Friday, November 16, 2007

World's Executioners Want To Block UN Vote

Move to outlaw state sponsored murder gains steam

"World public opinion has been so outraged by the continued use of the death penalty in the 25 countries that carried out executions last year, that a petition carrying five million signatures has been presented to the UN, where yesterday a small group of countries were attempting to block the historic vote on a global moratorium that could lead to an all-out ban.
(...)
As of last night, the draft resolution had been sponsored by 85 states, including all 27 European Union nations. The United States, which executed 53 people last year, will vote against. So will China, which put 2,790 people to death last year. In fact 91 per cent of all death sentences carried out happen in six countries: China, the US, Pakistan, Sudan, Iraq and Iran."

Fine company we're in there, makes me prouder'n hell to have such barbaric murderers making policy in this country.
Forget all the moral arguments against the death penalty, although there are plenty of those. Put aside the obvious implications of the possibility that innocent people could be mistakenly executed. It's true but only tangential to the subject that it costs a lot more money to go through the long appeals process in capitol offense cases than to just incarcerate prisoners for life.
All these reasons to eliminate the death penalty can be debated ad nauseum but there's one overriding reason to get rid of it from civilized society.

You should never, ever allow the government to have the power to kill the citizens. Because it will, in ever increasing numbers, for an ever increasing number of reasons.

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