On Capital Punishment
26 June 2008
The presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party is giving the voters repeated instances of “triangulation,” of calibrated betrayals of progressive principles. That is what has been the hallmark of the Democratic Party for the last third of a century, and it is all we can expect from them for the foreseeable future.
Setting aside pandering to the state of Israel and the outright reversal on immunity from prosecution extended to telecommunication corporations infringing federal law, we have today the obvious sucking up to the voters who like to have prisoners executed.
The death penalty is a barbaric anachronism that demeans its practitioners. It responds to the vicious behavior of a criminal by requiring the community to act vengefully. The entire international community of humane thinkers works actively to hasten the day when the minority of countries (38 out of 152 countries worldwide) which now retain it, agree to its abolition.
But the Democrats in 2004 put a plank in their platform in favor of the death penalty (withdrawn at the last minute at their nominee’s insistence), and in 2008 the Democratic candidate opposes a Supreme Court decision providing a reasonable limitation of disproportionate violence perpetrated in the name of justice.
Do not continue to give your votes to the Democrats even though they are corrupt corporate shills. Give your vote to a party, and a candidate, that works to build a better, a more
sustainable, society.
Vote Pacific Green. Vote Meo for Congress.
It is the Politics of Fear, and we are in the midst of another episode.
20 June 2008
We were forced to support brutal dictators in Central America who shot and tortured their own citizens because they called for unions and free elections, or simply an end to assassinations and torture. Ronald Reagan assured us that we had to do this, we had to arm and train vicious thugs in a Contra army and send them to rape and burn in Nicaragua because "they" would cross the Rio Grande into Texas if we didn't.
Ronald Reagan was a Republican.
We had to suffer mass arrests, in secret, following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and the declaration of a "War on Terror" because "they" were going to come here and kill us, all of us, on account of our freedoms. (Of course, if that were the case, if the attacks were intended as a way to have us surrender our freedoms, then the terrorists have obviously already won.)
George W. Bush is a Republican. We like to think Democrats are better.
But when Bill Clinton was running for President, and a mentally retarded murderer was scheduled to be executed, he sat by and allowed the execution. The murderers among us must be executed, goes the argument, or else they'll come and get us. That's why the United States has more people in prison than any other country in the world, and more prisoners per capita of our population, too. Our leaders batten on our fear -- they promote it and foster it.
Now Barack Obama has agreed, while he is presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party in the midst of a presidential race, to an amnesty for telecommunications companies that agreed to illegal surveillance of American citizens. "Given the grave threats that we face," Obama said today (20 June 2008), "our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists. . . " The intelligence we had before September 11th was fine; the response of the Bush Administration was incompetent. Investigation after investigation has shown that. And the issue of needing more powers to listen to terrorists is irrelevant: the nub is, do we prosecute federal officials and corporate officials who break the law and the Constitution?
Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was well aware that most Democrats opposed to capital punishment. Democrat Barack Obama knows that most Americans, not to mention most Democrats, are opposed to telecoms immunity
Their answer is, they approve of you being kept in fear. Vote for them, for you are in danger and they will keep you safe.
You see, the Democrats are part of the problem. They are wedded to the same Politics of Fear that got us into dirty wars in Central America, into the business of torture and murder of our prisoners. I appeal to the voters of Oregon to repudiate the Democratic Party and all its cowardly capitulations to the politics of fear. Vote for the Pacific Green Party, and stand up for peace, not only in Iraq but everywhere corporate interests, be they Republican or Democratic, promote war.
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