It's a Fair Cop

There was a bit of intellectual foot-gazing in the press here in Inglaterra the other day about Iranian court's decision to sentence a man to blinding. He'd been found guilty of assaulting a woman who'd spurned him. He threw acid in her face during the attack, permanently blinding her. The Iranian judicial system apparently sets great store by retribution because it decided that what's sauce for the goose etc...

Here in the west there was muted uproar. Not even the world's wettest liberal could dispute the vile nature of his act or deny the pleasing cosmic symmetry of his punishment. I think it was the fact that a government (even one in a rogue state) had meted out such old testament punishment that troubled. Had this fellow tripped while legging it from the scene of the attack and fallen face-first onto a pair of resting hedgehogs thereby blinding himself, no-one would have given a shite. I dare say even Michael Foot would have spat something along of the lines of "Good. He deserved it, the twat." on being told the news.

Iran's policy on these matters does raise an interesting question though: what would they do were someone found guilty of genocide? If they're being consistent, they have to wipe out perpetrator's race. This thought *must* have occurred to some young (Iranian) Turk in the legal profession there. I imagine his line manager puts him in his place by saying "Well, I think we'll cross that bridge should we ever reach it. Don't you?"