Death Penalty - Lithuania

"Death Penalty" is a tricky question. I even dare to say that it is the hardest question that literally touches the minds of each one, who dare to claim being human. Personally I had the various musings on that theme, therefore I am exceptionally happy for that’s the past already. Though it has taken some time to grasp consciously what it means to be the Catholic but I became free from confusion of the thoughts about the revenge that people name as the justice ultimately.

Death Penalty ... I was warned against a danger of indulging in the deep breathing on a street in a busy town. However, I have opened my window towards the world. My curiosity overcame the fear of nasty smell that was disguised under the beauty of the modern design and I was richly rewarded. The wonderful chirping of a tiny bird blanketed out the roar of the motors. I was looking at the rapid stream of cars, but I saw the wonderful picture, the smiling portrait of the sunbeam, the divine sparkle that washed my eyesight and put me into the wonderment. In a fraction of a second, I was freed from the local prejudices and the divine love stretched out my hands. I joyfully embraced the whole world.
We see not what is touched by us, but what flows from the heart. This outlook opens a door into the world of eternal light that knows no shadows.

I am not going to rewrite the Bible. We all will dye one day and no one knows where that will happen. However, the Christians know that the death is not the end but the exam, the door into the eternity. We all were worthy of the death, but Jesus was crucified for we could enjoy the eternal life. That puts everything in a new light.

However, do we comprehend what the acceptance of God's caring love means in practice?
Do I myself participate in the sharing of the divine light?
How does my own words relate to my actions?

Thank you for the project "One at all" I see it as a horizontal line of the Christian Cross where the vertical symbolize our relationship with God and the horizontal line reminds the need to recognize myself in the eyes of other, to name the foreigner my dear brother in spirit for to enjoy indeed the life.

I am sorry just for one. I am writing with a vocabulary in hand and therefore my Lithuanian-English may fail to express in words what is burning in my heart, yet I hope you will understand me right. I will be happy to answer any of your questions.

When we meet eye to eye, the smile decorates our faces by itself, and the hearty Hi joins us in a hug of itself. So our works reveal our heart and verify the statements we are making. Life on a web has some specific. Prior sharing our lights, we must log into the forum. However, I am sure this wouldn’t be the obstacle. We will make the exchange of our links for could name ourselves the members of “One at all" project in full sense of a word.
Thank you.

Death Penalty - United States

I agree with my Finnish mate that invoking the death penalty only mirrors the same horror that has been done by the orginal crime. What troubles me in the USA is how feverently the Right To Lifer's (anti-abortionist) are usually in favor of the death penalty.

I don't know if I am for it or against it in theory but in practice it makes no sense. When is a life deemed so worthless that the tax payers of our country can kill them with the consent of our law and govenrment?

Strangely, suicide is illegal in most states of our country. So, if you commit some kind of crime it would be illegal to kill yourself but the state can do it for you. Sometimes the USA is a constant contridiction and it makes us all look like assholes to the rest of the world.

Death Penalty - Malaysia

Well... I'm posting this with my limited knowledge. I'm just posting it from my perspective.

It's rare to hear death penalty in Malaysia. You might heard of death penalty in Singapore before where they sentenced an Australian because of drug smuggling a while back that caused a stir in the media. Also in Indonesia, the Bali Nine case. So far, I had not heard any from my own country. However, bringing in drugs to Asia is a big NO NO, you can easily be slapped with death penalty if you are that "lucky".

I heard that our prison is over crowed now. Crimes are increasing nowadays. Everyday snatch thieves; everyday pick pockets; everyday rape cases; almost always see murder cases in newspapers lately. It's so sad. These criminals got caught wouldn't be executed, I mean for murder cases. Since there are different degrees of murder, some will end up with death penalty, some don't. Even with these, with the loopholes in the laws, one can easily escape from being sentence a death sentence.

We, as civilians always hope that those murderers will get a death sentence especially those that "rape and kill", "rob and kill", "snatch and kill(e.g they snatch a woman necklace and she fell down, knock her head, comatose then die)". Sadly, they don't get this punishment with a few twists here and there and they are spare from death sentence.

It's sad that these things happen nowadays. The used to be a peaceful place is no more that safe anymore. Everyone is worry about their own safety. I'm quite worry and paranoia when I'm out there on the street. Thank God, I'm OK so far, nothing happen to me.

Anyway, I hope this will not turn foreigners off too visit my country. With this post, I might get flame by people from my country because they will think that I'm painting a bad picture of my country but this topic is a very hot topic everywhere in the coffee shops, streets, forums etc. even if I don't talk about it, it's everywhere in the WWW especially those local forums, local online newspapers and even bloggers are talking about it, so it's never a secret.*PEACE*


~~~Posted by, Sweet Surrender~~~

Famous People - Brazil

Good topic! Lighter then the other one, or so we´d get too serious!

Brazil has some personalities.

We have a world know writer, Paulo Coelho. All the critics and intelectuals don´t like him, they say that he´s not a good writer. The discussion became even more serious when he was admited at the "Academia Brasileira de Letras", something like "Brazilian Academy of Writers".

Machado de Assis: the founder of the Academy, one of the greatest writer of all times all over the world. Everybody should ready it!

Fernando Meireles, the director of "City of God", and "The Contant Gardner".

Walter Salles, the director of "Central Station" and "Motorcicle Diaries"

Oh, difficult to mention just some of them without the fear of forgeting any... We have Pelé, Gisele Bünchen, Fernanda Montenegro, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former president), Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Ivan Lins, Carmen Miranda.

Oh, we also have a new "personality" - Bruna Surfistinha (ex- prostitute that is making a big sucess here, and her best-seller book is going to be release all over the world).

Oh, I´d like to say a lot about each one of them!! If you want to know a little bit more, just ask.

Famous People

I was checking the list of members and I realized it's a very eclectic group, I'm sure there's a lot of differences between our every day lives but I just don't know too much about what is going on in the rest of the world... sorry, I'm that clueless.

Thinking that we need a lighter topic, I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about famous people in our lands: Is there a person in your country that the whole world knows him/her? Is there an artist, writer, performer, sports person from your country that can be recognized pretty much everywhere on the planet? Or maybe he/she is very famous for all the wrong reasons, but hey, he/she is from your country after all... Come on, tell us about him/her.

Death Penalty - Argentina

I keep saying that from Mexico's border to the south, things are all the same, and reading through the posts I think I am, sadly, right again... It would be really interesting if someone would compare the growth of the country's population against the penitentiaries' population. I'd bet money that the latter is quite higher.

My parents have a small business, and they have been robbed several times. Governments change, things change, and they still get robbed. My mother has had a gun pointed to her head while a complete idiot threatened to shoot her if she didn't open the cash register... luckily, that story doesn't have a tragic ending, but it was close to that.

As you might have guessed by now, I think we need to have strong laws, and strong punishments, so we keep the bad guys away from the hard working good guys. What I really don't know is if installing a death penalty would make things better. The US has it, and I don't see them making any progress.

What we really need is a plan to educate people, and I don't mean elementary education, I mean all sort of education, including sexual education. If you had a huge family to feed and no food on your table, what would you do? Would you steal to feed your children? But one thing is stealing food, and another is getting a gun and stealing money...

To makes things worse, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that jails are not achieving their goals. The ones who survive their jail-time, get out with a degree in murder, assault, and extorsion...

Death Penalty - Mexico

wow!
In Mexico the situation is so similar to Venezuela and Brazil that is scary. Indeed prisions are overcrowded, there is no death penalty and the system has so many holes and contradictions in it that it's sometimes almost imposible to put someone in jail. Particularly, if this "one" is a "powerful one".

See? So you get the small fish in jail and the big fish are still out creating the proper situations for crime in large scale. Here I'm talking about drug traffic, and some other organized mafias.

I used to belive that death penalty might be an option. Eventually as I got a little more of spiritual insight I got to the point where it seems to me that indeed if we go "and eye for and eye" in the end we will be nothing but blinded people.

It might sound weird, but after all, the probable solution for crime is not in the punishment but in creating the conditions for the development of a healthy society. Of course , this can't take place as long as we keep ignoring our spiritual selfs and leaving spirituality to religious and esoteric practices. If we keep ignoring this, we will continue seeing and thinking of ourselves as incomplete beings. An incomplete being can't expect a healthy, and fully alive being who takes care of himself ( herself) and of the world he/she lives in.

Writen by Edmeé

Death Penalty - Finland

In Finland the maximum punishment is 12 years in prison. Death penalty is not even discussed as it's considered immoral and barbaric. If you kill a killer, what is the difference between you two? The saying: "eye for an eye until the whole world is blind" says it all.

Prison conditions in Finland are humane and violence is rare. Prison sentences are also quite short. I believe the average being somewhere around one to two years for the first timers (if you even have to stay in prison at all) and four to six years for repeat-offenders, murder convictions excluded but manslaughter punishments included.

There has been much talk in Finland about our punishments being too soft, especially considering certain crimes, like rape. Rapists often get a conviction of one to two years with an immediate probation!

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

What do you think? Should the punishment be as cruel as the crime or a chance for society to try and change the criminal in a positive way.

The latter is what the prison sentences are about in Finland; education, work... Long sentences easily alienate prisoners from life outside the walls, making it hard to get hold of day to day life after their release and in this way making it more probable that they will break the law again.

Death Penalty - Brazil

Reading about the situation in Venezuela, I thought I was readind how the things works in Brazil. It´s EXACTLY the same. No death penalty, and 30 years is the max of time that a prisioner can get. But if you have at least a College/University, you have the right to be in a special jail. Anyway, if you have a good behaviour on the jail you can get out only spending 1/3 of the sentence. Besides all that, our law has a lot of "breaches", so the lawyers can find them to let the criminals free.
I really don´t know if I agree with the Death Penalty, but I´m pretty sure that I would if something happends with somebody close to me. In some cases I would consider it... when the criminal confesses the crime, and it´s a terrible one, for example. But I really don´t know.
My friend used to say, translating to english: "Human rights for right humans".

Death Penalty - Canada

In Canada we do not have the death penalty. To show how severe a crime is Maximum sentences are utilized.

The maximum penalties in the Criminal Code are designed to deal with the worst-case offender in the worst circumstances. The most severe maximums are 14 years and life imprisonment. Many Canadians are not aware that numerous offences other than murder carry a maximum life sentence. For example, extortion, break and enter of a dwelling house with intent to commit an indictable offence and hostage-taking, among several others, carry a maximum life sentence.

Apparently Canadian Sentences are more lengthy than in most western democracies.

Here is a chart of average time spent in Custody in various countries (this list also comes from this page of the department of Justice website, for Canada):

Australia : 14.8 years
Belgium : 12.7 years
England : 14.4 years
New Zealand : 11 years
Scotland : 11.2 years
Sweden : 12 years
United States : Life without parole 29 years, life with parole 18.5 years
Canada : 28.4 years

Now... personally, I have never known anyone in prison, or been there myself, but I gather it can be a very tough life. I only have movie reference to allude to. Death Penalty is not legal in Canada and I'm not really sure that I'd agree to it. I thought I did for a time, but, really how can you ever be absolutely sure you have the right guy for the crime? There have been well publicized cases where years after the fact the person has been released as with the advancement in investigative procedures people once thought guilty were found to actully be innocent.

So... I guess I agree with the way my country does post severe sentences, they are severe enough to deter a large part of the population from living criminal lives - there will always be some 'bad guys' but, if you can deter most of the people from living the illegal life, you are doing well, in my books.

-Posted by Desiree

Death Penalty - Venezuela

There's no death penalty in Venezuela and if I'm correct the max you can get sentenced to is 30 years, but that doesn't mean jails in Venezuela are a walk in the park. Our prisions are way overcrowded and human rights are violated in every possible way, filled with violence, drugs, guns and corrupted guards even in minimum security prisions.

That leaves us with a double standard, in one hand you have people and government opposed 100% to death penalty for humanitarian reasons, while in the other you have inmates living a less-than-human life behind bars, where there's a pretty good chance you will get stabbed or hooked on drugs instead of becoming a productive member of society.

I understand it's a very complex subject but neither the politicians or the government are doing a real effort to improve the situation, and why would they? Most of the people prefer to look the other way.

I've never been in jail or dead, but after you talk to someone who survived prision, it makes you wonder which one is worst.

Death Penalty

I just saw on the news that Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but the U.S., French and Pakistani officials does not confirm it. This fact reminds me how my country deals with its criminals, and the old discussion about Death Penalty.

How does this happen on your country? How does your country deal with the criminals? Is Death Penalty legal? What´s your personal opinion about it?

Friends

My friends are sorted by country.

Name: Francisco Pacavira Bernardo
Age: 25
Profession: Student of Journalism and Publishing
Blog: Angola Minha Terra
Luanda, Angola

Name: Patricio M.
Age: 31
Profession: Industrial Engineer
Blog: Pmarin
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Name: Adam
Age: 29
Profession: Public Servant
Blog: Adros47's Online Headspace
Sydney, Australia

Name: Ferdous Mahmud Shaon
Age: 24
Profession: Student of Computer Science
Blog: Shaons´s Weblog
Dhaka, Bangladesh

Name: Luciano
Age: 30
Profession: IT System Administrator
Blog: Corner of Lonely Thoughts
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Name: Keith Smith (aka DIALLO Adama)
Age: 46
Profession: Church worker
Blog: Under the Acacias
Gorom-Gorom, Burkina Faso

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Age: 25
Profession: Photographer, Student of Advertising
Blog: Casa do galo
São Paulo, Brazil

Name: Delian Mitucov
Age: 16
Profession: Student of IT Technologies
Blog: Del´s
Sofia, Bulgaria

Name: Desiree Shaw
Age: 42
Profession: Registered Nurse
Blog: Talk with Desiree
Red Deer, Canada

Name: Juan Carlos Uribe
Age: 19
Profession: Student
Blog: 186+
Bogotá, Colombia

Name: KubanR
Age: 21
Profession: Student
Blog: Cuba, una ventana al mundo
Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba


Name: Michael Carøe Andersen
Age: 27
Profession: Interaction Design
Blog: Blogging Gelle
Copenhagen, Denmark


Name: Dalia Rashdan
Age: 29
Profession: Dentist
Blog: d´s space
Cairo, Egypt


Name: Clare Grant
Age: 29
Profession: Website editor
Blog: Three Beautiful Things
Tunbridge Wells, England


Name: Sampsa Kiianmaa
Age: 28
Profession: Forester
Blog: Sampsa Daily
Helsinki, Finland

Name: Jan Schuster
Age: 26
Profession: Graduated in Political Science and German language and literature
Blog: Schon Leben
Darmstadt, Germany

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Age: 34
Profession: Nurse Aid
Blog: gudnyk.blogspot.com and bloggingreykjavik.net
Reykjavik, Iceland

Name: DN
Age: 27
Profession: Research and Analysis
Blog: Deepsea Musings
New Delhi/Rajasthan, India

Name: Kayanon
Age: 22
Profession: Serching
Blog: Discover Japan
Akita, Japan

Name: Munak
Age: 26
Profession: Project Manager/System Analyst
Blog: Munaks
Mombasa, Kenya

Name: Tomas Karkalas
Age: 51
Profession: what I am doing at the moment.
Blog: Captain's bridge
Klaipeda, Lithuania

Name: Ngai U
Age: 35
Profession:
Blog: Dysfunctional HeadCaptain's bridge
Macau, Macau

Name: Irene L.
Age: 24
Profession: Web developer
Blog: Sweet Surrender
Kuching, Malaysia

Name: Edmeé J. García
Age: 22
Profession: Alternative Medicine Therapist, Artist and Music Student
Blog: Super E!
Mexico City, Mexico

Name: Janine
Age: 37
Profession: Business Expert, but very soon a Teacher
Blog: Angelic Ramblings
Wellington, New Zealand

Name: Queen Ebong
Age: 19
Profession: Student
Blog: Diary Of A Determined Teenager
Abuja, Nigéria

Name: Tonje Brustuen
Age: 29
Profession: Psychology student, columnist and youth worker
Blog: Fissioned
Oslo, Norway


Name: Shelley Jo Saracin (Shing)
Age: 25
Profession: Staff Writer and Copyeditor
Blog: Letters to Kara
Makati City, Philippines

Name: Ashar Edith
Age: 34
Profession: Teacher
Blog: Ashar Edith
Isabela, Puerto Rico


Name: Morag Wylie
Age: 44
Blog: Mo's Milestones
Falkirk, Scotland

Name: Gena
Age: 19
Profession: Student
Blog: Gena
Singapore, Singapore

Name: Lina Johansson
Age: 23
Profession: Student
Blog: Mitt liv som student
Växjö, Sweden

Name: Cole
Age: 35
Profession: SAHM, nursing student
Blog: blahblahblah
Maryland , United States

Name: Johan Marchan Aguirre
Age: 31
Profession: Web designer and programmer
Blog: A view from the outside
Barquisimeto, Venezuela

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