It is worth pointing out that a number of countries continue to use stoning or lapidation including saudia arabia, indonesia, and iran. However there have been very few instances of their sentences being carried out as higher courts tend to reverse the sentencing. Since 2002 the Iranian parliament has had a moratorium in place as far as stoning is concerned and there have not been any actual cases carried out. The Iranian Parliament is currently considering legislation that would omit this form of sentencing from the legislature.

Personally, as with Amnesty International, I believe the inconsistent or dysfuntional judicial systems that often apply the many forms of capital punishment constitute the greater threat to human rights. As the Philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote in relation to capital punishment, "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."

We should remember, therefore, that the US has 2.5 million of its citizens incarcerated and increasing numbers of these are now routinely given months even years of solitary confinement. Many of these solitarily confined are now exhibiting symptoms of mental illness. Hundreds languish on death row and a good many of those have been on death row for twenty years or more. Some old fashioned folk entertain the odd idea that this too is an intolerable form of torture.

The activities of the US and the UK media to give considerable prominence to the more extreme Iranian cases has a clear political motive and may even be viewed as an exercise in 'softening up' their domestic populations to the idea of yet another war which, if the Republicans having anything to do with it, will not be very far away. Such a war, as with many recent such wars, will be dressed up shabbily with the noblest of intentions. Of course all but the most jejune among us will know what the real grubby motives will be behind such a war; just as we now know what the grubby little history was behind that other recent caper in a nearby neighbouring country...

Its an absolute disgrace. The woman was guilty of the crime but the sentence is absolutely medieval. It does not give an accurate represenation of modern day Iran, and the authorites should be ashamed of themselves for allowing it to continue.

hyde_park_floozy@ Although I support the end to the death penalty, and have protested publically for the abolition of the death penalty, I must point out your cheap equivelence of America and Iran in this instance serves only the theocrats.

@Devine

Where the US is concerned cheap is not a word I would use certainly.

It's a case of plutocracy vs theocracy although the US has shown historically that some theocracies are more acceptable than others and that they can do 'business' with them. The distinction the US makes for it's foreign policy purposes might be better characterised as between 'corruptible' and 'incorruptible' theocracy with the latter being the most objectionable [from a plutocratic point of view].

Recently, for example, the current US administration has applied for exemptions to its Child Soldier Prevention Act which would otherwise render the supplying of military aid to such countries as illegal. Citing national interest the exemptions are Yemen, Sudan, Chad, and the DRC.

The need for the US to protect its 'national interest' by continuing to supply aid [military?] to the Sudan might raise a few eyebrows. Obviously this aid is not being supplied to the Khartoum Government of Omar al-Bashir and raises some questions about what is meant by the 'national interest'. In plutocracies this can of course refer to a rather narrow but disproportionately influential sub-sect within that society.

Post-9/11 the US declaration of 'War on Terror' has seen the setting up of certain regions of the world where the US has become very pro-active in its fight against extremism. These have been dubbed 'counter-terrorism initiatives' and include supplying military aid to the regional powers. These regions are the DRC, sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa going north to the Sudan, the Middle East, the region known as 'the Stans'. These regions also now play a growing role in the US's need for energy security. The US currently imports, for example, 17% of its oil from sub-Saharan Africa and this is set to rise to 25% by 2015.

In reference to child soldiers here is Chase Madar discussing Gitmo:

"Gitmo and all other places without habeas corpus rights are indeed dismal places -- and there is certainly something disgusting about the first conviction of a child soldier since World War II. All the same, I couldn’t help but wonder if my vehement Kollegin had ever visited a homegrown federal prison like the one in Terre Haute, Indiana (whose maximum security wing was copied down to the smallest detail at Gitmo’s Camp 5), or even your run-of-the-mill overcrowded state lock-up, the kind you pass on the highway without even noticing that you’ve done so, or one of the crumbling youth detention facilities in New York State which, as we lawyers who have represented youth offenders know, are hellish."

He continues:

"The Khadr case should have been a bit queasy-making for us Americanos. Hasn’t there been a surge of concern for child soldiers in book clubs and church groups across the land? Turns out, however, that this long-distance compassion goes up in smoke at closer range. The second a child soldier points his gun at an American, not another African, it’s adiós victimized child, hello hardened terrorist.

The hypocrisy in all this is less flaming than it may appear. After all, clemency for youth offenders, be they child soldiers or just local kids, runs against the American grain these days. If we routinely prosecute children even younger than 15 as adults -- and we do -- why should a foreign child soldier be any different?

In fact the U.S. even has a few dozen inmates doing life without parole for acts committed when they were 13 or 14, and most of these sentences were mandatory rather than the prerogative of a particularly nasty judge."

When examining the issue of theocratic movements of liberation globally, often localised and reactionary, what you often find just beneath the surface are the perennial issues of of justice [or exclusion from], repression, and poverty.