i may have compassion but i have no sympathy for killers,especially those who relish inflicting pain and torture upon their victims.....i save my sympathy for the victims and cry only for them and their families.i would rather a killer be killed,than live to kill again and it also is not fair to victims to provide their killers with free food shelter and healthcare...(p/s..george,dick,nancy and condi are indeed killers,liars and criminals.....as above,so below)please cindy,dont join a system that is so totally broken and filled with evil...stay here in the light with us...work from within the light,for us...love,us

Cindy is not calling for death for the killers, just justice. She seems to have given up on impeachment, but in the interest of saving countless lives in the next 14 months, we must not give up!
Impeachment, removal from office, and then indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity. That is the very least we can do to uphold law and justice.
There have been 2 soldiers from around here who died in Iraq and the testimonials on the TV news were mainly about how much they loved to hunt. One, in particular, was said to have loved killing geese, rabbits, deer, squirrels and turkeys. Could his insensitivity to suffering make it easier to participate in the mass killing done in Iraq?

Coriolanus

Act 1, Scene 3

VOLUMNIA

He had rather see the swords, and hear a drum, than
look upon his school-master.

VALERIA

O' my word, the father's son: I'll swear,'tis a
very pretty boy. O' my troth, I looked upon him o'
Wednesday half an hour together: has such a
confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded
butterfly: and when he caught it, he let it go
again; and after it again; and over and over he
comes, and again; catched it again; or whether his
fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he did so set his
teeth and tear it; O, I warrant it, how he mammocked
it!

VOLUMNIA

One on 's father's moods.

VALERIA

Indeed, la, 'tis a noble child.

VIRGILIA

A crack, madam.

I'm generally against capital punishment. However, I do feel that there are crimes so heinous, so awful, and so shocking to the sensibilities of human beings that the right and privilege of the guilt party living one day longer should be revoked. I view capital punishment in those terms. No, I don't like it, but yes, some awful monsters should suffer as much or more than their victims, and no longer have the chance to repeat their deeds.

Sorry Cindy, can't go along with you on this one.

I'm often more amazed by what the newspapers and television media consider relevant news than the moral ambiguities involved. The deer slayer story is, in my mind, no more worthy of news than that crap about Brittany Spears. Hey Media! There's a war going on!

I can't hear myself think over the constant sound of Neo-Fascism in this country.

"I can say that I do not wish death for George and Dick, but it doesn't even look like I will get any kind of justice for my son's death."

MOYERS: I saw mothers who'd lost their sons struggling Christian mothers....struggling with this issue. They wanted to forgive and yet there was something there that was so hard to do — and I was thinking, 'Could they ever be friends?'

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: That is not what you necessarily ask, you know? It could very well be that you say, 'I have forgiven you, but I'm not going to try and have a relationship with you. I want to walk away.' That is legitimate. I mean, I have forgiven you. I'm not nursing grudges against you. But I don't believe I could have a relationship with you that pretended nothing had happened. Because I'm also a psychological being. I can be a spiritual being. But I'm also a psychological being. I don't control my thoughts and my memories. I can hope that my memories are healed.

Killing is wrong, but hunting for food to feed your family is necessary---especially now with food prices going up. But for a kid to kill 6 deer in the last year seems like it was trophy hunting and not for food. For the state to kill murderers is killing and is wrong. The murderer should be locked up for life. To celebrate a person's violent death won't help the family deal with the loss of their loved one.

It is very hard for families of victims of these illegal wars to face the fact that their loved one died in vain---but let's stop the war so more families don't have to suffer the pain and loss of family and friends. "When will we ever learn?" goes the words of an old song. We must stop this war and impeaching Cheney would be a good place to start the end of the war and the safe return of our soldiers. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Reps, said she might reconsider her statement that "impeachment is off the table" if she receives 10,000 hand written letters asking her to vote in favor of the impeachment of Cheney. Please write her a letter. Her office is at 450 Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco, 94102.

Not a fan of state sanctioned murder. The state can't even send you the right form letter.

If we want peace, we have to live in peace and that means NOT to put other human beings to death. All other major countries have gone that root except China.

The innocence project provides a lot of info on why capital punishment needs to go:
http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Thanks for the link to the innocence project ~ however I did find fault with their section on DNA testing. It rightfully puts forward the idea that DNA testing should be used to the fullest extent possible ~ but it focuses only on exculpatory evidence only and ignores what the consequences of DNA evidence that confirms guilt.

What's wrong with JUSTICE without execution? How is committing the same act of murder any better than the original act against which we, within our flawed humanity, have made judgement? Imprisonment with limited privledges can be worse than death. And, if a mistake has been made as it has in numerous cases, the option of life remains.

Incidentally, on some other thread, I have heard that Cindy has asked that the Pelosi letters be sent to Cindy's address. Maybe she can verify that on this thread.

Hunting used to put food on the table, however since cows came along I'm glad to see that the deer are not on everyone's dinner table anymore.

Now the question is this: Can you pull the trigger on a living being?

Not much difference in my opinion between senseless killing of people or animals.

Sure you will pull the trigger if you are hungry, but will you pull it just to prove you are so much better of a person for being able to kill?

As a kid getting a hero's treatment for killing, enforcing that behavior; isn't that what our media culture has been promoting all along?

All this money going to make movies and games asking us this question repeatedly has to be coming from special interests trying desperately to destroy this country!

Yea we are pretty immune to killing.

Thanks, Cindy. As cogent and concise as always.

Peace

Deer slayer reminds me of the movie, Deer Hunter (1978). Perhaps a stretch, but I think it ties into some of the issues about patriotism, government manipulation, violence, honor, family/community. Based on a 1937 novel, Three Comrades.....

Anyway.Same story, 11th verse?

I feel strongly that the decision about capitol punishment is more about who we are as a society, not so much about what is appropriate for the criminal. Capitol punishment is about killing, somebody has to do the dirty work. And of course, we the people bear the responsibility.

Veteran, '66-68

It's way past time to give up smoting for good.

Thanks, geoff29, for that great passage from Shakespeare. The world's great poet and playwright was perhaps the greatest genius ever. And Shakespeare hated war.

Lincoln adored Shakespeare. Macbeth was his favorite play. He would read long passages of Macbeth to most everyone who walked into the White House. Can we imagine in our wildest dreams the current occupant doing that?

Yes, Shakespeare (along with that other great genius Einstein) were both humanists, secular humanists. Einstein was even a socialist. Both hated war. Compare these two giants to the odious ignoramuses Cheney and Bush.

NMBill said, "Hunting used to put food on the table, however since cows came along I'm glad to see that the deer are not on everyone's dinner table anymore.

Now the question is this: Can you pull the trigger on a living being?"

First of all, deer might not be on everyone's dinner table, but much of rural America very much depends on hunting for meat.

Somehow it does not seem more moral or noble to eat meat that someone else has killed for you than to kill it yourself. It surely is hard to pull the trigger on a living being, but that cow is no less dead than the deer. In addition, the deer had a life of freedom, and its death is sudden and unexpected. The cow, on the other hand, probably had a life of living hell and was aware that something really bad was going to happen on the way to the slaughter.

I am not a vegetarian, and I'm also not a hunter, nor do I always live by what I believe as much as I'd like to. "People don't do what they believe in. They do what's convenient and then repent." (Paraphrase from a Bob Dylan song.) I believe that anyone who eats meat should morally - not legally or any such nonsense - have to kill something at least once to comprehend what eating meat entails. I've only gone so far as to shoot a pheasant, which is hardly the same thing as killing a deer, although I have butchered many of them. I'm really not quite living up to my own standards, but I most definitely do not condemn those who hunt. At least they are in touch with what it means to kill what they eat.

I think it's reprehensible to glorify the killing of six deer by a very young child, and this kind of attitude probably does promote an easy slide into violence.

And finally - the death penalty might be useful in very, very limited circumstances, but it is so often misused. It's virtually impossible to impose it impartially or to always ensure that the circumstance is correct. For this reason alone I would be opposed to it, even without my general moral objection to the eye-for-an-eye mentality that promotes it.

Far too often our culture seems to be punitive rather than preventive, judgemental rather than compassionate, and harsh rather than nurturing. The societal ills that breed violence, hopelessness, and resentment need to be addressed, but it's somehow easier to punish after the fact than to try to ensure a quality of life that diminishes hatred and the related crimes.

what's amazing is how prescient Shakespeare's plays continue to be - particularly the tragedies.

I think Studs Terkel said that Einstein was "born before his time." Maybe the same could be said of Shakespeare.

that being so, if I were Bush and I were intelligent (I would hate to do word play here I might come out looking stupid) but if I were I would be very concerned regarding my fate.

Yet Cindy, who would not really be able to do so due to her predicament and the way she leads our cause, should rest at ease as to the way fate deals with tyrants - despite how we mortals choose to interpret events "on the ground." To use the military jargon for "life on earth."

George, one way or another, it don't look good. But they never learn.

Cindy: Stop watching that crap. With time the absurd, becomes the normal, and we can't register the reality.

Murder, Murder, Murder, everywhere! CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, and many other chanels devote their prime time schedule to Murder, in one form or another, even PBS.

Nancy, Greta, and the rest of those murder anchors.

CSI Miami, NYC, Houston, Topeka, how many of those do we need.

Does anyone realize what the constant exposure to this crap does to the psyche? With time, murder, becomes normal.

Here's the rub, the people want it, they get off on all this murder television. What does that say about our nation? A nation of people who spend every evening watching some televised description of a murder, or the trial of a murder or another?

Cindy: Turn that crap off, don't encourage them, it's all very sick stuff. Stick to Antiques Road Show.

Ramsay

' I cannot resonate with a family that exalts in killing other living beings ... I have always been against capital punishment ..' writes Ms Sheehan.

What about the capital punishment meted out to Iraqis, Afghans - including babies, toddlers, kids - by soldiers, of which her son was one, Iraqis who threatened no one in the United States, dying under the weight of a thirteen year embargo. What wickedness. greenerthanthouh, I too have been struck over and over by the description of America's lost - and it does not detract from sympathy and sadness for all lost in this illegal nightmare.

We need to teach all our children gentleness, including the six year old 'deer hunter'. Else the American dream will become the American nightmare (with Britain as ever, hanging on the coat tails) ringing on down the generations. Teach them to play the piano, appreciate poetry, appreciate nature's beauty, not slaughter it.

Peace, PLEASE, j.

A very ironic and timely article, coming as it does in the same week that Ronald Castree, a comic book seller and former taxi driver, was jailed for life for the rape and murder of Lesley Molseed (a sickly 11 year old girl) in 1975. The man originally accused, an Inland Revenue Clerk named Stefan Kiszko, spent 16 years in gaol until evidence emerged proving that as an impotent person, he couldn't have done the deed.

That he was eventually freed was due to the persistence of his indomitable mother Frau Charlotte Kiszko. Stefan Kiszko's exoneration in 1992 made me abandon what was left of what used to be a strong belief in capital punishment.

Green Pat

Handwritten?

Can I at least assume that printing would do? (I sometimes have difficulty reading my handwriting.)

Aside from the incredibly stupid idea of letting a kid under 15 handle a weapon in the first place... How many deer did the rest of the family kill? Up here in Alberta you could kill 4 deer per person, which should be enough meat to feed your average farm family of 4-6 people for a year. (with the chickens and other critters you can take from your own land...) On occasion you might be allowed more animals thru special lotteries (if there's enough deer to hunt that year, and I'm only talking about deer, not moose, elk, bighorn sheep, etc.) but for a _child_ to shoot 6 animals in a year?

What the fuck are his parents thinking!?!

What sort of idiot lets a kid handle a large bore weapon, it's only going to be a matter of time before the ankle biter breakes his collarbone because he held the weapon wrong, or shoots his parent by mistake...

As for bush et al, I've said before the psycho's need to be behind bars until they die, then their coffins need to remain in the prison.

Hello Friends,

Great debate.

I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP ON IMPEACHMENT AND I WILL WORK FOR THE REST OF MY DAYS TO HOLD BUSHCO ACCOUNTABLE. I don't think we give up, at all.

Please send letters to my office
Handwritten or printed, is fine.

Cindy for Congress
attn: Impeachment
1260 Mission St
San Francisco, Ca 94103

I hear that Pelosi's office is denying that she will put impeachment back onto the table if we deliver the letters----but I think it is incumbent on us to still write and send the letters. It is our part in democracy to try and hold our officials accountable too.

We have already received hundreds of letters!

Love
Cindy

Do you think that I am for the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
No, and that's why I work so hard to bring our troops home.

I did teach my children gentleness. The military industrial complex
got a hold of my son and no matter how hard I worked to keep him safe
it didn't happen.

Don't you think I will be paying for the death of my son and millions
of others for the rest of my life, and I will be paying penance for that
horrible mistake?

And please don't think that all soldiers are killers. Casey joined the military
for college money, like most of our kids did before 9/11---I cannot absolve
myself for my mistakes, but I can't speak for my son who was killed for his
mistake.

Love
Cindy

Cindy, I have supported you both morally and financially in your quest to defeat Nancy Pelosi. I agree that the state should not execute the little guy. However, I think that the big boys (and girls - take note Condi), should face the ultimate price for their treason and crimes against humanity. I have no problem with either a public firing squad or hanging for all the senior members of the Bush administration, past and present. In fact, I think that Dubya and Darth Cheney deserve the Mussolini treatment (corpses being hanged upside down by their genitals in the public square). These greedy, hateful and arrogant bastards deserve no less. There's plenty of trees on the South Lawn of the White House for this event.

Let the revolution begin!!

murder should never be entertainment....i resent it being so prolific and hoary on the television.i would not want to be the executioner,but it is not fair to the victims,that their killers continue to live and be supported by the state and maybe even get paroled !!that is just plain wrong!!unfortunately it is our justice system that is mostly broken and sometimes executes the innocent and allows the guilty to wander free.....but humans whose m.o. is to torture other humans,should have no right to further life on this earth,,it is not fair to their victims or to their families..(CINDY,ELECTION IS NOT IMPEACHMENT..THIS COUNTRY..OUR PEOPLE NEED(at the very least)to have this evil renounced in a very public way)

Sieg Heil! To Der Fuhrer Bush and good ol' Sureshot Cheney.
I'm surprised to find Cindy Sheehan on the Internet's today. I've heard a bit about you from The End of America, Naomi Watts' book, and read a speech you gave (it was quite moving, too bad I wasn't there to hear it). Sadly, I think that voting will bring little change in this nation at this particular point in time. For one, most of the Democrats in Congress are almost as right-wing as the Republicans. Also, to quote Josef Stalin, "The votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. Lastly, I think we're so close to full-blown fascism that the only ways to end this include (a) massive protests nationwide, and (b) a revolution, for this 'age of information' is not particularly informative, unless false facts and lies from the media and the White House count as info. That's just my look on things, bleak though it may be.

skippyagogo41:
The computer ate my comment, and I don't care to type it all again. I'm afraid you all will simply be deprived of my brilliance today.

Peace

i do believe in the death penalty for the most heinous of crimes, i don't agre e that that is murder. however it does seem out of proportion of african americans. the Iraq war however is just murder. i am sorry for Cindy's loss and it's not what young americans signed up in the military for.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a convicted child-killer in Florida on Thursday, the latest reprieve in a death penalty case since the justices agreed to rule on the lethal injection method.

I remember decades ago when arcade computer fighting games where all over the place, including my local pizza parlor. A mother was standing behind her 9,10? year old son yelling "CUT HIS HEAD OFF, CUT HIS HEAD OFF!!!!!

Maximum PC magazine cd's, since before the Iraq war, all had free Combat game demos of which was the graphic on the cd covers. "First Person Shooters" FPS they are called.

Who needs the draft, the propaganda machine is well oiled.

"murder mysteries"
"murder mystery dinner theater"

We are a nation weaned into violence, and a Christian nation.

What I don't get is how the "Right to lifers" condone Capital punishment and still keep their name. We need to rename them and us as the Neo Cons rename liberals and themselves.

"Right to life/Right to Kill" (ers) we should call them from now on.

I live in a community with a decent amount of hunters. I'm not one of them, but I know quite a few. From my experience, most of the people that go hunting eat what they kill. Some of them even find uses for the rest of the deer. So instead of eating a cow that's been raised in some industrial farm, they're eating a deer that's been free most of it's life. Not only does it reduce the deer population (taking the place in my area of the wolves and other predators that have been wiped out...though I'll admit this isn't the best solution) and helping to reduce the masses of industrial beef. What's wrong with that?
Oh, not to mention it's much more fair. These people are out there for hours with a rifle or bow and arrow to get their food. And quite often the deer gets away. It's not some industrial meat mass production slaughterhouse like the places most of the country gets its beef from. I can understand if you're against killing animals for any purpose, but hunting is by far the most moral way of doing it.

As for the death penalty - there are some people that are just too dangerous to hang on to. And expensive (though I realize the death penalty is rather costly as well). And personally, I'd much rather be given the death penalty than life in prison. I mean, any more than a couple years in there seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me. Death penalty is the more merciful way to go in my opinion.

The time will come when lots more members of our race will wake up to the realisation that blame, retribution, revenge and bitterness is a *sickness* which harms both the individual, (carrying all that gunge around in their hearts), and which then seeps out to harm the wider world.

A nation or individual can count itself as nearing a state of being *civilised*, when the poisonous seeds of retribution and revenge are left behind, and in their place comes *Forgiveness* and proactive caring and healing.
Mankind's major teachers have all recommended exactly that as the wisest course of action.

____________________________________

Back in 1973, Marietta Jaeger of Detroit had her little 7yr-old daughter, (Susie) snatched from their tent as the family of seven camped overnight in the Montana countryside.

The child couldn't be found anywhere. And in the ensuing weeks, Marietta was so enraged she wanted to "murder the abductor with her bare hands"...

Week's later, after being in loads of internal pain and torment, one night she 'A Voice' telling her: "I don't want you to feel this way" and Marietta felt a big weight lift from her heart. She slept well that night. ~ She had found an inner strength to (start) to *forgive* the evil character that had stolen and probably killed her child...

But her husband Bill couldn't forgive. He bought a gun, 'just in case' (he could murder the abductor).
One night, -exactly one year after Susie was kidnapped, the abductor phoned Marietta to taunt her, but Marietta had done a lot of inner work on herself, and instead of screaming and ranting, she coaxed the abductor into talking, -(and the FBI wire tap recorded the hour-long conversation).

Using evidence gathered from the wiretap, the cops traced the maniac (David Meirhofer) -who had killed at least five other kids - and would have killed still more.

But Susie's dad, Bill Jaeger couldn't find forgiveness within in himself.
He developed bleeding ulcers, and heart problems, and died prematurely from a heart attack, -aged just 56.
But Marietta had discovered the *power of forgiveness* and went on to tour the world, giving talks on learning how to forgive. She wisely states, "If you remain vindictive, you give the offender another victim."

Here's a site about her: http://www.journeyofhope.org/old_site/People/marietta_jaeger-lane.htm

And here is the web page of the very valuable *Forgiveness Project* - with a host of true stories from those who, -like Marietta Jaeger- although having suffered immense pain, tragedy, trauma and harm, nonetheless discovered how to grow into *forgiving* those who had wounded them.

~Forgiveness is powerful medicine, and heals many.

It's also the only *sensible* way ahead, if we are ever to move on from the barbarism of ages past, where, 'an eye for an eye made everyone blind' ...

______________

The day will dawn when America grows up, and puts aside her perverse blood-lust and gun culture.

This unruly, spoilt, often arrogant and selfish child-nation will at last learn that she *does* have a useful role to play in the world, but that role is more akin to emulating Christ (and the other great teachers), but *for real* -in both word and deed, not just parroting the mangled mess preached by many current rabid 'Christains' (sic).

In place of insane warfare, please instead bring THAT on!

Peter Singer in his book, "The President of Good and Evil", points to statistics showing that states that reintroduced capital punishment actually had a subsequent rise in violent crime, more so than those states where capital punishment was no allowed. There is no evidence that capital punishment acts as a deterrent to violent crime.

Albert Camus in his essay "Reflections on the Guillotine" points to similar evidence in France in the 1950's. Camus points out that capital punishment is "revenge killing" and only serves to satisfy a barbaric sensibility.

O.K.....I put the addresses on the envelopes. One to Cindy and one to Nancy. I think one should go to Conyers too. Anybody got an address?

Just to add to the discussion, I read somewhere today that 92 nations in the UN have signed on to a resolution to put a moratorium on capital punishment for all nations. Of course, the US is fighting it tooth and nail...

As long as capital punishment remains there is always the chance that an innocent will die in your name. I can't support even that one chance.

I hope you'll forgive me taking up so much space with a wordy e-mail I sent to my peeps a while back. But if nothing else, it's an illustration of just how difficult it will be for Amerika to evolve out of its gun fetish. Here it is:
---------------------------------------------------------

In the off-chance that you thought America was generally a civilized, rational, enlightened place to live, consider this latest in a local story that's been percolating for a few weeks now; more comments follow.
_________________________________________________________

http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/893527.php?contentType=4&contentId=871032

KYW Newsradio | Posted: Monday, 03 September 2007 7:02AM

Falls Twp. Rifle Chair Reacts To Pa. Gun Sales Freeze | by KYW's Kim Glovas

Pennsylvania gun sales have ground to a halt through Wednesday night after a judge decided Friday to allow a computer upgrade to begin Sunday night. That upgrade means gun sales have stopped, because no background checks can be completed.

The three-day hiatus has been a bone of contention between Governor Rendell and some gun dealers. Andy Barniskis is the legislative chair of the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association:

"It means a lot of people are going to be inconvenienced. And more importantly, it means a lot of people are going to be denied their right, the right to acquire a gun whenever they wish to."

Barniskis says this is a busy time for gun sales because dove season starts this week, and goos [sic], small game, and other hunting seasons follow in rapid order. He believes the decision was arbitrary, and adds, there is nothing in the federal firearms act that allows anyone to just stop the sale of firearms. [
_________________________________________________________

Just to sum up: apparently some glitch or other irregularity affected the database that is used by gun dealers to make background checks on firearms purchasers, as required by law. The fix, or upgrade, to the computer database necessitates a three-day shutdown. This has caused quite a flurry in the Commonwealth. Well, I learned after a few work-related trips to Harrisburg that Pennsylvania is indeed Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on each end, with Alabama in between. I learned that schools close, or at least readily excuse students, during the first day of deer hunting season, etc. Well and good.

But here we have a situation where guns can't be legally purchased for THREE DAYS-- THREE DAYS, mind you-- and the gunophiliac community is squealing like the proverbial stuck pigs. There have been no end of outraged and indignant gunsels screeching in horror and fury about this outrage. One Republican legislator snarled that this circumstance was the work of "Philadelphia liberals". They complain bitterly-- get this-- that the shutdown couldn't come at a worse time, because it coincides with the beginning of DOVE hunting season, no less. And apparently DOVE hunting season is the traditional time for Johnny and Jenny to get their first guns, and a taste of blood. They've been putting their pennies and nickels in
the family Gun Jar all year, doing odd jobs and sacrificing for the sacred opportunity to pack heat and blast away at doves.

Now, because of this shutdown, we are to believe that these poor kiddies will be denied an ancient rite of passage, and will be reduced to chasing pigeons and squirrels around the barnyard with hammers, hatchets, and other primitive implements of destruction. And once the dove population has been properly destroyed and decimated, the slaughter moves on-- next on the firing line, according to the above story, are "goos", whatever those are. They are probably extinct in these parts already.

I haven't researched the matter, but I'm certain that the local news organs between the Pittsburgh and Philly bookends have given this crisis much heavier, and expressly sympathetic, play. Not sympathetic towards the doves and goos, etc., of course! I expect one can find many fulminating editorials railing against this unconscionable imposition of government
tyranny and unilateral transgression of a sacred Constitutional principle. (The populace there is almost certainly blissfully unaware that habeas corpus has been suspended. Not that they'd be terribly concerned, especially after receiving a negative response to "Habeas corpus? What is it? Kin ya shoot it?")

I don't want to seem unduly sympathetic and hard-hearted. Yes, I am moved by the thought of those poor bereft kiddies, sitting at the table with tears streaking their camouflage face-paint, clutching hand-me-down spears and slingshots, refusing to eat the last plate of fricasseed dove fingers retrieved from the deep-freeze where they sat since last year's
blissfully unfettered orgy of violence.

But it's only once a lifetime! And to make it up to them, why not buy them TWO guns when the terrible three-day ordeal is over! It's not like they need the money for their college funds; they have all the Virginia Tech they need out there in God's woods.
_________________________________________________________

Go Cindy! ♥ ;)

I would like to tell Cindy that I was distracted in the article when she accused the Deer Slayer of lining walls with trophies. Many humans hunt for food and there is animal husbandry that leads to death, albiet food for the living. Of course, there are vegetarian persuasions that would have their say on the subject, as well.
By verbally attacking part of the audience she may be trying to reach, she shutdown communication. I happen to refocus and finish the article. I've also followed her in the news and downtown in person. I have many common dreams with Cindy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18726.htm

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

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Lest We Forget

By John Pilger

11/15/07 "ICH" -- -- On Remembrance Day 2007 – Veterans Day in America – the great and the good bowed their heads at the Cenotaph. Generals, politicians, newsreaders, football managers and stock-market traders wore their poppies. Hypocrisy was a presence. No one mentioned Iraq. No one uttered the slightest remorse for the fallen of that country. No one read the forbidden list.

The forbidden list documents, without favor, the part the British state and its court have played in the destruction of Iraq. Here it is:

Holocaust denial
On 25 October, Dai Davies MP asked Gordon Brown about civilian deaths in Iraq. Brown passed the question to the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who passed it to his junior minister, Kim Howells, who replied: "We continue to believe that there are no comprehensive or reliable figures for deaths since March 2003." This was a deception. In October 2006, the Lancet published research by Johns Hopkins University in the US and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad which calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the Anglo-American invasion. A Freedom of Information search revealed that the government, while publicly dismissing the study, secretly backed it as comprehensive and reliable. The chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defense, Sir Roy Anderson, called its methods "robust" and "close to best practice." Other senior governments officials secretly acknowledged the survey's "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones." Since then, the British research polling agency, Opinion Research Business, has extrapolated a figure of 1.2 million deaths in Iraq. Thus, the scale of death caused by the British and US governments may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century.

Looting
The undeclared reason for the invasion of Iraq was the convergent ambitions of the neocons, or neo-fascists, in Washington and the far-right regimes of Israel. Both groups had long wanted Iraq crushed and the Middle East colonized to US and Israeli designs. The initial blueprint for this was the 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance," which outlined America's post-Cold War plans to dominate the Middle East and beyond. Its authors included Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell, architects of the 2003 invasion. Following the invasion, Paul Bremer, a neocon fanatic, was given absolute civil authority in Baghdad and in a series of decrees turned the entire future Iraqi economy over to US corporations. As this was lawless, the corporate plunderers were given immunity from all forms of prosecution. The Blair government was fully complicit and even objected when it looked as if UK companies might be excluded from the most profitable looting. British officials were awarded functionary colonial posts. A petroleum "law" will allow, in effect, foreign oil companies to approve their own contracts over Iraq's vast energy resources. This will complete the greatest theft since Hitler stripped his European conquests.

Destroying a nation's health
In 1999, I interviewed Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist at Basra city hospital. "Before the Gulf War," he said, "we had only three or four deaths in a month from cancer. Now it's 30 to 35 patients dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer." Iraq was then in the grip of an economic and humanitarian siege, initiated and driven by the US and Britain. The result, wrote Hans von Sponeck, the then chief UN humanitarian official in Baghdad, was "genocidal ... practically an entire nation was subjected to poverty, death and destruction of its physical and mental foundations." Most of southern Iraq remains polluted with the toxic debris of British and American explosives, including uranium-238 shells. Iraqi doctors pleaded in vain for help, citing the levels of leukemia among children as the highest seen since Hiroshima. Professor Karol Sikora, chief of the World Health Organization's cancer program, wrote in the BMJ: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee]." In 1999, Kim Howells, then trade minister, effectively banned the export to Iraq of vaccines that would protect mostly children from diphtheria, tetanus and yellow fever, which, he said, "are capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction."

Since 2003, apart from PR exercises for the embedded media, the British occupiers have made no attempt to re-equip and resupply hospitals that, prior to 1991, were regarded as the best in the Middle East. In July, Oxfam reported that 43 per cent of Iraqis were living in "absolute poverty." Under the occupation, malnutrition rates among children have spiraled to 28 per cent. A secret Defense Intelligence Agency document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," reveals that the civilian water supply was deliberately targeted. As a result, the great majority of the population has neither access to running water nor sanitation – in a country where such basic services were once as universal as in Britain. "The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 per cent compared to the Saddam Hussein era," said Dr. Haydar Salah, a pediatrician at Basra children's hospital. "Children are dying daily and no one is doing anything to help them." In January this year, nearly 100 leading British doctors wrote to Hilary Benn, then international development secretary, describing how children were dying because Britain had not fulfilled its obligations as an occupying power under UN Security Council Resolution 1483. Benn refused to see them.

Destroying a society
The UN estimates that 100,000 Iraqis are fleeing the country every month. The refugee crisis has now overtaken that of Darfur as the most catastrophic on earth. Half of Iraq's doctors have gone, along with engineers and teachers. The most literate society in the Middle East is being dismantled, piece by piece. Out of more than four million displaced people, Britain last year refused the majority of more than 1,000 Iraqis who applied to come here, while removing more "illegal" Iraqi refugees than any other European country. Thanks to tabloid-inspired legislation, Iraqis in Britain are often destitute, with no right to work and no support. They sleep and scavenge in parks. The government, says Amnesty, "is trying to starve them out of the country."

Propaganda
"See in my line of work," said George W. Bush, "you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

Standing outside 10 Downing Street on 9 April 2003, the BBC's then political editor, Andrew Marr, reported the fall of Baghdad as a victory speech. Tony Blair, he told viewers, "said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result." In the United States, similar travesties passed as journalism. The difference was that leading American journalists began to consider the consequences of the role they had played in the buildup to the invasion. Several told me they believed that had the media challenged and investigated Bush's and Blair's lies, instead of echoing and amplifying them, the invasion might not have happened. A European study found that, of the major western television networks, the BBC permitted less coverage of dissent than all of them. A second study found that the BBC consistently gave credence to government propaganda that weapons of mass destruction existed. Unlike the Sun, the BBC has credibility – as does, or did, the Observer.

On 14 October 2001, the London Observer's front page said: "US hawks accuse Iraq over anthrax." This was entirely false. Supplied by US intelligence, it was part of the Observer's staunchly pro-war coverage, which included claiming a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, for which there was no credible evidence and which betrayed the paper's honorable past. One report over two pages was headlined: "The Iraqi connection." It, too, came from "intelligence sources" and was rubbish. The reporter, David Rose, concluded his barren inquiry with a heartfelt plea for an invasion. "There are occasions in history," he wrote, "when the use of force is both right and sensible." Rose has since written his mea culpa, including in these pages, confessing how he was used. Other journalists have still to admit how they were manipulated by their own credulous relationship with established power.

These days, Iraq is reported as if it is exclusively a civil war, with a US military "surge" aimed at bringing peace to the scrapping natives. The perversity of this is breathtaking. That sectarian violence is the product of a vicious divide-and-conquer policy is beyond doubt. As for the largely media myth of al-Qaeda, "most of the [American] pros will tell you," wrote Seymour Hersh, "that the foreign fighters are a couple per cent, and then they're sort of leaderless." That a poorly armed, audacious resistance has not only pinned down the world's most powerful army but has agreed to an anti-sectarian, anti-al-Qaeda agenda, which opposes attacks on civilians and calls for free elections, is not news.

The next blood letting
In the 1960s and 1970s, British governments secretly expelled the population of Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean whose people have British nationality. Women and children were loaded on to vessels resembling slave ships and dumped in the slums of Mauritius, after their homeland was given to the Americans for a military base. Three times, the High Court has found this atrocity illegal, calling it a defiance of the Magna Carta and the Blair government's refusal to allow the people to go home "outrageous" and "repugnant." The government continues to use endless recourse to appeal, at the taxpayers' expense, to prevent upsetting Bush. The cruelty of this matches the fact that not only has the US repeatedly bombed Iraq from Diego Garcia, but at "Camp Justice," on the island, "al-Qaeda suspects" are "rendered" and "tortured," according to the Washington Post. Now the US Air Force is rushing to upgrade hangar facilities on the island so that stealth bombers can carry 14-ton"bunker busting" bombs in an attack on Iran. Orchestrated propaganda in the media is critical to the success of this act of international piracy.

On 22 May, the front page of the London Guardian carried the banner headline: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq." This was a tract of unalloyed propaganda based entirely on anonymous US official sources. Throughout the media, other drums have taken up the beat. "Iran's nuclear ambitions" slips effortlessly from newsreaders' lips, no matter that the International Atomic Energy Agency refuted Washington's lies, no matter the echo of "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction," no matter that another bloodbath beckons.

Lest we forget.

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so what most of you are saying is, hey it's OK to kill another Human, we will only lock you up forever feed you and give you for the rest of your life, because we few think it's not OK to take your life if you have taken another for no reason other than your own gain. so GO Ahead America, kill till your hearts content, we forgive you. You people are just as sick as the bastard that just did the killing. There is NOTHING similar between killing an animal for food. I am so sick of you tree hugging folks thinking you are better than the rest of us because you have only one thought wave. this is NOT YOUR world it is all of our world.

RE: greenerthanthou November 15th, 2007 2:20 pm

"...said to have loved killing geese, rabbits, deer, squirrels and turkeys. Could his insensitivity to suffering make it easier to participate in the mass killing done in Iraq?"

Exactly, but we must not forget violent video games & TV shows youth are constantly bombarded with that desensitize them to murder & mayhem, and things like 'gangsta rap' aren't a positive influence either. It's not entirely the public's fault, however, since the MSM is the culprit for foisting & expanding this 'culture of death' upon us.

Life on this planet has always included an element of violence, but if we are to evolve into enlightened intelligent beings, instead of devolving into just unthinking brutes, now is the time to heed the warnings.

RE: pdf November 15th, 2007 2:32 pm

If you were like the countless millions of Ameicans (~2.5 million as I type this) who have been incarcerated here you would understand the prospect of spending the rest of your days behind bars is a fate, and punishment, much worse than death. Logically, the best way to alleviate the problem is by attacking the underlying causes rather than the results, mainly social injustice & income disparity. For the truly incorrigible or criminally insane we would have ample space to isolate these anti-social types if we didn't waste prison resources on non-violent offenders such as potheads. This is sensible and probably why our overly money driven fundamentalist influenced government heads the in other direction. Cindy s correct when she states, "...the death penalty has not been proven to prevent or even inhibit the high incidences of violent crime in this country.", or any other country for that matter. For civilized peoples 'execution or institution' is not a quandary.

RE: geoff29 November 15th, 2007 4:17 pm

"...should rest at ease as to the way fate deals with tyrants"

Very astute observation. I've said (and written) many times,"All tyrannies are temporary", meaning they all eventually fail & fall. This doesn't make them any easier to live through, though, or forego a duty to be confrontational regarding them; only meant to give hope to the downtrodden.

RE: UN-common-dreams November 15th, 2007 7:09 pm

"The day will dawn when America grows up, and puts aside her perverse blood-lust and gun culture"

Three hundred million guns in the US at this tme and what good are they unless we can take Bush/Cheney & Co on a hunting trip?

kiss my ass has harshly said how i feel about this. i think that liberals are too easy on crime. the execution of a murdered isn't barbaric, it's justice. i've been told "well what if they are executed and they are innocent".

well what if they are imprisoned for 20,30, 40 years and are innocent as well? we need to make the investigative process much more accurate, so innocent people are acquitted. it's easy to say we should do away with the death penalty, when it's someone else's loved one who was killed. i've heard the arguments against the DP, but i'm definitely not swayed. a prison term can lead to a parole, especially after a few years of "good behavior" or they find "god" or whatever. I see so much sympathy for the criminals but not much for the victims.

even if people disagree with some of Cindy's beliefs, we should still rally with her and agree to disagree, so we can help restore our nation

Kiss my ass: I hunt, I hug trees, fuck you.

MannieDavis: Sorry to have missed your response.

If you can guarantee that the person accused is the person who's guilty of murder then you have half a chance of convincing me that execution is justifiable. In other words you have no chance. Yes, it's kinda cruel to stick someone in a cage for a few decades; in cases where the sob is guilty of murder I say good. In cases where the accused is able to prove his innocence, I say thank god we didn't off the guy. Let those who murder wish for a quick release, I say make them wait.

crime is marely a symtom of the rot within. Death penalty is not going to change any thing significantly. Essentially it is 'feel-good' measure.

When I was drafted into the Army they put a gun in my hand and told me to kill. I said "but killing is against God's Commandments". They said "shut up and kill those fuckers", so I did.

They made me a hero.

When I got home some guy pissed me off, so I killed that fucker.

Tomorrow I'm gonna hang.

I got some real confusin shit to discuss with God when I get to see him.

Cindy,

I believe you taught your children gentleness, but we can't absolve people just because they needed money. (For college, or whatever reason.) The united states and their soldiers in Iraq, regardless of what their excuse is, are there because they decided to murder people for money. (By joining the army, a person agrees to murder for money.) Whether their excuse is that they wanted a little money for college, like your son, or wanted a lot to line their already bloated pocketbooks, like Bush and Co, the fact is they decided to kill their fellow human beings to get it. We need to make a stand and say that EVERYONE involved in this has a choice, from the resident who ordered us there, to the soldiers who agreed to go. We all admire Ghandi, King, Thoreau, and the White Rose in Nazi Germany because when faced with a choice, they turned away from evil and said "no." And if that is the right thing to do, we cannot be true to our beliefs and fail to condemn those who kill for money, even for a little money, even on orders, until they realize what they're doing is wrong and stop. And we can't wholly blame society or the military industrial complex for this, either. Every one there is there because he made a choice to kill murder people if so ordered. If society was solely to blame, we'd have to say Bush, Cheney, and the rest of their murderous ilk pursue their murderous wars for profit because that's the way society (high society, in their case) taught them to be; pursue profit, whatever the cost. It wouldn't be their fault.

I would rather allow a thousand guilty men go free for murder if it meant that I would prevent the execution of one innocent man in the process. If anyone thinks differently, you wouldn't feel that way if you were the innocent one to be sacrificed.

Read John Grisham's non-fiction book 'The Innocent Man' which is actually about several innocent men who were placed on death row simply because of an over-zealous prosecutor and an apathetic community. America is far too biased, emotional and unprofessional to be given the authority to execute people they deem unworthy of living.