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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

IN LOVING MEMORY OF WILLIAM J. BUCKLEY, JR. [ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2013]

            In loving memory of William J. Buckley, JR. who died on this date, 27 February 2005. I will post the article on the death penalty of the week.

NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

ARTICLE TITLE: Michael Ross Dead? Capital punishment in Connecticut.
DATE: 11 January 2005
AUTHOR: William F. Buckley, Jr.
AUTHOR INFORMATION: William F. Buckley, Jr. (November 24, 1925 - February 27, 2005) was an American Conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, which had a major impact in stimulating the conservative movement. He hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, where his public persona was famous for a sesquipedalian vocabulary. He also wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and wrote numerous spy novels.
George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American Conservative movement, states that Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century... For an entire generation, he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary contribution to politics was a fusion of traditional American political conservatism with laissez-faire economic theory and anti-communism, laying groundwork for the new American conservatism of U.S. presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan.
Buckley wrote God and Man at Yale (1951) and over 50 other books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, including a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself as either a libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut. He was a practicing Roman Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.
In the late 1960s, Buckley joined the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA. He resigned in January 1978 in protest over the organization's stance against capital punishment as expressed in its Stockholm Declaration of 1977, which he said would lead to the "inevitable sectarianization of the amnesty movement".

William F. Buckley Jr. in 1985
January 11, 2005, 2:13 p.m.
Michael Ross Dead?
Capital punishment in Connecticut.
Catholics who attend mass in Fairfield County, Connecticut, on Sunday, January 16, will know that in doing so they are being dutiful, it being church law that the sabbath should be observed. But this Sunday, the faithful will be asked to declare themselves as dutiful also in a different sense — by signing a petition posted at the door at the behest of the Most Reverend William Lori, who is the bishop of Bridgeport. 

The proximate cause of the current commotion is the impending death of Michael Ross on January 26. Much attention fastens on him because he would be the first person executed in the State of Connecticut in 44 years, and incidentally the first ever to be executed by injection.

There is a lot that is special about Mr. Ross, other than his singularity as a condemned man this side of Texas whose execution might actually take place. Most notably different about him is that he has requested that the State get on with the execution. This confounds everybody, and is tangentially inconvenient for the defense squadron who have kept him alive for 20 years, which is when he committed his most recent murder. 

That was the 8th girl he killed, and one of several he also raped. The Hartford Courant sent a reporter down to Huntsville, Texas, to accompany the Connecticut official who wanted firsthand knowledge of how actually to implement the law on the books. The two were among the witnesses at the execution of James Scott Porter, and the Courant noted that between the time he was led out from his prison cell and the time he was pronounced dead, only 12 minutes had gone by. Porter was already in jail for murder, but had now attacked a fellow inmate in a prison day room and smashed him to death with a rock. Porter was the 337th person to die in Texas of the lethal injection: the 337th murderer to die, not the 337th Texan to die at the hands of a murderer — that number is many times larger.

What Bishop Lori is asking churchgoers to do is sign a petition to repeal the death penalty in Connecticut. The Connecticut bishops are of course hoping that Michael Ross's life can yet be saved, notwithstanding that he wants to die, that the Connecticut courts have found nothing to invalidate the sentencing, that the U.S. Supreme Court declines to intervene, and that the governor of Connecticut has said she finds no reason to commute the sentence. "As a community of faith and reason," Bishop Lori has said, "as believers and as citizens, we need to ponder carefully what is about to take place and then to make our voices heard." 

But of course capital punishment has been pondered, and it is the deliberated law of the state. The bishop's assumption that such punishments do not deter isn't verified. An important article in the Stanford Law Review in 1988 by Stephen Markman and Paul Cassell cited the research of Professor Stephen Layson of the University of North Carolina, which ”concluded that increases in the probability of execution reduced the homicide rate." Markman and Cassell took that research and wrote that "we can estimate that the death penalty has deterred roughly 125,000 murders in this country in this [the 20th] century." Moreover, Layson’s research “demonstrates rather starkly that under any realistic risk assessment the presence of capital punishment saves more innocent lives than it jeopardizes." 

The bishop goes on to cite Pope John Paul's disapproval of capital punishment as expressed in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae. But the bishop does not pause over the critical point here, which is that the pope's encyclical does not condemn capital punishment in absolute moral terms; what the encyclical asks is that the death penalty be exercised only in cases of "extreme gravity." That means that prudence is to be consulted. This is sharply different from the church's position on abortion, which is categorically rejected. A Catholic can in good conscience approve capital punishment for the guilty, but never capital punishment for the innocent.

Those who favor capital punishment do so in part because they fondle the deterrent claims of the penalty, but mostly because they wish to legislate the gravity that attaches to the government's responsibility to preserve human life — by being willing to execute those who take innocent lives. In the case of Michael Ross, the only reason to fail to execute him is that he wishes to be executed.


QUOTE: “If we fail to execute a convicted murderer whose execution might have deterred an indefinite number of prospective murderers, our failure sacrifices an indefinite number of victims of future murderers."

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Guest Column: Certain cases provide good reason for death penalty - delcotimes.com

Guest Column: Certain cases provide good reason for death penalty - delcotimes.com

SHEIKH MOHAMMED PROTECTS CHILDREN! [PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2013]



QUOTE: On Tuesday 13 November 2012, the draft law was cleared during the Cabinet meeting at the Presidential Palace.

Shaikh Mohammad ordered that the law be named Wudeema’s Law in reference to the eight-year-old girl who was allegedly murdered by her father and buried in the desert.

“Every child has a right to have a safe life, constant care, and emotional and psychological stability. There will be no leniency with people who violate the rights of children — they are the future,” Shaikh Mohammad said.

AUTHOR: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Arabic محمد بن راشد آل مكتوم; Muḥammad bin Rāshid al Maktūm), also Sheikh Mohammed, (born July 15, 1949), is the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and constitutional monarch of Dubai. He has held those positions since January 2006, when he succeeded his elder brother, Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum.


PERSECUTION FROM WITHIN [ARTICLE ON PRO-LIFE OF THE FORTNIGHT ~ SUNDAY 17 FEBRUARY 2013 TO SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2013]



NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

ARTICLE TITLE: Persecution from Within
DATE: March 2007
AUTHOR: Stephanie Gray
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Stephanie is a seasoned and international presenter who began speaking in 1999 at the age of 18 and who co-founded her national organization (which has grown to almost 20 staff) at the age of 20.  She has given pro-life presentations across North America as well as in the United Kingdom, Latvia, and Costa Rica.  She has spoken at many post-secondary institutions such as the University of Toronto, York University, University of Calgary, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and the University of Sussex in England. 
Stephanie has debated abortion advocates such as physicians who do abortions, which includes debating late-term abortionist Dr. Fraser Fellows in front of medical students at the University of Western Ontario’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.  She has also debated Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, Dr. Jan Narveson, Philosophy professor and recipient of the Order of Canada, and Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.  Stephanie’s audiences are vast, including high schools, churches of various denominations, seminaries, and pro-life organizations.

One presentation attendee described Stephanie’s talk as,

"interesting, convincing, moving, [and] excellent..."

Another said,
"I came in choice, I’m leaving life."

Stephanie has been interviewed on multiple radio shows, including numerous times on Catholic Answers with Patrick Coffin; she has been a guest on television programs such as CTV News, CBC News, Global News, SUN News, 100 Huntley Street’s Listen Up, and the Miracle Channel’s Insight.  She has been interviewed by ABC-, NBC-, FOX-, and CBS-affiliated television news programs throughout the Midwest of the United States.

Stephanie is Faculty at the Blackstone Legal Fellowship and is author of A Physician’s Guide to Discussing Abortion.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from UBC in Vancouver, and a Certification, with Distinction, in Health Care Ethics, from the NCBC in Philadelphia.  Stephanie resides in Toronto, Ontario, where she is co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Click here to read Stephanie's curriculum vitae.


Stephanie Gray

Persecution from Within

“Stand on the line if you’ve lost a friend to gang violence. … Stay on the line if you’ve lost more than one friend. … Three. … Four or more.”

Those were the instructions from a teacher being taught, from a woman getting a glimpse into the life of students considered “unteachables.”  Her name is Erin Gruwell, and her true story is dramatized in the inspiring film Freedom Writers that I watched a few weeks ago.

As a first-year teacher at an inner city school in Long Beach, California, Gruwell inspired a group of students—many of whom were involved with gangs, drugs, and other criminal activity—to abandon racism, to respect their fellow human beings, and to embrace education; in short, to transform their lives for the better.

It is a remarkable film and while many aspects struck me, one in particular stood out as it relates to recent CCBR experiences: Gruwell was having a positive impact on her students’ lives, yet received resistance from some fellow educators who had never given the troubled students the attention they deserved.

Gruwell took the time to understand the plight of these students: where they were coming from, what they had experienced.  She got to know them.  The educators critical of Gruwell, on the contrary, did no such thing.  They did not understand the students’ experiences and thus failed to address the students’ needs; beyond that, they even worked against Gruwell’s laudable—and effective—efforts.

CCBR also encounters opposition, in our case from some pro-life and religious leaders.  Recently, individuals have not only been critical of our well-researched strategy, particularly our use of graphic visuals, but at least one has gone so far as to make and spread the erroneous claim that what we are doing is wrong.

As I reflect on the persecution we’re experiencing from those who should be supportive, I realize that none of this is new.  It is a cross that must be borne by all who would fight the good fight against injustice.  The most obvious example is that of Jesus Christ who was opposed by the religious leaders of His day, by scribes and Pharisees who should have recognized the truth of His teachings.  Instead, the Pharisees plotted how they might kill Jesus when He cured a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath (Mark 3:6).  They even considered Him guilty of blasphemy (Luke 5:21), a charge reiterated by the high priest Caiaphas at the trial prior to Christ’s crucifixion (Matthew 26:65).

Jesus made it clear that those who choose to follow Him will also face persecution: “‘A servant is not greater than his master.’  If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:18, 20).
And indeed they do.  In April 1963, a group of clergymen, including Catholic and Methodist bishops, criticized Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s peaceful civil rights demonstrations as being not only “unwise and untimely” but even “extreme.”  Although today Dr. King is credited as playing a significant role in transforming the culture for the better, these religious leaders of the time argued that the local black community should not support his demonstrations nor press their cause in the streets.

Not only did Dr. King eloquently defend his tactics in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (www.kingpapers.org), he also expressed his heartfelt disappointments:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; …Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.  Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

***

“…I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church.  I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church.  I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church, who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

“When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church.  I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies.  Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

“In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure.  I had hoped that each of you would understand.  But again I have been disappointed.

***

“…In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities…

“I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi, and all the other southern states.  On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward.  I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings.  Over and over I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of people worship here?  Who is their God?’…

“…In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church.  But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.  There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.  Yes, I love the church…”

We at CCBR share Dr. King’s concerns about the indifference and even persecution from within.  That is not to say a religious belief should be abandoned because of some of its leadership.  Nor is it to say that if a strategy is being criticized that the criticizers are always wrong; there are certainly inappropriate methods and approaches just as there are appropriate ones.  The point is this: when individuals endorse or oppose a strategy, people must carefully examine the reasons behind that position and then test its merits by examining the other side of the argument.  This is the due diligence which CCBR takes in adopting the use of graphic images.

We know that what we are doing is effective; furthermore, we have well-reasoned responses to our detractors’ claims.  We find it bewildering, then, that our critics continue to object to CCBR’s use of graphic visuals.

But, once more, Dr. King’s response to the clergymen who opposed him provides insight we can apply to our present-day struggle:

“Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.’  But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; …when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: ‘Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?’; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; …when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next…—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

***

“…I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.”

As I grieved over the opposition we have faced from within, I realized that perhaps there is another reason for grieving: could it be that our detractors don’t really understand abortion, don’t really comprehend the oppression of the unborn?  Just as it is possible for someone to hear but not listen, it is possible for someone to know yet not understand.

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never been aborted to say graphic abortion photos should not be shown.  Perhaps it is easy when you are not the one being dismissed as a “blob of tissue” and disdainfully viewed as a “clump of cells”; it is easy when you are not subjected to dismemberment, disembowelment, and decapitation; it is easy when you aren’t the one to endure poisoning by saline that will burn your skin; it is easy when potassium chloride isn’t injected into your heart to induce cardiac arrest.

But when you imagine that baby being attacked but unable to escape; when you comprehend a baby being in a safe place only to have it invaded by a stranger who will kill her; when that baby cannot defend herself; when you catch a glimpse of her body parts being ripped off piece by piece; when you realize that what you know about this baby’s plight, most people do not—then you will understand why we use pictures.

This is the story of the aborted unborn.  This is the story that must be told.  Their cries cannot be heard—their screams are silent.  But their victimization can be seen.  It is the images of their terrible suffering that give voice to their cries and pierce the heart of anyone with a functioning conscience.

The story of the unborn, while unique in many respects, is a story that bears far deeper similarities to that of any group that has suffered brutality and mistreatment:

“[t]he real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men… It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested.”

These words were penned in 1960 by John Howard Griffin not regarding abortion but describing the evil of segregation in the United States.  But, for those with eyes to see, his words readily apply to the story of the unborn.

Recognizing that it is now the unborn who are the persecuted and defrauded, we at CCBR carefully study historical injustices and learn from the brave men and women who responded to them.

The aforementioned writer, Griffin, authored a compelling book, Black Like Me, which recounts first-hand how he underwent treatments in 1959 to darken his white skin and experience “what it is like to be a Negro in a land where we keep the Negro down”.  Through his subsequent experience, he gained critical insight into the universality of persecution and oppression: “The Negro.  The South.  These are details. … I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states, or a member of any ‘inferior’ group.  Only the details would have differed.  The story would be the same.”

We are moved by The White Rose, a book about university students who were killed for resisting the Nazis and for encouraging others to do the same.  One of the students perceptively asked the following:

“…Isn’t it preposterous that we sit in our rooms and study how to heal mankind when on the outside the state every day sends countless young people to their death?  What in the world are we waiting for?  Until one day the war is over and all nations point to us and say that we accepted this government without resisting?”

The book also reports about the cover-up of injustice by German newspapers:

“They made no mention of the fact that day after day not one but dozens of executions took place.  God knows the newsreel cameras never got inside the prisons which were crowded to bursting, though the inmates resembled ghosts and skeletons rather than human bodies.  They did not film the pale, drawn faces behind the bars…”

One of the students, Christl, had conviction and insight that all people of good will should heed:

“Then it is our duty by our behavior and by our dedication to demonstrate that man’s freedom still exists.  Sooner or later the cause of humanity must be upheld, and then one day it will again prevail.  We must gamble our ‘No’ against this power which has arrogantly placed itself above the essential human values and which is determined to root out all protest.  We must do it for the sake of life itself—no one can absolve us of this responsibility.”

We are inspired by the film Hotel Rwanda, which tells the story of one man who risked his life many times to save over a thousand refugees from the Rwandan genocide.  We are emboldened by the efforts of Oskar Schindler, who saved more than twelve hundred Jews from the Holocaust, and by the example of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian Independence movement who confronted British colonialists regarding their mistreatment of Indians.  We draw strength from the determination of those who fought to free the slaves of the British Empire and from the courageousness of Lewis Hine, who photographically exposed the plight of child labourers in the beginning of the twentieth century.

Our studies have taught us unmistakably clear lessons: victims always want their sufferings to be known.  And the people who respond to their plight do so because they have become intimately aware of the injustice.  They know about good and they know about evil.  Their knowledge of evil convicts them; their knowledge of good motivates them.  Having seen both life and death (Deuteronomy 30:19), they fight for the lives of the oppressed.  It is through the exposure of injustice that they and others are convicted to respond.  Dr. King expressed this very point as well:

“…we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.  We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.  We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.  Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

Today there is no debate about the use of graphic imagery to convey injustices from the past; it is a “no-brainer.”  People pore through history textbooks that contain graphic images; they flock to museums that show images of yesterday’s injustices; they line up to watch movies that convey the mistreatment of peoples by previous generations.

Why, then, is there a debate today about the use of abortion imagery?  For the simple reason that such imagery shows a present atrocity not a past one.  The guilt of historical crimes lies with our ancestors, not us.  The guilt of present-day crimes lies with no one but ourselves.  It is easy to say, “Shame on them.”  It is difficult to admit, “Shame on us.”

It has been eleven years since I was in grade 10, yet I remember a poignant story one of my teachers told: when he himself was in high school, an outcast student was grabbed by a group of bullies.  They stripped him naked, put him in a net, and hoisted him up the school’s flag pole.  Another student, outraged at the injustice, stood up in defense of the frightened, victimized teen, only to have the same degradation inflicted upon him.  A crowd of other students watched this evil play out; my teacher was one of them.

As he told us this story, he asked, “Looking back, if I could have taken the place of anyone there, who do you think I wish I would have been?”  He answered himself, “The student who was mistreated for standing in defense of the victimized boy.”

Whenever an injustice occurs, we have one of four roles to play: the victim, the persecutor, the bystander, or the defender.  We may not have a choice about the first role, but we certainly do about the latter three.  We can be guaranteed that if we follow our consciences and become defenders of the weak and vulnerable, we too will face mistreatment, not only from persecutors but even from bystanders who are being put to shame.  Enduring this we must contemplate, “Am I now seeking the favour of men, or of God?” (Galatians 1:10).

Written by Stephanie Gray with Brendan Huang
Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform
March 2007