Of course one argument for the other side might be the difference in the reasons given for the executions and the crimes of the executed. It's been a long time since we exersized the death penalty for witchcraft.

Treason is still on the books for execution in the US. The only crime on the books that does not need felony murder to be eligible.

I believe it is 743 per 100,000 is the incarceration rate here in the US. 178 per 100,000 in Saudi Arabia.

US population 323 million and change. 2.3 million inmates. .001% executed

S A population 27 million and change. 48,060 inmates. 16% executed

I was never great with #'s so if I am off please correct.

Going from you figures, I get 0.178%. I looked at those figures and did my own sums yesterday before posting, but didn't post my results - off the top of my head (cba to do it all again) and they were both in the 0.something but I thought it was even less than .001% for US.

lol
well that's one of her many manifestations :03:

Ok, was never great with decimals, but even with your math, there is a huge discrepancy.

But executions are still executions, whatever the 'law' broken in the first place. My point is that the US, as a whole, cannot dictate to or look down on, or tut disapprovingly at Saudi if the US does the same for a broken law.

And your witches don't go through the judicial system - they have vigilante mobs burning down their houses and baying for blood. I've seen no end of films showing such actions, so it must be true. :O:


I'll just point out that I'm quite right-wing in my philosophy, and I'm all for death penalties under the right circumstances - I'm just pointing out the hypocracy. :yep:

i do not think it to be hypocritical.

While there are strong arguments against any death penalty, it is not the case that all death penalties are thereby equal and it is just your stupidity to break the law.

There is a huge difference between having the death penalty for murder and having the death penalty for witchcraft or blasphemy.

Actually, the US population is 312 million.

Since you decided to approach this problem scientifically:

http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/witch2.gif

And my point was that there is a very large difference between executing someone for violently killing several innocent people and executing someone for speaking their mind, or even for the trumped up charge of 'witchcraft'.

Not that I'm for Capital Punishment, or against it. I see the arguments for both sides and waffle back and forth on the issue.

In the US, people get executed for some murders. A relatively small subset of murders, in fact. This is after trials, appeals, etc, ad nauseum.

In Saudi you are comparing the US executions for (particularly heinous) murder to execution for WITCHCRAFT. This is not even "thought crime," as there is no such thing as witchcraft. They are executing people for what is by definition nothing.

We in the US have every right to look down on them for this. In the last few years the number of executions in the US has been in the mid 40s. Call it 50 for slop.

There are over 18,000 homicides per year in the US.

Call it 15,000 killers for slop (everything I do here is increasing the US murder rates). So we bump off 50/15,000 = 0.33% of all murderers.

SA seems to execute a similar number of people, but I cannot get get stats on the number of people convicted of capital crimes (and not sure if everything gets counted), but they seem to execute 0.1% of inmates incarcerated for all crimes put together (the US stat for this is 0.000002% of all inmates (add a couple zeros to get the % of the pop at large magnitude)).

In short, the rate the US executes killers in in the same order of magnitude that SA executes people for no reason whatsoever.

Can you remind me which nation had a political candidate not long ago making a TV appearance to reassure voters she was not really a witch?

Does not matter...there still is nothing to substantiate witch craft exists. Delusions of gradeur, wizards, warlocks only exist within the mind, in film and books. Vampires do not exist either but people like to believe they do. Some practice being a vampire. I'm not sure what practicing does for them. Maybe I will go see a viewing of Twilight.

So its a bit like God then?:03:

You side stepping again? :hmmm:

I don't know. There are the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are quite interesting. Enough for someone to seal them and hide the containers. A lot of work for Harry Potter books of the time :hmmm: No one has found any Witchery Scrolls that I'm aware of. Perhaps the right cave has yet to be discovered. :hmmm:

Fact remains the beheading was nothing but unsubstantiated claims of witchcraft. But I guess it was all in good fun in their eyes.