Somewhere in all this we perhaps need to reflect that different cultures are at different points along the "civilisation" curve. Three centuries ago there were public executions in Britain. Four centuries ago people were taken down from the gallows while still fully conscious, diesmbowelled and quartered. About 150 years ago Dickens described public executions in the states and how blacks were beaten and tormented in ways that no self-respecting individual in the US now would ever treat an animal. He was accustomed to different values.

Barbaric lynchings were still rife in some American states when the US in most other respects had reached a level of civilisation far, far in advance of where Somalia is now. Some of the state executions in the US even in present times, usually performed in front of invited audiences, have been of a nature that would sicken many in Scandinavia and western Europe in much the way that Mick (and you're not the only one, Mick) have been sickened by the Somalia execution.

For centuries in India, the Hindu Brahmans required women to throw themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres or live out their widowhoods as slaves bereft of all human rights. Millions accepted suttee without question down the centuries, and when the British Empire banned it, women as well as men protested. Any mudcatter who thinks that he or she would have been the one to out against such entrenched abuse of women is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Mick's post seemed out of place among the contributions around it. I would have thought there was little left to say about our horror at what happened in one specific outrage in Somalia. But anyone who wants to continue repeating it is of course free to do so. Others here have moved on from that to reflect on why these things happen and why setimes they even attract an element of popular support. Those who do not want to join this part of the discussion are under no obligation. Why should it bug them if others do? We are not likely to find answers if no-one is allowed to ask questions.