transmothraProTV Video, a Romanian private TV station, has a video of soldiers of the People’s Republic of China actually killing unarmed, harmless Tibetan refugees trekking through the snow on a pilgrimmage to see the Dalai Lama.
Who will stand up to this brutality? Who will make the PRC pay for their numerous despicable crimes against humanity?
Here in Ohio, in the latest botched execution, a convicted killer takes over an hour to die from lethal injection.
The deadly chemicals started to flow at 10:25 a.m., [prison spokeswoman Andrea Dean] said.
“But after about three or four minutes,” she continued, “the inmate was able to raise his head off the gurney and said, ‘It’s not working.’ ” The vein had collapsed, she said.
Is this cruel and unusual? Or is it merely the thought that counts? I am inclined to go with the former.
Now come on, should we really be killing people? Is it truly in our mortal hands to kill members of the tribe who have committed atrocities against other members? Who is fit to judge? We talk about the sanctity of life regarding unborn fetuses, which almost certainly have no awareness or consciousness, but what about real, proven, fully-formed human life?
I believe that there are better punishments out there; alternatives to taking life away from someone who may or may not have repented, who may or may not still have some good left in them… and especially when the certainty of guilt is within a shadow of a doubt.
Life is precious, and i just can’t believe that anyone – be it a killer, or a judge – has the right to kill another human being.
“Soldier killed detainee in violation of ROE“; “Soldier killed detainee while handcuffed”; “1 strangulation found outside isolation unit”; “1 blunt force trauma and choking, died during interrogation” (there are three of these); “Soldier drowned detainee, body not found”; and “died sleeping after interrogation.” (source)
To this day, no U.S. agent has been prosecuted for “torture” or “war crimes”:
“The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a torture-related death while in U.S. custody is five months — the same sentence that you might receive in the U.S. for stealing a bicycle. In this case, the five-month sentence was for assaulting a 22-year-old taxi-driver who was hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died,” said Goering. [emphasis mine -ed.]
“While the government continues to try to claim that the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody was mainly due to a few ‘aberrant’ soldiers, there is clear evidence to the contrary. Most of the torture and ill-treatment stemmed directly from officially sanctioned procedures and policies — including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,” said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International’s Americas Program Director. (source)
“When religions are practiced, as they are by a majority of those in developed nations, today, as a kind of nostalgic little ritual – a community event or an excuse to get together and not work – it doesn’t really screw anything up too badly. But when they radically alter our ability to contend with reality, cope with difference, or implement the most basic ethical provisions, they must be stopped.“Like any other public health crisis, the belief in religion must now be treated as a sickness. It is an epidemic, paralyzing our nation’s ability to behave in a rational way, and – given our weapons capabilities – posing an increasingly grave threat to the rest of the world.”