Global Day of Action Held to Demand New Trial for Death Row Prisoner Troy Davis

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! talks with Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International, and Martina Correia, Troy Davis’s older sister.

 

Global Day of Action for Troy Davis

I’ve written several times about Troy Davis, and it’s always the same story: he is an almost certainly innocent man on death row, the day of his execution approaches rapidly, and a last-minute stay because of some appeal his lawyers (and millions of people all over the world) presented to the Georgia High Court brings some reprieve. Just imagine living through something like that not once, but a number of times. What Troy Davis and his lawyers are asking for, is an evidentiary hearing which would allow the witnesses to be heard and examined in a court of law — almost all of them claim to have testified against him because of police pressure and intimidation. Almost all of them have recanted their former statements. However, restrictions on Federal appeals have prevented Troy Davis from having a hearing in federal court on the reliability of the witness testimony used against him.

Amnesty International is organizing a global action day for Troy. Please read more about his case, and join if you have time.

 

Latest Peter Rowntree

There is something soft and gentle about this painting that I find immensely appealing. Relatively quiet colors, except for that red dot with the white circle with the black center that almost jumps off the page. There’s an enormous amount of detail that’s lost here, because the reproduction is so small. Hélas!

Go to his website to view more paintings. If you want to buy one, go to  flat grey wall.

 

The best-laid plans…

I was going to write about The Girl on the Bridge (La fille sur le pont), how beautiful and funny it is, about the fantastic performances by the two lead actors, Vanessa Paradis and Daniel Auteuil; I was going to mention a few other outstanding films by the French director Patrice Leconte — well, maybe some other time.

One thing led to another; in this case, one song from the movie, performed by Marianne Faithful, led to another song of hers, supposedly from the French movie Roberto Succo (which I haven’t seen). So this is for those who love Marianne’s voice.

Enjoy!

 

Tim DeChristopher — now THERE’s a hero…

I don’t care much for “our” boys and girls in Iraq or Afghanistan. As far as I’m concerned, they’re getting paid to kill people, more often than not innocent bystanders who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. While I applaud any veteran who speaks up against this insanity, and while I have compassion for anybody who gets hurt/ traumatized/ disabled/ killed by this war machine that they’re unable to understand correctly, I don’t consider them heroes. But Tim DeChristopher — he has my admiration and applause.

On December 19 2008, Tim entered an auction of public land near Utah’s national parks. He started to bid on the oil and gas rights to 10 parcels (22,000 acres) of BLM land around Arches and Canyonlands National Parks for 1.8 million dollars that he didn’t have, and he drove up the bidding on a number of other parcels that he didn’t purchase.

A 27-year-old University of Utah economics student, Tim eloquently explained the reasons for his act of civil resistance (Why I Disrupted A Fraudulent Auction). In February, new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded 77 of the leases, saying they were too close to national parks and never should have gone up for sale under the Bush administration. One would have expected that the case against Tim would be settled with a misdemeanor plea bargain.

Instead, DeChristopher was charged this Wednesday with two federal felonies, which could result in a combined sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. Why are people like Bush and Cheney not held responsible for their actions while a person who didn’t harm anybody is facing prison charges? This is not a rhetorical question.

Read Tim’s response to the charges: I’ve Been Indicted. And if you can, donate to his defense fund.

 

Spaghetti harvest in Switzerland

Ever wondered why spaghetti are all exactly the same length? Watch this video to find out:

And if you want to know how to plant your own spaghetti tree, check out this BBC News article.

 

Let it be dark -

- from 8:30 to 9:30 pm local time (or 2030 to 2130) tonight. Join over 3,400 towns and cities in 88 countries across the globe and turn your lights off, sit by candle light, go outside and watch the stars. Two years ago, Sydney launched Earth Hour, a campaign to raise awareness about the devastating effects of burning fossil fuels. This year, Andy Ridley, the organizer of the event, expects one billion participants. And countries such as India, China, and Brazil with their high-emission economies are participating, thus drawing attention to the problem of climate change.

Beijing's Bird's Nest taking part for the first time

Of course, some skeptics doubt whether this global event is more than just an empty, symbolic gesture, claiming that the use of candles could possibly produce more emissions that electric light. While this may be true or not, there is a useful educational component to any action that changes one’s habits, to a conscious choice versus a routine practice. Instead of just flipping on the light switch, one has to decide how to spend this hour — maybe a walk outside eliminates the need for candles altogether. In any case, it requires a deliberate action.

Landmarks including the Sydney Opera House, the Vatican, the Empire State Building, the Acropolis, the pyramids at Giza, and Beijing’s most prominent Olympic building, the Bird’s Nest, will go dark for one hour. People from all over the world can join in and demonstrate their concern about climate change. Nothing wrong with that, I’d say.

 

Spring in New Mexico

Of course we need the precipitation, but I hope the apricot/ plum/ apple etc. blossoms didn’t suffer too much…

Morning View

Mieze loves the snow

Chama River, behind the house

Fun stuff

Harold isn't so sure...

Steep climb...

This last picture shows a hike we did a couple of years ago, and I never manage to capture convincingly how steep and scary some of these climbs can be… If anybody knows of a good technique, please leave a note…

 

It’s the law!

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed the bill to repeal the death penalty, “the most difficult decision of my political life“, he said. He used to support capital punishment, but the risk to execute an innocent person is just too high — “I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime,” he declared.

It is such a relief to live in a state that can’t be named in the same breath with North Korea, China, and Iran, at least not as far as the death penalty is concerned. I applaud Governor Richardson for his decision. The right-wing Christians, crazies, and other nut burgers here in New Mexico certainly made it hard; if you don’t believe it, read some of the comments at the Santa Fe/New Mexican (link above).

 

Bill to repeal death penalty passes Senate in New Mexico

Could we really join the civilized world? Could New Mexico become the 15th U.S. state without capital punishment (like Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin; ALSO: – Dist. of Columbia)? Well, it’s up to Governor Bill Richardson now; he has until midnight of Wednesday, 18 March, to sign or veto the bill. In the past, he has supported the death penalty, but he isn’t so sure now. Please contact him and encourage him to sign the bill:

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
State Capitol Bldg.
Santa Fe, NM 87503
Fax:(505)827-3026
Tel:(505)827-3000
email: gov@gov.state.nm.us
web: http://www.governor.state.nm.us

The Santa Fe/New Mexican has some totally nutty, mind-boggling reader comments, in general from people who call themselves Christians. A case in point is the observation that flaming liberals are inconsistent, being “for” abortion and yet against executing criminals. Simply incredible.

 

The beauty of numbers

I find number sequences and series fascinating, for example the Fibonacci sequence. There is beauty and elegance just in the way the numbers relate to each other, but when they’re expressed geometrically, this particular sequence gives rise to a spiral reminiscent of the Nautilus Shell. Moreover, any two successive numbers stand approximately in the same relation to each other as the Golden Ratio, or 1.6180339887…

Many people share the aesthetic pleasure I experience when I look at number patterns. But there are some individuals who have highly unusual and entirely different sensations in connection with numbers. They perceive numbers and letters as particular colors, for example; a form of synesthetic perception. One such person is Daniel Tammet, a young man with extraordinary mental abilities. He is a “savant”, afflicted with a number of peculiar gifts and challenges related to autism, or more particularly, to Asperger syndrome. Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man is based on the life of Kim Peek, a severely handicapped man who at the same time is blessed with extraordinary mental capacities. He can read books incredibly fast, scanning the left page with his left eye and the right page with his right eye, while his memory retains every word he’s read. He can instantaneously calculate the day of the week for any date within 2000 or more years. But he can’t button his shirt or tie his shoes.

Unlike Peek, Daniel Tammet leads an independent life and is highly articulate. Scientists who study different forms of autism call him a “Rosetta Stone”, because he can describe exactly what goes on in his head when he performs complex mathematical calculations, for example. When he multiplies two numbers, each number takes on a particular shape. A third shape, the answer, arises between the two, and he can read this number effortlessly. He explains he’s doing math without having to think. Some numbers, 333 for example, are particularly attractive while others such as 289 are unusually ugly. Prime numbers are round and smooth, like pebbles on a beach.

At a convention in Oxford in 2004, Daniel managed to recite the number Pi to up to 22,514 decimal places — a feat that took him over five hours. And he was able to learn Icelandic, considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn, within a week. More recently, he did the same with German — studied with a coach for one week, and then gave an interview on German television that impressed the talk show host. He learns intuitively, he claims — by recognizing patterns and developing a feeling for the particular language. That’s how small children learn, and in addition, his synesthesia is a helpful component. Colors, shapes, and feelings form a network that make it easier for him to remember the “gestalt” of a language.

Learning — whether foreign languages or math — should be fun, Daniel explains. Unfortunately, for most kids it’s not. Besides being an advocate for autism, Daniel promotes a method of learning that sounds almost radical: the formation of a system of information which is imbued with intuition and love. Maybe a dose of synesthesia could enliven our schoolrooms.

 

New Mexico: Domestic partnership bill fails in Senate

According to an article in the Santa Fe/New Mexican, the vote was probably the result of pressure from the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had been coming out against the bill. The senators who voted ‘no’ feared that it would have opened the doors for the greater evil of same-sex marriage.

Now let’s see. About 45% of New Mexico’s population is Hispanic, which means they’re also Catholic. The Catholic Church and its bishops and clergy have a huge influence on their flock of believers; they promote the notion that homosexuality is “against the bible” and “against God”, a “perversion” and “sin”. So, it’s hard to keep politics separate from religion here — elected officials bow to peer pressure for fear of losing their next election. No matter how unbelievably idiotic it is to forbid two adults to enter into a legal contract where they voluntarily commit themselves to spend the rest of their lives together and be faithful to each other — to forbid them to do so, simply on the basis of their gender. That the Catholic Church or any other religious institution should have any influence whatsoever on a legal agreement between two people is quite preposterous.

Maybe New Mexico’s Hispanics should take a look at Spain, the land of their ancestors. Same-sex marriage was legalized there in 2005, against strong opposition from Roman Catholic authorities. Spain became the third nation in the world to allow same-sex marriage, after the Netherlands (2001) and Belgium (2003) (Canada, South Africa, and Norway have followed since). It’s a safe bet to say that in ten years most countries will have passed similar laws, but in the meantime many innocent people have to suffer discrimination because of bigotry, hypocrisy, and religious delusion.

 

L’Iceberg

Don’t get misled by the title. This Belgian movie from 2005, L’Iceberg, may make you want to crawl under the covers with its images of ice boxes, chilly waters, freezers, and yes, icebergs, but it is essentially heart-warming and very funny, albeit in an odd and quirky way. The plot line is quickly told: Fiona, the female protagonist, accidentally spends the night in the freezer room of the fast-food outlet that she manages. When she stumbles home in the morning, more dead than alive, her husband and two children are leaving the house without noticing her. In fact, they hadn’t missed her at all. The experience drives Fiona away from her family and on an obsessive quest for some meaning in her life, symbolized by an iceberg.

If this doesn’t sound like much of a story,  it’s not supposed to. Virtually without dialogue,  the film strings together vignettes of slapstick comedy, circus art, pantomime, choreographed action, and deadpan adventure reminiscent of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton.  A poetic note is added using clever cinematography on the one hand, and beautiful landscape on the other.

Underneath an apparent simplicity lies a multitude of references to silent movies and burlesque theater,  but also to archetypal symbols  of human life. One of my favorite scenes was Fiona’s manic struggle to climb on top of the iceberg she had finally reached, by way of a tiny sailing boat aptly called “Le Titanique”.  The iceberg was the symbol for the significance of her life and yet,  when she’s finally at the top, the iceberg slowly begins to sink. And soon, it’s gone.

Written and directed by Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, and Bruno Romy, a group of performance artists with a background in theater and pantomime, this unusual and offbeat film is enough motivation to watch out more for Belgian cinema.

 

Tribalism

For the last few weeks, I didn’t feel like posting anything here. There was this image in my mind: starving little children huddled next to the body of their dead mother, killed by an Israeli missile. Red-Cross volunteers in Gaza reported a number of incidences like this; by the time the children were found, they were too weak to walk. And then, when all of Gaza was nothing but rubble, two days before the inauguration of our new president, the Israelis agreed to a cease-fire.

The celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday fell in-between these two events. Alternet posted his speech from April 4, 1967, Why I Cannot Be Silent, a compelling and powerful statement for peace and against the devastating effects of war (in this case, the Vietnam War) which is just as relevant today as it was then. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict his ideas are poignant and, I’m afraid, way ahead of his and also our time. His urgent admonitions entreat us to look beyond color, race, tribe, religion etc. and instead strive for a true communion of all living beings:

“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept — so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force — has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.”

An absolute necessity for our survival;  — yeah, but I’m not holding my breath.

Kudos to my friend Peter who found an echo of Dr. King’s urgent advice in Obama’s Inaugural Address:

“And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

A glimmer of hope. An example is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded by Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said. It is a youth orchestra with members from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. In an attempt to step beyond the boundaries of their particular tribe, the young musicians participate in a dialog about conflicting view points where they learn from rather than hate each other. As one of the players states:

“It is more important not for people like myself, but for people to see that it is possible to sit down with Arab people and play. The orchestra is a human laboratory that can express to the whole world how to cope with the other.”

If  my identity is culturally and ethnically defined  by my tribe, it follows that anybody outside of my group is  foreign at best and easily becomes the enemy. “Us” vs. “Them” is the ubiquitous formula for conflict, wars, confrontation, hostility, and discord. The old Chinese were pretty straight-forward about this: anybody not Chinese was a “barbarian”, moderately if at all superior to monkeys.

“How to cope with the other” is indeed essential for the survival of humanity, all living beings, the planet. With our new president, we may be making a small step in the right direction.

 

Gaza: no words, only profound sadness

Pause in Violence: Israel halted its offensive to allow humanitarian aid organizations into the area. For three hours.

How much bloody retribution is legitimate?

Cindy Sheehan: We are all Gazans

Israel may face Charges for War Crimes

Join the efforts of AVAAZ.org to demand action from Congress, to bring about an immediate ceasefire that ends the violence, stops the rockets, and eases the blockade of Gaza.

National March on Washington, Saturday, January 10.

 

Inspiring awe and humility

Boston.com’s section The Big Picture has a lovely collection of images from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented in the form of an Advent Calendar by Alan Taylor, editor of the photo blog. Don’t miss the whole collection, but here are a few samples, with the descriptions taken from the site:

This object is a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. 7,000 light-years distant from us, the soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers tall. Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in chaotic neighbourhoods, where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars. A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars [off the top of the image] is eroding the pillar. The column is silhouetted against the background glow of more distant gas. The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of stellar birthing areas. These regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system. The blue colour at the top is from glowing oxygen, the red color in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen. This image was taken in November 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky).

The “Retina Nebula” is in fact, a dying star named IC 4406. The left and right halves of the Hubble image are nearly mirror images of the other. If we could fly around IC 4406 in a starship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast donut of material streaming outward from the dying star. From Earth, we are viewing the donut from the side. This side view allows us to see the intricate tendrils of dust that have been compared to the eye’s retina. Gas on the inside of the donut is ionized by light from the central star and glows brightly. Light from oxygen atoms is rendered blue in this image; hydrogen is shown as green, and nitrogen as red. One of the most interesting features here is the irregular lattice of dark lanes that criss-cross the center of the nebula. These lanes are about 24 billion kilometers wide, and are like an open mesh veil that has been wrapped around the bright donut. (NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team – STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky).

Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, the Egg Nebula offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible dust shells swaddling an aging star. These dust layers, extending over one-tenth of a light-year from the star, have an onionskin structure that forms concentric rings around the star. A thicker dust belt, running almost vertically through the image, blocks off light from the central star. Twin beams of light radiate from the hidden star and illuminate the pitch-black dust, like a shining flashlight in a smoky room. The Egg Nebula is located 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This image was taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in September and October 2002. (NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) More (see this on Google Sky).

Enjoy (thanks to Zoë for alerting me to the site).

 

Hey John

And another song I love, with a nicely done video:

Well, one thing leads to another; a great cover by Marianne Faithful:

 

Get out your handkerchiefs…

Can’t help it; this is so sweet!

Somebody pointed out that at about 6:40 min into the video, when the school children flock around Barack,  his daughter Malia points out to him that a little kid is crying; he goes back, and Michelle picks the kid up for comfort…

 

Looking ahead:

 

No, thanks to Turkey Day

So, everybody is going on and on about Sarah Palin rattling off her usual gibberish while turkeys are being slaughtered in the background. Keith Olbermann, Huff Post, countless blogs — they’re all shocked at her callous insensitivity. Hello? I bet many of these indignant people will happily sit down to a roasted, stuffed turkey on Thanksgiving, pass the gravy, please. And since these birds don’t grow on trees, they’ll have to be, uhmm, killed. The way it’s done in the video, behind Palin, is the more ‘humane’ method practiced at organic farms; if this made you woozy and lightheaded, better not look at pictures from more common factory farms. Relatively few of the give-or-take 45 million turkeys consumed on Thanksgiving Day come from organic farms. Learn more at the Farmed Animal Watch site.

I don’t think many of the – what – 90 million? 180 million? (depending on how many people share one bird) Thanksgiving turkey eaters are necessarily mean and cruel, aware of but unaffected by the immense suffering involved. Rather, they’re ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that part of the beak and two toes on each foot of a baby chick are cut off, without anesthesia. Ignorant of genetic manipulation which makes the birds grow faster and develop more white meat, resulting in bones too weak to carry the weight of a grown tom — his legs and feet are crippled, and he can’t stand properly. Ignorant of genetic manipulation creating white feathers, so that the skin doesn’t have “unsightly” blotches. If this sounds like polemic info from a PETA site, please check for yourself at eat turkey.com.

People don’t know that laying turkey hens are artificially inseminated and lay eggs in an artificially lit environment for about 25 weeks, and then are “processed” — an industry euphemism for “killed”. And if you think that your “free range” dinner had a better, cruelty-free life, please check the Farm Sanctuary’s Truth Behind Free-Range and Organic Turkey page. And then you can make an informed decision.

And to put yourself into some turkeys’ shoes, watch this Saturday Night Live video: