US, China and Iran: Three Little Pigs

I believe

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.

Part One: Life

VI

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin
        

Unto his (her) nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

ah XerXes!

Please step beyond the obvious and ATTEMPT to read beyond the mechanical meaning of the words and see the contexts.....

I called it "experience" and I did not even use the word US or USA or said a word about the policies of the US "government"!! Look at the map again and see who is "America" . I give you a hint, US is only one of them!

XerXes! I agree with some of what you said although it had nothing to do with what I said! but lets at least , lets both agree that Americans did not come from Mars.....and thanks for so elequently proving my point by saying : "I actually love living in America"!

While you so kindly and easily are forming an opinion on me and expressing it with such colors, read this article of mine too :  //iranian.com/main/blog/david-et/new-world-order 

Thank you for being so educated and humble as opposed to being an "ignorant" "arrogant" "kiss ass" as you called me. 

To related issues

According to your refereces, limit of "12 segheh" is also incorrect!

seppas,

RE:David ET

I just read "America is an amazing experience of humanity” and I stopped there. Let's count the wars that US has been in. Stop making excuses for a country that has ruined the dreams of many unfortunate (read: the weak) rest of the world. I actually love living in American, but I realize that it is in the expense of many other nations, being ruined by America!! Position of power does not give one a right to kill and demolish their dreams, just because they can. Be a human, you can still be a Patriotic "American" if you wish. Just don't be ignorant and arrogant! Some do it just to kiss ass...

David, have you ever read..

Jihad vs. MacWorld? You would like it.

nice

Rosie: I enjoyed reading your latest post.

America is an amazing experience of humanity and a very young one. It still has too much to learn but it has also given so much back to it.

The new world dominance is not through arms but cultural and via media and sadly I see so many cultures are gradually melting in to this new world order of advertised consumerism .

Armani is only one of the new Gods on earth among so many others.

God bless you...

my hamsafar, my brother.  Let's build a better world.  One by one, step by step,  Let's start here. Now.  The Buddhists say ending human suffering is like emptying the ocean with a teacup.  But here we have the ocean...we surf it...and everyone has a teacup...

PS Please register.

Dear Rosie: I'm in full

Dear Rosie: I'm in full agreement with you and thank you for setting me straight. I needed that. It is a spiritual struggle with me and I have to overcome it daily....Sometimes Schadenfreude seems too primal...lol

To: Mazloom Ast

Few days ago I posted a recent comprehensive report by Amnesty International about stoning which you might find helpful:

//iranian.com/main/blog/david-et/end-executions-stoning

and this is the link to the stop stoning forever campaign in Iran:

Persian: //www.meydaan.com/campaign.aspx?cid=46

English (less info):  //www.meydaan.com/english/aboutcamp.aspx?cid=46 

Dear Related Issues,

You wrote:Whether capital punishment, in general, should exist is debatable and I don’t think it is the sole issue here. Personally, I don’t believe in a death verdict/sentence for adultery.

 Capital punishment is certainly not the sole issue and David's statistics prove frighteningly that IRI's abuse of the practice is monstrous even compared with other Sharia countries. But I want to try to persuade you that capital punishment is not debatable.

First of all if you look at the language you use you say that personally you don't believe in death sentence for adultery. In the modern world this should not be a "personal" "belief" any more than one should "believe" a child should have nutrition and education, pr a person should have a shelter. To execute people for such "crimes" as adultery, drinking alcohol, homosexuality, is so outrageous and offensive that it would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. It's simply ABSURD to do such things in 2008 and outisde of Sharia countries, everybody knows this and it's not a question of "belief" but of fact. Your use of the term "personal" here implies that there's a counterargument and I assume this is due to your upbringing, things you've been taught (?). If not, then to a "culturally relativistic" ideological stance you've arrived at on your own in an attempt to be fair to non-dominant cultures. In either case, In , people can't be killed for making "nookie." So I think you need to examine your core belief here.

If you examine it and you agree that death for sex, even LOVE, is just WRONG, NO counter-arguments, then we go on to analyze the broader data. Who is doing the capital punishment? We find that outside Byelorus, who abstained, there is not one single country EXCEPT THE UNITED STATES UNDER GEORGIE PORGIE in the WORLD that is of mainly European origin in Europe or the Americas that went against this abolishment. What does it mean?

Well look at who the US is WITH...Sharia countries, Myanmar, North Korea...91% of all executions last year by the US, China and some Sharia countries? What does this mean?

Then we get to the problem of the dialectic of the Secular Enlightenment and why should we bother listening to Europe and her children in Canada and Latin America at all when these are the folks who brought us Hiroshima and Auschwitz. It's a complex, yet simple discussion, one some of us have been tackling in depth on the Ashura/Ahmadinejad blog.  The twentieth century was a DISASTER. It proved that the very concept of "civilization" is a travesty and we're all still REELING from it. And we have to STOP reeling.

We have to ACCEPT that the European ideals of individual rights and freedoms which led to our being able to dialog on this website without fear of imprisonment, for example, also led to those attrocities, and they were MISTAKES, HUGE mistakes, but we CAN'T keep throwing the baby out with the bath water. We HAVE to assume that Europe is starting to LEARN from those mistakes, and that is why she has a distaste for blood. If EVERY single European and Latin American country and Canada supported this proposal, they are trying very hard to tell us something, and I think we better listen. Europe learned the hard way that execution is nothing more than the taking away of the final human right, the right to live, after a series of progressive strippings of rights. First there was the yellow star and the pink triangle, then where you could work, who you could marry, etc., then work camps, then death camps.  CIVIL LIBERTIES INCLUDES THE RIGHT TO LIVE.

We have to listen to Europe. They learned the hard way. They paid dearly. Twenty million people died in World War II.  Entire cultures were destroyed. We have to listen to them and finally embrace the better values, the IDEALS, of the secular Enlightenment, without guilt or apologism....it's OKAY to embrace a European ideal in spite of the World Wars, in spite of the depredations of Colonialsm..or maybe...BECAUSE of them, so as not to REPEAT the same mistakes.

If the US is so out of synch with these values in the case of capital punishment, who are we with? Sharia countries, Caribbean island countries, a handful of tribal African ones and places like North Korea and Myanmar (Burma).  It's bone-chilling. I think it proves, I really do, that capital punishment is no longer debatable after the Holocaust when people were legally killed for just being people....there's no line in the sand...the whole thing has to be thrown out--the lines of the debate are drawn, and the "allies" the US has chosen are...bone-chilling....

Capital punishment has no relevance for the modern world. And we're in the modern world. And we have to somehow make it livable. There's no turning back the clock.

mazloom: I can't give you

mazloom:

I can't give you any references on your first inquiry online...because the stories are anectodal. On the second one, there is an income chart eligibility criterion:

"Income Level Per Wife/Sigheh Table"

//kamangir.net/2007/08/09/dollar-per-wife-tab...

According to a new bill just suggested by the government to the parliament, men do not have to ask the permission of their wife for a second marriage. According to the bill which is titled “Support for Families”, men only need to prove their economic power for the second marriage [Persian].

//www.aftabnews.ir/vdch-6n236nx-.html

You can also order your sigheh online:
//jostojoo.blogsky.com/

To David ET,

Can you provide me with some stat on the number of executions in Iran by hanging in comparison to stoning, for the most recent year, or years if you have it? I need this for an article about execution by hydraulic cranes in Iran, surely to galvanize the Iranian expatriates, maybe.

.

.

Additional data:

• More than 130 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.  Only 25 countries actually carried out executions in 2006: //www.stopchildexecutions.com/legal&reports/A.R.Countries.ACT5000107.pdf
• In 2006, 91% of all known executions took place in China , Iran , Iraq , Pakistan , Sudan and the USA .
• In the Americas only the USA has carried out executions since 2003.  The number of executions in the US in 2007 reached the lowest level in 13 years
• Europe is almost a death penalty free zone with the exception of  Belarus.
• In Africa only six states carried out executions in 2006.
• China holds the highest record of executions but is decreasing 
• Iran holds the highest percentage of executions in comparison to its population
• Iran holds the highest record of children executed since 1990 
• Iran  holds the highest number of children facing execution (86) followed by Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan (2 each) , all Islamic countries.
• Number of execution worldwide were reduced except in Iran where it has substantially increased:

                            2006 vs 2005    50% increase

                            2007 vs 2006    70% increase

• In December 2007, the U.N. General Assembly approved a draft resolution expressing "deep concern" at the systematic human rights violations in Iran, including torture, flogging, amputations, stoning and public executions. The 192-member world body adopted the resolution by a vote of 73-53 with 55 abstentions: //scenews.blog.com/2438411/

You might have heard about

You might have heard about the public hangings galore in Iran under the hideously savage Mullah regime, now be informed that Ahmadinejad’s henchmen have a huge appetite for public hangings. Three men faced the gallows in the public glare after being convicted of smuggling related offences.

The public hangings have been widely criticized and are primitively savage. They are inhumane as they can dent the spirits of the masses. However Iran has justified the hangings as being in accordance with the Islamic Law or the Sharia.

//in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-...

Nearly 300 people have been executed in Iran since the start of the year, according to several non-governmental human rights organisations.

//www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15054

Three Turkmen have been killed and 300 have been arrested in Iran. Their families are not notified of their whereabouts. The 1,100,000 Turkmen are a major ethnic group in Iran.
//zaneirani.blogspot.com/2008/01/three-turkme...

From://plateauofiran.wor

From://plateauofiran.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/a-discussion-about-adultery-stoning/

1. Whether capital punishment, in general, should exist is debatable and I don’t think it is the sole issue here. Personally, I don’t believe in a death verdict/sentence for adultery.

2. Regardless of capital punishment and death sentence (as ultimate verdicts), the process of arriving at such verdict and the method by which the death sentence is carried out are equally important.

Are you aware that stoning prior to mullah rule was not part of the law in Iran? Bear in mind that I’m referring to 3000 year plus history of Iran, not just the Shah’s era. Do you also realize that the act of stoning is often performed by a group of people including children? Stoning is in fact torture which leads to death. It is a slow and painful death/execution. Stones used to hit the person must be of certain shape and size. Using big stones that can lead to instant death are against the Islamic law (sharia) in Iran.

Moreover, the basis for stoning a person is a ritual which is practiced by muslim pilgrims visiting Mecca. It is called “stoning of the Devil/Satan”. During this ritual, pilgrims must personally look for and gather appropriate shape/size stones, bring them back to an appropriate location and begin to throw them at a pretend-to-be devil as an act of denouncing and renouncing the Devil (Satan). However, there are vast differences between stoning a pretend-to-be-devil vs. a real person.

3. The judiciary, legal system and courts, in general, in Mullah ruled Iran are absolutely dysfunctional. Two different people can be sentenced to two different punishments for exactly the same crime depending on how much each one is favored by those in charge of passing the sentence. If stoning for adultery was to be applied across the board, then many of the ruling mullahs and their cohorts should have been stoned to death long ago. Not to mention that many of the articles which currently exist in Islamic government constitution are not adhered to or are generally so vague and codified that one can interpret them any way one wants to and is expedient. They are highly subjective. Regardless, stoning, as a form of punishment for a capital offense, is actually mentioned in IR constitution including articles 83, 102 and 104.

4. “what is valued in a soceity, what crimes constitutes a capital offense and why?” Adultery is not valued in Iranian society, but nor is stoning. Stoning is valued and enforced by Mullahs in the society. There lies the difference. However, I don’t dispute that certain groups actually enjoy it such as: Bassij thugs and those who get their kicks out of torture and killing of others. I consider them sadists and mentally unstable i.e. psychotic.

5. How do we define adultery in Mullah ruled Iran? Have you heard of temporary marriage “seegheh”? Under sharia (Islamic law in Iran) with a few words, you can become temporarily married to someone for any period of time. Women often practice it due to economic/financial hardship. Even married women, whose husbands may be unable to provide for them and the family because of drug addiction (Iran has a very high percentage of drug addicts) can be temporarily married in order to feed their family and children. Of course, “seegheh” to me is not only a legalized form of prostitution, but it can also be construed as adultery. Men in current Iran can have 4 wives at the same time. Additionally, men can have up to 12 “seegheh” i.e. concubines. Traditionally, the practice of polygamy and “seegheh” - an arab/muslim practice - are frowned upon by the mainstream in Iran and never existed in Persian society or culture, certainly not prior to Islamic laws being enforced in the society and in people’s personal lives.

In conclusion, I think your reasoning, as far as mullah ruled Iran is concerned is rather simplistic. And, I hope you will find the above informative.

Thank you for the well-researched documentation, Jammy,

actually I'm trying to make a different point.  There is a tacit but extremely effective triangular alliance in the United Nations between these three powers to prevent the death penalty from being abolished. They're not unsuccessful. What passed was only "symbolic", not "binding."  It was these three nations which spearheded the movement against abolishment, and it is because all three of their current government are totalitarian and bloodthirsty in essence. They simply do not have the regard for human life and individual freedoms (other than shopping, in the US) that the progressive countries have. There isn't a European country, east or west, that went against. The coalition of countries against rallied around them. Without their tacit alliance, the moratorium would've passed sooner and led to "binding" resolutions. These three governments are all completely out of synch with the best values of the Secular Enlightenment.There is no question that the IRI has turned execution into a macabre form of daily bread and circus. But that the U.S. under Bush could lead a coalition of SHARIA countries in ANYTHING having to do with law really gives cause to pause. And it is Bush's work. Don't forget his record of executions as Governor of Texas.

R: Jamshid (correction)

 True, Iran and then China have more death penalties per capita than the US because US judicial system is outdated, while the system in the dictatorial countries is not independent, except on the paper.

Remember millions of executions under 30-year-Stalin's rule, the show process of Nazi in 1944 against Col. Stafenberg and his companions and many others with different scale but by a dependent judicial system.

Good point, but...

... but there are difference between these countries and how they apply the death penalty.

US mostly applies the death penalty to captial crimes, eg, murder. China mostly applies it to captial crimes and political crimes too. Iran applies it to all of the above and religious crimes as well.

So the death penalty has its broadest sepctrum of application in Iran. That is why the per capita executions in Iran far exceeds that of even China.

According to Amensty International, in 2006, there were 53 people executed in the US, 1010 in China, and 177 in Iran.

US has a population of 300 million, China 1320 million (1.3 billion), and Iran 70 million (rounded). The number of executions as a ratio of the population is 18 per million in the US, 77 per million in China and 253 per million in Iran.

Note that IRI is executing three times more per capita than China is. Also we must remember that the IRI executes for political and religious offenses as well, hence the higher numbers.

One cannot compare the US executions (criminal crimes) with those in China. And you cannot compare the executions in the US and in China to those in Iran. Neither the US nor China execute people for religious offenses, nor do they stone people to death.

The IRI has taken captial punishment to an entirely new level.

No death penalty

Offences committed by an individual have mostly roots in the society. Education and Poverty are the most factors. In a case, the offence is not derived from these two factors, then, we have a moral factor. Such a factor is often derived from the collective consciousness, a phenomenon which can be related to our moral and spiritual evolution of society or species. When a judicial system does not consider these and other social or psychological factors of offence, this system is either depended to the ruling system like in Iran and China or is immorally outdated like that of some states in the US. Death or long imprisonment are not the fair solutions but a prison as long as a re-education is more adaptive to our state of evolution.

The Death Penalty Is a Form of Torture

The Death Penalty is torture in its ultimate stage. Torture of a nation in the hands of its government is in violation of human rights and humanity's moral code. Capital punishment for heinous crimes must be life imprisonment and imposed rehabilitaton, whereby the individual is deprived of the most cherished privilege a citizen can enjoy: social freedom. Countries that kill their own citizens kill hope for correction, rehabilitation, treatment, and recovery. Last but not least, the death penalty has not been proven to be a deterrent of heinous crimes.