war crimes!!!!!

I heard on the news that Israel is now accused of war crimes against Palestine.  That horrified me.  How could a nation that became--or rebecame a nation after sort of surviving the most horrible war crimes I could have imagined.  Surely they did not become the monsters.  Surely they have not forgotten so soon what it is like to be a people that is homeless and without acceptance.
But being no Pollyanna, I accepted that the people of Israel, the people that survived the Holocaust after surviving 2000 years of wondering after the loss of their own country was not made of wimps and wusses.  Of course they are capable of war crimes.
Then the term--war crimes--struck me.  What about war is not a crime.  There is no good in a war.  Wars could all be avoided, but they aren't because one group always decides that someone else has something they want, and they want it enough to send their young people at risk of life and limb, to get it.  Their is always an aggressor.  And the aggressor always wants something.  Something that is currently not theirs but that could be if they kill enough of the other people to make them decide keeping it is not longer worth it.
We have grand and patriotic terms for war.  We always are fighting for freedom here in this country.  I'm not sure how we always know which side to take to be fighting for freedom.  I haven't not noticed much freedom in the Ukraine, or Afghanistan, or Iraq or anyone of those countries that we want to fight for or against.  I didn't see much in Vietnam either--France left after years of colonialization---read long term pillaging of another countries resources, and two factions went at it.  As usual, the poor on both sides lost.  I don't know that anyone won.  Or that anyone ever wins.
Same with Korea, we fought with the South, and I do think the dictatorship in the North is pretty scarey, but no one won.  Maybe buying some peacetime is all war ever does.  And we humans should figure out that if we don't go to war, its all peacetime.
But back to war crimes.  What part of war is not a crime and therefore how does one determine what is a crime.  I personally find that there have been many atrocities, but during war and during peace.  I wasn't sure we Americans wouldn't commit our own atrocities upon those children at the border.  They are certainly raising the hackles on many of our people.  We watch the news, hear the spins placed by our personal favorite newscaster, and take side.  We haven't had a war on our soil in over 100 years so its almost like cheering at a tv football game.  Choose your side, be loyal, be supportive when they are doing good, don't boo when they aren't doing so good.  You know, be a good cheerleader.  but those things our there that are loud on our TV screens, those are people, and in many of those places, they have lived lives similar to ours, this is just as horrifying to them as if suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an invasion of aliens.  When suddenly your home isn't safe, your children could be killed, not as a rare accident but by a gun or bomb or for smiling or not smiling at the enemy soldier now inhabiting your town, then what isn't a war crime.  If your son or daughter is conscripted into the war, with no desire to go to war, with a new spouse, plans for a career, wanting children, and they are sent in to shoot at people they don't know and those people are shooting back and kill them.  Is that not a war crime?  If your five year old doesn't know not to walk through the empty field by grandma's because it is now a minefield, is that not a war crime?  If you family business of 6 generations is taken as a temporary headquarters for the newly arrived allies and they tear up the walls and throw out the supplies to make room for their own needs, how is that not a war crime?
Perhaps all war is a crime, and then all warmongers are war criminals.  Who would be on that list.  The weapons manufacturers, the developers of technology that has no use but to kill large numbers of people, the people that want war, that profit from war, that start wars for their own gains.
Our own country is full of war criminals.  The politically connected, the rich and powerful, the greedy and military powers that know their only purpose is war, they are war criminals.  The 18 year old that snaps and strangles a kid in a village when they startle him, the soldier that suddenly sees "enemy" with every person that looks like the peoples that have been shooting at him and blasts a group of teenagers that were out trying to party in  their blasted city that is not surviving in a war,  the mother that throws a grenade into a jeep after watching her toddler run over by the same kind of jeep.  Those are the true fruit of war.  PTSD, missing limbs, traumatic brain injury, family trees that suddenly end, those are the fruit of war.
This is where everyone brings up Hitler.  "We had to stop Hitler"  Agreed, but why would so many people follow him.  Why was it so easy for him to make so many people kill for what he believed.  Hitler was one man, who gave him the power to start a war?  We did.  Just like we do now.  Just like we do now.  Hitler did not personally kill all those people.  It is estimated that WWII lead to 60,000,000 dead world wide counting military and civilians.  Over 50 countries lost people in that war.  And everyone blames one man---Hitler.  A small man with a bad moustache.  There is no way he could have killed 16,000 people a day by himself.  We didn't have that kind of technology back then.  (we might be able to do it now, but reality is, the people giving orders usually can't even run the equipment, so one man couldn't do it alone now, either)
Yet, every single person that fought in that war saw themselves as a patriot, a hero, doing their duty, from every side, from every position.
We all need to do a better job teaching our children.  The problem is not that we need wars to protect our freedoms.  We need to all know that no one can take our freedom.  No ONE person, no ONE idea can make us do what we know is wrong, no ONE desire for possessing what does not belong to us can be used as an excuse to kill.  We all matter, we all have a right to live in safety, with personal freedoms (that end at the tip of the other person's nose) and enough food/water/medicine/shelter to keep from being on constant want.  Acquisitiveness is not a right to take from others, power hunger is not a right to tell others what to do, and personal beliefs are not a right to make others live by our rules.  That is freedom for all.  And real freedom doesn't kill people, people kill people---and calling it war doesn't making it any less a crime.

HOSPICE AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

There is a lot of discussion about the cruel and unusual punishment that is occurring with lethal injection in capital punishment.  The drug companies don't want their drugs used for it--bad advertising.  The people that have taken oaths to do no harm are avoiding participation.  The people willing to participate don't actually have a clue about what they are trying to do.  Where is Dr. Kevorkian when you need him?
In truth, people working in hospice will tell you that natural death is not all that pretty.  It isn't quick, and it is only as painless as you can make it without hurrying it along too much.  The description of the person gasping for breath  for almost 2 hours sounds pretty much like---death.  Inadequate respiratory effort caused by the mix of opiate and benzo--what everyone working with patients on that combination for a procedure knows to be aware of and ready to treat.  Hypoventilation leading to acidosis and death.  Guppy breathing.
Why, after years of using potassium to stop the heart, suddenly no one can figure out that is what is missing, not the barbituate but the actual chemical that causes death.  No pain medication or anxiolytic will cause death, they just depress respiratory centers in the brain.  A strong, healthy person can stay that way a good time---I've seen old and sick and dying people with respiratory acidosis during their active dying that maintained a heart beat and shallow, ineffective breathing for hours---and they were old and sick and dying.  Why would we expect that drugs that do not stop the heart, merely depress the respiratory centers, to cause a younger, basically healthy person that is also sporting a healthy dose of adrenaline to just lay down and die in a short and inoffensive timeframe.
Perhaps the question we need to be asking is not about what is cruel and unusual punishment; perhaps the questions we should be asking are about the court systems in our country.  We have DNA evidence of executed inmates that whose DNA didn't match the crime scene.  We have Police officers that are willing to bet on their own gut feelings by planting evidence to ensure convictions, we have juries that ignore the evidence or are chosen for their inability to think clearly as it makes them easier for the lawyers to sway.  We also have crimes so horrendous that the jurors can only think of revenge, and can't separate their own need to punish someone from the job of deciding if that is the person on trial.
None of the problems are intentional and in fact our court systems, with their checks and balances, rules of protections, and use of a jury of our peers was all intended to remove the problem of a king or his representative passed judgement with whatever evidence and however ruthlessly suited him that day.  A person that shot a rabbit in the King's forest could be executed, or maimed, or sent away from his family to labor in one of the King's colonies--colonies always had plenty of labor needs, and criminals were a good source of free labor.
So, our constitution improved upon the previous laws, but then we set about turning it into a game, a game of chess, a game of politics, and game made up of powerful people and powerless people--guess who always loses?
The following is a list of people with considerable doubt raised posthumously as to their guilt.  I'm sure they all feel much better about their executions knowing someone actually questioned their innocencs.

Carlos DeLuna Texas Conviction: 1983, Executed: 1989
Ruben Cantu Texas Convicted: 1985, Executed: 1993
Larry Griffin Missouri Conviction: 1981, Executed: 1995
Joseph O'Dell Virginia Conviction: 1986, Executed: 1997
David Spence Texas Conviction: 1984, Executed: 1997
Leo Jones Florida Convicted: 1981, Executed: 1998
Gary Graham Texas Convicted: 1981, Executed: 2000,
Claude Jones Texas Convicted 1989, Executed 2000
Cameron Willingham Texas Convicted: 1992, Executed: 2004

Troy Davis   Georgia   Convicted 1991  Executed 2011

The links should take you to more detailed information.  (and this is only a small number of them, and reality is, many more than this have maintained their innocence till the time of death but no one backtracked to check it out.  It is interesting to note that half of these are people of color.  Half of these occurred in Texas, All of them occurred in southern states.  

In each case, only those witnesses that made the case were used, those that said it wasn't him were not invited to testify, several police officers either recanted or were later removed from uniform for unethical methods of getting confessions--and yes, we have known for a very long time that hurting someone will make them say whatever you want them to say.  Several had evidence that was not pursued once the prosecution decided it had enough to win a case.  All focused on one suspect to the exclusion of others once a suspect was identified.  In once case, an arson, later examination revealed that, just like the convicted said, the fire was not purposefully set---the conclusions of the investigator were wrong and no arson occurred.

People can be wrong, it happens, we have all been wrong and we have all had to apologize to someone for something at some time.  But the executed do not forgive us.  They can't.  They're dead.

What is the problem?  Our legal system has forgotten its purpose.  We have lost our humanity and our justice system has lost its credibility.  The people investigating are pressured to provide a high solve rate.  The Heads of the police are pressured to make the current local politico's look good, to make them look like they are "tough on crime".  The District attorneys are elected officials and need the votes so their conviction rate is more important than anything else.  We have 3rd party jails and prisons that like a full plate---more prisoners equals more money, and death row is special, more guards, more money, more everything.  The victims' loved ones want someone to pay.  There is never a lack of people being accused that can bargain at witnessing someone else's guilt in exchange for time off their own sentence.  

To make everyone happy--a conviction is needed.  The family of the victim can start healing, the community quits fearing a killer in their midst, the police look smart and dedicated, always good PR, the prosecuter ensures his numbers in the next election, the Mayor looks like he is all about the helping the community attract more  ______(insert business, jobs, tourism, money---chose the latest mayoral buzzword) and thus help everyone living there, and the corporate topdogs get their bonuses for having a full jail/prison)

The only person not happy is the person that gets executed, the person that didn't do that particular crime, the person that may not have committed any crime, the person that ceases to exist in the name of a lie.

That is the problem with capital punishment.  If they did not do it with a camera running and with a full disclosure of what led to the crime (I do think that anyone can be pushed to kill--ask anyone that has lived in a condition of war for protracted lengths of time, and  some marriages or communities might qualify as war zones) then how can we kill them for it.  How can we ever close that book so permanently.  I think that the time of capital punishment is over.  We all die but making people kill innocent people as part of their job is inhuman.  The guilt, what do those executioners do with that.  What do they do with it when they know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are guilty.  I think I don't trust a person that could be executioner without any remorse.  That person may be scarier than the person they are killing.  Its time to come up with another plan.  Dahmier lasted 2 years after his conviction--no death row, just general population.  General population has always been a scarey world.  I wish our guards weren't part of the problem, but the cost of death row, both in money and in soulessness, is too much.  Time to call an end to it.  Time to stop the game.

Hypocrisy in a Brave New World

Yesterday I was talking to a woman at work about the stuff in the news.  She was lamenting the number of innocent children being hurt and killed in the Middle East.  She wanted to stop the senseless killing, the accidental shooting of children, the maiming, the destruction of lives before they were fully begun.  She wanted to donate money to help care for these children.  She wanted to send troops to protect them and stop the madness.    And with hardly a breath between sentences, she went on to complain about the 52000 illegal immigrants being "welcomed into our country, using up our resources, costing the taxpayers money for their food, legal representation, healthcare and foster care.  She understood the armed protesters going to stop them at the border.  She thought they would turn into crimnals in our country.  She thought it was time we got tough.
When I started talking about the history of the countries those children were coming from, the civil wars, the gangs that started in our own cities that were then transferred back to those countries when we deported the immigrants from the 1980's that created gangs to compete with the gangs already here and then ended up in prison.  If you want to fine-hone a gangster--send them to prison--they are truly bad when they get out and we should all work-out so much.
We deported them, and they took that new culture back home, where the whole drug cartel/gangster's- running-everything-and-everyone-that-can't-afford-their-own-persona-army-is-at-their-mercy lifestyle took off like a rabbit that saw a fox.  The people back home, countries that had been simple/agragrian/translate--poor---were helpless,  And the children either joined the gangs or became their pawns, to be used and sold and extorted.
Would I send my children on a thousand mile trip alone?  Are they being sent alone, or are coyotes promising to take them here for a price.  How desparate does a poor person have to be to save enough money from the food money that isn't enough already to send their children away in the hands of people as questionable as--well let's face it--the reputation of the coyote is of a tricky/sly/good-fer-nothing predator.  (personally, I  like the animals, but know better than to leave my pets out at night)  How bad does it have to be to think that is a risk worth taking.  Do Central American poor people not value their children at all?  Or are they seeing something happening right their in front of their eyes that is so much worse than anything they could imagine that they start hiding money and hunting for someone to save their kids?
But what about us?  Why are we hating these kids so much?  We have been deeply invested in middle-eastern politics for a long time.  We hear about their economies, their politics, their terrorists and we want to fight their wars, send our own young people to die for them.  They are obviously valuable.  But is it their human life we value, or their resources.
Our own southern bordering countries have been having issues for generations and what have we done--"build a taller fence, send more guards, deport them."  Reality is, there are as many people with relatives on both sides of that border as there were on relatives separated by the Berlin Wall.  The history of North and South America are not so different, the people here when the Europeans, Africans, and Asians started coming over were very closely related.  And the original immigrants were closely related.  The time frames were similar as far as the original immigration.  The methods were different and the language was different.
But i don't know anyone that speaks any of the middle eastern languages that didn't come to this country with their parents.  I have always known people that also speak Spanish.  Its the most likely language to be taught in public school, the second being French, and we have neighbors that speak that also.
Maybe that is the problem.  We used to all know and help our neighbors.  Mr Rogers encouraged it long after the necessity of it ended(amazing what automobiles and telephones cured)  Now, the neighbors are the people we fight with over ugly fences, loud radios, and pets---our charity, both financial and volunteering are spent with larger groups that help people that we never see.  It's like the person that goes on a mission to a distant country to bring them food but calls the mayor every week about "those nasty homeless people"
When I was a teenager, the big rebellion was at the hypocrits our parents were when we first started looking at them as people instead of our heroes.  A parent that didn't get called a hypocrit by their child had definitely failed to raise an intelligent and independent child.  They earned the name when they drank a beer and wouldn't let us, when they went to church after being at the bar the night before, when they bought themselves suits and wouldn't pony-up the money for a new pair of jeans.  Obviously, we were not living in a place of danger, our parents felt no need to spend their last dime sending us to another country.  There were dangers to people in poor places, people struggling right in this country to be treated like first class citizens, but that was not the issue to my pals and I.  We were all about being treated like adults.
Now, half a century later, it is my generation that is the hypocrits.  And it isn't about the petty stuff we complained about.  It is big stuff, big-as-the-nose-on-your-face stuff.  The kind of hypocrisy that makes people look silly and blind and ridiculous.  The kind that makes us look petty.
I guess we haven't changed that much after all.

These are a few of my favorite things (hum that Julie Andrews tune as you read, it isn't lyrics, but I want it stuck in your head)

• NPR radio, not the old version with Rush Limbaugh, but the new stuff which seems to have moved as I have moved--kind of like a great pair of Jeans.  If I had any money, I'd donate it to them, as it is, I just love the stuff they talk about.
• Neil Grasse Tyson, the Cosmos guy, the man about science that isn't afraid to say the stuff that the public school in this state and several others just as red won't let be taught--but we want to compete in science and engineering and medicine.  That is like promoting art while making it illegal to use writing or painting implements.  He is also very vocal on political issues that are even more hands-off, equal opportunities, cultural bias, you name it, what is not to love.
• Ebay, I have no reason for this, but have bought enough stuff there that must  prove I love it.
• Facebook, (just kidding)
• Farmer's markets--o yeah!  tastes like fresh, homegrown, I'm speechless, but the flavor is so much better than the packable/shippable/genetically altered stuff that passes as produce at the store.   It makes me beg for spring and summer to hurry back.  This year, every flower bed has been vegetablized.
• Flea Markets--think REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE.  I take some cash--they got smarter and put in ATM machines, so you can usually get more--and due to my own weird need to purchase from the underdog, I now own some very odd things.  My children will have to figure out what that stuff was about after I'm dead.  Its a kind of revenge for making me purchase pogs and name brand jeans during growing spurts and those weird little electronic pets that would suddenly start making noise for no reason in the middle of the night.
• Nature Parks that let you enjoy the sounds and sites of nature without the screams of over-excited children, bawdy teens and drunken adults and no motorcycles, scooters,motorboats, radios, tv's---what am I saying, no evidence of other humans.
• Kittens, how very cliche, but kittens are so completely themselves.  They each have their own personality and are almost immune to pavlovian alterations.  Control freaks that think they have trained their little ball of wild animal are almost always later made aware that they got the creature to not do that while the human was watching. To me, that is smart, despite the tendency of most people to define smart by how fast you can train something to do what you want, I think having a mind of your own may trump that.
• Old trees.  
• Power tools--being older and female, its like suddenly all that upper body strength and decreased endurance no longer matters.  I can make anything I can pick up, prop up or build laying down and then get help pulling it up.  Or I can go buy an electric winch to pull it up.  See what I mean?
• Rocks! Not Rock-and-Roll (though that is not bad), not Rocking chairs(also fun) but rocks!  They are fun to find, fun to look at, fun to wear and fun to decorate with.  Yesterday I got my first trilobites--just looking at them makes me think in geologic time.  I'm just a baby in the general scheme of things.
• Projects!---not work ones, personal ones.  If it starts with a goal and ends with a change--that is it.  I'm getting ready to finishing painting the stairs.  I'm scattered, so it is coat two, and is still an unknown time from the end.  I also have a half-finished beadazzled wig head, multiple quilts in various stages, several oil paintings, and a chair to finish.  I always have something to work toward---but when a project is done--what a feeling of accomplishment.
• Grandbabies.  Not every baby, but those babies that your own kids are raising and you get to have time with.  A little trip down memory lane, a chance to get to know a new member of the family, and time to play.
• Sunny mornings with the light streaming across the yard, each blade of grass casting its own shadow, bark mottled, leaves glistening, its like a miracle is occurring---guess it is.

But what do you believe?

What I believe and what I know seems to be two very different things.  There have been books and seminars on believing ourselves rich and beautiful and successful.  There are religions in which believing is the most important thing they teach.  Believing can create magick, save fairies, and start an industrial empire.
But what does belief have to do with everyday life?
Everything.  Just Everything.  Let me tell a story about beliefs.
I work with a woman that is strong in her faith, very religious, and very vocal about anyone not living according to the rules of her faith.  She is also very narrow in her views and judgemental about just about everything and certain about what is right and wrong to the point of self-righteousness.
She also has no idea that is annoying to anyone else---because she is right.  (she takes black and white thinking way beyond concrete)
Recently, she decided to take a problem she was having to the whole department because she didn't know what to do.  It was a personal problem involving a newly married son and his new wife.  She presented her side--when she and her spouse got married, instead of having their christmas day at either parents, all the families from both sides came to her house and spent from early morning to evening.  All her spouse's family and all her family---I resisted asking if they were both only children.  And the problem was that the son and his new wife were going to spend the holidays at her family.  She thought the wife's family should all come to their house as they always had.  She was in tears, but the word wrong was used.  I asked why both families didn't go to the newlyweds home.  She started crying.
Their was no sympathy in the department meeting, we had all experienced tradition changes at our own marriages and with our grown children.  But she had somehow assigned a very real Right and Wrong to her little family tradition and somehow had expected us to tell her how to make her son and his new family tow the line.
Belief.
To talk about god or metaphysics or spirituality without the use of the word is almost impossible.  But our beliefs are not limited to those things that can't be proven by science.  We develop opinions, tastes, desires and styles based on beliefs.  If you ask three people what is beauty you will get very concrete answers most of the time, but beauty is an intangible determined by each of us and what we believe is beautiful has a great deal to do with it.  Most young girls in the USA know that the disney princesses are beautiful.  Every clear eyed adult knows that no human has ever looked like those cartoons.  But those caricatures of young women do give girls something to believe about what makes a beautiful woman--they must be young, clear-skinned, perfect hair, pert noses, big eyes, with no asymmetries, fatness, handicaps.
Little girls pick their most beautiful feature based on such things and they hate the feature that gets them made fun of, either by others or by their own mirror.
Every judgement is based on a belief.  Whether we are judging ourselves, others, or a system.  And beliefs are generally developed without conscious thought.  We are indoctrinated to them as children, by our parent's teaching us their beliefs with the certainty of fact. by the religious system our parents choose for us and take us to, by the schools we attend, by the entertainment we watch and listen to and read, and by the people outside our family that spend the most time talking to us and teaching us.  They aren't just spiritual, we are taught what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, what is popular and unpopular, what is important and what is trite, what is worth fighting for and what is ridiculous.
And for most kids, that process ends when they graduate from high school.  If you run into an old classmate 50 years later, they are still sporting the same tan lines and extra-straight long blonde hair, they are going to the same church, and when they open their mouth, you hear the same opinions spouted as truths--gossip about people not doing what she expects, party-line politics, and judgements about the earth going to hell-in-a-handbasket because of all those people that aren't living the right way.
Socrates, the king of questions, said the unexamined life is not worth living.  Have we stopped teaching that, or has it always been so rare for people to try to see beyond the blindspots.  Listening to toddlers parrot their parents is not unexpected, but listening to 30-somethings do the same is very scarey.  And that is not rare.  A part of me feels that we have not encouraged thoughtfulness--critical thinking--call it what you want.  Another part recognizes that getting past beliefs is hard.  It takes consciously recognizing them as beliefs.  It requires looking at them without emotional buy-in.
Every time I see a person that is upset because the church of their childhood will not accept them due to their sexuality or due to a divorce, I wonder why they don't find another religion.  Why stay with one that condemns you for something you do not feel is wrong or that was not even a choice.  But the three people I have asked that of respond with statements of simplicity---"they are the true church"  Wow!
I was raised to have strong religious beliefs as a child.  Neither parent did much in the way of questioning, although neither were terribly close to the church by their deaths.  I questioned, and the first questions were pretty mild next to the questions that came later.  In the end, I decided that my spiritual beliefs would remain fluid and treated as beliefs--not as unprovable facts.  I no longer get into discussions of god with true-believers.  It is pointless.  Most traditional religions have the strange caveat about belief being the most important thing.  The act of examining it places your soul in danger.  I'm far to paranoid to think that was ever part of anything but a human attempt to make other people do what they are told.
But is there a way to change our beliefs about other things.  Can my daughter love her nonstraight and nonblonde hair?  Can I learn to love my decidedly old and convex face?  Should all plastic surgeries be covered by regular insurance?  And success?  How do we redefine it?  How do we make it ok to be who we are?  How do we examine those things in our lives that we have turned into truths based on beliefs.
What do you believe?