Stanley Tookie WIlliams Execution hearing - Dec. 8

This is hopefully first of a series of posts in the runup to Gov. Schwarzenegger's private clemency hearing Dec. 8, 4 days ahead of the scheduled execution date Dec. 13. (My math is not wrong- executions in California usually occur at 12:01 am on the scheduled date, so really at the end of the day before, as soon as possible after the legal date begins)

More about the case at save Tookie web site.

This case is already very high profile with Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dog and many others going to bat for the popular author of anti-gang children's books, but no mistake, the hard line pro-death penalty faction will fight hard as well, and public opinion in California, when given specific facts about the death penalty will back away from it, but when asked the general question favours the death penalty, So the pro-death penalty side will avoid the details of how the penalty is administered, the bias against the poor and non-whites, the many exonerations, the rare tip of the iceberg cases where DNA is available, one estimate being 1 in 7 wrongfully convicted. See Barry Scheck's innocence project to get a flavour of how things go down.

The right conclusion from the exonerations is not that the system works, but that death penalty cases put so much pressure on the system that the path of least resistance often determines who is prosecuted and what the punishment is, and this is often not consistent with a thorough intelligent investigation and prosecution. I will try in the next 2 weeks to highlight a half dozen renowned cases in Canada where incredibly famous life sentence cases were shown only decades after the fact to be entirely bogus.

Buy nothing Day meanderings

On this Buy Nothing Day. as I stay at home not shopping, I allow myself a utopian reverie, with the thought that religious and other freedoms were once utopian reveries of the past. I went to U of British Columbia for 2 years way back, and have tried since then to get a job there and move back. Latest attempt is 3 visits in past year to a coastal logging town near Vancouver (which is too pricy for me I think right now). Every time I talk to real estate people or locals about it I am impressed at the gulf between them and me about how I feel about the place. My latest plan is to live and be environmentally active there, until I am satisfied I can do no more, then be a good example and move to Israel or Russia and be active there. The good example is: it would be nice if everybody from Europe and Asia who voluntarily (or whose ancestors voluntarily) moved to the Americas would back off, have no or a maximum of 1 children for a few generation and then back off North America by moving back to where we came from, there of course to shrink the population further and help reduce all of our global footprint. Wealth through shrinkage is to live like pirates rattling around in all the space and abandoned houses and possessions of the heirless as the selected cities crumble and are overgrown by the admittedly less diverse forests or grasses than were there 500 to 5000 years ago. Aim to be heirless.The declining Buddenbrooks family, but with pride and optimism while writing and imparting family culture to the shrunken next generation, cherished and well cared for children of the few who have children.

Jane Goodall's Harvest for Hope

Flying to Seattle from Oakland in the late 90's, I noticed a woman who looked like Jane Goodall waiting in the lineup for the cut-rate, no frills, cramped Southwest flight. I thought, "gosh, she looks like Jane Goodall, but Jane Goodall, one of the most famous and recognized scientists in the world heads a multi-million dollar foundation and mixes with the rich and famous around the world. No way flying on Southwest, where you have to scramble for a cramped seat because no reserved seating."

After the woman bought her ticket, she took a large stuffed animal from under her arm and stood by the front of the line, talking to each passenger, particularly the children. It was a hand made gorilla.

I congratulated her on speaking out on the treatment of research primates some years earlier, saying it took courage in the face of many Canadian and American academics' opposition to any mandatory guidelines such as Britain's. I had been surprised at her stance, but it turns out I was ignorant of her personal history.

In a nice interview played today promoting her new book Harvest for Hope, Thanksgiving, on Democracy Now, it turns out she has been a vegetarian, or at least avoided factory farmed meat, since the 70s, having spent time on a traditional free range farm as a child and loving the animals.

She was knowlegeable about animal liberation and food issues and talked about speaking to Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian anti-GMO farmer who crossed swords with Monsanto over the last decade. More name dropping, Percy Schmeiser's family owned a house I rented for 4 months in Saskatoon in 1979. I discovered he was an incredibly hard-working tractor dealer/prairie farmer, who personally deliverd 17 tractors that summer.

Wal-Mart movie

I saw part of Robert Greenwald's : WalMart:The High Cost of Low Price last night at a union screening at a local community college, 400 seats about 2/3 full for the early showing. It was very professional, entertaining, high production values, amazing compilation of information and full coverage around the US and of factory workers in China and Bangladesh. A little use of raw numbers discussing crime in Wal-Mart parking lots, similar to Bowling for Columbine where I would like to see relative numbers like percentages. However, Bowling For Columbine remains one of my favorite movies in spite of my criminology research background and my carp that he should show the less dramatic but no less apalling per capita gun murder rate differences between Canada and the US ( I estimated about 3 times the rate vs 30 times the raw number; Canada has about one tenth the US population). These films are passionate, sometimes humorous essays about serious important issues, like an editorial page feature story which contains many facts but is not an exhaustive monograph. A ll in all a powerful case that the local success story of Sam Walton, who had a buy American policy has grown into a corporate monster which is far too monomaniacal about profits and far too powerful for the USA or the world's good, the very situation for which our great grandparents in their wisdom implemented anti-trust laws. Thus another carp is that I think it should have covered the impact of going public and the US law that nothing but shareholder profit, not environment, not community, not employee good can legally be considered by corporate decision makes, as described so well in the Canadian documentary, The Corporation and made the distinction between the family owned company and the public corporation, but maybe it did. I missed the first half.

Nestle kills babies again?

On daytime TV during the Martha Stewart or Ellen DeGeneres show first daytime ads for formula in a long time. Clever ad - Nestle's formula contains special calming proteins. So will this new defiant push in America revive the opposition that successfully forced Nestle to back away from their worldwide ads promoting bottle feeding, especially in developing countries?

Also, freetrader highlights BUY NOTHING next Friday Nov.25. (Beware of a somewhat silly site squatting inexplicably on the buynothingday/org url). The real longstanding international effort is http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/, affiliated with the wonderful artistic Adbusters magazine out of Vancouver, British Columbia. This real link has all kinds of reports on activities around the world and local actions. I envision some year buy nothing day concerts, where tickets are handed out at shopping centres between 9:00 am and 10:00 am diverting young shoppers to all day concerts with the many great musicians who have resisted commercialization and corporate sponsorship and endorsements. Neil Young's anti-sellout song, "This song's for you" could be an inspiration.

Robert Fisk: Torture's out: abuse is in

Reading the news, everything seems confusing and disheartening. After reading analysis by Robert Fisk, just clear-eyed outrage. Without the history firmly in mind, we are rudderless flotsam. (Click above title to see the link)

Fairtrader on Class in America

Click above title for blogger fairtrader's sorely needed discussion of the playing field for newborns in different developed countries. Bill Gates, and other billionaires opposed dropping the estate tax, a few years back, and were ignored for once by lawmakers and scorned by pundits. One really covoluted comment used against the argument: they have so much, they can afford the estate tax.

Heifer International

The above link is one of my favorite charitable organizations. They have great ideals but are not "idealists" . I am skeptical of many such charities that seek to help the poor around the world, but, like Oxfam, they are so transparently astute economically and politically, try as I can, I can find no weakness in their projects, detailed thoroughly on the site. They have by far the most specific, clearest and most understandable examples of some of the unnecessary and negative consequences of trade agreements like WTO and of ill-considered corporate globalization.

Rats, I have no excuse not to give generously! :>

Tactical Voting

Canadian politics (click the link in the title) is all about what is usually called strategic voting. People vote for a pretty corrupt party in fear of the excesses of US style laissez faire neo-coservatism. I call it tactical voting, because you can win battles with tactics, as in the originally Chinese game Go, but to win the war you need strategy. Just doing tactics is not enough. You have to do the really hard work of thinking about and building a long term strategy, and in modern politics in developed countries, that means the Herculean task of getting the public to look deeply into issue like crime and health care/ Otherwise, good things like the Canadian health care system will suffer the death of a thousand cuts.

Open voting; the next crisis?

The paper trail and other necessities for a democracy. Progressives and Democrats hopeful for meaningful change need to declare now that they do not recognize votes decided by no-paper-trail voting machines, nor candidates elected that way, however they turn out. This is a serious gauntlet to throw down, and the sooner the better to sort out the implications the details of non-recognition.

Coutnries around the world could also declare a similar non-recognition and what sanctions they plan to apply, as already have been with countries whose elections and governments are not seen as legitimate. in past decades.

Al Gore at Net Impact Conference

I found a huge photograph of Al Gore on the front of the Saturday Nov 12 2005 San Francisco Chronicle business section with a very short caption describing what seems a medium expensive but very interesting, possibly important conference this weekend, where " participants discuss themes including corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, community development and environmental management" according to the site. Click on the title of this post for the conference web site. It is sold out. Kudos to the Chron business section for featuring the photo with the headline "It's not about the money."

Hoping the speech was late last night and this is just the beginning of coverage ,not shallow celebrity journalism with no story beyond the big photo and caption (nothing at all I can find on the web version). Maybe it is out of their purview because it is not about the money, but hopefully they will have more coverage tomorrow or Monday.