Nguyen & the death penalty

A dead man and thousands of legal dollars later, what have we learnt?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1521407.htm

Should the State Take Lives?
- Most of the time the State doesn't know what its doing. Why should we ever trust it with any one's lives? The death penalty is the utmost explicit form of state inflicted violence. No one should have the moral right to determine whether others should cease to live.
- Most of the time the legal system of the state is designed to benefit the power holders, the ruling class - It is culturally biased and ideologically biased. It is inheretantly unfair and injust in its fundamental set up. Why do you think there are more blacks in US prisons and more Maoris in NZ prisons?

Singapore - What developed economy?
- The post-war economic development and high education achievement has obviously made no impact on the social conscience of this supposedly developed country. Like other civilised societies such as China and the US they still punish people by death. Not just murderers that take lives, but economic torts.
- A country looses its ability to continue to flourish when its people are numb enough to not question. Singapore is one of those sterile police states when they are tied on a leash and pumped out as money making machines, bloodless and brainless.

Race
- Howard decides to go ahead with Prime Minister's XI cricket match on day of execution, and has been accused of being careless towards Nguyen because he is not Caucasion.
- Yeah I think that's true. But not uncharacteristic of JH nor white Australian psyche in general.
Why the bloody hell are they up and arms about Shapelle Corby getting 20 years, when for three years Nguyen's case has been mentioned quite a often in the media? Cos he's Vietnamese and not your girl next door. Vietnamese criminal deserves to rot in hell but ofcourse Shapelle's totally innocent cos she hasn't provided any evidence to proove that she's is actually innocent. So some human rights groups do a bit of a rah rah a month before he's hung and the rest of the public just shrugs it off.
- Personally I think its sad that he had to die, but there are many many thousands of others on death row around the world. Not mentioning others in "slow deaths" of poverty, starvation, torcher, despair.

Drug Trade Death Toll
- More ppl die of overdose than capital punishment, by the way. Other drug dealers die in hideous ways such as being gunned down on the side of the road or on remote hills. All over the world. Not stats recorded. You just don't hear about it cos its not sexy, and no body cares. They've learnt nothing from Nguyen being hung.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.