The UN isn't a global police force. All it can do its organise sanctions to force the PNG government to do something about it or get nations to contribute to some sort of fund to improve education and policing domestically.

Nor should it be a global police force. I think people/countries that don't condone this type of behavior should be more willing to offer refugee status and provide the means to leave such places and situations, but people are pretty hard-mouthed about their borders... At the end of the day, we can't tell people what to do, only offer them alternatives.

> What? This made me very angry.

And anger is what made this happen in the first place.

I'm not trying to draw any platitudes or grand truths here. Just... think on that.

I don't even want to know on what planet mob lynchings and indignation at the brutalization of a defenseless individual are the same thing, just "anger" -- but I suggest it be nuked from orbit, because one might just as well argue it's sloppy thinking and the resulting stupidity that causes this crap. And by crap I don't mean a group enacting punishment on an individual[1], but the crooked ways in which they arrive at their judgement... because that a mob is angry might be okay, great even; depending on what they're angry at, and how they act on that anger.

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." -- Albert Einstein

"Anger is a gift." -- Rage Against The Machine

[1] notice how even we have that, and that nobody is angry in the process does not help someone who, say, has been framed and is sitting in prison for 20 years. Even if all inmates were excellent to each other all the time, even if the prison food was delicious and varied and healthy, it would still suck, no? How does anger even enter into any of it?

> I don't even want to know on what planet mob lynchings and indignation at the brutalization of a defenseless individual are the same thing, just "anger"

It is the planet Earth, your home, and it is not as simple as you wish it were.

Men who do and wish violence upon others -- and women, but mostly men -- claim to for various reasons: money, power, fun. But it's blatantly obvious that we live in a universe where escalation to violence is almost never the best way to attain your desires.

But us mammals, we grew up in a much more dangerous world. We grew a brain function to overrule our own better judgment, to make us look tough when we feel our weakest, to make us fight when we would retreat. Anger is the feeling of wanting to do violence and not knowing why, because there was no time to ask questions.

But we have time now. Something unconscionable has happened, and we should ask questions like "How do we fix the damage? Why did this happen? What could we have done?" But anger seizes the thoughts of men -- and women, but mostly men -- and transforms this into: "Who should suffer for this?"

Of course, no one in this thread is going to raise their hand because of this (nor, I imagine, does anyone here have anything more productive to do). But I'm not asking anyone here to change their behavior; just to think on it.

The lack of consequences ensures that it keeps happening...

This strikes me as a rather lazy analysis of human behavior. We have had consequences for senseless violence for as long as we have had sense, and while it has been slowing it shows no signs of stopping. Can't we do any better than that?

We would not be looking at the same scale of operation of there were consequences. I'm not saying it would eliminate it, but having huge crowds of people gathered around to see a 'witch' tortured to death would be less likely to happen if they were all at risk of significant jail time.

The idea of changing minds is nice, but that happens slowly, over longer periods of time. It's a nice long-term goal, but in the meantime, people are being tortured and killed. Would you throw these people under the bus rather than take a multi-tiered approach to the issue?

I'm not sure I can do anything at all for Papua New Guinea. Not to sound callous, but I'm more worried about the state-sanctioned torture and killing that takes place much closer to my home. It is the very people whom we have entrusted with power to provide consequences who get away with these things -- in fact the violence and suffering inflicted often takes the form of those consequences themselves!

So I really hope we can do better than "there should be consequences".

> In order for this to stop, the entire society and way of life would have to change. Is the United Nations looking to do this? It needs to be done.

And here I thought "Cultural Imperialism" was a bad thing.

This is a dangerous road down which to tread, especially when the entity doing the treading (the UN) contains members such as Iran, the PRC, and every country that rates "depicting Mohamed" as being worse than "killing Jews".

Cultural Imperialism is bad. Using it as an excuse to stand by in the face of evil because of some sense of moral relativism is arguably a lot worse.

Yes. But ultimately it comes down to this. Trying to go and affect rapid change on a culture and society is no easy task. It is difficult to predict and control, and almost certainly full of unintended sideeffects and costs.

To jump into any attempt to affect change without really REALLY carefully considering what the actual goals are, what the acceptable costs on the sides of all parties are, and even what tools and strategies are available or possible is literally how you end up with Afghanistan.

For example, say we decided to go in there and change things. Do we go and punish those who partook in this? What happens if the potential backlash from imposing punishment is too way to even consider it? How then do you answer the cries of the victims asking for justice? Yes, you could answer with all sincerity and truthfulness that you cannot go after their tormentors for the good of all future people. But it still sucks, and if you're not careful, you can find yourself not just in a shitty situation, but also causing all sorts of unintended problems where you're trying to fix things.

These are clearly not easy issues, and I do not mean to say that these problems or issues should always deter from action. What I do mean to say is that "OMG, that's terrible, can't we do -SOMETHING- about that?" is a fine, and acceptable first response. But if that becomes your guiding philosophy, then you're going to have a harddd time.

Forcing cultures to change their barbaric ways has been done successfully in the past. A quote, from Charles Napier (Britain's Commander in Chief of India), on the topic of burning women:

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

You make a good point; however, I'm not advocating we invade. I'm saying we need to do this as peaceably as possible, but certainly assertively. I'm not a politician, I don't know how it would be done, but would strengthening the economy even more help the situation and modernize perspective or serve to increase class divisions?

> would strengthening the economy even more help the situation and modernize perspective or serve to increase class divisions?

Initially it would do the second. As we see from the modern PRC and our own Gilded Age (1870s-1910s), it takes a fairly active and honest government to force wealth out of the hands of the richest and into society as a whole. Until and unless that government comes into being, wealth creates cliques and oligarchs in a crony capitalist mode.