Tutu on the death penalty

Desmond Tutu has written a very short and eloquent article about why we need a global ban on the death penalty. Here is his conclusion:

It is often asked by those favouring the death penalty: “What if your child was murdered?” And it is a natural question. Rage is a common reaction to the homicide of a loved one, and a wish for revenge is understandable. But what if the person condemned to death was your son? No one raises a child to be a murderer, yet many parents suffer the grief of knowing their child is to be killed. In 1988, the parents of those on death row in South Africa wrote to the president, saying: “To be a mother or father and watch your child going through this living hell is a torment more painful than anyone can imagine.” We must not put these children to death. It is to inflict horrific and unacceptable suffering upon them, and their mothers and fathers.

Retribution, resentment and revenge have left us with a world soaked in the blood of far too many of our sisters and brothers. The death penalty is part of that process. It says that to kill in certain circumstances is acceptable, and encourages the doctrine of revenge. If we are to break these cycles, we must remove government-sanctioned violence.

The time has come to abolish the death penalty worldwide. The case for abolition becomes more compelling with each passing year. Everywhere experience shows us that executions brutalise both those involved in the process and the society that carries them out. Nowhere has it been shown that the death penalty reduces crime or political violence. In country after country, it is used disproportionately against the poor or against racial or ethnic minorities. It is often used as a tool of political repression. It is imposed and inflicted arbitrarily. It is an irrevocable punishment, resulting inevitably in the execution of people innocent of any crime. It is a violation of fundamental human rights.

As long as we say that killing is sometimes right there will be those who conclude that their circumstances make it justifiable for them to kill. We've got to say no. We've got to stop the cycle. Abolishing the death penalty is one way to begin.

Silencing the opposition

We were warned:

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

-- Harry S. Truman

Toxic plastics

Oh my. Frank Ford sent me two articles about the toxicity of plastics and I want to make sure you get both of them. The first is called "Practical Values: Hard to Break". Did you know the following?

"Today there are no babies born without measurable levels of phthalates," says Dr. Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Phthalates, which are used to give flexibility to pvc (a.k.a. plastic—though it's rarely labeled), turn up in bath and teething toys, shower curtains, upholstery, flooring, medical equipment, and countless other products, including cosmetics. Animal studies have linked phthalates to the same genital abnormalities that are now among the most common birth defects in American baby boys. "We're not yet sure what level of exposure produces these adverse effects, but they are a real concern," explains Dr. Paul Foster, a senior researcher at the National Toxicology Program.

Now take a look at this excerpt from an article entitled "Get Plastic Out Of Your Diet":

I spent about two years answering telephone inquiries at an environmental organization in Berkeley. A great number of the callers asked what the safest plastic to use in contact with food or water is. They also wanted to know what the safest plastic is to microwave food in. My answer was that plastic should never contact food. And that one should never microwave food — it's probably as bad or worse than putting it in plastic because it creates free radicals in the food that damage cells in your body. It also heats the plastic, thus increasing the rate of migration into the food. That answer wasn’t popular with either the caller or the organization, which likes to point out positive alternatives. However, plastic is the alternative! And glass, wood, metal, and ceramics are the real things. Plastic is merely a foul imitation thereof. By using the least offensive plastic, one only prolongs and increases the toxic load on the Earth and in our bodies. If saving trees is your aim, stop using so much stuff. But in the mean time, don’t further degrade the environment with more plastic.

As consumers, we always look for ways to maintain the status quo of our modern lives. However, the only logic I can see in the regulation of food contact plastics is profit at the expense of our health, the economy, society, and environment. You needn’t be a polymer scientist to know that plastic shouldn’t contact food. What is essential though is a firm standing in reality and a good grip on logic. It also requires being free of ties to the industry before that logic becomes evident.

But please, read the whole articles. I can't do them justice with short excerpts. The ubiquitous nature of plastics in our world just may have something to do with the increase in Alzheimer's, cancer and obesity. Maybe we really need to pay attention.

Why I've always loved mathematics

Take a look:

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

-- Albert Einstein

Veterans Day, 2007

The Navy Hymn always makes me cry. We sang it in church this morning - the version that has stanzas that apply to all branches of the armed forces. I fought tears throughout the whole service because of what war does to people - is doing right now.

Veteran's Day used to be called Armistice Day. The armistice referenced, of course, was the one that ended "the war to end all wars." Well, we all know how that worked out.

War will never end war. Peace is the only way to end war. It is the only way. I promise you, it is the only way.

Almighty Father, strong to save,
whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
for those in peril on the sea.

O Christ, the Lord of hill and plain
o'er which our traffic runs amain
by mountain pass or valley low;
wherever, Lord, thy people go,
protect them by thy guarding hand
from every peril on the land.

O Spirit, whom the Father sent
to spread abroad the firmament;
O Wind of heaven, by thy might
save all who dare the eagle's flight,
and keep them by thy watchful care
from every peril in the air.

O Trinity of love and power,
our people shield in danger's hour;
from rock and tempest, fire and foe,
protect them wheresoe'er they go;
thus evermore shall rise to thee
glad praise from space, air, land, and sea.

Of your compassion, whoever you may be who reads this, pray for peace.

The cost of war

Written by a great American:

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, and the white skeletons of young men, I saw them; I saw the debris and debris of all dead soldiers, But I saw they were not as was thought; they themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not; the living remained and suffered, the mother suffered, and the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered, and the armies that remained suffered..

--Walt Whitman

Now, if you have the stomach for it, go over to Dependable Renegade and see what the effects of war look like.

Something to think about

Heck, he has a point here:

Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.

Of course, it's from The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Our stupid prohibition laws

Did you know this?

Pot was legal until around 1937. When Congress was debating whether to make it illegal, they were subjected to the lobbying by two organizations:

The American Medical Assn, who wanted to keep it legal.
The American Pharmaceutical Assn, who wanted to make it illegal.

That says something, doesn't it?
Nope, I don't use it. Never have. But I sure want it available if I ever get cancer.

Let's REALLY support the troops - Part 2

By now I hope it has come to your attention that one out of every in four homeless persons is a veteran. And many of the newly homeless are veterans of Afghanistan and the most recent Iraq war. Take a look at this conclusion from an article called "Support The Troops? Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is":

On Sunday, the nation will observe Veterans Day. There will be sincere expressions of gratitude for those who risked and lost limbs and lives when duty called. That is good, but a nation’s gratitude shouldn’t be expressed primarily through “Support the Troops” bumper stickers and the ritualized “thanks” traditionally tendered when the guns fell silent - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Supporting the troops would mean not sending them to war on the basis of a pretext and with a plan amounting to wishful thinking. Supporting the troops would mean asking the nation to make the sacrifices to pay for that war, rather than saddling yet-unborn children with the cost. Supporting the troops would mean remembering that one of war’s many horrendous costs is the damage to the soldiers’ psyches.

The nation should provide adequate care, treatment and assistance for those who stand and serve. On the streets, it is clear, that bill is coming due.

We owe these men and women. We owe them.

Friday cat blogging!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Health insurance travesty

Here's a John Aravosis rant from AMERICAblog:

It's time for massive federal regulation of the health care insurance industry. As a young 40-something myself, it scares the hell out of me that I have no idea what my health insurance does or doesn't cover, whether my health insurance can or can't drop me should I catch some horrible costly disease, whether I have a lifetime limit on my policy (which happened to a friend of Chris in Paris - caught something horrible, had $2m in medical payments, the company said bye-bye have a nice death), or the fact (that I just recently learned) that I lose my health insurance if I move to any other state from DC. Yep, I lose my coverage and have to start all over again, so the problems I've had with eyes, among other things, become "pre-existing conditions" and probably won't be covered. So I can never leave DC again (unless I move to Europe, where I'll be covered, but then can't ever come back to the states since I won't be covered). Then there's a member of my family who is now being told that she may have to pay $11,000 out of her own pocket, PER EYE, to have a cataract removed. She had insurance, HAS insurance, has ALWAYS had insurance, but because she changed employment a few years back, her insurance changed, and her eye problems may now be excluded pre-existing conditions - sorry! So it's potentially looking like $11k per eye or go blind at the age of 50. "Socialized medicine" ain't looking so bad when the alternative is being middle-class and going blind at 50. What is wrong with our country?

That's bad. That's really bad. And you know something else? John linked to an article about an insurance company that gives out bonuses to its employees according to how many policy holders the employees CANCELLED. That's not just bad; that's evil. You can read about it here.

Please help save the Alaskan wolves

I got this email from Defenders of Wildlife today:

Dear Ellie,
Trophy hunters are loading their shotguns in Alaska.

Just days ago, state officials in Alaska began issuing permits for this year’s aerial wolf hunting season. This move kicks off a killing season that could claim the lives of hundreds more wolves. Please donate $25, $50, $100 or whatever you can afford to underwrite our work to save wolves and other wildlife.

My name is Robert Dewey, and I’m Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund’s lead advocate on Capitol Hill. I’m writing today to tell you that we’re re-doubling our efforts to pass the Protect America’s Wildlife (PAW) Act, federal legislation to end Alaska’s unpopular, unnecessary and inhumane aerial wolf hunting program.

We’ve just delivered a letter to every Member of the House, along with Defenders of Wildlife’s powerful mini-documentary on aerial hunting. Our plan is to follow this up with a full-page ad in Congress Daily -- a must-read on Capitol Hill.

Now we need to raise $45,000 by the close of business Tuesday to help pay for these efforts. Can you help?

Please donate $25, $50, $100 or another amount to help us place this ad and support our work to save wolves and other wildlife.

So far, two dozen Members of Congress have joined our fight to end aerial hunting as co-sponsors of the PAW Act. That’s a great start, but we’re going to need a lot more support in Congress to ensure that this important bill becomes law.

Starting today, we’re meeting with hundreds of different Congressional offices (up to 22 each week), reminding lawmakers of the tens of thousands of petitions and letters that people like you have sent in opposition to aerial hunting.

We’ll show our powerful mini-documentary on the Hill and at house parties across the country. And we’ll urge lawmakers to take the next vital step to finally end Alaska’s state-sanctioned aerial wolf hunts once and for all by supporting the PAW Act.

Please help support these vital efforts. Please donate $25, $50, $100 or another amount today to help us save wolves and other wildlife.

Contributions from our supporters over the last several months have enabled Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund and Defenders of Wildlife to generate more than 109,000 messages in support of the PAW Act. But this will be a tough fight. We need to secure dozens more cosponsors for this important bill, and we’re facing stiff opposition. The trophy hunting lobby is working with Congressman Don Young (R-AK) to block passage of the PAW Act.

This powerful group is misrepresenting the facts about aerial hunting and ignoring the two times Alaskans have voted to limit the state’s awful program.

I’m ready to do what it takes to win this fight, and I hope you are, too. I sincerely hope you’ll make a donation of $25, $50, $100 or whatever you can afford today to ensure we have the resources we need to win.

Best Regards,
Robert DeweyDefenders of Wildlife Action Fund

Aerial hunting of wolves (or anthing else) is absolutely despicable. If you're going to hunt wolves, be man and hunt them on foot so that it's a reasonably fair contest. When wolves are hunted by air, they are chased until they are exhausted and then cruelly shot. Please, let's help stop this horror. Wolves are magnificent, highly social creatures who cooperate with each other and adore their young. Just think of what happens to the pups if their mother is killed.

Quotes to ponder

Let's all think about this observation:

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

-- Mario Puzo

And this plea:

Live simply that others may simply live.

-- Mohandas Gandhi

They go together.

Let's REALLY support the troops

Denying health care to veterans is truly morally reprehensible. Take a look at these excerpts from an article entitled "Fought for America? Bush Still Won't Give You Health Care":

Last April, President Bush told members of American Legion Post 177 that "we owe the families and the soldiers the best health care possible."

That debt is still unpaid. According to a new report by Harvard Medical School researchers, published last week in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Public Health, millions of veterans and their family members have not been getting the medical care they need.

People assume that veterans automatically get health care from Veterans Affairs (VA). They don't. Despite their military service, the Bush Administration requires most veterans to pay additional money for insurance in order to get care. But many veterans don't earn enough money to be able to buy health insurance. At the same time, they aren't poor enough under Bush Administration guidelines to get VA care or to qualify for Medicaid. Abandoned, these veterans struggle alone to find health care. In the insurance marketplace, our veterans remain in harms way -- their service, and our debt, forgotten.

Why haven't we made good on our obligation? Our moral debt to our veterans, based on mutual need and shared responsibility, goes unpaid in the current health insurance system because it is based upon corporate self-interest. An insurance company's responsibility is to maximize profit, even when that means denying care to veterans. Clearly, our national moral responsibility is not the same as an insurance company's corporate fiduciary duty to maximize profits.
...
In America, we don't have a health care system; we have an insurance marketplace. Until we understand the difference, no reform will work. To our low-income veterans, that is a daily hardship. We should make their hardship our problem too. One we solve together. Now. We owe that to our veterans.

And, of course, a truly moral and just society is obligated to provide health care to everyone else too.

Violence against women

I want to share with you an excerpt from the book The War on Women:

There is another war – largely overlooked but even more deadly – with far more victims killed by "hostiles." But these dead are not labelled heroes, nor are they honoured in the national media or in formal ceremonies. From time to time, they may attract a spate of publicity as the result of a high-profile trial or an inquest that will likely conclude that society let them down once again and recommend changes to prevent future deaths, though these recommendations will be mostly ignored. This war is the War on Women.

Compare the raw numbers. In the same seven-year period when 4,588 U.S. soldiers and police officers were killed by hostiles or by accident, more than 8,000 women –
nearly twice as many – were shot, stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. In Canada, compared to the 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers killed, more than 500 women – nearly five times as many – met the same fate.

Those are the deaths. Then there are the wounded. In the same period, about 24,000 U.S. military were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, while about 80 Canadians were wounded in Afghanistan.

In the United States, it's conservatively estimated that in addition to the 1,200 to 1,300 women killed each year by intimate partners, another 5.3 million, age 18 and older, are victims of non-lethal domestic abuse.

Based on those numbers, the violence costs the country more than $5.8 billion annually – nearly $4.1 billion in direct medical and mental health care, and $1.8 billion in lost productivity and lost earnings due to homicide.

These numbers are believed to underestimate the problem for several reasons, and additional efforts are needed to determine more accurately the full cost of intimate-partner victimization of women in the United States.

In Canada, the federal government estimates the annual cost of violence against women at $1.1 billion in direct medical costs alone. That figure rises to more than $4 billion a year when social services, lost productivity, lost earnings, and police, court, and prison costs are factored in.

Why is this not highlighted by the press? Why is it not considered a societal emergency? Why do we normalize the war against women?