Someone is getting killed in both cases. There’s no parole, time off for good behavior, or rehabilitation possible.
If you think that there are reasons to kill someone, any reason at all, then you can be the one to look them in the eye and take their life.
On the other hand, do you advocate the death penalty for all crime? Do you agree with every law in each country equally, or are there some you don’t agree with? Do you think that once a law is passed that it cannot ever be changed?
Never mind answering here. I’ve seen a lot of posts from posters who would gladly kill other people over whatever hot-button topic is being discussed at the moment. Only you can decide if I’m referring to you personally.
Not really related to the thread, but actually, the Jews who suffered from the inquisition were the ones who converted to catholicism (or more likely their descendants) .
The Inquisition had no juridiction over the Jews, only over christians (catholic or not, the protestant being just considered as heretics). The inquisiton prosecuted christians who were suspected, rightly or wrongly, to still hold on Jewish beliefs, practices or customs. Being able to prove you had not been baptized could save your day (though then you’d have to face prosecution by regular courts, since jews weren’t allowed in the kingdom).
Doper hemlock, who doubles as my publicist when not doing his daytime job as English Language Trainer for a local company, has a nice little section on Harry Lee’s kingdom on his website. While there, you might check out the link near the bottom to “Lee Kuan Yew and Eugenics”. Guaranteed to make you think (Harry’s a raving loony).
Another take on the story Saying that the PAP government never respond to the accusation may be something of inaccuracy. It’s just that, well, they just keep repeating themselves and doesn’t shed any light on the incident. According to this Newsweek’s article, “Lo has partial stakes in [it]”.
Had Van actually gone through Customs and exited the airport or was he just waiting for a connecting flight? No, I didn’t read the links. It just struck me that I wasn’t sure he was actually in Singapore.
Anyway, put me down as another “way too excessive” vote. I say that as someone who lives in the worst area in Canada for homelessness and drug use and the attendant crime. Matter of fact, one of the locals relieved me of my bike last week.
OTOH, a girl I’ve known off and on since '74 used to be a serious addict and likely an occasional dealer. She cleaned up a few years ago, took a bunch of courses and now runs a rehab. Had she been executed for her crimes, a couple dozen other women would likely be dead now too - the ones that she got off the street.
Van Nguyen’s actions posed no threat whatsoever to Singaporean citizens or ‘to the country as a whole’ in any meaningful sense. He was detected with drugs whilst in transit from Cambodia to Australia at the airport making connecting flights. The heroin was never intended for the Singapore market, and thus I find that the Singaporean chest-beating, bleating that they are protecting their borders from scummy drugs and dealers overwhelmingly pathetic in this instance.
There is no reason to execute this man. It will not stop the flow of drugs around the world, it will not cure heroin users of their addiction, it will not stop some other stupid young twit from hoping to make a quick needed $ trying the same thing next week, or next month, or whenever Nguyen’s face is off the headlines.
That drug dealers don’t ask for I.D. (though many will refuse to sell to kids on principle [yes, plenty of dealers do have principles]) is a direct result of prohibition. It’s not the fault of the drugs themselves, and it shouldn’t unduly prejudice people against dealers any more than an adult who buys beer for kids should turn people against legitimate purveyors of that drug.
Again, a consequence of prohibition. Not only that, but problems of that nature are far less frequent than TV dramas would lead you to believe. You’re tarring the entire profession with the misdeads of a select few.
No matter where you are, there are dealers doing business near your house. Not every dealer has people coming in and out at all hours of the day and night. Many are small time, and others do their business away from home so as not to attract attention.
I’ve known a lot of small and mid-level (along a few higher-level) drug dealers in my time, and, for the most part, they were nice people. The vasy majority were no different from you or me.
I actually considered drug dealing to be immoral for quite some time until I met a particularly intelligent seller and had several long conversations with him on the subject. He convinced me.
I have never and would never sell drugs myself, but if someone else is merely supplying a product that’s in demand and not hurting anyone in the process, I cannot fault them for it. Granted, that product may be deadly, but between tobacco, alcohol, fatty foods, prescription drugs, etc., we have more than a few legal products that earn the same distinction.
So as Zoogirl suggested, he was not even in Singapore?
Van is a stupid idiot for doing what he did. His stupidity is on par with the stupid US contractors that are regularly hung up or burnt alive in the streets of Iraq.
However, Singapores behaviour is despicable and barbaric, just as is these Iraqi insurgents.
International pressure should continually be applied to attempt to abolish death sentences in all nations. The death penalty itself is vulgar and disgraceful, but hanging for carrying drugs - how could any ‘civil nation’ be able to get away with this.
I should probably clarify the “in Singapore” part.
I kind of had the impression that airports are a sort of neutral territory, or at least the connecting flight portion is. I’m basing that at least partly on the story of the poor guy that’s been living in one for several years. Something about having improper paperwork - can’t go out of the airport into the country itself, can’t go home because he can’t get on a plane. There he sits.
So, unless Van actually cleared Singapore customs, was he “in” Singapore, legally?
Antechinus, as horrid as your cite is, I don’t see the connection between the actions of Iraqi civilians taking out their vicious angst upon American civilians and the imposition of the death penalty upon Truong Van Nguyen by the Singaporean judicial system.
Care to elucidate? Is it just the ‘stupidity’ factor?
I agree though that the DP is barbaric and has no place in a modern civilised society. I ESPECIALLY agree when the DP is mandatory, and that no mitigating circumstances can be offered to lessen the penalty for the offender, as I personally believe should be the case with Van Nguyen.
And yes, it is my understanding that he had not left the transit lounge, so was not in fact on Singaporean ‘soil’ when the arrest was made. I might be mistaken though…can anybody clarify this (IMHO) important piece of trivia please??
OK, first off let me be the fourth, fifth or nth to call Clothahump a vile, repulsive, horrifying individual. At least if his bon mot earlier was sincere.
Clothahump, have you really never understood that the essential first step to acts of atrocity is to select a group of demonstrably human organisms, and declare them to be not human?
The stumbling block to get over, if you’re going to machine gun a few hundred jews in an extermination camp, is that they’re humans, and they therefore evoke empathy. But convince yourself they’re not humans, just cattle, and it all becomes much easier!
Hate American dominance of the Arab world? Fly some planes into a big building in the heartland of the American economy! Now, thousands will die, but that doesn’t matter, if you can convince yourself they’re not actual humans, right?
Now I do think that you’re a disgusting piece of shit, but on the other hand I very much don’t want you to be killed. Why? Because YOU’RE A HUMAN!
Incidentally, Adolf Hitler was also human. Mohammed Atta was human. Osama bin Laden is human too. If your mind can’t handle this fact, too fucking bad.
Now I actually came in here to mop up this turd from Weirddave :
Jesus H Christ you stupid sack of shit.
OK. You are indeed correct that smuggling drugs is a choice whilst being Jewish, black or gay is not. And we are indeed horrified by oppression/extermination of those three groups of people. But, a sane and compassionate human being (such as you might argue with on this board), is horrified by oppression NOT because its targets cannot help themselves, but because IT IS WRONG to oppress somebody for those attributes.
When I hear of some guy being beaten to death because he’s black, I do NOT think ‘how awful, the poor guy can’t help that he’s black’. I think ‘how awful to kill someone for being black’. It has jack shit to do with whether the attribute they are being oppressed for is a choice or not.
Now you may think that dealing drugs is wrong, or that it is not wrong - you clearly believe the former where I believe the latter. But in that case, let THAT criterion be your guide to determine whether punishment is right or not.
Let me try one last time:
To distinguish between drug dealers and jews on the basis of the perceived morality of their defining characteristic is valid, even if we stongly disagree on that morality. But to distinguish between them on the basis of their freedom of choice, is asinine.
Weirddave , do you concede this point?
Weirddave , do you care to retract that very dumb post you made earlier?
Weirddave , if I were to add the phrase <hears crickets…> to the end of this post, would that be snarky or just prescient?
:dubious: I mean, other than the fact that they were selling illegal shit that would eventually kill you. But yeah, other than that, your local drug dealer is a hell of a guy. Here’s a fun experiment, neutron. Go up to one of your vending buddies and tell him you’re gonna sell him out. Let’s see how nice and peaceful he is, OK?
Tell that to the law-abiding citizens of Camden, NJ, Compton, CA, and Flint, MI who live in fear from a stray bullet. Tell that to the parents of some midwestern town who just lost their kid to a meth addiction. I’m sure they’d just love to hear about how the majority of drug dealers are misunderstood and slandered by the media.
And profession? These guys aren’t lawyers.
Change “convinced” to “suckered” and I’m with you.
And I actually agree with this statement. I would have no problem legalizing most drugs and regulating them the way we do alcohol. But the fact that it’s illegal matters, neutron. The fact that drugs are illegal means that their selling and distribution are going to be monitored by bad people who are willing to do violent things to see that profits stay high. Your kinder gentler drug dealers are either very small time or they’re working for the kinds of people who aren’t going to have much of a problem dealing to kids or blowing away some granny if it means taking out a business rival. You can’t just absolve the drug dealers by saying “It’s prohibition’s fault.” The reality is far darker.
That was my co-worker. Guy’s still there, too. As severe as the punishments are, the prisons themselves aren’t so bad, going by what he and his family have told us.
That statement is false.
Replace the words ‘would eventually’ with ‘could possibly’ and it becomes true.
Are you suggesting that a person’s pleasantness can be determined by considering how they would react if you told them that you were going to destroy their life? Do you try this with any of your buddies? (the fact that your buddies are not drug dealers is irrelevant to the logic of your point)
Many people have been killed over the last few years in acts of terrorism perpetrated by Muslims. A tiny tiny minority of muslims. Possibly, some of the victims’ families harbour hatred of muslims because of that. These people would be asshats.
Some drug dealers are responsible for a great deal of suffering in our society. That doesn’t make the statement ‘the majority are misunderstood and slandered by the media’ incorrect. Nor the concept that most drug dealers are great guys. If such sentiments are actually false, it is not simply by virtue of the fact that some are scumbags.
Indeed, unlike bartenders, purveyors of illegal drugs do so illegally. What’s your point?
Don’t you even want to hear the arguments put forward by a drug dealer?
Wow, give the man a gold star! But I would propose to you that it is in fact possible to deal drugs in such a manner that it is only the fact of the dealing that is illegal, and no beating, robbery, murder, arson or extortion is required.
So, are the majority of drug dealers murderers and suchlike, or is it only the minority? Well to be truthful, I can’t say for certain. But since you made the first claim, I’d like a CITE please! It seems to me that the default position a person should normally take, is that group x or y of people are generally peaceful easy-going types, in common with the human species as a whole. Positing a difference places the burden of proof.
Which differs from you friendly neighborhood bartender how, exactly?
Yes, you can go ahead and name the few most dangerous places in the country and hold them up as representative of the entire United States, but that doesn’t prove a thing, and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of towns and cities in this country that don’t work that way.
I would also note that those cities have significant problems with poverty and other social issues besides drugs. Such locales are breeding grounds for violent crime, so it’s hardly surprising that your average drug dealer in Camden is more violent than one in Podunk, Iowa.
And out comes the “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” argument. Give me a fucking break. :rolleyes:
My opinions were formed not only of his words, but also of the actions of the majority of dealers that I’ve known.
I’ve never maid the claim that all drug dealers are angels. I’m saying that the public perception of these people (as illustrated disgustingly accurately by Clothahump) is negatively exaggerated far beyond any semblance of reality.
I’m not Weirddave, but I’ll pop in here anyway. Hope that’s OK.
This makes no sense. How can anything have morality if it isn’t a choice? Drug dealers (or runners, in this case) make the choice to do something that I consider to be morally wrong. Jews don’t even make a choice, therefore being Jewish is morally neutral, no matter what other characteristics it may have.
Was Singapore just a stopover point, and he got the drugs from another country and just waiting for his connecting flight? If so I would think if he stayed in the airport and didn’t go through customs (if possiable) then they should be a bit more willing to deport the person.
If he got the drugs in Singapore, well he should have known the risks, and assumes such risks when engages in the activity, the risk is counterballenced by the reward of profit. I am pretty certain that he would like to get as much profit from this trip as possiable, I woudn’t expect him to sell his drugs below the going rate, why shouldn’t the risk (now triggered) be imposed in full also?
OK. Fair enough, I maybe didn’t make my point clearly enough. Here goes:
Argument: Drug dealers should be executed if that’s what the law says, because, duh, it’s the law. (note: NO requirement here to mention personal beliefs of right or wrongness of drug-dealing)
Counter-argument: you could say the same about jews in Nazi Germany. Being a jew in Nazi Germany was a death sentence. Yet surely we can’t brazenly say to such a jew, ‘oh well, you don’t like it, stop being a jew or get out… after all, it’s the government’s decision, don’t come crying to me’
Counter-counter-argument (and this is where Weirddave came in): but you can’t compare the two, because being jewish isn’t a choice, and being a drug-dealer is.
c-c-c-argument (my point): the point about choice is true but is irrelevant to the counter-argument. The jews indeed didn’t have a choice to be non-Jewish, but that isn’t why the Nazis were despicable for exterminating them. The Nazis were d.f.e.t because it is wrong to execute someone for a characteristic that is not harmful to others. It is the point about actions being harmful to others that is germane to this discussion, not whether somebody has a choice about what they do. Now if you want to claim that drug-dealers should be executed because they do indeed cause harm (or at least, that we shouldn’t particularly be upset if some country does execute them), by all means do so, and we can disagree about that premise. (obviously in generality… I can’t deny the existence of many drug dealers who ARE scumbags). Basically, in short, Weirddave’s observation is correct but its attachment to the prior discussion is invalid.
Weirddave’s point boils down to the commonly heard idea that it is not good to punish somebody for what they ARE, only for what they DO. This is fair enough, stated in that form alone. The trouble is, it can then lead people to the incorrect deduction that is therefore unequivocally ok to punish people for what they do. No it isn’t. Sometimes what they do ISN’T WRONG.
If you still think the comparison between oppressed jews and oppressed drug dealers (and btw won’t somebody please think of the USERS! :dubious: ) is spurious, level the playing field in precisely the area Wierddave addressed: replace ‘Jews in Nazi Germany’ with ‘dissenters in Stalinist Russia’. After all, they had a choice, right?
Perhaps my use of the word ‘morality’ in my last post was unwise. Replace that concept with ‘perceived harm to others’. And, er… probably rephrase a lot to make grammatical sense!
Christ I’m sorry for all those unsightly brackets in my last post (it’s just the kinda guy I am [so you shouldn’t oppress me for it ])
Oh maybe at this point I’d better vaguely address the OP. I agree muchly: fucko off Singapore. Don’t give me that crap about a country’s sovereignty or the sacrosanct nature of law.
No of course we shouldn’t invade it, but those of us who find the death penalty and/or drug prohibition barbarisms more suited to medieval times, should feel no hesitation whatsoever in condemning this news, and exhorting elected representatives over all the world to bitch strongly to Singapore about it. Of course they are unlikely to do any such thing, because even though few other countries execute drug-dealers, most of them don’t lose sleep over it either, as Clothahump so sweetly demonstrated (asshat! :mad: )
Alcohol is legal. The bartender doesn’t have to shoot another bartender in the head if he wants to open up a new bar down the street. If the bartender serves you wood alcohol, and you go blind, he’ll probably go to jail.
Get real. I could go through pretty much all the major cities and pick out the drug blocks. And guess what, neutron? You tend to get a lot of addicts in those blocks, and again, the addicts do bad things to feed their addiction. Whether the addict caused the poverty or the poverty caused the addict is a moot point. The point is that the people in those drug blocks live in fear.
Oh, and by the way, speaking of generalizing:
Very profound. You meet a few drug dealers in suburbia, fall for their “I’m just providing a service” routine, and suddenly you’re the resident drug trade expert? Give me a fucking break! :rolleyes:
Once again, neutron. “It’s all prohibition’s fault” might work for your little suburban neighborhood in Harrisburg, but that gets old real quick in the actual drug blocks. These guys are dealing death, and unlike those in the alcohol industry, they’re not accountable by any legal means. If you’re going to compare the drug trade to the alcohol trade, you pretty much have to look to Al Capone, not your friendly neighborhood bartender.
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