>I knew we could have neo-liberalism and free trade with rogue states, gays
>kissing on prime time TV,... but I didn't see how we could have that *and*
>an end to the death penalty...Life in a world of globalized capitalist
>relations only gets more and more interesting....
>
>Steve
It is usually wise on the internet to refrain from expressing strong opinions about events in another country, but hopefully the internet does break down insularity and may even puncture the US sense of having an overwhelming sense of security in its own economic might.
At least the development of global culture is having some effect of shaming England about the fascist element in its football fans.
All this is a preamble to say from the other side of the Atlantic what I hope is more than a mere prejudice, how utterly barbaric is US practice of the death penalty. At least in China it is perhaps understandable as a relic of feudalism in a society going through extremely rapid change and lacking more subtle control mechanisms over corruption.
In the US it appears to me to be just fascist. It plays to the most atomised sense of the isolated individual, supposedly each born free and equal and equally meant to be responsible before the bourgeois law (providing they can pay enough for defence lawers). It essentially fails to see the individual in context. It panders to gut populist electioneering and the crude relation of individual to individual as mere part objects. It shows a lack of organic civility which at least on the continent of Europe even christian democrats recognise.
Fundamentalist muslim states have the honesty to show the full horror of the process in public.
Such a practice does not exist in a class vacuum. The counterpart to having a presidential candidate who as governor has signed over 100 death warrants, is to enjoy the absolute bourgeois right to bear arms. This is to the great profit of the armaments capitalists, who have ruthlessly campaigned against rational social measures to control deaths on the grounds of atomised individual liberty. It therefore fits with this concept that those who kill people while mis-using guns, the minority of bad gun owners in contrast to the vast majority of "virtuous" gun owners, should themselves be killed. What a disgusting feature of a degenerate capitalist society.
Chris Burford
London