A solution to the Halting problem

[ This is not about this Halting problem. ]

The Halting problem

The problem is how to halt execution of Ali Hussain Sibat. I cite CNN as of 31 March 2010: "A Lebanese man charged with sorcery and sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be beheaded on Friday [PF: 2 April] the man's lawyer said Wednesday [PF: 31 March]." Amnesty International has reported about this case on 8 Dec 2009 [Article from the Amnesty International Website]. I became aware of the case by CNN's article on 19 Mar 2010. Update: CNN reported on Thursday, 1 April 2010 that Sibat "won't face beheading Friday [PF: 2 April], his lawyer said Thursday [PF: 1 April]".


The solution to the Halting problem

I am pretty sure that Sibat's lawyer, his family, Amnesty International, Lebanese government and many other individuals and organizations are working frantically to stop the beheading. Here is an online petition that I ask you to sign if you agree with me that sorcery does not qualify for the death penalty. It takes a lot of public outcry to solve this Halting problem. This is what I call a solution: a) beheading does not take place + b) the public outcry, also with the contribution of the informed and outspoken online society, made a difference.

Update: I have meanwhile (11pm CEST, 1 April 2010) contacted the Saudi Embassy in Germany, and brought the petition to their attention. I also asked them to pass on the information to the Saudi Ministry of Justice whose email address / fax address is not available on the web. I will sent an update once the petition reaches 1000 signatures and then again for 10.000 signatures.

Update: Join this Facebook group which fights for the same cause. This group is growing rapidly and it is great information centre on Sibat's case, when compared to my humble blog post. The group endorses the petition.


Disclaimer

Please note that the petition and this post do not attempt to make any general statement about Saudi Arabia or Lebanon, their juridical systems or governments (Saudi Arabia's, in particular), about Sharia, Islam, or you name it. Instead the petition and this post is concerned with the specific case of Ali Hussain Sibat and with the charge and death penalty in this case in particular.

A personal note: I condemn with my whole authority the charge and the punishment in question on the grounds of information provided by Amnesty International and CNN reporters modulo personal judgement.


Privacy issues

You are only required to share your email address with PetitionsOnline. Their privacy rules are such that they do not share these email addresses with anyone for whatever reason. PetitionsOnline only uses the email addresses for some forms of validation. If you decide to share your email address with me (the petition's initiator), I will not share your email addresses with anyone for whatever reason. The primary purpose of the petition is to be online and allow us to refer the target of the petition to it.


Thanks to everyone who has signed already.

Thank you
Ralf Lämmel

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SWI-Prolog's Java Interface JPL

I would like to mix Java and Prolog code on a number of occasions. Together with a student of mine (Joachim Pehl), we just convinced ourselves that the JPL library of SWI-Prolog is really cool. Basically JPL allows you to call Prolog from Java and Java from Prolog. But the question is, of course, how easy is it and can you easily go back and forth . For instance, can we call Prolog from Java and call back Java from Prolog and share Java state throughout? Sure it works! PROLOG PORTION FOLLOWS % This library is all we need to call Java from Prolog :- ensure_loaded(library(jpl)). main :- % Create an object jpl_new(class([],['Test']), [], X), % Printing objects is like printing object ids write(X),nl, % Access a field of the object; happens to be static jpl_get(X, state, Y), % Prints whatever the state's value is write(Y),nl. JAVA PORTION FOLLOWS // This jar is all we need to call Prolog from Java import jpl.*; public class Test { public static int state = 0; ...
Read more

Lecture series on advanced (functional) programming concepts

[ Added 10 Aug 2010: Here is the link to the first lecture's video: " The Expression Problem ". ] If you are a programming nerd or something of a similar species, you may know of C9 Lectures at http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/C9+Lectures . Several of the lectures are given by Erik Meijer who has turned many chapters of Graham Hutton 's book " Programming in Haskell " into videos. In my recent, recorded lecture on " Programming Paradigms and Formal Semantics ", I also incorporated Graham's text, but you should really watch Erik's lectures, if you haven't---they are more fun. I am inspired by his ability to present relatively simple content in such a crisp, insightful, and enjoyable manner. In the aforementioned lecture, I covered all kinds of "crazy stuff" though, and in the end, I had to deliver body bags to my Bachelor students---in the form of a radically simple examination. Thanks a lot btw to @grammarware for helping with t...
Read more

Should I declare defeat on the research topic of API migration?

Of course, I won't, but perhaps I should! Then, I could turn to lower-hanging fruits in research, which I first need to spot, which I can't though because I am a bit obsessed with API migration (and admittedly some other stuff such as megamodeling ). Sigh! It was around 2004 that I became interested in API migration and I have talked about it here and there ever since. Perhaps I am thinking that talking about a difficult problem of interest helps in discovering the solution of the problem, or at least a sensible path to go. Wishful thinking so far! In theory , the objective of API migration made a lot of sense while I was on the XML team at Microsoft because there are obviously way too many XML APIs. In practice , nothing happened on this front because I didn't understand automated API migration well enough back then. Add to this that API migration is something that is potentially risky for the API provider and the API migrator . So you need to mash up a rocket scientist ...
Read more