On Wednesday delegates at the United Methodist Church’s General Conference voted that marriage should not include same-sex unions and that homosexual acts are not compatible with Christian teaching.
More than 200 Methodists attended a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony Friday in defiance of a vote to uphold a church law that says gay relationships are “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
The ceremony was at a park across from the Fort Worth Convention Center, where some 3,000 people are meeting for the United Methodist Church’s general conference. It is held every four years to set church policy. […]
No clergy member presided over the commitment ceremony of Julie Bruno and Sue Laurie of Chicago, a couple for 25 years, although about three dozen ministers attended.
Officiating at a same-sex union ceremony violates church rules for clergy and would leave them vulnerable to being charged in Methodist church courts. In 1999, a senior pastor in Omaha, Neb., was defrocked after a church trial for performing a same-sex union.
Participants explain that “the message was less about upsetting people and more about being role models and for people to know that these ceremonies are going on.”
In highlighting the ongoing legal prosecutions at Siemens - the German mega-giant now mired in what some have called the greatest bribery scandal of all time, Klocks writes:
“What German courts were unable to achieve and even the Pope would have failed to accomplish, has now been done by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. … The capitalists themselves insist that the train of greed remain on the tracks - its tracks.”
Kocks then goes on to describe how the Pietists created the first capital markets - which leads him to what created the business powerhouse known as the United States of America: Read the rest of this entry »
Much has been written in the foreign press about the real purpose of Pope Benedict XVI’s unprecedented election-year visit to the United States. Some charge that he came to bolster the only pro-life candidate, John McCain. Others have surmised that the Pope came to make common cause with President Bush to oppose the perceived threat of an expanding Islam.
“As for Catholics in the United States, almost a third of the population has been brought up in that faith, but today only 24 percent of Americans call themselves Catholic, less than a half of those who identify themselves as Protestant/Evangelical - almost 52 percent. The study clearly shows that the strongest adherents of the Catholic Church are amongst recent immigrants. Forty-six percent of U.S. nationals born outside the country are Catholic, while 24 percent of them Protestant.”
“The situation changes when we consider the religious affiliation of those born in the United States: fifty-five percent are Protestant and 21 percent are Catholic. In other words, a significant percentage of those who were Catholic in their infancy, have over the years decided to change their affiliation, switching primarily to Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.”
In other words, the longer immigrants remain in the U.S., the greater the likelihood that they’ll switch to another denomination or religion.
“To the Pope’s misfortune, the dynamics of change are influenced by factors beyond his control.”
By Carlos Martínez García
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
April 23, 2008
Mexico - La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)
The results of the trip are more media than real. Benedict the XVI’s visit to the United States ratified a pastoral line that doesn’t confront problems at their root but treats them superficially and postpones their resolution, to the detriment of the millions of Catholics whose disillusionment with the leadership of the Catholic Church continues to deepen.
A good number of commentators and analysts expressed surprise and even praised the papal decision to meet with some victims of clerical pedophilia in the United States. They forget that due to the peculiarity of United States society, both in terms of its religious composition and the vigilance with which it monitors leaders of any kind, Pope Benedict XVI was practically obliged to show some sign that these outrageous abuses will not happen again.
We know of the magnitude of the sexual abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests in that country thanks to the mobilization of those who were assaulted and the solidarity of people who assisted them in disseminating news about the size of the problem and suing the pedophiles in court. It was an organization of citizens and its insistence on documenting and making public the sexual attacks of clergy in that country, which made it possible to make the issue a public one of such national significance.
The various centers of ecclesiastic authority, both in the U.S. and Rome, did everything possible to conceal the scandals. When they failed in the attempt, they imposed damage control measures and tried unsuccessfully to minimize the problem.
It was an entire network of complicity within the U.S. Catholic Church that permitted thousands of cases of sexual abuse, not the isolated behavior of this or that cleric. In this regard there is convincing data:
“A study ordered by the North American Episcopal Conference in 2004 … concluded that the number of children victimized by about 5 000 priests over the past three decades was over 11,000. Since many cases have been resolved according to the culture and civil law of the United States, the relevant statistics include $2 billion that has been paid in out in this regard, which has contributed to bankruptcy of more than a few diocese” (from The Pope and Clerical Pedophilia in Mexico [El Papa y la pederastia clerical en México] by Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa, Proceso).
The Pope pronounced words and promised actions favorable to Latin American immigrants, the majority of whom entered the United States without a visa. The productive apparatus in the United States has benefited on a great scale from these so-called illegals by paying them low wages and providing them with almost no social benefits. For the most part, these people come to that nation as Catholics and are the main factor in the growth of Catholicism there. This reality has another less well-known side, which is creating concern at the Holy See in Rome.
“Bush sees the world in terms of good and evil, and he considers that only a united front encompassing all 2.2 billion Judeo-Christians will be able to resist Islam. Recent decades have seen increasing religious tension and the spread of theocracies, which now encompass almost all Arab countries.” Read the rest of this entry »
“No one should believe that the Iraq War is really that high on the Pope’s agenda. When it came time for the Holy See to endorse a candidate for the last presidential election, the then chief-inquisitor who became today’s Pope found it more important to support the candidate who opposed the legality of abortion than the one who stood against the war. This meant that Bush garnered the support of about a million votes that otherwise would have gone to Kerry. Bush is President, so to speak, due to Benedict’s grace.”
Etschmayer goes on to say, “As Benedict XVI is a Pope of restoration, when he visits the United States during an election year it symbolizes a policy that is anti-liberal and is a sign of support for the only conservative candidate: John McCain. McCain’s talk of remaining in Iraq for even 10,000 years if need be changes nothing. In the end, the fact is that this Pope by far prefers a Christian theocracy that fights bloody wars over a liberal, non-Christian democracy that avoids conflict.”
By Patrik Etschmayer
Translated By Patrik Etschmayer
April 17, 2008
Switzerland - Nachrichten - Original Article (German)
The headlines looked to be rather promising for opponents of Bush: The Pope would give Bush a few verbal slaps in the face, unambiguously criticize him and perhaps the Pontiff would even administer a real beating. But one should not be deluded: Standing on the same foundation, these are two men that think reason and reality should take a back seat to belief in a world as one wishes it to be.
This unity stood out when George W. Bush integrated a core-belief of the Pope into his speech of welcome by stressing that it is important for the nation to heed “the dictatorship of relativism.” Ultimately, this means that both Bush and the Pope stand for an absolute believe in a God that accepts a diversity of faiths only in the sense that there are people left to convert.
It’s perhaps a little ironic then, that the relativism both of these men fight so passionately against exists between themselves, as Bush is a member of a Methodist Church while the Pope is the world’s top Catholic. As far as the Protestants, the Pope has already made his opinion quite clear: When he declared that the Protestant churches were in fact not real churches at all, it triggered considerable consternation among ecumenical [inter-church] organizations.
In this light, the Pope’s criticism of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy is doubly interesting and curious. It’s probably too simplistic to use oil to explain Bush’s drive to invade Iraq. This was certainly a major motivation but there might as well have been the hope of having his “Christian” army plant a flag of victory over the stylized Islamist fanaticism of Saddam Hussein, whose rhetoric certainly contained a religious component. Recall when Bush initially spoke of a crusade, it looked simply as a clumsy choice of words. But who today uses this expression in a military context? It’s quite possible that he actually meant it in a literal sense. A man that continuously stresses doing the Lord’s work will also be drawn into war for his master.
And no one should believe that the Iraq War is really that high on the Pope’s agenda. When it came time for the Holy See to endorse a candidate for the last presidential election, the then chief-inquisitor who became today’s Pope found it more important to support the candidate who opposed the legality of abortion than the one who stood against the war. This meant that Bush garnered the support of about a million votes that otherwise would have gone to Kerry. Bush is President, so to speak, due to Benedict’s grace.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the Pope’s visit to the United States.
The Phelps Family Ghouls (the ‘God Hates Gays’ Baptists who picket funerals) may lose their property to the courts as a consequence of their hateful actions.
A federal judge in Maryland on Thursday ordered liens on the Westboro Baptist Church building and the Phelps-Chartered Law office.
If the case presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett is upheld by an appeals court, the church, at 3701 S.W. 12th, and the office building, at 1414 S.W. Topeka Blvd., could be obtained by the court and sold, with the proceeds being applied toward $5 million in damages Bennett imposed on church members for picketing a military funeral.
A lien is a legal hold on property, making it collateral against money owed to a person or entity. It can keep the owner from selling the property or transferring title to the property.
The $5 million penalty is the result of a lawsuit filed against three of the church’s principals by Albert Snyder, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, whose funeral was picketed by church members.
The senior Snyder contended the picketing caused emotional distress and invasion of privacy.
Westboro Baptist members regularly picket funerals of members of the U.S. armed forces, contending the deaths are God’s punishment for the country’s support of homosexuals.
The impact that Martin Luther King had in the United States is well-known to us. The effect he had on the rest of the world less-so.
Referring to the 1958 Montgomery Bus Boycott boycott, Enrique Dussel writes for Mexico’s La Jornada, “It was a routine ‘event’ that would launch Martin Luther [King] into history. Such ‘events’ are always of humble origin, but resonate strongly with the public. As with the ‘water war’ or the ‘gas war’ that ended up toppling two Bolivian governments, what began small ended up having a huge impact. … Dr. King became involved in the boycott and led demonstrations … and was was transformed into a leader of Afro-American multitudes who had already begun mobilizing.
In describing his growth into a global leader, Dussel writes, “Martin Luther began to discover other forms of oppression. So his discourses began to include all of the poor of the United States, from the urban working poor, Hispanic farm laborers and the marginalized, to the jobless. And after 1964, he began using his leadership to oppose the Vietnam War. In that year he received the Nobel Peace Prize. … But there is more. His discoveries led him to accuse his own country of being the cause of misery to other peoples. In 1967 he led the ‘Poor People’s March,’ which lifted the issues of racial and economic injustice to the national and global level. He reached out beyond the poor of the U.S. to those of Africa, where the slaves originated, and to Asia and Latin America.”
Dussel concludes, “It seems as though he had overstepped the limits of allowable criticism. … And so on April 4, 1968 (the same year as the May unrest in Paris and Berkeley, and the October Massacre in Tlatelolco), the life of Martin Luther King was cut short.”
By Enrique Dussel*
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
April 4, 2008
Mexico - La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)
Forty years ago on April 4th, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis! It’s an anniversary that provides food for thought.
Martin Luther, an Afro-American from a Baptist community, was born in the midst of economic depression in 1929. As his father was a pastor and having obtained a doctorate in Boston [Boston University, in systematic theology], he took charge of a community of believers in Atlanta, Georgia [actually, it was in Montgomery, Alabama; the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church]. The struggle for the civil rights was picking up, but it was a routine “event” that would launch Martin Luther into history.
Such “events” are always of humble origin, but resonate strongly with the public. As with the “water war” or the “gas war” in Bolivia, what began small ended up toppling two Bolivian governments. One shouldn’t dismiss “events” that could develop into storms - an issue exposed by Alain Badiou in his “Being and Event,” and which Walter Benjamin referred to as “now-time” in regard to the arrival of the messiah.
In this case, the “event” was the simple fact that an Afro-American woman, tired after finishing work, refused to give up her bus seat to a White person who wanted to take it, as the established custom and the discriminatory laws of the south dictated. The woman preferred to have the bus stopped. The police were summoned and a full-blown confrontation ensued. But the best part is that the other Afro-Americans on the bus not only got off, but they declared a boycott of the bus company. The controversy spread. The local pastor, Dr. Martin Luther King, became involved in the boycott and led demonstrations. Meanwhile, every Afro-American in Atlanta began to walk to work, sometimes over long distances and for days or even weeks.
The bus company sued the movement because it went into bankruptcy. King was accused in a court of law and found guilty of causing economic damage the company by holding the boycott and had to suffer incarceration. All this had the effect of raising the social pressure, and the young, 26-year-old pastor was transformed into a leader of Afro-American multitudes who had already begun mobilizing across the country for the fight against racial discrimination.
In 1956, a law was decreed to end racial segregation in the United States (which is not the same as making it a reality), and slowly but surely, Afro-Americans began accruing political clout. Martin Luther’s leadership continues to inspire, not only in his native state, but across the country. Reflecting on Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of “non-violence” (which was inspired by the ancient Jain school of Indian thought), he began a true strategic struggle against racism in the United States, a phenomenon as old as slavery, which was established in the 17th century. Martin Luther was arrested again several times. While “non-violence” isn’t a universal principle, it’s a strategy that works in a country that respects the rule of law (for the powerful, of course, not for the poor).
It was August 28, 1968 when he delivered his most famous speech before 200 000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Gradually, the Atlanta preacher [Alabama, actually] began to realize that that Afro-American people had been discriminated against since the dawn of modernity; since the onset of European slavery that involved over 15 million Africans. It was a terrible kind of oppression, and yet it was an oppression that went unnoticed by French Revolutionary and Enlightenment thinking. Then Martin Luther began to discover other forms of oppression. So his discourses began to include all of the poor of the United States, from the urban working poor, Hispanic farm laborers and the marginalized, to the jobless. And after 1964, he began using his leadership to oppose the Vietnam War. In that year he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
November 9th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
The Night of The Shattering Glass, otherwise known as Kristallnacht, took place November 9, 1938, marking to that date, the most widespread attack against Jews in peacetime Germany and Austria.
In France, two days prior, a 17 year old Jew had shot a German embassy staffer in retaliation for the egregious treatment of his father and family at the hands of Nazis in Germany.
Hitler seized on that event as opportunity to enact his long planned desire to destroy Jewish houses of worship and the Jews…. parnasah, their ability to make a living.
Thus, on that night, Hitler unleashed his most psychopathic and hate-gorged minions to loot and burn any and every Jewish community in Nazi territory. 267 synagogues were plundered of sacred Torah scrolls, the hand-built temples torched.
100 Jews were murdered whilst trying to defend family and property. 7500 Jewish shops were looted of valuables, left with every window shattered and all remaining fixtures despoiled and set afire.
The Nazi government said the Jews had brought this down upon their own heads, and ordered them to pay one billion marks for the murder of the Embassy staffer in Paris.
The Jews were also charged six million marks to pay for the Nazi’s destruction of their own shops.
Shortly afterward, 25,000 Jewish fathers, rabbis, brothers, sons, students, poets, farmers, sweethearts, and bridegrooms, were dragged from their families, farms, and off the streets.
They were forced to Nazi slave camps, never to be seen again. It was the commencement of an ancient evil, but on a new, relentless scale.
The Nazi plan: To extinguish entire cultural groups, but first to coerce them to become a wage-less workforce for the state’s purposes, until these innocents, unable to work any longer because of starvation and torture, were murdered where they lay.
Near Oswiecim Poland, the Nazis ordered more heatless barracks and factory halls built. Less than eighteen months after Kristallnacht, this death camp, called Auschwitz, was fully packed with blameless souls who were rendered into a river of blood. This flood of humanity was bled out day and night without cease for the next four years.
Kristallnacht stands as one of the central flashpoints… one so large that for those who had the eyes or heart to see it, it could be registered around the world. It was Kristallnacht that catalyzed the Nazi’s spreading stain across Europe and Russia.
The sick psychological ideas underlying the arsons of Kristallnacht leapt from dry mind to dry mind until the malicious ideas caught on that mental tinderwood in each man’s darkest mind, and there, broke into flame, fueling ever more death.
By 1938, Dachau had already been rendering human bones and blood for six years. Now were added six more houses of slaughter in Poland alone, including Auschwitz.
In the years prior, Hitler had ordered Germany’s doctors to euthanize tens of thousands of German children, Jews and non-Jews alike, who were in some way lame or halt, and that ‘operation’ was carried out in full, emptying sanitoriums and orphanages even as many German physicians protested vociferously.
But, death and disposal of ‘inconvenient humans’ had become not only the pattern of the collective unconscious of a nation, but an insatiable hunger. The legends of the vampire do not spring up from a soul being lost.
The oldest vampire legends spring up around those who have murdered, and thereby a ’switch has been thrown’ in them; they developed a blood lust to Read the rest of this entry »
November 8th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Rev. Bob Graetz, friend of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., has criss-crossed the country, preaching and teaching, including in the heartland of America, the Midwest, which is mis-touted by some as a bastion of conservatism that is purported to condemn and freeze-out anyone who doesn’t conform to a narrow principle.
But, no one informed The Gateway-St. Louis Chapter of Lutherans Concerned, and other churches and convocations which have invited pastor Rev. Graetz to be celebrant at services. Rev. Graetz is author of the book A White Preacher’s Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott. He was the only white pastor who openly participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and 1956 with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other black pastors and church people. His family’s house was fire-bombed twice for his and his family’s public stand.
More so, Rev. Graetz and his wife have served as instructors at The Soulforce Institute for Nonviolent Change, also held in the supposedly ‘closed’ Midwest.
Soulforce is an interfaith movement which uses the nonviolent principles of M.K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to end spiritual violence perpetuated by religious policies against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people.
Among other instructors of Soulforce: Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; Dr. Rodney Powell, who helped lead the Freedom Rides and lunch counter sit-ins; and Rev. Dr. Mel White, author of Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America.
Soulforce conducts “Twenty-four Hours of Justice” projects which attempt to bring truth and justice to other members of society, religious groups in particular, through marches, vigils, media events, direct action, and possible civil disobedience.
Soulforce has sponsored their events to take place in proximity to national conferences of Southern Baptists, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, as well as ELCA.
November 5th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
I had a night dream long ago about how hard it was to get to earth. For those of us who get pregnant when just passing through a room where a man is reading a newspaper and no more, it has sometimes seemed as though women becoming pregnant, carrying to term, and laboring to bring a living baby into this world is easy, common, like falling out of a ground floor window.
But, it isn’t. It is hard to get to earth, more than a one in a million odds, I think with certainty. Those souls who make it to earth have made a long trek with many perils along the way.
In my dream, I saw that getting to earth was like running an obstacle course of timing: making love timing, who what where when timing, physical timing, time of life timing, money timing, right lover timing, right this that and the other timing.
If little souls sit on clouds gambling on a body being made for each one, they’d lose their bets more often than win.
That’s why I think being born, no matter how a person came to be conceived, is like winning the lottery. Most of us were not planned. Some of us were not ‘wanted.’ Some of us arrived through a loveless act or a perfunctory one. Some of us came by accident. Some of us are called ‘the ooopsie baby.’ Some of us came from unsanctioned moments and are called ‘love child.’ Some of us were sick in utero, even sick unto death, but somehow recovered. And some of us, well…
Listen…
When doctors found that Gabriel was weaker than his brother, with an enlarged heart,and believed he was going to die in the womb, his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision.
Doctors told her his death could cause his twin brother to die too before they were born, and that it would be better to end Gabriel’s suffering sooner rather than later.
Mrs Jones decided to let doctors operate to terminate Gabriel’s life.
Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong.
They then cut Mrs Jones’s placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother.
But after the operation which was meant to end his life, tiny Gabriel had other ideas.
Although he weighed less than a pound, he put up such a fight for survival that doctors called him Rocky.
Astonishingly, he managed to carry on living in his mother’s womb for another five weeks - until the babies were delivered by caesarean section.
The children are home now. The doctor’s thinking was that one child seemed half the size of the other, not getting enough nutrients. The doctors said his heart was 3x normal size and it was likely the tiny baby in distress would die from a heart attack or stroke in utero.
Mrs Jones said: “They told us that if he died, it could be life threatening for his brother.
“We had to decide whether to end his life and let his brother live, or risk them both.”
At Birmingham Women’s Hospital, when Mrs Jones was 25 weeks pregnant, doctors tried to sever Gabriel’s umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply and allow him to die.
But the cord was too thick, and they could not cut through it.
As a last resort they divided Mrs Jones’s placenta so that when Gabriel died, it would allow Ieuan to survive. Mrs Jones said: “I put my hands on my stomach thinking of Gabriel. It was devastating. I had said my goodbyes.”
But the next morning Mrs Jones felt Gabriel kicking. A scan showed his heart was still beating. She said: “No one could quite believe it.”
Gabriel hung on, and his enlarged heart started to reduce in size. He also gained weight.
Mrs Jones said: “They thought it may be because the placenta had been divided. Inadvertently, it had evened out the distribution of nutrition between them, allowing Gabriel to survive.’
Like I said, it’s really something to make it to earth. If you’re reading this, you’re one of the very few lucky ones. I know with an earth burgeoning with over 6 billion people that sounds like an overstatement. It isn’t. Given all other matters, that you and I are here, is amazing.
I hope I can say this right without it being misunderstood; I hope I can adequately express the way this all sits in my heart, in my bones: I’m not pro-abortion. I’m not anti-abortion except for myself, my daughters and grandchildren: we consider a pregnancy, no matter how unexpected, no matter how it comes about, a gift of a soul trying to come to earth.
October 29th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Though some try to hijack the issue of capital punishment into a left vs right tailspin, it’s not a pol issue at base; it’s a thinking issue about, “How shall we who are of, they say, greater minds than other creatures, how shall we live together in the forest?
… a forest that is filled with great peril, more so for some than for others… and also filled with many avenues for self-defense, as well as ways of co-existence, and even symbiosis, as each situation might merit?
Pre-Sister Prejean, the nun who so deeply speaks out against executions, groups of Catholics, since forever, have stood outside in cold or heat of night protesting each execution of a human being in the United States. So have other religious groups, like the Quakers, who hold each God-created human life as sacred. So have many others protested the death penalty, both spiritual and secular groups
Perhaps that is the operative phrase, “human” ….for surely some such as Ted Bundy, implicated in the murder of dozens of long dark-haired young women who back in the 60s and 70s ‘took a ride with a stranger,’ and whose bodies Bundy left in deserts, down mine shafts and at river bottoms… would he be ‘human’?
Or is there another word that describes a person who has no fear nor mercy for innocent young women, bloody and torn, begging for their mothers, begging to be let go, promising they would never tell? Some would say, “animal,” some would say, ‘mental defective.” Perhaps there are other names.
Could we ask the non-PC question, What do we do with persons who are no longer persons? Once as babies, or as young children appreciably peaceful, but somehow, somewhere along the line, the brain unraveled and deteriorated into a malicious ganglia of kill synapses that looks like, talks like an actual person. But isn’t. And more so, is not in any way fit to live amongst human beings without doing them harm.
We kill animals who have rabies because we don’t know how to heal them. And we execute people who have murdered once, or serially.
And the subject of ‘taking another person’s life who has already taken another person’s life,’ is a huge one. My own side, I have struggled through these issues time and again, and I still stand for life. No killing. Even though I, like most people, can see how some should never have been allowed to walk the face of the earth, even though in my work as a post-trauma specialist working with families of murder victims; I witness and see the sheer glass mountain of pain the family endures for the rest of their lives.
I also see that for most survivors and survivor families, their pain of loss is not diminished at soul, spirit level by the murderer being executed or even dying of natural causes. There is a feeling of ego satisfaction perhaps in those moments after an execution, especially when it is a criminal like Timothy McVeigh, who kept giving interview after interview to media (another issue in itself), until finally, Judge Matsch, the westerner with real cowboy gear bona fides and a fine judicial mind, said, the buck stops here. McVeigh was executed.
The survivor families from the Murrah Building were spared from years and years more of media outlets making their chops on ‘interviewing the mass murderer of infants’ who thought extinguishing the tiny and precious lives of children was a necessary ‘collateral damage.’
Yet, there are arguments on all sides, most certainly also including the barbarous, and for many decades almost unquestioned means of literally burning a person to death with electricity, poisoning them, and other means used to put criminals to death. Though survivors of loved ones murdered might say any number of things about that, the surviving relatives do not put criminals to death. We do.
***
But, things are changing. It used to be we most often heard about ‘dead man walking’ to his or her own execution. Now, it may be ‘dead man talking’… for a powerful group has taken up the plight, not of those who are guilty of murder on death row, but of those who are on death row and innocent.
This Sunday, the American Bar Association released a report saying that the death penalty systems are deeply compromised, applied unfairly in many cases, and inaccurately in many others. The ABA for three years studied eight states, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee
The ABA said every state with the death penalty should review its execution procedures before putting anyone else to death.
This link to the story at CNN also carries the link to download a PDF of the 31 page ABA report, with vital charts on something seldom spoken about regarding prison and death penalties: severity of mental illness.
The British army’s longest continuous military operation comes to an end at midnight tonight when responsibility for security in Northern Ireland passes to the police.
Operation Banner lasted 38 years and involved 300,000 personnel, of which 763 were killed by paramilitaries. The last soldier to die was Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, who was shot at a vehicle checkpoint in 1997.
From tomorrow there will still be a garrison of 5,000 troops in Ulster, but they will not be on active operations and will be available for deployment anywhere in the world.
ABC News has an interesting article up about Bush’s decision Wednesday to veto the latest stem cell bill. As ABC points out, Bush may believe that using stem cells for scientific research is immoral, the far majority (68%) of Americans disagree. Moreover, 60% “favor loosening the current restrictions on federal funding for this research, as the legislation Bush has rejected would have done.”
As should be expected, Republicans and Democrats disagree quite strongly with each other on this issue. Only 49% of Republicans “support stem cell research overall,” compared to 80% of Democrats. Now the reason that I believe that Hillary Clinton should make stem cell research an important theme of her campaign: 70% of independents favor such research. If Hillary wants to win the Presidential elections, she needs to win over Independent voters.
Three people working at a Bible publisher in the Turkish province of Malatya were murdered yesterday. Attackers slit their throats. Interior Minister Abdülkadir Aksu immediately condemned the murders saying, “No matter what the reason is, we hatefully condemn this savagery.” He called the murder an “attempt to deal a blow to the atmosphere of peace, stability and tolerance,” which indicates that he suspects that the murder was committed for religious reasons.
An injured man, apparently one of the assailants who jumped from the window to escape police, lies on the ground outside a publishing house in Malatya.
The person in the photo above, one of the murderers, is Emre Günaydın. Besides him, Turkish police arrested four others. The other four are Hamit Çeker, Salih Güler, Abuzer Yıldırım and Cuma Özdemir.
One of the people killed was a German citizen. German Ambassador Eckart Cuntz said in a statement: “I am shocked that a German citizen is among the victims. Even if the exact circumstances of the crime are not yet known, I most strongly condemn this brutal crime.” Please click here to read more.
![[NZZ am Sonntag, Switzerland]](http://worldmeets.us/images/bushpope_nzzamsonntag.gif)
