December 2008 archive

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Mississippi has long supported the death penalty.  So it is remarkable when a Mississippi Supreme Court Justice writes a dissenting opinion in a death penalty case that calls for the abolition of the death penalty.  In Doss v. State (pdf), Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr., did just that, he called for the end of the death penalty.

The Sun Herald reports:

Outgoing Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr.’s impassioned call for an end to the death penalty has drawn both criticism and praise.

In what was likely his departing dissent as his tenure on Mississippi’s highest court ends, Diaz says society finally must recognize that “even as murderers commit the most cruel and unusual crime, so too do executioners render cruel and unusual punishment.”

Jimmy Robertson, a Jackson attorney who served on the state Supreme Court from 1983 to 1992, said Diaz laid out a number of points, including that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder, that were “pretty close to being irrefutable to anybody that’s objective on the question.”

The criticism in the Sun Herald article was provided not by Mississippians but instead solely by Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation of Sacramento, a right wing, pro death penalty organization, who provided the usual shop worn generalities.

  I started earning my own money in the first grade. Me and my little buddy David, my best bud back then, decided we could get rich shoveling driveways and sidewalks. By springtime David and I were starting to like having a little money so we expanded our operations to mowing yards. My dad said that as long as we kept oil and gas in the mower we were welcome to use it. It felt like we had been given the keys to the financial kingdom of our dreams. I liked David because he was a quiet kid who laughed like crazy at every one of my stupid jokes and he never stole anything from me. David liked me because I didn’t make fun of him and didn’t let other kids beat him up when I was around.  

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With the recent admissions by Vice President Cheney and the release of the Senate Armed Services Committee Report on detainee treatment, what we have known in the blogosphere for years has now….finally….made it into the mainstream. The Bush Administration planned, developed and carried out an organized torture program stretching from Gitmo to Iraq, Afghanistan and secret prisons around the world.

Despite their protestations and attempts to cover themselves with highly questionable legal opinions, this was and is a War Crime. Their politicization and corruption of the Department of Justice has stymied any investigation and left all efforts at accountability and justice to the new Obama Administrations DOJ, and specifically to AG Designate Holder.

Now, even the New York Times is….again, finally…calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate these crimes.  

You may remember that I wrote a few times over the last two years about Eleazar Torres Gomez and Cintas.  Here’s one diary that gives you some background: Did Eleazar Torres-Gomez Lose his Life for Company Profits?

Eleazar Torres-Gomez was pronounced dead on the scene after apparently being dragged by a conveyor into an industrial dryer. Torres-Gomez was trapped in the dryer-which can reportedly reach temperatures of 300 degrees-for at least 20 minutes.

Burned to death in March 2007, and it was preventable.  Now with Bush riding off into the sunset, he couldn’t resist harming working people for Christmas.  The Bush OSHA has entered into a sellout settlement with Cintas over six OSHA cases regarding safety hazards at its facilities, including hazards that led to the March 2007 death of Eleazar Torres Gomez.  

Congressman Phil Hare called this settlement a “a despicable pardon” for a “serial offender,” and asked:

How many lives will be lost before this company is required to gets its act together?  

How many more?

Yesterday marked the 16th Third Friday observance of the Iraq Moratorium, a locally-based, grassroots-powered, monthly anti-war protest.

Heavy snow blanketed much of the Northeast and Midwest and definitely caused some cancellations of Moratorium Day events.

Although reports have just started coming in to the website this morning, I don’t mind declaring the day a triumph.

And that’s not movement bravado. Two events–one national and blogospheric, one local and on the ground–that just happened to take place on the Third Friday of December show the growing importance of this campaign.

First, the MoveOn.org crew announced the results of their members’ vote on this year’s priorities, with hundreds of thousands of members weighing in. The process was supposed to produce three national priorities for the group for 2009. Close voting resulted in the adoption of four. Along with national healthcare, rescuing the economy and global warming, MoveOn promises to prioritize the fight to “End the War in Iraq” in 2009. Unless current trends are suddenly reversed, this will require MoveOn organizers to challenge, directly and actively, major parts of the Iraq policy of the incoming administration. Mobilizing the MoveOn base will provide a real boost to the struggle to end this unjust and unjustifiable war.

Here in NYC, the hundred-plus students who had occupied the New School “suspended” their takeover at 3 AM on Friday after a sudden victory. The administration said it would give in to most of their immediate demands! (The seizure was diaried here with an interesting and contentious comments thread.)

How is this connected to the Iraq Moratorium? Among the demands still on the table are the resignations of university president Bob Kerrey, a “liberal” advocate of the Iraq war from the start, and the treasurer of the Board of Trustees, a gent named Robert B. Millard. Millard is a top exec at a company called L-3 Communications.

New School SDS discovered that part of what falls under L-3’s definition of “communications” is providing torturers to the US military at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib! They launched their campaign against L-3 place a year ago on Moratorium Day. They have continued to dog Millard and observe Moratorium Day since. (Their website has detailed dirt on L-3.)

Add to this the fact that just a week ago the largest anti-war coalition in the US, United For Peace & Justice, adopted the Iraq Moratorium as a project at their National Assembly. Going into 2009, the Iraq Moratorium is on a roll!

Me, I’ve already got January 16 marked on my calendar, and can only urge, “Go, thou, and do likewise.”

Crossposted at Daily Kos.

The Auto Bailout: Means

Screw The Workers And Their Union

Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders



By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Published: December 19, 2008

By the end, the world itself was too small to support the vast Ponzi scheme constructed by Bernard L. Madoff.

Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to casually plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.

Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club. A Swiss hedge fund manager, Michel Dominicé, still remembers the pitch he got a few years ago from a salesman in Geneva.

Iraqi shoe-thrower was beaten by security, says judge

• Chief investigator says journalist may be pardoned

• Doubts cast on apology as ‘shoe intifada’ spreads

Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian, Saturday 20 December 2008

Muntazer al-Zaidi could hardly have anticipated the extraordinary reaction when he hurled his shoes at George Bush on Sunday to protest at the invasion of Iraq. His “farewell kiss” to the US president has kept the previously unknown TV journalist in the centre of global attention – a hero across the Arab world and beyond.

Zaidi, who was wrestled to the ground by security men, was beaten on the face, investigating judge Dhia al-Kinani revealed in Baghdad yesterday. But claims that he has asked the Iraqi prime minister to forgive him for his “big ugly act” were immediately questioned by his brother.

Zaidi’s emergence as a role model for anti-American resistance was confirmed by the Iranian ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who praised what he called the “shoe intifada [uprising]” at Tehran University, where demonstrations against the “Great Satan” have been routine for 30 years.

USA

Aid in Hand, Clock Ticks for Detroit

With $17.4 Billion, a Mandate: Restructure by March or Go Bankrupt

By Steven Mufson, David Cho and Cecilia Kang

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, December 20, 2008; Page A01

President Bush put the government into the daunting role of industrial oversight yesterday by grudgingly throwing a $17.4 billion lifeline to General Motors and Chrysler, a politically sensitive mission that President-elect Barack Obama will soon inherit.

The emergency loans mark the first time the administration has extended its bailout to companies outside the financial sector and will head off imminent bankruptcy for the ailing Detroit automakers, which have said they lack enough cash to make major payments due to suppliers by the beginning of January.

Speak With Enthusiasm  

ELTON JOHN Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)

The Year’s Best…

In 2008, academics discovered that…

• A 30cm-long, 130 million-year-old fossil unearthed in Ishikawa Prefecture belongs to the world’s oldest plant-eating lizard

• Menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage

• Thanks to the heat island effect, the average January temperature in Tokyo rose 2.62 degrees during the past 50 years

• Men who eat lots of fruits and vegetables are half as likely to suffer esophageal cancer as their junk food-eating brethren

• East Asians tend to examine faces starting with the nose, whereas just about everyone else focuses on the eyes and mouth

• Genetics can account for the variances in physical traits between “mainland” and “Ryukyuan” Japanese, such as hair thickness and “whether earwax is dry or wet”

• There is a way to measure the brain waves of a cow to determine whether it is afflicted with BSE

• Caffeine has the effect of relieving pain

• People who are either socially outgoing or “nonconformist” tend to have higher obesity rates than average, while neurotics are skinnier

Last week was the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Born from the horrors of WWII,  all the members of the UN stood together to clearly define basic human rights. Through the years it has become the widely accepted as the universal agreement for human rights and is the most translated document in the world, found 360 different languages.

The UDHR is not a binding treaty, however it does enumerate human rights as stipulated in the UN Charter, which is binding on all UN members and has become an important part of international law. It also stands as the foundation for two additional UN Pacts which are binding, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Unfortunately all human beings hasn’t been all inclusive. Follow me below the fold for this stunning and historic move by members of the United Nations.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

As the holidays approach, I turn as I do every year to focus on those who are incarcerated. This isn’t the result of the religious injunction in Matthew 25:44 about visiting those in prison.  It’s because my business is to defend people charged with serious crimes, and I’m painfully aware that when the defense doesn’t work, and it often doesn’t, the client pays with what the Thirteenth Amendment blandly calls “involuntary servitude.”  That means being a slave of the state.  For a long time.  A time measured in years.  And it’s as bad as it sounds.