CRUELTY AND CAPITALISM

"Amnesty International on Tuesday called on Iran to abolish the "grotesque and horrific" practice of stoning people to death. Amnesty, which opposes the death penalty under any circumstances, said an Iranian man had been stoned to death in July last year for committing adultery, despite a moratorium being imposed on such executions in 2002. The woman he was convicted of committing adultery with still faces the threat of being stoned, a practice that involves the woman being buried up to her breasts in sand and then pelted with stones until she dies. "Amnesty International is calling on the Iranian government to abolish immediately and totally execution by stoning and to impose a moratorium on the death penalty," the rights group said in a 30-page report on the practice. "Iranian law prescribes that the stones are deliberately chosen to be large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately ... It is a particularly grotesque and horrific practice." (Yahoo News, 14 January)
It is difficult to quarrel with Amnesty's indignation, but the "grotesque and horrific" practice of starving people in a society capable of producing an abundance and millions of children dying for lack of clean water also seems "grotesque and horrific" to socialists. RD