John L Sheppard completely missed the thrust of my argument decrying capital punishment as a form of “justice”, and obviously misinterpreted what I actually wrote. Retreating into statistics is a well-known form of obfuscation exploited by people either unable or unwilling to articulate the hard realities of the topic at hand. This is all the more pertinent when such barbarism is the default punishment used by tin-pot dictators and their odious regimes. Giving in to primitive emotions is never a wise move, and creating more victims does not make for a just solution. As I wrote earlier, I am happy to debate workable, civilised alternatives to several states’ failure of moral principle.

Source: The Nation Bangkok October 29, 2018 18:00 UTC