So, it turns out that Hillary will campaign on.  No matter what.  Lending herself millions.  Fighting on and on.  I’ve seen this before:

Enough already!  Basta ya!

This disgusting, barbarous event will be overlooked in the news about the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.  

This evening Georgia resumed killing its prisoners by lethal injection.  William Earl Lynd has been executed. This is the 1100th execution in the modern era and the first following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Baze v. Rees, upholding Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol.  It has been almost 8 months since a state killed a prisoner. This is longest amount of time between executions since at least the early nineties.

Convicted Georgia prisoner William Earl Lynd was executed Tuesday, the first inmate to be put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its nationwide ban on executions.

Lynd was pronounced dead at 7:51 pm at the Diagnostic and Classification prison in Jackson, Georgia as anti-death penalty activists stood in quiet protest outside.

According to prison officials, Lynd had been “somber all day,” and had requested a mild sedative before being lead to the death chamber.

Lynd had been convicted for the 1988 kidnapping and murder of live-in girlfriend Ginger Moore.

source

The crime was an extremely brutal one, and Lynd waited on death row for almost 20 years to be killed while he appealed.

Tonight, almost 2 decades later, Georgia executed him by lethal injection.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that “he was the 41st man Georgia has executed since 1983, the 19th by lethal injection.”  He was 53 years old.

Barbarism and revenge killing have returned to the US.  I want it to be understood that William Earl Lynd was not killed in my name.  I detest killing.  I detest Lynd’s killing his victim.  My heart goes out to the victim, her family, Lynd, Lynd’s family, the lawyers who defended and prosecuted him, the jurors who deliberated his case, the judges who ruled at his trial and appeals, those who wrote and those who read the newspaper coverage of the crime and the trial and the execution, in fact, everyone who had knowledge of this case or any contact with it.  How can we live with ourselves when to revenge a killing, we permit our government to kill?  

Mahatama Gandhi correctly identified the issue. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Today, May 1, 2008, in addition to everything else is Law Day in the United States:

Fifty years ago President Eisenhower proclaimed the first Law Day a “day of national dedication to the principle of government under law.” The ABA [the American Bar Association] invites you to celebrate this enduring principle during the 50th anniversary of Law Day.

Law Day 2008 will explore the meaning of the rule of law, fostering public understanding of the rule of law through discussion of its role in a free society.

The Rule of Law.  How interesting that the Bush Administration would today inform us that one of the functions of law is to keep certain laws secret from the public.  Don’t bang your head on the desk.  You read that properly.  On Law Day the Bush Administration announced that it could enact laws and keep them a secret from you.  That’s in your very own best interest, of course.

Join me in the Irony Corner.  

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

On May 1, 2003, exactly 5 years ago, President Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to mark the end of major combat operations in Iraq:

Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card (ph), officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

More than 4,000 US troops have now died in Iraq, more than 97% after the President’s speech.  The number of injured US troops and injured and killed Iraqi men, women, and children follows the same relationship: the vast majority of the casualties occurred after the “major combat operations in Iraq [   ] ended.”

Think Progress reports:

Today (4/30/08), reporter Helen Thomas asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino how the president would “commemorate” the date tomorrow. Perino said the White House had “certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner”:

 

PERINO: President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific, and said, Mission Accomplished For These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission. And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.

Does the White House seriously think we’re so stupid as to believe that Bush wasn’t really talking about the end of hostilities in Iraq?  that he was talking about something else?  Think Progress points out:

Just a month after his speech on the U.S.S. Lincoln, he also spoke to troops in Qatar: “America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.”

Chalk that up as just one more reason why on May 1, 2008, I’m not working and why I’m participating in a one-day General Strike.

Need other reasons? How about torture, Gitmo, illegal extraditions, secret renditions, $3.67/gallon gasoline, sub prime mortgages, lack of universal health care, the recession, and on and on and on.  You could make your own list.  You could write an essay that was just a list.  It would go on and on and on.  It’s not necessary to do that.

I’m striking.  Please join me.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles



A Memorial To Sean Bell

I’m shaking my head at the verdict Judge Cooperman (without a jury) rendered yesterday in the Sean Bell murder case. I’m saddened and troubled.  I think I understand the roots of his acquittal verdict, and I think there has been an enormous miscarriage of justice in this case. Unfortunately, this kind of injustice probably should have been expected because of the way the law acknowledges and fosters police exceptionalism. The defense lawyers for the detectives knew it, and sought to benefit from it, and the prosecutors knew it as well, and didn’t try to block it.

Please join me in Kew Gardens.

In a 7-2 decision today the US Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s method of execution by lethal injection.  This will permit Kentucky to resume executions. And, worse, it will end the unofficial moratorium in the 35 other states that use lethal injections in their executions.

The decision is here.  It’s long. And it is not uplifting.

Justice Stevens concurred but wrote that he now believes capital punishment itself is unconstitutional.  It’s about time.  Only Justices Ginsberg and Souter dissented.  There were seven votes to permit the killing to continue.

This is awful news for the hundreds of prisoners facing execution on death rows across America.

This isn’t much of an essay.  I’m disgusted.  I feel gullible to have believed that the death penalty would be abolished by the Supreme Court because of the means the state uses to exterminate its prisoners. This, at best, seemed to me to be a nice flanking attack, but hardly one we could expect to end a barbaric practice that was created by legislative action and has been practiced since before the Constitution itself.  

At the very most, those who battle against this barbarism and fight for abolition have been given a slight breather, a chance to catch their breath.  The battle now resumes.  Again.  Every death penalty case has to be fought and fought hard.  Every state where abolition can be won in the legislature needs to be organized.  Every organization that funds anti death penalty litigation and organizing needs to receive your funds.  We all need to add our voices to the call to abolish the death penalty in all cases.

I’d like to think that the 7 months we’ve had of de facto moratorium have taught us one important thing.  We can live without the death penalty.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The IOC (the “International Olympic Committee”), the group that runs the Olympics, has figured out how to prevent participating athletes from demonstrating for Tibetan freedom and displeasing their Chinese hosts.  The age old tactic: a “chilling effect” on free speech.

It’s relatively simple: the IOC tells athletes that they have a right to free speech, but they don’t have the right to make “propaganda.”  IOC won’t define line between the two.  But if an athlete so much as steps even with one toe into the latter, s/he’s out. of. here.  Goodbye.  Put simply, the IOC doesn’t need explicitly to forbid certain kinds of free speech.  It can accomplish the same, desired result by harshly and intentionally chilling it.

A definition of “chilling effect”:

A chilling effect is a term in United States law that describes a situation where speech or conduct is suppressed or limited by fear of penalization at the hands of an individual or group.

And that, folks, is precisely what’s going on with athletes’ free speech at the Beijing Olympics.  

The Times reports:

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues – including in their own rooms – could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.

Got that?  Expression of political views: good.  Indulging in propaganda: bad.

But, you’re asking, is there a difference between the two? How does one know if one is expressing free speech or propagandizing?  What’s the difference?

The question of what will constitute propaganda when the Games are on in August and what will be considered opinion under IOC rules is one vexing many in the Olympic movement. The Olympic Charter bans any kind of “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” in any Olympic venue or area.  /snip

The IOC did not specify whether a Chinese athlete or a foreign competitor of Tibetan origin flying the Tibetan flag would be regarded as patriotic or propagandist. A spokeswoman said that there had been no discussion internally or with the Chinese authorities about use of the Tibetan national flag. Asked whether athletes would be allowed to hang the flag in their rooms, she said: “The village is an Olympic venue so it falls under the same rules and regulations of any venue which would mean that anything in there would be judged on whether it was a provocative propaganda initiative.”

The fact that the IOC has still not qualified the exact interpretation of “propaganda” means that some athletes remain confused about what they can say during the 16-day event without being sent home or stripped of a medal.

Unfurling Free Tibet banners or wearing Save Darfur T-shirts at Olympic venues are acts likely to be regarded as a breach of the charter, which was introduced after the American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the Black Power salute on the podium at the 1968 Games in Mexico City.

So, as of right now, there’s no official definition of what constitutes “propaganda” and how propaganda might be distinguished from “free speech.”

The consequences of uttering or otherwise expressing “propaganda,” however, are quite dire.  This means that as things stand now, there is an enormous “chilling effect” repressing legitimate, free speech.

No athlete who has trained for his/her entire life is going to jeopardize participation in the Olympics by testing the definition of “propaganda” by hanging a Tibetan flag in a dorm room, by waving the flag on a victory lap, by speaking out about Tibet to the press, by showing a picture of the Dalai Lama, by wearing Tibetan malas, by wearing a Tibet hat or headband or t-shirt. Why?  Because that might be considered to be propaganda by the IOC.

So far, the IOC has been very much China’s lap dog.  As the Times reported:

A spokeswoman said that there had been no discussion internally or with the Chinese authorities about use of the Tibetan national flag.

You might wonder what this question of definition in the IOC rules has to do with China.  In fact, it has everything to do with it.  The IOC does not dare to step on China’s sensitivities about the topic.  In these circumstances, the message to athletes is incredibly simple.  STFU about Tibet.  Or go home.  Free speech be damned.

The IOC doesn’t need to enact a gag rule for its athletes.  That would be assailed as a “prior restraint” on free speech.  No, when the stakes are this high, a harsh “chilling effect” accomplishes precisely the same goal.  So much for the so-called “Olympic ideal.”  

The New York Times this morning is reporting that Afghanistan is holding secret trials for dozens of Afghan men who were formerly detained by the US in Gitmo and Baghram:

Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried [in Afghanistan] in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years’ confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said. /snip

Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.

Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the United States military. Afghan security agents add what evidence they can, but the cases generally center on events that sometimes occurred years ago in war zones that the authorities may now be unable to reach.

“These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. “So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed.”

Join me below.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The spontaneous demonstrations by monks in March seem to have triggered demonstrations across the world in support of religious freedom and autonomy for Tibet.

We’ve been treated to huge street demonstrations in London, Paris, and San Francisco. To extinguishing the torch in Paris. To Chinese security pushing around Sebastian Coe, who was a fantastic runner in his prime. To mountain climbers hanging flags on the Golden Gate Bridge. To demonstrations in Lhasa. To news items about the struggles of Tibet. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

But if Tibet is to be saved, and I truly hope that it will be despite fifty years of Chinese domination and oppression, if it is to be preserved in a form we can recognize as Tibetan, it seems only right that it should be saved by what are essentially Tibetan, nonviolent means.

My simple proposal has two items:

1. Please send some $$ to International Campaign For Tibet. This is the Internet so large donations aren’t required. If you give $5 or $10, and millions join you, it will help in a dramatic way. You don’t need to strain to help. Anyone can help.  There is no minimum amount.

2. Please sit quietly (eyes open or closed). Then, non-denominationally and/or theistically and/or untheistically, however you are most comfortable, inhale the suffering and oppression of all of the Tibetans, and then exhale out in place of their suffering and oppression, strong love and healing to all involved in the conflict, including the Chinese government.  Repeat this over and over until you are finished. This is called “tonglen” and is a wonderful and powerful practice for making peace. When you are finished with doing tonglen– you don’t need to do it for hours, minutes with a clear focus will work just fine– you may conclude by saying the following:

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be well.

May all beings be safe,

And may any merit from this practice go to the ocean of merit created by the Buddhas for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.

This is a road to saving Tibet. May Tibet be free.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

According to Bloomberg, FARC has now said that it will not allow France’s medical mission to treat its most famous hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, whom it has held hostage for more than six years:

Colombia’s biggest rebel group refused to allow a French-led medical mission to help former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a dual citizen held captive more than six years.

“The French medical mission isn’t appropriate and much less so when it’s not the result of an agreement,” the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said in the statement posted today on the Web site of Venezuela’s Agencia Bolivariana de Prensa.

The FARC said the French made no contact with them to negotiate sending doctors to help Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen who is suffering from hepatitis B, and reiterated its demand that the government pull troops from two towns in western Colombia to swap about 40 high-profile captives, including Betancourt, for 500 jailed guerrillas. The French mission will leave Colombia, Efe cited the French foreign ministry as saying.

“If President Uribe had withdrawn troops from Pradera and Florida for 45 days at the beginning of the year, Ingrid Betancourt, military officials and jailed guerrillas would have been freed,” the FARC statement said.

The FARC statement is here (Bloomberg’s link is wrong).  And, obviously, freeing Betancourt and other hostages is something FARC also rejects.

Pardon me.  This is barbarian.  FARC has not given an adequate, humanitarian answer to concerns about Betancourt and its other hostages.  Its denial of access shows that it persists in using civilian hostages in its attempts to further its political goals.  That is disgraceful.  It is simply a human rights violation.

Betancourt, and the hundreds of other, less well known hostages should be released. They should not be permitted to continue to be pawns in FARC’s four decade long struggle with corrupt Colombian governments.  Yes, the Colombian governments are awful.  Yes, they are the US puppets in the region.  But, FARC’s refusal to permit the medical mission to reach Betancourt is unexcusable.  

And what, you might wonder, is anyone in the US or Europe or anywhere else going to do about this?  Answer: nothing.   To the contrary, the US is going to reward Colombia. The US is going to give Colombia a free trade agreement even though it kills unionists, even though its paramilitaries participate in the cocaine industry, even though it has ceded huge amounts of land to FARC, even though it receives billions of dollars in “insurgency” aid, even though its “drug war” has impoverished peasants, even though it is powerless to control its own territory.  And the EU?  Nothing.  And France?  Its mission is finished:

“Keeping the medical mission in place is no longer justifiable,” the French said in a statement released by the ministry, according to Efe.

This is simply disgraceful.