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Activism!!!

Here's where I go off the rails due to soome unfortunate newspaper reading.

In today's local paper there were many things of interest to me.

First there was an article by some Professor from Calgary, Alberta who did some jackass of a study that revealed that bloggers (that's you and me folks) are a lonely and isolated lot living in the make-believe world of cyberspace. He says we choose to form virtual relationships instead of real ones. Professer Michael Keren is his name and he says that bloggers are to blame for the fall of public activism.

I say Professor Michael Keren should pull his head out of his butt long enough to realize that just because you choose to write from your home does not mean you are lonely. And that many bloggers political or otherwise rise to the occasion and start public activism movements that span the globe simply because they have a blog that can reach someone on the other side of the world.

Professor Keren doesn't know what he's talking about.

Secondly, some jackelope wrote a letter to the editor disagreeing with a previous letter regarding capital punishment. This guy writes, and I quote...

"We have allowed politicians to tell us that [capital punishment] is barbaric. Is it? Personally I think not. It is the ridding of society of something that is abhorrent - the taking of a life of another human being."

Okay...first of all that paragraph makes no fucking sense AT ALL. You are proposing to do just what you claim is abhorrent.

This guy believes that capital punishment is some sort of societal cleansing.

"It is not an eye for an eye....It is rather the cleansing of our society....capital punishment does not lower society's standards, it raises them by removing them from society and informs other that society will not tolerate the taking of human life..."

Again, aside from the bad grammatical form, he is again advocating the taking of a human life as punishment for the taking of a human life AND he pulls out the old tired deterrent argument.

Arrrrgggg!

Capital punishment is wrong. Not because it is taking a human life but because it allows the possibility of taking an innocent human life. Until such time as the justice system is perfected so that no one is wrongly convicted capital punishment cannot be used.

I'm sure that David Milgaard, Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, Guy Paul Morin, Donald Marshall and Steven Truscott would all agree with me along with all the other wrongly convicted people sitting in jail right now trying to get someone to believe them.

For Pete's sake, the Innocence project alone has exonerated almost 200 people who were "found guilty" during their trial.

Capital punishment is wrong.
Period.

And hey, on another note, if you haven't yet watched AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH go forth and rent it. It will change the way you think about global warming and taking care of the planet. The book's not bad either.

That is the end of this non-paid political announcement.

P.S. If y'all ever decide to send me to rehab - send me to the one that Lindsay's gone to. She gets to leave for work and to go to lunch and to do some shoppin'. I'm thinking it's the perfect rehab facility for me....except for that going-to-work part.

8:23 a.m. - 2007-01-31

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