State prisons keep botching executions of inmates, prolonging death to obscene lengths of time such as nearly two hours in Arizona. How hard is it to kill a person? Israel has killed 1500 Gazans, all accidentally? Surely there’s a way to turn two wrongs into a right.
Calling the IDF
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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You’re a sick man, Ted. (but that’s not the only reason to read your cartoons…)
But it’s reason enough! 😀
Neither nitrous oxide nor carbon monoxide requires any special training to administer. If you were really interested in humanely ending the life of someone who had been judged by the community as completely unfit to live, there’s your method. How can I say that? Because many people use nitrous for dental procedures. They feel nothing. Lots of people are rescued from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning every year. The ones who recover invariably say the same thing: all I remember is that I got very sleepy. Do you know why you have a carbon monoxide detector? Because you can’t smell it, taste it, or anything else it. You will simply nod off and not wake up.
Thus, the pursuit of a “humane” method of killing someone is not the object of the exercise.
So the question becomes, what IS the purpose of the death penalty? Is it a quasi-religious fetish ritual?
I seem to recall that the Fred Astaire character in “On the Beach” committed suicide with carbon monoxide from his sports car in a sealed garage. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) 🙂
Imagine if he’d hanged himself. You could say he died dancing. … On the end of a rope.*
* I stole that one from the Three Stooges.
Perhaps – apropos the cartoon which follows – they could «buy locally» and ask the cops in Ferguson, Missouri to help out ? They certainly seem to be equipped for mayhem….
Henri