Who’d Go on Holiday to Libya?
Out of curiosity I typed Lybia holidays into Google and found that I could book one with several reputable countries.
Even without the current troubles, you wouldn’t find me going to Libya, as I don’t give dictators any money and wish them the bad luck they deserve. Also included on my list are any countries without proper democracy, those that have cruel dictators and those that still use the death penalty.
On the other hand if say the United States wanted to give me a large sum of money for something I’d created, I would go to collect it. I’m not that stupid, but they’d hear my views on the death penalty in no uncertain terms.
Was This a Badly Placed Internet Advert?
I usually get notification of newspaper polls on the death penalty from a list I belong to on the Internet. This was the latest request I got.
Please help turn this poll around. Thanks! http://www.ydr.com/local It’s down on the left.
I voted appropriately. The paper incidentally is the York Daily Record.
But imagine my surprise that the placed adverts on the site were for theTrainLine.com, who I’ve recently used to buy a ticket on East Coast to York. And they were trying to sell me a ticket to York! Obviously, there’s an Atlantic Tunnel I don’t know about.
Seriously though, the advertising system was probably looking at my cookies and made an appropriate decision.
I’m not particularly bothered, but I can see that some people will be!
I hope everybody who reads this votes using the link.
–abe
Globalisation Hits Executions in the United States
Globalisation is often blamed for many of the world’s problems, but here’s an article that says that the same process is starting to hit executions in the United States.
The news has broken today that the sole US manufacturer of a key drug used in lethal injections will cease production because authorities in Italy, where the drug was to be made, wanted a guarantee that it wouldn’t be used to put inmates to death.
Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill, had decided to switch production of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental from its North Carolina plant to Liscate, outside of Milan. But the Italian Parliament wanted the company to control the product’s distribution to prevent it being used for executions. Hospira decided it couldn’t make that promise and has decided to suspend production — potentially throwing the death penalty system in the US into disarray.
But what’s missing from today’s reports is that behind the Italian Parliament’s insistence is a lay Catholic movement dedicated — among many other things – to the eradication of the death penalty around the world. The Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio had been engaged in discussions with Hospira’s Italian subsidiary, Hospira SL, which led to meetings with the Foreign Affairs minister, Franco Frattini, and the Ministry of Health. The result of those meetings was an agreement that the production of the drug in Italy would have to be for strictly therapeutic purposes. The company has long deplored its use in executions, and said it regretted the need to cease production.
Hospira’s choice to end production because it couldn’t give that guarantee was described as “highly responsible” by Sant’Egidio’s spokesman, Mario Marazziti, who said: “It highlights the point that therapeutic drugs and doctors should never be used to bring about death”.
Sidium thiopental is already in short supply after the British government last November also banned the UK manufacture of the drug following a campaign by the British NGO Reprieve. According to the Wall Street Journal’s law blog, Hospira’s decision means the death penalty system in the US “is potentially thrown into turmoil”. States can attempt to use another anaesthetic instead — Oklahoma, for example, has switched to a drug used to euthanise cats and dogs
— but it involves seeking clearance from the courts, which is likely to delay executions.
There is a lesson here about globalization. It’s not just the market that’s gone global. It’s civil society pressure, too.
I also applaud the work of the Catholic church here.
It is Really Thirty Years?
When anybody writes the history of the twentieth century in the future, one of the most significant days will be December 8th 1980. It was on this day that John Lennon was murdered in New York.
Lennon was a bit hero of mine and probably still is, as in the 1960s, his attititude was an inspiration to me, as the Beatles showed what could be achieved if you just believed in yourself. I would not have succeeded like I possibly have, without the four musicians from Liverpool.
I was also lucky enough to see them live at the Hammersmith Odeon around Christmas 1964, when several of us from school climbed into my battered Austin 8, for the trip across London. One image of that concert is Lesley Clarke, who was at school with me and in the party, trying to get the girl in front to cut the screaming, as she couldn’t hear anything.
Without the Beatles, I might never have gone to Liverpool, as who would have chosen to go to University in that grim port city in the north?
Liverpoool made me, as I found C there and our first child was conceived in the city.
We both shared a taste for his music, as does or did our sons.
When C died, it was the raw tracks of Lennon’s songs coupled with the haunting ones that Dory Previn created that brought me through.
Now is the day to move completely on. I owe it to C and my son. And to John!
The world must move on too! I would love to see two things die before I do; the death penalty and war.
John and C would have agreed.
America on the Ropes
Read this interesting take on the Death Penalty from David Rothkopf called “America on the ropes: First GM goes bankrupt and now this…”
Whoever Supplied This Should be Prosecuted
I indicated in an earlier post that the United States was having difficulty in getting enough sodium thiopental to carry out executions. It now appears that a British company has supplied the drug. This is an extract from the BBC’s report.
Writing in the Guardian newspaper, a British civil rights lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, has called for the naming and shaming of the company as it was “making a business out of killing”.
“One question that immediately springs to mind is whether it is criminal for the British corporation to profit from such a killing: while the language is loose, EU Council Regulation 1236/2005 takes a step along this path, making it illegal to trade in certain goods which could be used for capital punishment, torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment…’
“When the veil of secrecy is inevitably sundered, this British corporation should be reminded that the medical profession boasts of a Hippocratic oath, not a hypocritical one,” he wrote.
I agree with Clive and will be writing to the company, when it becomes known.
America Has a Drug Problem
We all know that, but this story from Agence France Presse is rather different, as it concerns a shortage of a drug needed for capital punishment by lethal injection.
In the midst of a drug shortage that has already forced postponement of lethal injection executions across the United States, some states say they now have the drug in hand but are refusing to disclose its origin.
The unprecedented situation has been compounded by an inmate scheduled to die Tuesday but who is suing to stop his own execution, arguing that the drug which the state of Arizona intends to use may be counterfeit or unsafe.
Only one pharmaceutical company in the United States, Hospira, currently manufactures the drug, the anesthetic sodium thiopental.
But it is out of stock and will not be able to resume production until the first quarter of 2011, and Hospira’s most recent batch is nearing its 2011 expiration date.
Some states like Texas and Ohio have enough thiopental to carry on with their execution schedules, but others like Kentucky have been forced to put capital punishment on hold.
Can’t they get the message, that someone is trying to tell them that the death penalty is totally wrong. The story would be funny, if it wasn’t so serious.
US May Re-Instate “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Policy for Gay Servicemen
I have never understood the US’s policy on gay servicemen. My view has always been that if you’re up to the job you can do it and if you’re not you shouldn’t. Whether you’re gay or not is irrelevant.
As the British and other forces have gay recruits and some of these are probably fighting alongside the US forces in Afghanistan, I just wonder if the subject ever comes up. I suspect that professionalism will out!
I just think though that the US should bring its policies up to what is acceptable in the modern world. Let’s start with proper attitudes to gays, women, minorities, religion and the death penalty.
Justice – Virginia Style
We have all protested about the proposed stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in Iran, but why is it the European governments are absolutely silent and not protesting about the execution of Teresa Lewis in Virginia, especially as she is just a point on the IQ scale above the legal minimum for execution in the United States.
The least we should do is to suspend fast track extradition to the United States. By not protesting we are actually condoning the horrific sentence.
But then the United States doesn’t believe in justice but vengeance!
The Anonymous Widower 