h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having the death penalty as a maximum penalty would not help with someone being under penalised for a crime. Face it, if the death penalty were in force you'd be typing
"Paul Barnardo is on death row. Karla Homolka made a deal with the police. She was given a few years in prison.
She is due to be released in a short while. While in prison she takes University courses, gets day passes.
Where is the justice in all this? Nothing will bring back the girls they tortured and brutally murdered.
How are the families ever going to live with their losses of their daughters.
Where is the justice in all this."

Changing the maximum penalty wouldnt fix the problem.

;^)#

Excellent point. Group 1 are definitely hypocrites to a man (and woman). Group 3 includes me, so clearly are not hypocrites

It hinges, for me, on the "why." I do not support abortion on demand up to the point of birth, but I do believe that until a certain point a foetus is not truly sentient (and is unquestionably not capable of independent existence) and if its death will save the mother's life, or prevent the tragedy of an unwanted child, then it can, with certain reservations, be supported - but not normally beyond the point at which life can be sustained outside the womb (say 24 weeks at present). The exception would be rape victims, where abortion should be available on demand until later.

The current practice of shooting doctors who perform terminations on the grounds that killing is immoral is, to me, utterly bizarre.

Agree strongly.

The most common cause of such injustice is road traffic death, particularly death caused by driving under the influence of alcohol. In the UK you can get a shorter sentence for causing death by bad / drunk driving than for theft. You can even get your license back before some thieves are released.

There's a lot of bizarre stuff going on!
Should Pinochet (btw why don't the newsreaders pronounce it pin-o-chet not pin-oshay, the guy is Latin American - not French!) be released. If his organisation had been the Mafia instead of the Government we wouldn't be even having these discussions! And his actions were all cold blooded. Or does scale matter? Kill one or twenty and you're a nasty murderer. Kill a thousand and you're a statesman!

Interesting. I think that sort of thing is a lot more sensible than the hotblooded vengeance cries which normally beset such a debate. It's still not quite the same as "personalised vengeance" in line with the original suggestion, though.

Nonetheless, "personalised vengeance" implies personal responsibility - a point which your description of the "Muslim" justice system seems to capture very well...

You miss the point. He killed people with white faces and crosses round their necks - that's the crucial differentiator.

wait what is exactly is up with pinochet?
-saffire

He's a very naughty boy. Chilean Dictator allegedly responsible for ordering the "Disappeared": thousands of people who were unlawfully detained over a period of ten years, never to be seen again.

On the plus side, he's a very good friend of our beloved ex-dictator Margeret Thatcher and often comes to tea.

He was being held subject to a decision on whether we could extradite him to Spain for trial. The panel of judges said he had to go (Hurrah!)

Unfortunately one of the judges had links with Amnesty International (look at top of screen for further details on that - unless its the one about Gorillas!) and so was deemed to be totally unreliable and the verdict was deemed unsound (boo!).

It then fell to Rt hon Jack Straw MP, Home Secretary to decide whether Mr P. should go home to Chile or have a nice trip to a pleasant Spanish prison.

"Gun Crazies"? hehehe. Am I a "gun crazy"?

Might I point out that guns have ALWAYS been part of american society- even (if not MORE so) during the 1940's and 1950's, when violent crime was pretty low.

It's not the possession of weapons which cause a violent society, it's the conflicts created by the social institutions which generate violence.

I dont have to lie down - but then in my country shootings still make the news & every jerk with a problem isn't armed to the teeth.

"If you seriously consider that someone who's defending themselves against another who wishes to kill them and their family is the same as the person who initiated an uprovoked attack, I think you've widely missed the mark!" - yes you are absolutely right. You're approach has proven to be SO successful in countries like Northern Ireland & ex Yugoslavia where all the grudges about who did what to whom have been so comprehensively solved.


;^)#

I don't see the relevance of Pinochet to this dicussion, I think you're building Straw men.

I didn't start it,it was all Vestboy's idea *snivelling, shifty voice*.

but talking of Straw men. Jack Straw, now there's a man who deserves a good hanging if anyone does. Never in human history has one man tried to introduce so many 1984esque laws. It makes the CJA llok quite enlightened.

Still, we need another divisive tirade to get things going again. Aren't there any supporters of eletric chairs for the under fives out there? What about hanging for truancy? That'd be quite a deterrant for bunking off school. Shar'ia law for pups that poop in public?

CJA llok = CIA look

That Latin page is coming in really handy, Merkin

CJA = Criminal Justice Act, not the CIA, smarty pants. Tsk...

Though the CIA would have been just as good an example! So what's your opinion on this whole death penalty / justice / gun law / abortion / genocide thing? (just to cover the half of the spleenery that's been vented?)

Maybe we should find ourselves a guest white supremacist along to the forum to really get things going? Then we could go along to one of their "How to make a buring cross" forums and fill it with complete tripe and Latin eulogising...

Anti-death penalty, pro-abortion. I don't know about gun law, I haven't made up my mind, although someone posted a 'vicious circle' description (people have right to bear arms therefore Police must bear arms for protection therefore criminals must bear arms to be effective against Police ... ) that was interesting.

My Pinochet point was about the role of "power" in decisions about guilt concerning murder.

The idea of "War crimes" would indicate that murder is possible even in a state of war. So at the same time you can kill loads of people legitimately and be safe while if you kill a different group you are a war criminal and will face trial.

Hang on a minute though. It's only the losing side in a war which faces war trials isn't it. What does that say about war crimes?

There was a huge backlash in the UK when someone wanted to put up a statue to "Bomber" Harris and some Germans described him as a war criminal for killing thousands of German civilians during bombing raids.

Which he was, but as you say, we won, so that's OK then. War crimes tribunals are rightly for injustices during wartime against civilians, and both Bomber Harris, and whoever ordered Nagasaki and Hiroshima, were specifically targetting civilians.

Naturally one can claim, as everyone did, that it was the lesser evil which saved the lives of many people, but when you can justify killing 100,000 if you may be saving 1 million, then human life becomes pretty cheap.

Not since Michael "Creature of the Night" Howard, anyway.

History is always written by the winners. Wars should be fought according to the Geneva Convention, and if wars must be fought then there is a moral duty to try to minimise civilian casualties. But is there not a difference between a civilian killed by a force attacking a military target, and a civilian killed because a military target was deliberately placed in a population centre? Or a civilian shot in the back becuse they belong to the wrong ethnic group?