Last time I checked, Russia still had the death penalty. I think it also still qualifies as "an advanced industrial country," sort of. I think Ukraine might have it also, similarly sort of qualifying, and maybe Belarus also, with the authoritarian Lukashenka in charge.
Since this is my third post of the day I'll combine another issue on here, namely about the Milton/Tolkien thread. The link between the two shows up in the much less widely read _Silmarillion_, published in 1977 after Tolkien's death with editing by one of his sons, not the more popular _Lord of the Rings_. Tolkien does a plain-out steal of _Paradise Lost_ which annoys Carrol Cox for good reasons. It may be that this is too obscure for this list and so I apologize. Carrol and I have both read a lot of Tolkien and have discussed various aspects of his work at some length offlist, where we probably should stay. I have partly gotten back to thinking about it because I am reading _Lord of the Rings_ to my nine year old daughter. For those who don't know, Tolkien was a conservative but anti-fascist English Catholic. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thursday, March 04, 1999 3:35 PM Subject: Re: Death Penalty
>K. Mickey
>>>I just wonder why death penalty seems to attract even some leftists in
>>>America. It's not the same elsewhere, is it? The popularity of death
>>>penalty must be related to the
>>>popularity of anti-abortion sentiments via
>>>moralism/individualism/anti-hedonism routes.
>>
>>I don't know if the death penalty is popular in Asia, but both China and
>>Japan enforce the death penalty. Japan is the only advanced industrial
country
>>other than the USA to use the death penalty, albeit very rarely in
comparison
>>to American practice. The PRC executes fairly large numbers of convicted
>>criminals. And of course abortion is quite widespread in both countries,
>>even compulsory under certain circumstances in China.
>
>My point is, however, in America death penalty seems to attract even some
>*leftists* (as can be seen on this list) whereas in Japan no leftist seems
>to endorse such a position.
>
>Yoshie
>