United Nations Human Rights Council reviews Japan

Isn’t the U.N. Human Rights Council an oxymoron just like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence?

If it’s not, then it should be.

The U.N. Human Rights Council doesn’t have much credibility for anything as far as I’m concerned since several countries with notorious human rights records have headed that non-elected body in the past.

Personally, I support the death penalty.

As far as Japan is concerned, a majority of people there support the death penalty. The problem with Japan using the death penalty is that the system has been long criticized for being complex, nebulous, and seemingly arbitrary. I’m sure that a lot of people in Japan wouldn’t shed a tear if Shoko Asahara and the others responsible for the sarin gas attack were executed.

That’s not to say that the death penalty system here in the U.S. is above reproach. It isn’t, not by a long shot. Texas does tend to execute the most prisoners year after year, so the State of Texas does come under criticism for being a little too eager to execute convicted murderers. However, it should also be understood that many people, especially here in Texas, are tired of what they view as lenient sentences for perpetrators of violent crimes. For example, notorious murderer Charles Manson had his death sentence overturned in the 1970s, and now spends the rest of his days in prison.

Now, as for Japan, this could all change as Japan switches over to the jury system for trials and starts to adopt more of the so-called Anglo-American judicial system. Does anyone know when this is supposed to occur?

Except that one is done at the discretion an individual, unjustly robbing the life of an innocent victim, while the other is the fulfilment of a social contract which everyone must albeit to and which the offender has knowingly broken.

It’s easy to throw famous sayings around without context, but often the context is what matters.

That said, I don’t think that the death sentence is “fair” either, but then again I don’t think that fairness is obtainable or even desired in certain situations. But I would argue that it serves a useful purpose or permanently removing harmful members of the society who have proven themselves to be immune to rehabilitation.