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Death Penalty
Two issues about the death penalty are in the news.
Somehow Congress gave the Attorney General the right to shorten the process in death penalty cases:
Under the 2006 reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the Attorney General was given the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases, an authority that had been held by federal judges. If a state requests it and the Attorney General agrees, the new rules drafted by the Justice Department would allow prosecutors to "fast track" procedures that shorten the amount of time those on death row have to file a federal appeal after a conviction in a state court.
In effect the main-prosecutor of the U.S., who is an avid fan of the death penalty, will in future decide if a defendant’s lawyer is adequate. That is a perversion of due process.
Bush and Gonzales already worked as a team in Texas to kill as many people on death row as they could. So there is no surprise that they try to away with any possible hindrance.
Texas is also the place for the next news item of a current urgent case:
Foster was convicted for the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood Jr., who was shot following a string of robberies, by a man named Mauriceo Brown. Brown admitted to the shooting and was executed by lethal injection last year. Now Foster faces the same fate. So, if Brown was the shooter, what did the 19-year-old Foster do to get a death sentence? He sat in his car, 80 feet away, unaware that a murder was taking place.
Foster was convicted under Texas’s "law of parties," a twist on a felony murder statute that enables a jury to convict a defendant who was not the primary actor in a crime.
The U.S. is the only country in the "west" that has the death penality on its books at all (though Britain has an exception for cases of treason.) Why?
The death penalty is inhuman. It kills people, some criminals, but also innocent ones. Abolish it. Now.
There is not much hope for Foster, but it might help if you sign these petitions.
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
The issue of individual rights, and liberties, and responsibilities, is but a microcosm of those same rights within the larger nation system, which itself is a similar microcosm of the larger world system.
In a world where capitalism always suffers from an excess of “human product,” and a dearth of new profit-making avenues to mop up “excess liquidity,” killing or imprisoning a percentage of the population solves both problems. Debating this endlessly through the perspective of looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope sells a lot of papers, and deflects real thought, examination, and reflection. It keeps the masses entertained and occupied, and teaches them to make decisions based upon knee-jerk emotional reactions. Of course, that way they are guaranteed to be easily led.
The entire world is awash with violence against others, and equally awash with competitive training brainwashing to foster an us (maybe that should be U.S.) vs. them worldview. When it is state sanctioned rape, pillage, and murder, in the name of “security,” or some other such Orwellian rationalization, well, that is OK.
But when an individual chooses to stray from the herd of brain-washed 24/7 hate, well, that is simply not acceptable. Do the names Mumia, Peltier, and the recently executed Stanley “Tookie” Williams mean anything?
Simply put, what is the scientifically established “error rate” for our species? What proven percentage are defective and best destroyed? Who here can claim to be conversant in the scientific literature on this topic?
Or if there isn’t a scientifically established “error rate,” but the rate varies from society to society, then we must ask our selves the hard questions of what is wrong with our society that we have one of the highest “error rates” in the world. In other words, perhaps it is the society which is causing all of the “errors,” rather than the “errors” which are damaging society.
According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London, the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. We’ve got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars, or 701 per 100,000 population. (Of course, this figure only includes official, and not “secret” prisons.) China has the second-largest number of prisoners (1.51 million, for a rate of 117 per 100,000), and Russia has the second-highest rate (606 per 100,000, for a total of 865,000).
Are we feeding our population the wrong food that we have such a high “error rate?” Or is it, perhaps, the years of nuclear mining and testing in the West, combined with CIA experiments on an unwitting population, that is causing this growing national problem? Or maybe it is, as Paul Simon once sang, “When I think back to all the crap I learned in High School, it’s a wonder I can think at all.” Years of learning that Columbus “discovered” America, that the Indians were savages, and that we had to drop the bombs on Japan in order to “save lives,” can cause a few “errors,” especially when upon graduating from wasting the best, and most irreplaceable twelve childhood years of our lives, we discover that we are qualified for nothing more than mind-deadening rote minimum wage jobs, which our “information” society seems to create like a cancer these days. Perhaps the fact that we are the most highly medicated society in history, deadened, then bred and fed on a devitalized, industrially grown, omega 6 rich, omega 3 poor, sugar saturated, GMO addled, inflamation producing, mass produced, never-before tested, foodstock, could be causing a few “errors.” And then again, maybe a society that is so highly militarized that it spends more than the rest of the world combined on so-called “defense,” really weapons systems designed to systematically, from great impersonal distances, and without great fanfare, but more like a video game, kill others, can cause a few “errors.” Or it could be that we are a captive population, like a community of lab mice, living trapped in a nightmare world of cognitive dissonance, where we are bombarded by image after image, at an average rate of one every five seconds we are awake, unprecedented in human evolution, all telling us just how great we, and our society are, and yet how it could be just a little bit better, if we were to buy the product touted in the latest image to swim up before our bleary reddened eyes. That could cause a few “errors” too, especially when one lacks the money to buy the latest magic product dangled before our unconscious minds, which promises us this sorely needed relief, happiness, and craved for contentment, even if we know it to be temporary.
Who is to say that, until our nation’s great scientists, funded by government grants and subsidies, study the problem very carefully and inform us what the true cause is, we will ever really know why we here in this greatest of nations upon the face of the world, have such an aberationally high “error rate.”
I personally think it is the spate of licentiously illegal file copying and sharing that is causing this elevated “error rate.” That, and bad music.
But we have been led so far astray, that we don’t anymore see the issue from the proper perspective. Instead, “We The People” demand, ever more hysterically, that we, and our property, are protected from “killers” and “criminals.” (How is this any different from our dialog about the Nazis and collective responsibility?)
There is no sense of stewardship, of shared responsibility, in our world. The so-called “American Dream” is the myth of the individual making it on his own in this world. But what happens when, through illness, bad luck, accident, or any other vagary of life, the individual fails to “make it.” Well, in our society, thieves and killers like Ken Lay and Ariel Sharon dine with the President, while the misfortunate become “errors” to be hidden or disposed with. How can we discuss this great tragedy, Capital Punishment, without, in the same breath addressing the fact that we live under a system, a regime, that demands of its populace , indeed that structurally mandates, 5% excess labor in order for the rich to continually grow richer. Are those bottom 5% — the crippled, the aged, the ill, the slow, the un and under-employed, the losers of society — not every bit as human as the top 5%, who must run to check their datebooks with care to see if they are free before committing to yet another evening of lobster and champagne? Just who is the real thief, who is the real criminal, who is the real murderer? Where does the “error” lie in our society?
The old English rhyme from the eighteenth century, when the last of the great commons were enclosed and put into private hands, points to the real answer:
“They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the Common;
But let the greater criminal loose
Who steals the Common from the goose”.
Just this very week, we were treated to news that the US now ranks 42nd in the world in life expectancy, with some African Americans having a lower life expectancy than Bangladeshis. And why should our IMF/World Bank/UN Security Council militarily designed, mediated, and rigidly enforced, World System allow outcomes where that slice of Southern Africa composed of the nations of Botswana, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Angola have life expectancies of around 37 years, while the great social democracies of Northern Europe, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and others have life expectancies of around 80 years, and over 86 for women? What does that say about so-called “Fair Trade,” and who really owns the one true commons, the one which Bucky Fuller used to call “Spaceship Earth?”
In the county where I currently insecurely dwell, New London County, Connecticut, our great Congressbug, Joe Courtney (Democratic War Party), who our Green Party supported as a lesser evil, announced with great fanfare in yesterday’s paper, that he had successfully secured funding for a second nuclear submarine a year to be built here, at a cost of “only” $588 Million a year. (This sub, he told us, of course, is to help with our national “defense.”)
Since we are speaking about what our society should do with “bad” people, it seems self-evident that we, here, are “good” people. So I ask our “good” readership, how many of you understand how the emergency food distribution system in your area works, and if not, then why not? Here, in our county — one of the wealthier counties, in arguably the richest state, in the wealthiest nation in the world — on any given day, fully 11% of the county is what is euphemistically termed “food insecure.” (That is scientific language for hungry and starving.) Over the course of the year, about one in six people — almost 50, 000 — fall into that category at one time or another.
We have 279,000 people in this county, which means that, instead of building a sub which will make large numbers of the world’s population more insecure, we could be providing the poorest third of our county with an annual tax-free stipend of $6K. That would completely cure the problem of food insecurity around here, and even leave enough over for some of those people to have a party or two and invite some friends over. (Of course, they would have to check their datebooks first, before accepting.) I can’t say for sure if that would lower our human “error rate,” but I am sure that our great Universities and Colleges would be able to provide enough scientists and scholars to devote some of their precious time to look into this matter and provide us with an educated and civilized opinion.
In our county, while “official” homelessness is low, below 1%, perhaps the same percentage as those who are food insecure, or even more, can be classified as home insecure: behind on mortgage payments, rent, facing eviction, or living in overcrowded or sub-standard conditions. Additionally, this county has a dearth of life reinforcing jobs, like organic farmer or poet, and an over-whelming surplus of deadly dull, and actually deadly, jobs like changing linens in one of our huge casino hotels, or weapons manufacturer, or weapons user at our huge naval base. Again, I can’t be certain, but these conditions could possibly lead to an increase in our human “error rate.” Could we work to ameliorate this?
Our county spends about $30K/yr. per student. Over twelve years of schooling that works out to $360K, or with compounded interest, perhaps half a million dollars. If we abolished enforced schooling in our county, and made it volunteer and voluntary, instead giving each student $500,000 when they terned eighteen, it is possible that we would end up with a happier, freer, less brainwashed, better educated and motivated, more life-affirming population. We might be creating fewer “errors” too. I can’t be sure but it would be worth studying — though not by government or academic professionals — in the interests of affirming life, and reducing our “error rate,” we would have to abolish those positions too.
The point to this entire disquisition, is the same as the point I made a year or two ago in a post about immigration. By talking about the choice between capital punishment and life imprisonment for “bad” people, we are ceding the framing of the entire debate to entrenched power, which means that things will never change for the better. We must establish the playing field upon which we are to hold discussions and seek solutions.
In this case, the choice is not how to disappear our human “errors.” It should be how to build a just society where there is enough resources, especially human, to care for and nurture our entire society so that we create less “errors.” Can we actually do this? Of course we can! And then, I’m willing to bet, we would have far less people to debate about forcibly removing from our midsts. Though, we can always get some professors to study this.
There is something wrong with our society that we have one of the highest “error rates” in the world. It is the society which is causing all of the “errors,” rather than the “errors” which are damaging society. And we can fix this, not by arguing for life imprisonment over capital punishment as a way to create a more humane society, but by changing the nature of our society. Then we will have the leisure to study whether we have, in the process, created fewer “human errors.” That would be a good thing.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 16 2007 4:44 utc | 25
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