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.

You right, long day and my eyes were crossed. :salute:

Yes.

The difference is what is part of the LAW, though.

In SA it is clearly against the law to practice an imaginary set of skills. The fact that morons of different religions also believe in witchcraft is unsurprising, they are after all idiots. It's the fact that it's part of a legal system that is troublesome. If some fundie moron doesn't vote for someone because they think that someone practices imaginary "arts," it is their right to do so. Arresting them for it would be another matter. Santa Fe, for example, is filled with left-wingers that believe in the healing power of crystals, various other "spiritual" new age type tripe, etc, ad nauseum. Equally stupid, but again, it's not part of state or federal law.

Regarding the US population, it's sort of meaningless. The more important stat would be the % of killers executed---which is still a vanishingly small, and statistically insignificant number. A killer in the US is more likely to die of disease than be executed.

You are shooting in the dark and wait what comes up in the morning or getting old in the bitter way?

This will come as a surprise, but I will perhaps come to tribesman's defense here. Anyone who is religious, and has a problem with this sentence seems not sufficiently religious to me. Unless maybe they are polytheists, or Jains or something.

People seem to forget that the penalty (as supposedly handed to humans directly by god) for violating 7 of the 10 commandments is... death. Stealing, adultery, dishonoring your parents, even keeping the sabbath... all carry a death penalty. When yahoos want the 10 commandments in courtrooms, do they realize that the penalty for cheating on your spouse is death (for both parties)? Silly is silly. Sorry.

Similarly, if the very notion of witchcraft is absurd to someone that believes in magical books, raising dead people, or countless other unsubstantiated magical events in any number of holy books... all I can say is that whatever algorithm you use to find witchcraft absurd, I can apply directly to any other magical belief with virtually no changes and pronounce them just as silly.

It is applying the same reasoning that was being used.
Simple isn't it.

Indeed, just another example of the age old bread and circus act.

left wingers?????? I would have though those new age spiritualists would be against party politics and outside of any of the meaningless lefty righty babble

Santa Fe is overwhelmingly democrat, and the few that are not are probably in the green party. It's politically left of San Francisco and NYC.

I add it because the yahoos worried about witchcraft in the SE US (right?) were right wing nuts. The left can be equally enamored of fantasy in the same (religious) vein, they just sometimes pick different religions. Note also that politically in the US, apologists for muslims are almost always democrats. I know countless people on the left here that hate fundie christians, but don't hate muslim sects that have doctrines equally, or even more literalist. Hate both, or neither.

the hairsplitting German in me can't help but to correct ;):

To make a fair comprehension you should only use the numbers from US states which have capital punishment; the murders that fall under the jurisdiction of said states. Then you also have to put the the murder rate into the calculations: 1/100000 for SA, 5/100000 for the US. Maybe only compare Texas and Saudi Arabis, as they both have a similar population size: this would be interesting.

Oh, and there are indeed some other offenses in the US other than murder, which can let you fry: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deat...s-other-murder

Personally, I know in which country I'd prefer to be on trial, better a dysfunctional justice system than a system where you can get convicted by "the testimony of two male witnesses" (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital...n_Saudi_Arabia)


PS: good to see you again on here, tater :salute:, greetings from the Penguin who thinks capital punishment in every country is barbaric, though the reasons in some are nuttier than in others.

I'm fine with getting rid of capital punishment as long as the murderer is deprived of all pleasures in life for his remaining life. Solitary. No TV, no books, just himself, and bare walls after appeals are done. before that, he can have books, etc., under the presumption he might possibly be innocent even though convicted. Once appeals are done (as speedily as possible, BTW), solitary. No parole, no getting out, except in a bag.

Do that and I'd be for abandoning the DP in civilian courts.

Nicely put!

My magical mystical thingy is OK, but your magical mystical thingy is wrong. :doh: You are right, it is rather silly when you think about it.

Yeas thinking can be difficult sometimes...after all they do what every average european did 1000 years ago.
No big deal.

Oh yeas.. try to compare now witch hunting to death penalty for murder...great exercise to watch.
Some small cultural difference when you think about it lol.