Once again: why anti-Zionism is antisemitism
3 hours ago
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Um, no....
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Human Rights Games
Yes, Teresa Lewis is a tough sell for commutation. She's a drug addict and she reportedly encouraged one of the killers she hired to have sex with her 16 year old daughter. But according to her mother in law, Lewis was "not right." Lewis was incapable of such simple tasks as balancing a checkbook and couldn't even manage buying groceries for more than a day at a time. She skipped from job to job, and had held nearly 50 low-wage positions by the year 2000, when she arrived at the Dan River textile factory, where she met and married her husband and future murder victim. Her attorney has gone on record saying "The bottom line is we didn't feel like the judge would give her the death sentence. Unfortunately, we were wrong."
Iran is making much of Lewis's execution. People who live in glass houses and all.
Yeah, on some of these issues the US and Iran make quite the pair. Both countries have killed more than a hundred thousand Iraqis during the course of a war. Both countries are evidently a little too willing to execute people after disturbingly flawed legal proceedings.
Sure, we, too, have far to go, Mr. Ahmadinejad. But I think we're a bit further along than you are.
Anyway, I know I won't make you happy by posting Sajjad and Saeideh's letter to Sakineh.
So you know I've got to do it, right?
From Bernard Henri-Lévy's La Règle du Jeu (English here):
(AFP/La Règle du Jeu)
We do not know what is going on behind the scenes. Why and how many interviews, and for what reason? All this suffering because our attorney revealed the truth and the illegality in a file? Why is it that they provoke their partisans against us by producing false interviews, so that we are the target of their attacks? Why are my little sister and I forced to hide? Where is the justice in all of this? Why didn't you allow us to be next to our mother during the interview? Why are you playing with her life and with our family's reputation in your televised broadcast? Why are you urging your supporters on against us, so that they pursue us and strike us, in the street? And so that they call us sons of.... How many more false interviews are there yet to come? These days, we feel lost, searching for ourselves.
With each day that passes, everything that is happening makes the meaning of our lives more incomprehensible.
We are tired and want only one thing, to find refuge and peace in the arms of our mother.
We are tired, and we shiver at all the insults and injustices we have suffered, and all the times we have had to conceal our tears.
We follow this obscure path of life with fear in our bellies and despair in our hearts.
We are so tired, from having run for so long, and all alone.
We have run out of tears to wash over our faces.
We are tired of having cried so much, and we want so much, today, to be able to cry with you.
We are tired of fighting alone.
We wish we could put our arms about your neck and hug your shoulders.
Yes, Mama, it's been years now that we are no longer protected by your shadow, or by Papa's. Often, we stare at the door, but now they are forbidding us to receive news from you.
Who are we? Living beings? Where and for whom are we living? We don't know. Why did God create us, the two of us, my sister and me? Did we come into the world to suffer so much torture? Why, and how much? During our childhood, when we huddled with fear in the dark and cold streets, we lost our home.
While other girls in their mothers' arms were teasing them to braid their hair, my sister was shivering in the cold and the snow, praying, all along the great wall of the prison, that perhaps she would be allowed a glimpse of her mother.
While my friends were sitting alongside their fathers, doing their homework, I was witness to the murder of my father and, even more painful, the false and ignominious accusation against our mother of having assassinated our father.
In the course of spelling lessons, we always made mistakes writing the word "mother", so the master would punish us by making us write "Mother" a thousand times on a blank page. Can you imagine it?
Our attorney, Houtan himself, has lost his home. For the sole crime of having defended us, he is no longer allowed to even enter the Ministry of Justice. He even needs someone to protect him. For all of us, this life has become a tragedy. Perhaps the interrogator of the régime's Intelligence Service was right when he told us, last week when our lawyer's office was searched, that even if our mother comes back to us, "they" will never let us live in peace. Because, according to him, the world is concerned only with our mother's liberation, not with our lives.
Yes, our lives have no meaning. We have been rejected everywhere, even by our own family.
The day when, overcome with despair, I called Mrs. Mina Ahadi, and the day, in Iran, when I became aware of the generous support of our friends, those we knew and others we did not know, the world over, those days were like a light breaking through the shadows of solitude.
We beg you, from the bottom of our hearts, to continue to think of us, but also of those like us, and of all the people imprisoned in Iran, and especially to remember that they have no means of defense, even though they are innocent. Yes, we plead with you. We beg you.
Sajjad and Saeideh, to the entire world.
(Letter translated from Persian by Franco-Iranian journalist Armin Arefi)
Running the Gamut
(Image credit AFP/The Telegraph)
Do They Need Counsel?
I haven't been much up for writing for the past week, as many of you will have noticed. But I just can't let it slide that the Vatican, the same outfit that has botched how they handled the sexual and physical abuse scandals raging around the planet, now has their bank investigated for laundering money? To the tune of $30M USD? It's just too amazing, like you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.
Meanwhile, Sinéad O'Connor hits another home run in her Open Letter to the Pope.
"We deserve better than lies and insults to our intelligence.
The Holy Spirit deserves better.
As long as the house of The Holy Spirit remains a haven for criminals the reputation of the church will remain in ruins.
Finally, your statement that you hope the church's "humiliation will help the victims" is deplorable on two levels.
One: not one member of The Vatican has publicly displayed an iota of humility over this issue. Instead each person who has spoken has done so most arrogantly and dismissively.
Two: how dare you use the word humiliation to describe what you and the church are going through? Hope and pray, and thank God that you will never know the abject humiliation of children who were raped by monsters in the employ of your church. That is true humiliation."
Palate Cleanser #105
Bamboo Forest, Japan
Photograph by Kyle Merriman, Your Shot
A shot taken from the path while entering the incredible bamboo forest outside of Kyoto, Japan.
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Monday Distraction
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Why Flip-Flop Charlie is Bad for Gay Rights
Flip-Flip Charlie and the Slo-Mo Gay is Okay Stance
(based on the Bilerico Project's image)
When Charlie Crist wanted to be the Republican Governor of our wonderful state of Florida, he was against gay adoption. Why? Because that was the law of our State and hey, a lot of Republicans who liked that law helped him get elected. But when Charlie Crist decided he wanted out of the Governor's Mansion and into the United States Senate, he suddenly became of a mind that maybe just maybe enforcing the ban on gay adoption in Florida was not such a swell legacy to have attached to your name. Because it was under Crist's tenure in the Governor's Office that significant trials of the ban, namely Wayne LaRue Smith's case, Martin Gil's case, Robert Lamarche's case and Vanessa Alenier's case were all largely pressed, especially at the appellate level, under his administration. And his DCF fought tooth and nail, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on some of these cases.
So now, Flip-Flop Charlie says that it's okay, that gays can and should be allowed to adopt. He says his office is reviewing whether or not to drop appeals once the Third District Court of Appeals makes the likely ruling that the ban is unconstitutional. (Hey, Smith's case went all the way to the federal appellate level before the State gave up. But they gave up because they knew the ban was unconstitutional...)
Anyway, what's wrong with that? Well, as a very pointed opinion piece in the Palm Beach Post pointed out two days ago, the problem is that that dropping Martin Gill's case would mean no change in the horrible law. That's right. Nothing would change. Someone else would have to come along and fight, just as Vanessa Alenier is fighting. And as, unless the 30 days for appeals are expired, Robert Lamarche may have to fight. What it means, in a nutshell, is that nothing would change. Quoting Alenier's attorney, Alan Mishael:
"We'd still be left with the statute" that bans gay adoptions, said Miami Beach lawyer Alan Mishael, who has represented two homosexuals who successfully adopted. "We'd still be where we started - judging on a case-by-case basis."
But what else would be the outcome? Naïve liberals will think that Crist is a liberal Republican. Conservatives can look at it as a masterful way to preserve the law. My state would continue to legislatively support bigotry against gay people. And indirectly slam children who have found their forever home and family with someone Anita Bryant and her ilk just don't like.
Let's hope that Crist has the guts to let the system of checks and balances work. If the legislature in my state doesn't have the balls or the decency to change this law, let's let the courts change it.
Meanwhile I'm left looking at a Senate race that is about as unappealing as any I've ever seen in my State. Can I, in good conscience, actually vote for Charlie Crist to keep Boy Wonder Rubio (a Tea Party Hardy Boy) out of the US Senate thereby blindsiding Kendrick Meek? The bile is rising at the thought...
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