Dead Pakistani - Would this one finally be too many? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 18, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101 "2012-09-18T19:53:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/1 "2012-09-18T19:53:59Z")
Arggggh Mateys!! I yam putting this thread here in The Pit because I am unsure where else to put it. I hope dat it is OK to post it here and if it is not OK, I sure would appreciate if some moderator would send me a PM to let me know. Also, I yam talking dis way because it is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Didn’t 'choo know dat Matey? Tank you. Another Dead Pakistani - Would this one finally be too many? Could it be the one straw that breaks the camel’s back? I don’t know. Hmmm … > **[America basher’s backfire: Killed by flag smoke](https://nypost.com/2012/09/18/america-bashers-backfire-killed-by-flag-smoke/)** > > PAK-ING HEAT: Protesters torch a US flag in Lahore yesterday. (AFP/Getty Images) Old Glory strikes back. In an apparent case of red, white and blue revenge, a Pakistani protester died yesterday aft… At least he went out like a Pakastani hero should. Dun’t 'choo tink? Apparently, he burned an American flag and died after breathing da fumes from da fire. What a way to go! When I die, I tink dat burning da Pakistani flag and breathing da fumes might just be a righteous way to go. I suppose it all depends on what Allah would tink. Or his greatest prophet Mohammed. I’m just very disappointed dat I never chose dis fellow in the da det pool. Dag Nab It! But, who would have ever figured. Know what I mean? I wonder if the CIA or FBI is responsible for adding some new poisonous chemical to all American flags so that anyone who burns a flag and breathes the fumes will die. If they have done this, I think it would be one of the truly most brilliant and most effective ways to strike back at America’s enemies. I wonder if the resulting impact would do more harm than good. I just don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/2 "2012-09-18T20:00:50Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > Arggggh Mateys!! Stop it. I’m embarrassed for you and anyone that calls you family or friend. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/3 "2012-09-18T20:01:00Z")
Is this intensely annoying OP by any chance a collection of your tweets? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/4 "2012-09-18T20:02:26Z")
For reals, you’re talking about someone who died from smoke inhalation (admittedly self-inflicted, and stupidly so) and you feel the need to do it in pirate talk? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/5 "2012-09-18T20:08:47Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > Also, I yam talking dis way because it is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. That’s tomorrow. Fortunately today is International Post Like A Fuckwit Day, so you’re good. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/6 "2012-09-18T20:10:41Z")
> [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > I wonder if the CIA or FBI is responsible for adding some new poisonous chemical to all American flags so that anyone who burns a flag and breathes the fumes will die. I doubt it: breathing the smoke and fumes from pretty much **any** substance is not at all good for you. Moreover, AFAICT from the photo in your link, the protesters weren’t burning just one American flag, but had a fairly big pile of rubbish and flammable chemical substances blazing there. There were probably enough nasty toxins in that mix to poison people who breathed the fumes even if no American flag had got within a mile of the conflagration. > [@Lazlo Hapsburg](#): > > If they have done this, I think it would be one of the truly most brilliant and most effective ways to strike back at America’s enemies. :dubious: So you’re advocating violent harm, if not murder, as a response to what boils down to a mere exercise of free speech rights? I don’t like it when people burn American flags as part of stupid and hateful anti-American protests. Nor do I like it when people make stupid and hateful films to promulgate ignorant religious bigotry. But in neither case do I think that the people responsible ought to be killed for it. If this now-dead Pakistani protestor did nothing worse than burn an American flag—and there’s absolutely nothing in your linked article to suggest that he did—then while I certainly don’t consider him a hero or a martyr, I certainly don’t think he deserved to die. My, it’s going to be fun seeing various posters who were howling in other threads about the sacredness of free speech when it takes the form of insulting Islam come trooping in here to gloat over the death of an anti-American Muslim because he burned an American flag. ---
**Author:** ![akennett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee59a6/32.png) [@akennett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/akennett)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/7 "2012-09-18T20:18:04Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > For reals, you’re talking about someone who died from smoke inhalation (admittedly self-inflicted, and stupidly so) and you feel the need to do it in pirate talk? And he did it a really shitty job of it, too. (The pirate talk, that is. I don’t feel qualified to rate idiotic deaths inflicted upon the self in the name of utter stupidity.) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/8 "2012-09-18T20:19:03Z")
What does the “another” in “another dead Pakistani” signify? Is the OP suggesting that deaths of human beings are to be celebrated if that person happens to be Pakistani? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/9 "2012-09-18T20:19:17Z")
> [@akennett](#): > > And he did it a really shitty job of it, too. (The pirate talk, that is. I don’t feel qualified to rate idiotic deaths inflicted upon the self in the name of utter stupidity.) I pictured the OP being read by Mary Poppins-era Dick Van Dyke doing an African accent. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/10 "2012-09-18T20:23:22Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > What does the “another” in “another dead Pakistani” signify? Is the OP suggesting that deaths of human beings are to be celebrated if that person happens to be Pakistani? Yes; don’t you? I personally rejoice every time I hear of _another_ Pakistani death. Those silly Pakistanis, they’re not even human! Really I would like to know, too. The OP goes on to say: “Another Dead Pakistani - Would this one finally be too many? Could it be the one straw that breaks the camel’s back?” What straw, what camel, and why too many? In the case of stewed prunes, are two not enough, and are four too many? ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/11 "2012-09-18T20:23:39Z")
Isn’t there a rule about posting in other languages? I’m pretty sure it’s a bannable offense. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/12 "2012-09-18T20:28:03Z")
It appears your pirate is Jamaican and moonlights as either a moonshiner or grizzled prospector . ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/13 "2012-09-18T20:33:49Z")
Babelfish’s “English to Popeye” isn’t working properly, it seems. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/14 "2012-09-18T20:41:26Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > That’s tomorrow. Fortunately today is International Post Like A Fuckwit Day, so you’re good. And what are the odds it’d fall on Five-Month-Old Troll’s Drunken Flameout Day? ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/15 "2012-09-18T20:50:24Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > If this now-dead Pakistani protestor did nothing worse than burn an American flag—and there’s absolutely nothing in your linked article to suggest that he did—then while I certainly don’t consider him a hero or a martyr, I certainly don’t think he deserved to die. OK, I’ll champion the underdog here (a little). Mostly just because I’m bored, y’understand. Like most folks here, I’m not particularly amused when I see some furriner burning an American Flag either, and I reluctantly accept it as a free speech thing and I go on with my day. When I’m at my best, I’m pretty much a live and let live kind of guy. At worst I just don’t give a damn about anyone but me and mine. Joining a violent protest, which by any reasonable application of imagination is bound to lead to someone’s bodily injury or property damage, however, is kind of asking for trouble. It’s an open invitation for trouble. It’s macho chest-beating at its least mature. Now yes, someone lost a son, possibly a brother or father, and that’s sad. Really. And who knows but his life may have been a desperate 3rd world day to day struggle largely because of decades of US interference with his government. And it’s all the more sad because he was exercising the very right to free speech you and I would love his own government to impose on him, and that’s got to be a sad and miserable way to live. Thankfully, most of us will never have to know. But you have to appreciate the irony in the story. “Death to USA!” torch USA flag, breathe deeply the smell of your symbolic triumph…and die as a result. My point is, it’s not that it’s such a fantastic thing that a random antiAmerican brownskin on the other side of the planet snuffed it. It’s that this guy let violence and hatred steer his actions, and it was his undoing. Gandhi’s death was wrong. This guy’s was poetic. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/16 "2012-09-18T20:54:44Z")
And I do wonder how many Pakistanis have to die before they realize that all this hatred is just hurting themselves. I mean, they think that burning the Koran means you want to destroy Islam. So I think it likely they think burning the American flag is essentially a cry for “death to America.” And, no, I’m not too inclined to afford freedom of speech to death threats. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/17 "2012-09-18T21:05:12Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > But you have to appreciate the irony in the story. Sure. What I was specifically objecting to was the OP’s salivating over the idea that the American government might take to _“adding some new poisonous chemical to all American flags so that anyone who burns a flag and breathes the fumes will die”_, and calling such a policy _“one of the truly most brilliant and most effective ways to strike back at America’s enemies”_. Noting the irony when somebody’s expression of hatred against somebody else ends up causing their own death? Yeah, that’s one thing. (Similarly, I wouldn’t expect widespread emotional devastation if the anti-Islam filmmaker had happened to get his head crushed by a camera during the filming, either.) But gloating over the notion that our government might deliberately lay traps to **murder** people just for indulging in an expression of hatred that our own laws would protect (and have protected in the past) as an exercise of free speech? Well, I guess there’s irony in there too, but it’s irony of a much more disgusting kind. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/18 "2012-09-18T21:13:32Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > So I think it likely they think burning the American flag is essentially a cry for “death to America.” And, no, I’m not too inclined to afford freedom of speech to death threats. Oh, I see. Protected expressions of free speech should suddenly stop being protected when it seems to us “likely” that the people expressing it are **thinking** something we find insufficiently respectful? News flash: Crying “Death to America” in a public demonstration **is** protected by the constitutional right of free speech. It doesn’t fall under the speech restrictions applying to death threats, because you can’t murder a country. Or would you argue that American nutbags burning a Qur’an and shouting “Death to Islam” should also not be “afforded” freedom of speech? Like I said, this thread is going to be fun. In a kind of cynical and depressing way, of course, but you take your fun where you find it. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/19 "2012-09-18T21:13:35Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And I do wonder how many Pakistanis have to die before they realize that all this hatred is just hurting themselves. > > I mean, they think that burning the Koran means you want to destroy Islam. So I think it likely they think burning the American flag is essentially a cry for “death to America.” And, no, I’m not too inclined to afford freedom of speech to death threats. So you think their ‘hatred’ is all about holy book burnings? Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this, could it? [**Obama’s 262 Drone Strikes in Pakistan**](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/06/obama_drone_strikes_the_president_ordered_more_than_george_w_bush.html) Simplistic douchebag. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101/20 "2012-09-18T21:14:27Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Sure. What I was specifically objecting to was the OP’s salivating over the idea that the American government might take to _“adding some new poisonous chemical to all American flags so that anyone who burns a flag and breathes the fumes will die”_, and calling such a policy _“one of the truly most brilliant and most effective ways to strike back at America’s enemies”_. Well yeah, that bit’s messed up. But [Devil’s advocate hat on] it would certainly be an honest and physical manifestation of our last 100 years of foreign policy. “Cross us at your own peril.” And at the end of the day, isn’t honesty the greatest virtue? [DA hat politely doffed] yeah…my heart’s not in this one. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-dead-pakistani-would-this-one-finally-be-too-many/635101.md?page=2)