Coming to the office this morning, I noticed this crowd of people demonstrating in front of the Prime Minister’s office chanting slogans and demanding the death penalty for the killers who killed a woman from their family.
An Arab man's attempt at bridging the cultural gap and trying to make a difference. Failing a lot. Succeeding once in a while.
Coming to the office this morning, I noticed this crowd of people demonstrating in front of the Prime Minister’s office chanting slogans and demanding the death penalty for the killers who killed a woman from their family.
Comments
Re(1): Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
Yeah. While I can of course understand the emotions that might cause the bereaved family to make such a demand, I don’t see how ending someone else’s life could do something to help.
Of course this is not a problem suffered only by Bahrain, or the Arab World. The protector of the “free world” approved of many such legal killings during his time as governer of Texas.
Re(2): Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
I got to endorse the above comments on the death penalty. There’s been enough killing in the Middle East – the region’s problems can’t be solved through executing people.
Is it right that Sheikh Isa was opposed to the death penalty – recognising exactly the moral implications of signing a death warrant and so refused to sign them. Although I understand he caved in on one occasion in 1996 – hence if you go to Amnesty International’s site Bahrain’s listed as retentionist.
But looking at the rightward drift on Bahrain’s political culture there’s bound to be a renewed emphasis on using the death penalty – no doubt the thin end of the wedge before the MPs start demanding all sorts of new and bizarre punishments.
Re(3): Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
It seems like a particularly bad idea to have capital punishment in a country that throws bloggers in prison for blogging. You need a set of laws drawn up by legislators who answer to the people to cover such crimes plus an effective system of impartial courts to enforce them and an appeal process to proof the verdicts. Until that system is in place, my advice is to cap punishment for murder at life sentences.
Steve
Re(2): Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
Chan’ad,
[quote]The protector of the “free world” approved of many such legal killings during his time as governer of Texas. [/quote]
It would be very educational for you to read some of the cases of murderers put to death in Texas. One guy raped his grandmother then beat her to death. Many kidnapped and raped children, then strangled them. Hunters found one little girls body when they noticed her Raggedy Ann doll hanging from a bush. They found one very pretty girls bones wrapped around a fence line, where she had been thrown. Then there are the ordinary murderers who kill somebody they know and are caught driving their victim’s car with the victim’s money in their pockets covered with blood. To be blunt, these people deserve to be executed.
We had life imprisonment for capital crimes before Bush, when the Democrats were in charge. It didn’t work. The Democrats kept springing the murderers from prison, even with life sentences. Life sentences in the US don’t really mean life sentences. They can mean 20 years in prison or much less. It is prohibited by law to tell juries this when they are sentencing criminals. Most jurors seem to think that sentencing a criminal to life in prison means that they will die in prison. In fact, most murderers in the US serve less than seven years in prison. Back in the 1980s, a study showed that 625 convicted murderers were in prison on their second offense. That’s 625 victims who died due to the lack of a death sentence.
Texas brought back the death penalty after the case of Kenneth McDuff. Back in 1968, he kidnapped three high school kids, shot the two boys and raped the girl until he and his buddy were tired of her. He strangled her with a broomstick on a dirt road. She was 16.
Texas sentenced him to death. He got last minute stays of execution four times before the Supreme Court prohibited the death penalty in 1972, commuting his sentence to life. After fifteen parole hearings, he got paroled in 1989 when the Democrats decided to free up space in prison. McDuff started killing women within a couple weeks of his release.
He was convicted again of the murder of three women. The police think he killed at least eleven. We’ll never know. One was a 28 year old woman washing her car. Another was a pregnant 22 year old cashier in a convenience store. And on and on.
Texas sentenced him to death again. This time, with no Democrats in power to stop it, he was executed. The American experience is that liberals will work, a step at a time, to free murderers. The only way to keep proven murderers off the street is to execute them.
You have your facts mixed up with respect to Bush approving executions as governor of Texas. The governor has no such power to approve or reject death sentences. Death sentences are imposed by juries reviewing the evidence in a trial. It goes through an institutional review that usually lasts ten years. The only power the governor has when reviewing death penalty cases is to approve a one-time thirty day stay of execution. By the time it gets to the governor, the facts have pretty well been wrung out of the case. There’s no fact left unturned. They are guilty.
Defense lawyers make spurious special pleas to get these thirty day stays. Only one death row inmate that I know of got one in Texas. He claimed that DNA evidence would prove his innocence. The DNA test proved he was the rapist and killer of the victim. But he got another thirty days of life at the people’s expense.
Chan’ad, you just might consider that a lot of the facts you receive there at the other end of the world are distorted to further a wrong-headed agenda against Bush and America. You can thank me for setting you straight. And you’re quite right, Bush and America are the defenders of the free world. The Wahhabi headcutters would rule if we did not oppose them with force just as the Kenneth McDuffs would terrorize Texas if we did not execute them.
Now where should I send your Bush bumper sticker?
Steve
[Modified by: Steve The American (Steve) on November 28, 2004 05:11 PM]
Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
Try here for more pics and details: [url=http://www.ahraralbahrain.com/vb/showthread.php?p=5546]link[/url]
Things seem to be awful quiet on M.tv recently…. where is Steve when we need him?
Re: Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
I don’t agree with their demands, because:
1. They haven’t even gotten to trial yet.
2. They don’t know exactly what happened and who killed the woman, rest her soul.
3. Judging by the inefficiency and ill-training of the criminal investigation department, it is highly likely that they will implicate and convict the wrong party.
4. I am against capital punishment. It doesn’t serve anything.
5. Not to belittle their case as they have the full right to demonstrate whenever they want, but I really can’t see the reason for the demonstration in the first place. Capital punishment is not banned in Bahrain, it is just almost never applied because of the clemency of the King.
6. This demonstration is clearly racist. They assume that an Indian killed the woman, and in one of the placards you see the following written: “they imprison them for a year, send them back home then they go change their passports and come back again!”
Re: Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
[quote]Things seem to be awful quiet on M.tv recently…. [/quote]
Chan’ad.
If you understood America(just kidding!) you would know that the “SILLY SEASON” is now in full swing. So sadly Mahmood.tv must take a back seat for other things such as EBAY.COM for the next 20 some odd days.
Re(1): Capital Punishment Demonstration in Bahrain
That’s right. My Christmas gifts are all mailed out. I’m trying to get my Christmas cards out. Now I’m facing the dreaded office Christmas party. They have decent food but no cute single women work in my home office, so it’s a bummer. Nobody enjoys Corporate Fun.
Steve
I’m in favor of the death penalty in principle, but if the state is going to kill someone, I demand certainty of his guilt. The Rolando Cruz case in Illinois, for example, shows that an overzealous prosecutor and police are quite capable of framing an innocent man when they’re under pressure to resolve a highly-publicized case.
In practice, I think I would reserve the death penalty for those cases where it really could deter a repeat of the same crime, such as those Mutaween who murdered the girls in Mecca by driving them back into a burning school instead of letting them leave the building without their Hijabs. I also consider it appropriate to kill a political figure whose continued existence can provide a rallying point to his followers: what the Italians did to Mussolini, and what the Romanians did to Ceaucescu, for example.