Re: capital punishment in Iran
On Apr 27, 2007, at 1:38 PM, Lenin’s Tomb wrote:
On 4/27/07, Doug Henwood dhenwood@panix.com wrote:
[hanging people from a crane so they take 10 minutes to choke to death…lovely]
It’s atrocious. But, if I may add to that obvious assertion one further: death from electrocution can take as long (say if the heart is still beating five minutes after the first shock has been administered, they’ll go ahead and have another go), and being fried isn’t necessarily easier on the senses. I don’t know if lethal injection is any better come to that, what with the prolonged armageddon of lungs collapsing and heart stopping. And the US has repeatedly scored way higher than Iran in the global executions stake.
No disagreement from me on the horrors of the U.S. love for capital
punishment (or the penchant to criminalize and incarcerate). What
annoys me are the repeated assertions coming from some quarters that
having an avowedly anti-imperialist government with a populist who
mouths ineffectual populist rhetoric makes a society somehow good or
admirable.
Doug