Why is it since the end of WW2, so many international laws have been broken?

As talked about even before the end of the Cold War, the only resort is to make use of the principles of power balance, especially concerning Iran and Israel, and as certainly helped to prevent war between INDIA AND PAKISTAN.

Indeed, during the Cold War, there was that strategic sideshow in the Middle East when Israel really broke the Code of Nuclear Deterrence which even Henry Kissinger had complained in a recently found report, that the balance of power among smaller ME nations had not only been destroyed but had given the Soviet Union, already with an arranged power balance with the US, the excuse to arm the Arab nations with Nuclear weapons.

Though thanks to our lucky stars the worst did not happen, the point is that there is now evidence that Richard Nixon was also against Israel going militarily nuclear.

So what we are faced with now using the power balance agenda, Iran should be allowed to go nuclear to prevent a pariah-like Israel not only using nuclear weapons against Iran in an initial strike, but also conventional.

The big worry is, of course, that with Putin’s Russia already building nuclear installations in Iran, Kissinger’s original concern might come to pass - because there is already proof that Israel’s present power position in the Middle East is illegal, Russia and possibly China, and even India may believe they have the right to protect Iran under International Law.

There is even reports that Iran might already possess nuclear warheads to fit her long-range rockets, no doubt illegally arranged, but certainly no worse than Israel’s illegal possession of atomic artillery right now.

Regards, BB, WA.

So this is where the usual suspects, RWDBs, trolls and wackos hang out when they have nothing better to do.

I think you'd enjoy starting your own blog where you can advocate just killing everyone you disagree with. That would solve your problem.

It's clear that none of the rabid rednecks here - including the French one - have read the actual article. Why would anyone suggest that the author is insincere or dishonest? There is no evidence for that in the article.

On the contrary, the author is obviously sincere in his abhorrence of capital punishment anywhere for any reason. He makes the point that the United States is in very poor company when it comes to the death penalty. Whoever said that the US has the most free and liberal democracy in the world needs to have a good look instead of repeating hoary old myths.

The French redneck seems to be willing to think less harshly of someone who, in the heat of emotion, unintentionally kills someone and is remorseful. Those who advocate the death penalty can claim no such defence. Capital punishment is precisely to kill someone coldly, intentionally and without remorse - in fact probably in Col's case with a frisson of dark and secret pleasure.

We live in a liberal democracy. That is a direct result of the Enlightenment and the deadly fights that went on about rights, freedoms, individuals' responsibilities and the restrictions of the powers of states and monarchs. It was a moral as much as a political and religious fight. The murder of citizens by the state for any reason has now been abolished by the citizens of almost all liberal democracies (amongst which you cannot count the Malaysian theocracy or the Singapore despotocracy).

The Enlightenment is now more than two hundred years old, if the news hasn’t yet filtered through to the particular rocks under which you live.

Only one problem with capital punishment. Sometimes the jury gets it wrong. Sometimes the police plant false evidence. That means the innocent get hanged.We need to avoid making fatal mistakes. That ends the argument about capital punishment.

Willis “in fact probably in Col's case with a frisson of dark and secret pleasure.”

That assertion conflicts with my previous posted statements re-

“Any death penalty should be administered with accordance to the gravity which such a sentence deserves, using the most “painless” methods possible.
An “execution” is not some sideshow which panders to those with a salacious interest in someone else’s suffering.”

So please advise, since we have never met and all you know of me is what you can read here, what judgmental resources have you relied upon to make such inferences to my “dark and secret pleasures” or is that just a bit of gutter post, deployed for its dramatic impact ?

HenryVIII – “Sometimes the jury gets it wrong.”

That is the risk with any media of judgment. We have no alternatives if we are to maintain a balance between social safety and personal liberty.

The greater likelihood is the guilty will go free. Despite my personal support of the death penalty, I am not advocating the dilution or amendment to any legal safety provision.

Col Rouge. I would be happy to bend my opinion in the case of known mass murderers and assorted genocidists who have clearly given orders to murder (Pol Pot, Pinochet, Franco, Saddam Hussein, Suharto to name but a few) and in the case of folk who wander into buildings and shoot or bludgeon others to death and where there is absolutely no doubt that they have done the job. But where the evidence is circumstantial-no death penalty. The police have been known to plant evidence, and as for the sort of circumstantial evidence that had Lindy Chamberlain convicted, which included a sound-deadening paint in her car being touted as blood-no death penalty. But its been recognised for a very long time that for your average murderer, the death penalty is little deterrence.