Wednesday 29 September 2010

US lacks drugs for executions!


According to the BBC executions in the US are being delayed due to a shortage of sodium thiopental, used in lethal injections!


"Officials in California are pressing for its first execution in over four years to go ahead on Thursday evening as scheduled, because the state's last remaining batch of sodium thiopental expires on Friday."
!!!

Maybe America can outsource executions to China?
They have proven credentials in the field, and the loss of jobs state-side would be minimal...

Maybe Iran can help, as a gesture of good will towards the US?

Update: Britain "saved" the day, drugs were imported from the old colonial masters... who stopped executions in the 1960s

2nd Update (Dec 16th 2010):

US inmate John Duty executed with animal drug!

A shortage of sodium thiopental in the US has led Oklahoma to use pentobarbital instead. Officials in the US state of Oklahoma have executed a prison inmate using a drug cocktail that includes a sedative typically used to euthanize animals.

John David Duty, 58, is thought to be the first US prisoner to be executed using the sedative pentobarbital.


Thursday 23 September 2010

Is the American lethal injection any better than the Iranian gallows?


The US are executing a woman in 24 hours.


The governor refuses that death penalty would be unconstitutional because Teresa Lewis has a very low IQ
No offers of asylum from Brazil like for similar cases in Iran?
Is the American lethal injection any better than the Iranian gallows?

Sunday 19 September 2010

Bertrand Russell


Happy Yom Kippur everybody! Let's celebrate with a slightly non-Kosher dish (thank you Philippe!): 

a 1959 interview of Bertrand Russell (pbuh!) on God.


"Well there can’t be a practical reason to believing what isn’t true. I rule it out as impossible. Either a thing is true or it isn’t. If it is true you should believe it and if it isn’t you shouldn’t. And if you cannot find out if it is true or isn’t you should suspend judgement. It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it is useful and not because you think it is true."


Bertrand Russell caricature