[lbo-talk] capital punishment in Iran

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 4/27/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 27, 2007, at 1:38 PM, Lenin's Tomb wrote:
>
> > On 4/27/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >> [hanging people from a crane so they take 10 minutes to choke to
> >> death...lovely]
> >
> > It's atrocious.  But, if I may add to that obvious assertion one
> > further: death from electrocution can take as long (say if the heart
> > is still beating five minutes after the first shock has been
> > administered, they'll go ahead and have another go), and being fried
> > isn't necessarily easier on the senses.  I don't know if lethal
> > injection is any better come to that, what with the prolonged
> > armageddon of lungs collapsing and heart stopping.  And the US has
> > repeatedly scored way higher than Iran in the global executions stake.
>
> No disagreement from me on the horrors of the U.S. love for capital
> punishment (or the penchant to criminalize and incarcerate). What
> annoys me are the repeated assertions coming from some quarters that
> having an avowedly anti-imperialist government with a populist who
> mouths ineffectual populist rhetoric makes a society somehow good or
> admirable.

But you have no problem with people who admire America, such as Noam
Chomsky, despite what its government does in the world as well as at
home, nor do I hear you going on about how guilty, ashamed,
embarrassed, etc. you feel living here.  You seem to take America in
stride, while you can't say the same about Iran.  You have a problem
of blindness that comes from nationalism, it seems to me.

As for Iran, compared to the state of affairs before the Iranian
revolution, the country today is over all much better, and probably
most Iranians think so, even taking death penalty into account, just
as the Chinese, despite their country's death penalty, do (neither
people, like the Americans, may not be all that opposed to capital
punishment either, as Emadeddine Baghi's professed trouble lining up
even reformists behind his campaign testifies in Iran -- anti-death
penalty reformers in all three countries have a long way to go).
-- 
Yoshie