Russia--Russia!--has just permanently banned the death penalty. The country that gave the world the gulag archipelago, Stalinist purges, planned famines, mass slaughter of those deemed to be politically inconvenient, and God knows what other ways of killing people, has decided, as the first decade of the 21st Century winds down, that there has been quite enough killing in Mother Russia and it simply has to stop.
(Tell that to the journalists and truth-tellers who continue to be assassinated there.)
But maybe this is a sign of something truly new and good in Europe. They must all be exhausted into the ground by war, secret police, extermination policies, and violence as official policy. Even the Russians are now backing away from legally sanctioned killing--is a new spirit arising in Europe that will infect the world for good this time?
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