The Huffington Post and other media reported that Ambassador Mark Sedwill, NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, said that youngsters living in Afghan’s capital probably are safer than in other big cities like London or New York.
The knee jerk reaction of the virtual mob judged Sedwill wrong without evidence.
However, he was right!
Between 2001 to June of 2010, direct deaths of “all” civilians killed in Afghanistan as a result of insurgent actions was estimated to be 4,949 to 6,499 or an average of 550 to 722 a year.
In the US, total murders 2001 to 2009 were 137,840 people. Forcible rape was about a million. Aggravated assault was about eight million. Source: FBI
About 260,000 children die globally each year in motor vehicle collisions and ten million are injured. That’s more than all the roadside and suicide bombings in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started.
In the US, Child Help reported that 10,432 children died from abuse 2001 to 2007 and over 3 million reports of child abuse are made annually.
That leads me to the Western mob’s criticism of China’s convicted criminal execution rate.
Amnesty International estimated that 1,718 executions took place in 2008 in China.
The big difference is that most people executed in China at least get a trial and a chance to prove innocence before death. In a motor vehicle collision, murder or child abuse, the innocent victim has no chance.
It is wrong that criminals serving life sentences in the US without a chance for parole or execution cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
KPBS did a special on The Cost of Life in Prison. For 2,600 serving life sentences in California, the projected cost was about $6.4 billion.
Criminal Justice says, 140,610 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. and more than 40,000 are serving life without parole.
China’s justice system is doing the right thing. China has executed convicted child molesters. Source: Dream Catchers for Abused Children
Discover The Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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