On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 08:00:10AM +0200, DagT wrote: > Den 25. juli 2011 kl. 04.39 skrev John Sessoms: > > > From: Eckehard Wegner > >> 2011/7/24 Ken Waller <[email protected]>: > >>>> I'll never understand the complete absence of dignity in terrorist > >>>> thought. > >>> I'd nominate this for a MARK ! if it sometrhing to do with photography. > >> Which in turn prompted my memory to dump before my feet Adorno and his > >> statement that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric... can > >> monstrosity really eclipse beauty? Nothing can bring back those killed > >> but rather than to dismiss it as the act of a lone nutjob, erect the > >> usual ugly memorial stone and move on IMO the best thing to do would > >> be to fill the island with the very spirit he was looking to > >> destroy... so in a sense poetry is IMO imperative. > >> > >> Sorry if I rambled > >> Ecke > > > > One thing that's disturbing me about all this is according to news reports > > I've seen, the maximum sentence he can get is 21 years. He should at least > > be locked up the rest of his life. > > We have a law that let us keep them longer if they are still a danger to > society.
This underlines a major difference between the US and European prison systems. The US sentencing is all about punishing the wrongdoer; European systems tend to be a lot more about protecting society. When I moved to the US (some thirty-plus years ago now) I was astonished to see testimony from the family of victims being given so much prominence at sentencing hearings. It just seemed out of place, almost saying that it was somehow more acceptable to murder people without families. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
