Tag: capital punishment

Chinese surgeons removed the hearts and lungs of death row inmates while they were still ALIVE, study claims

China enlisted surgeons to execute prisoners by cutting out their hearts, new Australian research has revealed.  

The Australian National University study, which examined thousands of medical papers from the communist nation, uncovered shocking secrets about China’s clandestine organ harvesting trade.

The research, published in the American Journal of Transplantation, found the certified causes of death did not align with the medical procedures listed in 56 hospitals across the country. 

Instead, prisoners’ hearts were harvested from their chests before they were brain dead to be given to transplant recipients. 

Concerned human rights advocates said the new mounting evidence ‘tells a terrible tale of murder and mutilation in China’ and the stories coming out of the Chinese Communist Party are ‘almost too dreadful to believe’.

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As America Slips Deeper Into Authoritarianism, State Brings Back Executions Via Firing Squad

As TFTP reported, the Justice Department quietly amended its execution protocols in December 2020, no longer requiring federal death sentences to be carried out by lethal injection and clearing the way to use other methods like firing squads and poisonous gas. The following year Arizona followed suit and began preparing to execute death row inmates with the same gas used by the Nazis at Auschwitz — Zyklon B. This month, South Carolina raised their hand at the execution table and asked for firing squads and have approved just that.

According to a report from Reuters, the state Department of Corrections said it alerted the Attorney General’s office that it has developed protocols and completed renovations at a correctional facility in Columbia, the capital city, which allows for the execution of inmates via a three-man firing squad. According to the report:

A state law passed in May 2021 authorized the death penalty policy changes, giving condemned persons the option to choose death by rifles or lethal injection when available. It also made the electric chair the state’s primary mode of execution.

South Carolina joins Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah in allowing firing squad executions. Those states use lethal injection as their primary method. Three executions, all in Utah, have been carried out by firing squad since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, a 49-year-old convicted killer, was the last person in the United States to be executed by firing squad in 2010.

The move is touted by officials as a good thing because it now gives inmates a choice of three different ways to die but they are missing the elephant in the room.

While the various methods of death are certainly shocking, the idea of capital punishment seems to be taking a back seat to all of this. For the state to claim the responsibility of justly ending life, it means that the state must never be wrong. Even the most ardent of statists will have to concede that an infallible state is but a terribly written fiction.

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NY Dems Call For J6 Protesters To Be Executed: ‘Consequence of Treason Is Death’

New York Democrats accused Trump supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol last year of committing “treason” and called for their execution.

The disturbing remarks came during a January 6 vigil in upstate New York held by far-left Saratoga, Warren, Washington Progressive Action group on Thursday, with cochair Larry Fine and two Democrats running against Rep. Elise Stefanik (R) attending.

“We were attacked. There was a terrorist attack on our country, attempting to overthrow our government, our government. It was a coup,” Fine said. “They came with weapons and lots of people and arms. Because this attack is by our own citizens, it’s called treason, treason.”

“A consequence of treason is death. According to the Constitution, a consequence of treason is death,” Fine added, with a member of the audience shouting “Amen!” in response.

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Taliban Ban Music and Then Execute Leading Afghan Folk Singer

Roughly 50 years ago, Don McLean released his son song, “American Pie” with its famous line about “The Day the Music Died.” It was a reference to when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson died along with pilot Roger Peterson in an airplane crash. For Afghans, the day the music died coincided with the Taliban takeover of their country. Nothing drove home that fact than the horrific killing of Afghan folk singer Fawad Andarabi, who was executed by the Taliban for playing music.

The singer’s son said that the Taliban came to their farm and shot his father in the head. They targeted him because of his fame for playing the ghichak (above), a bowed lute, and preserving the traditional songs about his country.

While the Taliban told the media it would investigate, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid emphasized that “Music is forbidden in Islam.” Just days before, he announced to the media that music was banned. It was one of the first things the Taliban did after retaking power.  Music was also banned under Taliban rule from 1996 until 2001.

You can see one of the last folk sons of Andarabi here as he sings of “our beautiful valley.”

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Arizona Wants to Bring Back Zyklon B for Gas Chamber Executions

Arizona has “refurbished” a prison’s gas chamber and purchased the ingredients necessary to create the same deadly chemical compound used by Nazis during the Holocaust.

The state’s Department of Corrections has bought more than $2,000 worth of ingredients to make hydrogen cyanide gas, according to documents obtained and published by The Guardian. That same type of gas was used by Nazis to murder more than one million prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, and other death camps during World War II, including Jews, Poles, Roma, and prisoners of war. When it was used during WWII, the gas was known by the trade name “Zyklon B.”

Arizona has bought sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid, which produce the lethal gas. The Department of Corrections also spent $1,530 on a solid brick of poisonous potassium cyanide in December.

Arizona State Prison Complex, Florence, where the state’s gas chamber is located, has been out of commission for years after a botched execution in 1999 left a prisoner suffocating for 18 minutes before he finally died. The chamber was originally built in 1949.  

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Arizona plans to execute prisoners with the same deadly gas used by the Nazis at Auschwitz, documents show

The state of Arizona has plans to use hydrogen cyanide, the deadly gas used by the Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps, to kill inmates on death row, documents obtained by The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington showed.

The Arizona Department of Corrections spent more than $2,000 in procuring the ingredients for the gas, The Guardian reported, citing the partially redacted documents.

The ingredients purchased include a solid brick of potassium cyanide, sodium hydroxide pellets, and sulfuric acid, the documents showed.

Cyanide is lethal in that it prevents the body from using oxygen. It was used in both World Wars — by French and Austrian troops in World War I, and by Nazi Germany in World War II, said a 2014 fact sheet by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The trade name for hydrogen cyanide is Zyklon B.

The department has also refurbished a gas chamber in Florence, Arizona, that was built in 1949 but had not been used for 22 years, The Guardian reported.

The chamber was tested for “operational functionality” and “air tightness” last August, and in December, following a refurbishment, officials “verbally indicated that the vessel is operationally ready.”

The documents published by The Guardian also included instructions on how to operate the gas chamber.

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Biden Stalls on Ending Capital Punishment

Seventy-five days since taking office, President Joe Biden has yet to issue a promised executive order on the death penalty. And criminal justice reform advocates working closely with the administration are growing tired of the delay, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Two of these sources said they had each received assurances from transition officials that Biden would sign an executive order on capital punishment very quickly or “imminently” after he entered office. But in recent weeks, White House officials and close allies of the president have been quietly signaling to frustrated activists that a more forceful push on this type of reform will likely have to wait until some unspecified point after the new president’s first 100 days in office.

“It is complete bullshit that they’re dragging their feet on this,” one of the sources said. “We have been pushing them on this and barely getting anywhere.”

This source noted that Biden came into office promising the American people that he would dramatically reverse course, especially after Trump’s “killing spree.”

“And we’re still being told to wait and be patient,” the source said.

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Virginia Becomes First Southern State to Abolish Death Penalty

Virginia, the state that has executed more people than any other in the nation, has abolished the death penalty. Governor Ralph Northam signed the bill into law on Wednesday, a month it was passed in the state’s Democrat majority House and Senate.

“It is the moral thing to do,” he said during the press briefing, echoing Democrat party policy. “The death penalty is fundamentally flawed.” Virginia becomes the first former Confederate state to get rid of capital punishment.

“This is a major change because our Commonwealth has a long history with capital punishment. Over our 400-year history, Virginia has executed more than 1,300 people, more than any other state for 200 years,” Northam said.

Virginia executed 113 people in the years after the U.S. Supreme Court restored states’ rights to enact capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). In the last five decades, only Texas has executed more people than Virginia.

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