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Post by janet on Feb 16, 2008 9:43:24 GMT -5
Most prisoners on death row are guilty. Despite that fact, it's incumbent for society to look behind the crime, at the individual who perpetrated it. Death Rows in prisons are filled with the psychotic, mentally retarded, and those who haven't had a break in life from the day of their birth. To act as God, when "In God We Trust", is somewhat of a dichotomy. It is an abomination that an evolved society like the United States, meticulously plans to murder people. Is the government above the law? Murder is murder no matter how one chooses to look at it.
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Post by andie on Feb 16, 2008 17:05:08 GMT -5
The government isn't above the law they just created a law that when someone comitts murder a possible sentence can be the dp. Then again those who comitt murder know that. Most prisoners on death row are guilty. Despite that fact, it's incumbent for society to look behind the crime, at the individual who perpetrated it. Death Rows in prisons are filled with the psychotic, mentally retarded, and those who haven't had a break in life from the day of their birth. To act as God, when "In God We Trust", is somewhat of a dichotomy. It is an abomination that an evolved society like the United States, meticulously plans to murder people. Is the government above the law? Murder is murder no matter how one chooses to look at it.
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Post by happyhaddock on Feb 17, 2008 15:12:53 GMT -5
The government isn't above the law they just created a law that when someone comitts murder a possible sentence can be the dp. Then again those who comitt murder know that. But it hardly figures into their calculations. And the government created the law to give expression to the hatred too many Americans have for each other and their lust for revenge.
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Post by poseidon on Mar 2, 2008 22:07:29 GMT -5
happyhaddock, The death penalty is nothing but the feeling of revenge codified!The french scientist and anarchist Elisee Reclus said so in his booklet "La Peine de Mort."
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Post by happyhaddock on Mar 3, 2008 13:21:16 GMT -5
happyhaddock, The death penalty is nothing but the feeling of revenge codified!The french scientist and anarchist Elisee Reclus said so in his booklet "La Peine de Mort." “To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.” (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)"Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me," Proudhon proclaimed, "is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him to be my enemy . . . . Government of man by man is slavery" and its laws are "cobwebs for the rich and chains of steel for the poor." The "highest perfection" for free society is no government, to which Proudhon was the first to give the name "An-archy." He excoriated government in a passion of contempt. "To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied on, regulated, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, ruled, censored, by persons who have neither wisdom nor virtue. It is in every action and transaction to be registered, stamped, taxed, patented, licensed, assessed, measured, reprimanded, corrected, frustrated. Under pretext of the public good it is to be exploited, monopolized, embezzled, robbed and then, at the least protest or word of complaint, to be fined, harassed, vilified, beaten up, bludgeoned, disarmed, judged, condemned, imprisoned, shot, garroted, deported, sold, betrayed, swindled, deceived, outraged, dishonored. That's government, that's its justice, that's its morality! And imagine that among us there are democrats who believe government to be good, socialists who in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity support this ignominy, proletarians who offer themselves candidates for President of the Republic! What hypocrisy!"
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Post by poseidon on Mar 9, 2008 22:41:17 GMT -5
" Enemy of the death penalty , I must try to understand its origins first. Does one justly derive it from the right of personal defense? If it were so, it would be difficult to combat it, for each one of us has the right to self-defense and of defending one's own, whether against beast or against the ferocious man who attacks it. But isn't it evident that the right of personal defense can't be delegated, because it ceases immediately with the danger? When we take in our hands the lives of our kind, it means that there isn't any social recourse against them and that no-one can help us;even when a man places himself outside of others and causes his power to weigh upon citizens changed into subjects, these have the right of rising up and killing who opresses them. Fortunately, history gives us numerous examples of the revendication of this right. The origin of the death penalty, as it is actually applied by the States, is certainly vengeance, vengeance without measure, as terrible as hate can inspire it, or vengeance ruled by a sort of summary justice, that being, the law of retaliation. When the family was constituted, the individual took its place in order to exercise vengeance or the vendetta. It demande the price of blood:each wound is payed by another wound, each death by another death, and this is the reason why hates and wars are eternal. It was the state of a large part of in the Middle Ages, it was, in the nineteenth century, that of Albania, of the Caucasus and a lo t of other countries. However, a little order was introduced in the perpetual wars, thanks to the ransom.Individuals or families could ordinarily ransom themselves, and this type of transaction was fixed by custom.So many bulls, sheep or cows, so many chiming ecus or arpents of land were fixed for the blood ransom. The condemned man could also ransom himself upon making himself be adopted by another family, sometimes even by the one that he had offended. He could also become free by an outstanding action; finally, he could fall too low so that they might deign to punish him. It sufficed for him to hide himself behind a woman and unfortunately he was free, too vile in order that on might want to kill him, but more unfortunate than if he were covered with wounds. He lived, but his life was worse than death.
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Post by pumpkinpie on Mar 10, 2008 10:53:17 GMT -5
" Enemy of the death penalty , I must try to understand its origins first. Does one justly derive it from the right of personal defense? If it were so, it would be difficult to combat it, for each one of us has the right to self-defense and of defending one's own, whether against beast or against the ferocious man who attacks it. But isn't it evident that the right of personal defense can't be delegated, because it ceases immediately with the danger? When we take in our hands the lives of our kind, it means that there isn't any social recourse against them and that no-one can help us;even when a man places himself outside of others and causes his power to weigh upon citizens changed into subjects, these have the right of rising up and killing who opresses them. Fortunately, history gives us numerous examples of the revendication of this right. The origin of the death penalty, as it is actually applied by the States, is certainly vengeance, vengeance without measure, as terrible as hate can inspire it, or vengeance ruled by a sort of summary justice, that being, biblical law: Head for head, eye for eye, tooth for tooth." When the family was constituted, the individual took its place in order to exercise vengeance or the vendetta. It demande the price of blood:each wound is payed by another wound, each death by another death, and this is the reason why hates and wars are eternal. It was the state of a large part of in the Middle Ages, it was, in the nineteenth century, that of Albania, of the Caucasus and a lo t of other countries. However, a little order was introduced in the perpetual wars, thanks to the ransom.Individuals or families could ordinarily ransom themselves, and this type of transaction was fixed by custom.So many bulls, sheep or cows, so many chiming ecus or arpents of land were fixed for the blood ransom. The condemned man could also ransom himself upon making himself be adopted by another family, sometimes even by the one that he had offended. He could also become free by an outstanding action; finally, he could fall too low so that they might deign to punish him. It sufficed for him to hide himself behind a woman and unfortunately he was free, too vile in order that on might want to kill him, but more unfortunate than if he were covered with wounds. He lived, but his life was worse than death. Self Defense has nothing to do with the death penalty. By the time an execution takes place, the time for self defense or to defend another is OVER, it's in the past. Self defense doesn't come months later, years later, or days later- that would be revenge. "He lived but his life was worse than death" you say? Well, that's life, isn't it? We all have to go through it, live with our own actions, and it's no more yours, mine, or the state's job to take someone else's life, than it was the criminal's to take the victim's.
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Post by justice on Mar 14, 2008 1:32:13 GMT -5
You know, I have been reading about all these serial killers on the crime library, and I have to tell you I was kind of weary about the whole death penalty thing for a long time growing up. I thought it was just wrong but after maturing and having kids of my own my views have changed. After reading about the things some of these people do, I can do nothing but wish for the death that awaits them. There are some truly sick people in this world. Hell I worry about my own children all the time. If anything was to happen to any of them like the stuff I have been reading up on. Not only would I want the person responsible to pay with their life it would real hard not to do it myself.I recommend taking a look at some of the crimes these people have committed. Expecialy the ones that commit crimes against children.
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Post by happyhaddock on Mar 14, 2008 10:43:14 GMT -5
You know, I have been reading about all these serial killers on the crime library, and I have to tell you I was kind of weary about the whole death penalty thing for a long time growing up. I thought it was just wrong but after maturing and having kids of my own my views have changed. After reading about the things some of these people do, I can do nothing but wish for the death that awaits them. There are some truly sick people in this world. Hell I worry about my own children all the time. If anything was to happen to any of them like the stuff I have been reading up on. Not only would I want the person responsible to pay with their life it would real hard not to do it myself.I recommend taking a look at some of the crimes these people have committed. Expecialy the ones that commit crimes against children. Revenge is not justice - especially if meted out by the imperfect standards of humans. See www.innocenceproject.org/ and note that as of March 14, 2008 214 people have been EXONERATED by this organization alone. Many others have been freed, often from death row, by other groups. In all too many cases the original verdicts were confirmed by superior courts over and over again despite the actual evidence. See also Rolando Cruz and note that not one of the policemen or prosecutors who knowingly framed Cruz were convicted - and one is, IIRC, now the chief justice of the state! No one is protected by a corrupt system that convicts the innocent and lets the guilty go free, nor by a system that rewards the corrupt. First, fix that.
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Post by poseidon on Mar 19, 2008 21:39:49 GMT -5
You are right, happy haddock. The judicial system must be totally changed fot it to protect the innocent. What people must first understand re Proudhon and Reclus are that they are 19th Frenchmen, writing for their own times.
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Post by happyhaddock on Mar 20, 2008 11:15:02 GMT -5
You are right, happy haddock. The judicial system must be totally changed fot it to protect the innocent. What people must first understand re Proudhon and Reclus are that they are 19th Frenchmen, writing for their own times. But they could have written for the USA in these times. In all too many US states the police and prosecutors operate as if they are above the law, as if they are a special class of persons who can do as they please, like kings of old, and complain that they are burdened by annoying laws and decisions that hamper them in 'getting' whoever they are after. The way the system has been distorted to make it easy for them to do as they wish is shocking, yet all too many judges are just as accepting of the corruption of the system, routinely ignoring gross violations of the law. And the feds are worse.
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Post by janet on Mar 20, 2008 11:45:23 GMT -5
I agree that they could have written for the U.S.A. in these times. The instances of collusion between police, prosecutors, and even the state Departments of Corrections are abominable and shocking. There are legion cases of illegal search and seizure, confession obtained by threats and coercion, myriad examples. In a number of states in which I'm involved, the Departments of Correction directly 'feed' aggravating, incriminating information from files, correspondence, and other sources directly to the Office of the Attorney General. It's an overt disgrace.
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Post by poseidon on Mar 22, 2008 20:36:25 GMT -5
The law of retaliation from family to family could not evidently be maintained in the great centralized States, whether monarchies, aristocracies or republics. There, it's Society, represented by its government, king, consuls or magistracies, which is charged with vengeance or the pursuit of a crime in the name of society, as one says in the language of jurisprudence. But history proves to us that upon monopolizing the right to punish in the name of all, the State, caste or king is ,above all, occupied with avenging its particular injuries, and we know with what furor it has chased its enemies and what refinements of cruelty it has taken time to make them suffer. There isn't a torture that the imagination could invent and which were inflicted accordingly upon thousands of men; here , they burned on a small fire, elsewhere, they gave the poor devil forty lashes or they cut off his ligaments successively, at Nuremberg, they locked up the condemned in the body of the "Iron Maiden", reddened with fire; in France, they broke his legs or his hands and legs were tied and were attached to four horses, which , upon the king's order , pulled them until he was left a bleeding corpse; in the Orient, they impale the poor devils, in Morocco, they immure them upon only leaving their head out of the wall. And why all these vendettas? Is it to punish true crimes? No, always has the hate of kings and dominant classes been turned against the men who vindicated the liberty of thought and of action.
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Post by poseidon on Apr 6, 2008 21:40:02 GMT -5
The death penalty has always been at the service of tyranny. What did Calvin do, master of power? He burned Michel Servet, one of these men of scientific divination as one counts hardly ten or twelve of them in the history of all humanity. What did Luther do, another founder of religion? He incited his friends the lords to run on top of the peasants: Kill them, kill them, hell shall take them back sooner!" What did the triumphant Catholic church do? It organized acts of faith! It's she who lit the logs, who held the noble people of Spain under terror for three centuries. And recently when a free town, guilty of having maintained its autonomy, was reconquered by its oppressors, didn't we see these same oppressors kill men, women and children by the thousands and make use of the machine-gun in order to swell the pile of cadavers sooner? And those who took part in the massacre, proud of their work, didn't they come cynically to brag about it?
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Post by poseidon on Apr 14, 2008 17:04:47 GMT -5
But if the State is ferocious when it is a question of avenging an attempted wrong to its power, it brings less than passion in the condemnation of private crimes, and bit by bit that has made the State of applying the death penalty. The time is no longer when the hangman, dressed in red, makes his person shown behind the king, it's no longer the second person personnage of the State, it's no longer the "living miracle"as Joseph de Maistre called it; it has become the shame of society and doesn't let itself be known under its name. One has seen men cut off their right hands in order not to be forced to serve as hangman.
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