Anyone care to guess what the US is ranked at #5 in the world at?
Here is the ranked list for a hint:
[ol]
[li]China[/li][li]Iran[/li][li]North Korea[/li][li]Yemen[/li][li]United States[/li][li]Saudi Arabia[/li][li]Libya[/li][li]Syria[/li][li]Bangladesh[/li][li]Somalia[/li][/ol]
Answer: Executions
That’s some great company to be in, eh?
Works for me.
My first guess was “torture” actually.
Yeah well we’re still number one in FAT!
I was guessing it was people who believe in Creationism (but I think we are second in that).
Even with the knowledge that capital punishment is WRONG, always and everywhere?
Why does that work for you?
Wish they would have ranked countries on a per-capita basis. Then it ends up looking like this:
On a per-capita basis, China is killing 'em 25 times as fast as we are. Even when it comes to capital punishment, you just can’t compete with the Chinese.
Feel better?
It isn’t, so it works.
Yes it is, so my question stands.
Makes him feel good to be in that elite group of countries maybe? Is perhaps comfortable with that group’s moral and ethical stances, and thinks that the US fits in very well with how those countries are run?
If you include deaths by military action then nobody can touch us!
“Always” and “everywhere” are pretty strong statements to make.
What if you are a soldier and are in enemy territory and learn someone in your squad is a traitor who has been feeding information to your enemy.
Do you risk everyone else in the squad and abandon your mission that will save 100,000 lives to drag him back to your side for a trial and imprisonment?
If you let him go he will blow your mission that will save 100,000 lives.
Betting you’d shoot him.
Who has that knowledge? I don’t. And it’s sort of a bad list, just because it doesn’t take into account population. The only countries on that list with a population close to the US’s are China (which has about 4 times as many people) and Bangladesh (which has about half as many people.) So, while we’ve executed almost twice as many people as Saudi Arabia this year, we have ten times as many people. So I don’t think you can make a comparison on just raw numbers. Here’s the complete list from the Amnesty International report, btw, in case anyone in curious.
China (1,000s)
Iran (252+)
North Korea (60+)
Yemen (53+)
USA, (46)
Saudi Arabia (27+)
Libya (18+)
Syria (17+)
Bangladesh (9+)
Somalia (8+)
Sudan (6+)
Palestinian Authority (5)
Egypt (4)
Equatorial Guinea (4)
Taiwan (4)
Belarus (2)
Japan (2)
Iraq (1+)
Malaysia (1+)
Bahrain (1)
Botswana (1)
Singapore (unknown number)
Vietnam (unknown number)
67 countries sentenced people to death. Here’s the list of that, unsorted:
By Jove, i think he’s got it!
The numbers on the list aren’t particularly meaningful because of the difference in scope. The list itself is meaningful.
That’s not capital punishment, which is execution through the judicial process. Your example is “vigilantism”.
Why is the list itself meaningful? Because a lot of “bad” countries are on it? Japan and Taiwan are on it too. Both those countries execute. So are Mali and Botswana, which are two of the more democratic and human rights respecting African countries.
I was going to say we were slackers compared to the plucky lads from Yemen, but it turns out it’s a bigger population than I thought.
Although I oppose the death penalty in all situations (well almost all, there’s one I come very close to accepting it for in theory, but back away from it in practice) in a weird and twisted way there’s something refreshing about one aspect of its use in China. When a Chinese businessman (who doesn’t have the right connections of course) through incompetence/corruption causes death and misery for customers, he gets a dose of government induced lead poisoning. Here the same person gets told he is a naughty boy, receives a golden parachute and a few years later is practicing the same sleazy behavior with another company.
ETA - interesting - I didn’t know the Japanese still had the DP on the books.
Because Americans pride themselves on having a country that is more committed to justice and superior to countries like China and Yemen and North Korea from a human rights perspective.
It’s not vigiliantism either; it’s an expedient measure taken to protect a “must not fail” mission.