SGdiehard,
I am not unrreasonable.
2-4) I say Forbes' and Ariel's posts are lacking in substance not
because they disagree with me - FYI, I'm perfectly willing to
engage or even accept another point of view, and I make that clear
in this forum when I answer people's posts with "I see" or "I
agree" or "yes" or "I see your point" - but because the weakness of
their argument can easily be proved from reference to linguistic
material on logical fallacies provided by secondary school or
University. I have spent quite a sizeable portion of my post
discussing Ariel's inaccuracies, and I have said, in fashion, that
Forbes' letter is so short that it would probably score a 2 in an
SAT exam (which I am taking on Dec 3). :mregreen:
IMHO, if my character was that which you assume me to possess, then
I would be calling *your* posts insubstantial and refusing to
answer them, rather than providing you detailed, if unclear,
analyses to each section of your post.
6) I'll reply to this paragraph later, because I need to look for
Ariel's letter.
7) Please don't put words into my mouth. 
10) Saying that a student didn't do his CME homework properly is
not the same as saying that he didn't do his CME homework
peroid.
11) America is a federation of states which is less united than u
think. Half of the USA is retentionist; the other half is
abolitionist. In many ways, in fact, the USA appears to be a
microcosm of the UN.
13) I was using Heroin as an example, not ecstasy. Nonetheless,
even for ecstasy, if companies like GSM started to market new
medicinal products that had the same effects, but not the same
side-effects and addictive capability, as the constituents of
(illegal) ecstasy pills (i.e. amphetamine, ketamine, FXM, ephedrine
etc.), then probably we wouldn't have to worry about ecstasy pills
as a problem, since there would be no more demand for them.
15)
17) And the relevance of this to your quote is... ??? 
19) I do respect what they are doing for me. You seem to have
misunderstood the section you quoted.
21) Jeez, I hate the condescension of "y r too young". Why don't
you just explain to me, if you want to make a point. But anyway,
however an adult can shoot a drug traffficker, nonetheless it is
unhealthy for his / her child to in/directly experience the
violence. So anyway ...
23) Well, giving them the right to survive is only one part of the
larger picture. Clearly, if we do not find a way to integrate them
back into society, they will be compelled to re-commit their
crimes, and social integration also happens to be an essential
requirement of helping ex-convicts live out their lives as useful
and law-abiding citizens. But then of coruse, it takes 2 hands to
clap - having one without the other is fully useless. There is no
point in helping a dead man re-integrate into society, or to spare
a man's life in the barest sense but isolate him from the community
such that s/he has no alternative except to seek social security
(which IS NOT available in Singapore since the govt likes
ruggedness so much) or commot crime, than blame him/ her for being
lazy or using his/her example to apparently prove that "many
criminals repeating crimes after jail". Kind of like the pot
calling the cattle black, eh?
25) That's the problem with retentionists: the victims are always
innocent, true, but isn't there a possibility that the convicted
accused is innocent too, say framed or whatever? After all, police
are also human beings; tehy may misinterpret information or come to
incorrect conclusions based on extrapolations from incomplete
information. Judges are also not perfect: Seriously, does YPH look
like a saint to you? Judges are people too, and they can make
mistakes in judgement; experience reduces the chance of making
mistakes, but it does not eliminate that possibility.
Blindly following a trend is indeed unhealthy, but so is blindly
rejecting to follow all trends per se. At the end of the day, we
need to appreciate the fact that a trend means the presence of a
huge mass of people, and that there must be a certain strong
attractive force to bind so many people to one cause. In the Death
Penalty's case, unlike in the case of teenage idols, the cause is a
moral cause, and moral causes are seldom incorrect because they
base themselves on caring for the welfare of others.
IMHO, abolitionists recognize that the attitude is just as
important as the physical legislation itself, thus they define 2
forms of abolitionism : totally abolitionist and abolitionist in
practice. A totally abolitionist country has scrapped laws for the
Death Penalty, whilst a country which is abolitionist in practice
has not scrapped the Penalty, but nonetheless has ceased performing
executions for a relatively long number of years (eg. 25 yrs) ,
thus signalling a change in mindset and attitudes of the government
officials, and sometimes even the people of those countries.
27) Well, you certainly aren't abolitionist.
Can you prove that the following laws are just: Sedition Act, Land
Acquisition Act, Newspaper and Printing Presses Act, just to name a
few? (This is not a rhetorical question, jic u think it is.) I have
no doubts that our laws are fair in that they dole out equal
punnishment to all those convicted, but fair laws are not
necessarily just laws.
29) Don't try and twist my words. Needs are excessively strong
desires in the case of abstract principles: justice (supported by
the retentionist camp) as as abstract a concept as human dignity
(supported by the abolitionist camp). When I say or imply lack of
awareness, I mean lack of awareness of facts. Facts in this case
doesn't just mean statistics proving the presence or absence of the
DP's effect, or the financial costs or savings incurred by it, but
also means knowing and understanding and empathising with convicts
on the Death Row, the executioner who apparently can't find a
suitable replacement, and the CJ, who to his personal credit, did
feel moral uneasiness at sentencing Vignes Mourthi to the DP. Our
press and local media do not cover such perspectives enough. It is
through the set of facts provided to the person that makes the
person see the need or lack thereof for the action or policy to be
implemented. In such respect, I have to say that AI officials have
more experience than you, me or even perhaps the government in such
awareness, since they take part in prison inspections and full
court hearings with other international organizations. Sometimes,
they even interview the various people involved.
I am not conducting a fallacy of gross generalization, because I
acknowledge that it is the majority, and not the entire, population
which is politically apathetic. And anyway, we can prove that. Even
looking at SGForums alone, there are many more forumnites in the
other forums combined than in this one.
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