Turkey: Hitler, Best-Selling Author

Hitler's anti-semitic politically radical book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is a best-seller in Turkey, thanks to new cheap publishing that allows it to be sold for $4.50 a copy. That's kinda scary.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm all about free press. And I have some desire to read works with beliefs that I disagree with---Mein Kampf, the Koran, possibly the Da Vinci code---for the purpose of fully understanding my opposition so that I know best how to combat it (although I haven't actually read any of those). Call me an arrogant cynic, but I doubt all the Turkish people have such noble motives. I wonder why they're all so interested in it... why now? Why Turkey?

Edmond the Hun

War In Iraq: Unnoticed Progress

There is progress in the war in Iraq! It's interesting that when the media replaces the war with a brain-damaged Florida woman, the protests for the war disappear for awhile. Anyway, I read this on the bottom of the front page, last Thursday actually. We (meaning, the US Army and Co., or whatever "our side" is called) killed 85 insurgents in one day last week. Eighty-five! That was part of a multi-day raid somewhere in Iraq that totaled a couple hundred! (And the dissenters protest when we lose a single life) The article also reported that Iraqi citizens are now starting to give us information about the insurgents, whereas a couple months ago it used to be the other way around. The point is, we're making good progress in Iraq! And it did make the front page, but still second to Terri.

When bad things happen in Iraq, people cry out in protest. When good things happen in Iraq, no one notices. Or at least, not much.

Edmond the Hun

The Aftermath of Terri

What Reform is Needed?

Whatever your position was, she's finally dead, and she can now stop crowding other things off the news. The big question now is: what reform is needed to prevent future cases?

The most extreme option is to say that, if there is no living will, as long as a person is breathing or their heart is beating, everything must be done to keep them alive. No questions, no exceptions. But families often have to make the choice to end varying degrees of life support to their loved ones, and sometimes they feel that it's the right choice to let them die. And even if it's not written down in concrete, sometimes the person has communicated their desires to the family members. I don't think it's fair to deprive them of that right and say everyone always has to be kept alive.

I don't like the government intruding in on personal family decisions. But when someone abuses a system, the government has to get involved. Michael abused the system. There is overwhelming evidence that he did not care about his wife's wishes or interests. But he had the authority as a husband---and I don't think husbands should be deprived of that authority---to decide whether or not to maintain the feeding tube.

I propose reform that would clearly outline the levels of authority that various family members have. If a family member objects to the decision of another with more authority(i.e. parents to husband) and if they can't work it out themselves, then there must be a legal battle. A simple one. Not to determine the fate of the disabled family member. A legal battle to determine if the family member with the higher authority is making a decision based on the person's best wishes and interests. That's vague. So I would say the only way someone can be deprived of their authority is if there is overwhelming evidence that their decision is based on selfish or outside motivations. In this case, Michael would have lost that authority, which would have been transferred to the parents.

I'm not saying that Michael was wrong and the parents were right. I'm saying Michael should have lost his authority. If Michael had wanted to keep her alive and Terri's parents wanted to kill her, then Michael could still have been deprived of his authority if something corrupt was involved (say, someone was paying him to keep her alive).

Anyway, that's the reform that I propose. Maybe I should do something active and e-mail my representatives...

Edmond the Hun

Current Events: Who Has the Authority?

I'm sick of blogging about this Shiavo soap opera. But I have come to realize that the question of Terri's fate is a question of who has the authority to decide her fate.

Ultimately, Terri Schiavo herself is the only one with real authority to decide her own fate. But if she honestly told her husband that she would not want to be kept alive like that, then she has given him the authority, as her legal guardian, to carry out her wishes. Who are we to automatically assume that Michael's lying, allowing us to step in and prevent her wishes from being carried out?

It's a valid argument, but it breaks down. Since she has no living will, all we have to go on is Michael's word. Now this may be a matter of opinion, but I don't think second-hand accounts should be regarded with as much authority as official, legal documents. There's too many variables. Even if she did say something like that, since there's nothing concrete written down, how do we know to what extent she was talking about? Did she mean she didn't want to be kept alive if she couldn't breathe on her own? Or if her heart couldn't beat on its own? Or only if she couldn't eat on her own? Michael's account is too vague.

There's also the question of his character. In general, it is unjust to automatically assume people are lying about things. We have to assume they are telling the truth, unless confronted with evidence to the contrary. I would like to assume that Michael is telling the truth about his wife's wishes, but it is obvious that he doesn't care about her. There is some evidence that he abused her and didn't even want to help her recover---he just wanted her to die and be rid of her. And it's suspicious that he only started using the "wife's wishes" argument in 2000, closer to the time that he found a different girlfriend than the time his wife was first brain-damaged.

Because Michael's account of her wishes is uncertain and unreliable, and because his character calls into question the truthfulness of his account, we cannot be certain that Terri would want to die rather than be kept alive. Once we are uncertain about Terri's wishes, then an outsider has to decide her fate, which becomes a judgment call---a philosophical question---on whether she deserves to live or not.

Now it becomes a question of who has the authority to make that judgment call. As her legal guardian, Michael is the most likely candidate. And he has decided that she does not deserve life.

OK, that's his right, we can't interfere, too bad. But if he hates her and has an obvious bias against her, then does he still retain that right? That's another judgment call.

I don't know who has or should have the authority. Her husband? Her parents? Apparently the government thinks it does. No matter the outcome of this case, in the aftermath there needs to be reform that clearly outlines who has the authority to decide in cases like these and what can cause legal guardians to lose that authority. Until then, we're forced to let the government step in.

Why Terry Schiavo Has the Right to Live

Now, I don't know who has the authority, but to whoever does, let me argue why you should decide in favor of her life. Two reasons.

First, there is so much controversy regarding the genuineness about her so-called "vegetable state." Perhaps she really is unconscious and brain dead, but until an official investigation can be made---and I don't know why there hasn't been one yet---it would be better to err on the side of caution and keep her alive if she's brain dead, than let her die if she's not.

Second, and for a greater reason, it's a matter of principle. It is true that keeping Mrs. Schiavo alive for fifteen years appears to have accomplished nothing and been a waste of time. But this is an extreme case. If you set a precedent for death here---even if it could be justified, and I truly think it could---where you do draw a line? How far gone must someone be before they lose the privilege to live? Carry the philosophy to its logical extremes, and you're supporting euthanasia. No, the only way to be just is to award all living people the right to live. Now it simply becomes a matter of how you define life.

Does life mean only the beating of the heart? Brain activity? Breathing? Does life mean all of those combined, or more, or something else? To decide if a person has a right to live, all we have to do is decide if they are alive. Terri Schiavo is breathing on her own. Her body can process food, even if it has to be given to her through a tube. No matter what your minimal criteria for life are, I think she easily qualifies.

And so, to preserve the value of life and prevent it from becoming diluted, I believe Terri Schiavo should be kept alive, even if keeping her alive for fifteen years accomplshed nothing and even if it will accomplish nothing more in the end.

Edmond the Hun

Current Events: The Removal of the Feeding Tube

Well, now it's happened. They have removed the feeding tube of Terry Schiavo, who has been brain damaged for fifteen years. They say she can live at least a week without it, and after that... who knows? Conservative Christians and the like are in an outrage at this decision which will, unless opponents can legally break through, ultimately result in the death of Mrs. Schiavo.

If the case was simpler, I would go against the conservative Christian stream and say this is the right decision. She's been like this for fifteen years, doing nothing but eating through a feeding tube and eating thousands of dollars with it. OK, so she has laughed and cried, but those accounts are controversial, anyway. I think it would be best to put her out of her misery.

But it's more complicated than that. It has to be. After all, Terry's husband and Terry's parents have been fighting this for years. And there's something fishy about Michael Schiavo (the husband). The big mystery is: Why does he want to pull the plug? He claims that his wife told him that's what she would want. But no one seems to believe this simple answer. He was even offered a million dollars not to pull the plug, but he refused. There is obviously some deep reason that he wants to pull the plug. Maybe he really does belive that's what his wife wants.

But I know the reason has nothing to do with devotion to his wife. Why? Because he has kids with another woman, but he never officially divorced Terry to marry her. Why? It appears that he wants his wife to die---as his wife---before he marries the other woman. The only obvious motive is that somehow that would give him a lot of money, but he refused a million dollars, so that seems out of the picture.

This whole thing is rancid of corruption, and there's too much we don't know. There's some deep reason that Michael wants Terry to die as his wife. Now Congress is hurriedly trying to pass a law to stop it all. Unfortunately, Terry got caught in the middle of all this corruption, and there's nothing she can do about it. I want to say put her out of her misery---but Michael's mysterious behavior feels like something out of a Grisham novel. So I want to say keep her alive, just in case he has a corrupt (albeit unknown) reason for wanting her death.

Basically, I guess I still don't know one way or the other. It's just a very, very sad and corrupted case.

Edmond the Hun

Current Events: More on the Atlanta Shootings

I have learned some more about the recent shootings in Atlanta, and what we have here is either some stupid officials in charge, or one feisty grandmother. Or both.

Apparently, the woman didn't have the gun on her. (This was apparently all caught on video tape) She had the gun locked up, and as soon as she took the handcuffs of him, he forced the key from her, and went and got the gun himself.

Now, Nichols is 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, and a former college linebacker. Cynthia Ann Hall is a five-foot, fifty-one year-old petit grandmother. But according to the accounts released as of now, there was a three-minute struggle before he got the keys from her. Three minutes! It took a big linebacker three minutes to take down an old grandmother! Either these reports are exaggerated, or we have one feisty grandmother here. Maybe it wasn't as ludicrous as I thought to leave her alone with the guy.

So, kudos and my respect to the poor woman who had to guard this dangerous rapist and murderer all by herself, and also managed to keep him off for three whole minutes!! Good job, Cynthia! I hope you recover from your injuries swiftly so you can testify and put this guy away for good.

Edmond the Hun

Current Events: Atlanta Shootings Reveal Need for Reform

Brian Nichols was going into the court room to face a rape charge. He was not handcuffed---that's against the law in his county, because they don't want to prejudice the jurors. He was only guarded by one deputy, a woman. As the story goes (unless new information comes to light), he took the gun from the woman, shot her, the judge, the stenographer, and another cop who got in his way. He was caught the next day, although those details aren't as important.

Here's what's important: There are two reasons the incident happened, and they both are very stupid ones. The first reason this happened was because the suspect was not handcuffed on his way to the court room! If he had been handcuffed, he wouldn't have been able to get the gun or do any subsequent damage. The idea is that if the jurors see a man coming in with handcuffs, they will immediately, if subconsciously, think, "hey, look, he's got handcuffs. Guilty people wear handcuffs. He's probably guilty." That also applies for laws that don't require the suspect to arrive wearing wearing his prison garb.

Come on here! I think this is taking things to the extreme! Unless you can show me some good psychological data, I doubt that the presence of handcuffs on a suspect can influence the jury that much against him. And even if it did have some psychological effect, the jury is supposed to judge based on the facts presented, not their feelings. If they're basing things on their feelings, they're just incompetent jurors, and handcuffs aren't really gonna matter anyway.

But I could be wrong. Maybe handcuffs really can unfairly influence a jury. So let's look at reason number two: He was escorted into the courtroom by only one deputy, a woman. That's not very smart to begin with. One-on-one is never a good ratio for that sort of thing, even if the guard has the gun. What's more, the guard was a woman. I don't mean this in any sexist way, feminists, but it's just basic fact that anatomically the average man is stronger than the average woman. And at over six feet and two hundred pounds, Nichols wasn't an average man, anyway. And the deputy was a fifty-one year-old grandmother. She didn't exactly have the upper hand here. There's a third issue, too: the night before he had been caught with knives in his boots.

So here's what we have: A suspect who has proven to be dangerous is only guarded by one woman. And look what happened.

I propose, number one, getting rid of the stupid law against handcuffs. The risk of deaths is greater than the risk of influencing the jury, if that influence even exists (although I will retract that if someone shows me psychological data). Number two, require that male suspects be escorted by at least two male guards. Either one of those would have stopped the weekend's nightmare from happening.

In an effort to be fair, we give our criminals too much freedom. I didn't have time to blog about Martha Stewart when she switched from a fancy "prison" to a fancy home "confinement." Don't even get me started on our prison system. But this is just another example of extra latitude to the criminal causing suffering to the innocent.

We suffer by paying taxes to let criminals play video games and computers and all sorts of luxuries while serving their "sentences." And now, four people suffered to let a criminal walk around without influencing a jury. Except they suffered with their lives. How much more suffering must we allow before there is reform?

Edmond the Hun

Current Events: Iran and "Incentive" Rewards

For awhile, Bush didn't support the general European idea of offering Iran economic rewards as an incentive to stop their nuclear weapons programs, an idea which makes no sense to me. He recently changed his mind and now agrees with that idea. Not that it matters, because Iran just said that they won't stop their programs anyway.

What I don't get is the very concept of offering rewards (why don't they just call it "bribes"?) as an incentive to get a country to stop trying to make nuclear weapons! When someone's doing something you don't want them to, you don't offer them something to make them stop! That implies that you're weaker than they are. Pretend that the ability to make nuclear weapons is a treehouse, and the countries are young boys. Countries like the U.S. that have nuclear weapons are the boys in the treehouse, and countries like Iran that don't are the ones on the ground. If there's just a small boy in the treehouse, he might pay a bully to keep him from coming up. There's nothing else he can do to keep him out. But what about the boy who's bigger than the bully? The bully's trying to climb up to the treehouse, and the bigger boy says, "Hey, don't come up here! We'll reward you if you don't!"

No! It's not the big boys in the treehouse who have to bargain with the little bullies! If the big boys don't want them in the club, they use physical force to keep them out. Why on earth would we want to give Iran "economic rewards" to keep them out of the treehouse? That's negative reinforcement! If they accepted it, we'd put ourselves in a position of blackmail---what's to prevent their saying, "give us more rewards or we'll start it up again." I'm actually surprised Iran rejected the offer; it's very confusing. But it appears that nothing short of physical force will be effective.

Economic bribes---because that's what they really are---only work if the issue is not something that's fundamentally important to you. If someone offered me a million dollars to never eat another bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I'd take it immediately. I might miss the CTC, but it's not that important to me. On the other hand, I wouldn't take a hundred million dollars to stop publishing this blog of mine! Why? Because having a voice in the world and sharing my opinions is worth more than tangible things to me.

And I don't think I'm wrong in saying that getting nuclear weapons is worth more than tangible things to Iran. We told them to stop, and they said no. We told them we'd bribe them and give them goodies if they'd stop, and they still said no. They really want it. So why on earth did we humiliate ourselves and try to bribe them? Do Bush and the Europeans actually think that would be effective? Because it seems completely uneffective to me. If we want them to stay out of the treehouse, we're gonna have to physcially pry them off the ladder.

Edmond the Hun

Religious Freedom and the USA

The Supreme Court is going to make a ruling very soon about whether or not the Ten Commandments are allowed to be displayed outside courtrooms and other public buildings. Opponents claim that this is offensive to other religions who don't believe in the principles of the Ten Commandments. Let me clarify some things for you.

First, as I've mentioned before, the Constitution does not give you the freedom from being offended! It's nowhere in there! I don't know why these special-interest, minority, and/or liberal groups draw the offensive card as if it's their guaranteed right. You don't have that right!
But as good as that point is, that's not the main issue here.

The truth is, our country was founded on religious principles. I know opponents claim all these things to refute that, saying that our country has changed in recent years and that we're not really a "Christian nation" anymore. They also try to make comparisons to the original Americans, saying that they left England to escape religious persecution, and now Christians are doing the same thing to other religions.

Let's take the first claim. Even though things have changed in recent years, that doesn't change the original background and makeup of our country. Let me draw an analogy. Far too many areas of our economic industry have started catering to non-English-speaking people who have come to the United States. The amount of Spanish labeling is getting ridiculous! I understand we have to be reasonable for the people who literally can't speak English yet, but they have to be reasonable too and make hard efforts to learn English. But it's getting to the point where they don't have to learn English anymore---and we're helping them! Sure, you can speak other languages, but the United States is English! Deal with it and learn English, or leave! (I realize you may disagree with me, but it's impossible to cater to every single minority that exists---you have to draw the line)

Coming back to the displaying of the Ten Commandments---it's just like the Spanish labels. You're perfectly entitled to practice whatever religion you want, but recognize that the United States was founded on Christianity, and there's nothing you can do about that.

Now on to the second claim. Making persecution comparisons with the original founders of our country is just preposterous! The English church/government wasn't displaying some religious icons in recognition of their historical foundation---they were absolutely prohibiting other religions to be practiced at all! I don't see how the displaying of a sign prohibits the free exercise of Hinduism, Buddhism, or any other religion. They're not even comparable!

So, to sum it up: Displaying the Ten Commandments is a recognition of our country's founding and status. It is not religious persecution. And if you think it's offensive, well, you don't have the right not to be offended anyway. I challenge you to present me with a better argument for getting rid of the Ten Commandments. Until then, I can't sympathize with you.

Edmond the Hun