Death Penalty, Yes or No? Vote!

I’ve just read an amazing article about the Death Penalty in India and like its author I’m totally against all forms of Capital Punishment. Still, I am interested in what my readers are thinking about this topic, so I made a poll where you can vote for or against the Death Penalty. Of course the voting is totally anonymous, so don’t worry about me seeing your name/IP address or anything like that.
Please leave a comment here if you want to say something more about this issue. Below you can find “Reasons against the death penalty” with a few comments by me and also the article I mentioned above.

 

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Reasons against the death penalty (by antideathpenalty.org)

1. Executions cost more than life in prison.
$2 million per person vs. $500,000 (4x as much!). Free counsel for defense, for appeals, maximum security on a separate death row wing.

Stop Kony? Who the F*** is Kony???

In case you’ve asked yourself this, cause you’ve seen the name “Kony” float around the web during the last hours, you asked the right question! The answer is in this video, and I strongly recommend you watch the whole thing, because there is some really important information in it. Also, it’s only 30 minutes, not 3 hours, so I bet you’ll survive focussing your attention on this video for a while.

Photographing Life and Death in Juarez

A young girl from Ciudad Juarez prepares for her 15th birthday party, a coming of age party known as a "quinceañera." Her family spent most of their savings on making it a happy occasion. Her father had recently lost his job and was making ends meet by making repairs to homes in the neighborhood. Photo: Dominic Bracco II

Juarez, Mexico is a war zone.

The war is being waged by two rival drug cartels, the Juarez and the Sinoloa, block by block for control of the city and its trafficking routes. The result is extreme levels of violence, corruption and intimidation. And for the past two years, photographer Dominic Bracco II has been covering the war’s effects on the border town’s residents. While he is working there as a journalist, Bracco can’t help but feel invested in the subjects that he’s become so familiar with.

“I want an American audience to look at my pictures and see how people are living on the border as result of American policies and Mexican corruption and take some responsibility,” he says.

Bracco, who grew up on the border in Texas and speaks fluent Spanish, says he doesn’t feel constantly threatened while working in Juarez but he certainly takes precautions. Even though he lives in Mexico City, no one knows his home address. And he only flies into Juarez when he’s working on his story or an assignment.

He regularly works with the same fixer who knows Juarez well and they both do their best to stay under the radar, like driving beat-up cars that don’t attract the attention of car jackers. Bracco says the flip side of this, however, is that the beat-up cars often break down, stranding them in some of the most dangerous parts of the city.

He never calls his subjects ahead to time to let them know he’s coming; he just shows up. for fear of who might be listening. He just shows up.

Full article and slideshow here…

“The Arab Spring Is Coming to China.”

Senator John McCain, right, and the Chinese vice foreign minister, Zhang Zhijun. | Andreas Gebert/European Pressphoto Agency

HONG KONG — The former Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, told one of China’s most senior diplomats on Saturday that “the Arab Spring is coming to China,” pointing to the wave of Tibetans setting themselves on fire in China.

With the news Sunday of three more Tibetan self-immolations, at least 18 ethnic Tibetans — many of them current or former Buddhist clergy members — have set themselves alight in the past year to protest Beijing’s harsh stance against the Dalai Lama and the apparent suppression of Tibetan religious and cultural practices.

All the self-immolations have occurred in Tibet and the western Chinese province of Sichuan.

Three Tibetans in Sichuan burned themselves on Friday, according to news reports on Sunday.

Zhang Zhijun, the Chinese vice foreign minister, was on a panel with Senator McCain at a security conference in Munich, and Mr. Zhang termed the notion of an Arab Spring-style uprising in China as “no more than fantasy.”

“It is a matter of concern when Tibetans are burning themselves to death because of the continued repression of the Tibetan people in your country,” Senator McCain told Mr. Zhang during the panel, reiterating his belief that “the Arab Spring is coming to China as well.”

A street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in December 2010, and his death was the catalyst for nationwide riots and protests. Similar rebellions followed in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen.

Read more…

Video: Shit Homophobic People Say

Alternative title: Shit Stupid and Ignorant People Say

Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.
Check out http://www.lambdalegal.org/

Layout, Comments, Sharing, Rating & More

Hey guys, I just thought I should update you about what I’ve changed here lately. First, I’ve obviously changed the layout about 7390 times, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve found the right one now. I’m really happy with it and plan to keep it for a while.

The new header was created by none other than me, myself, and I, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. I’ve never done any graphic design before, so this header is the first thing I created (with Gimp, cause I can’t even afford a proper graphic design software).
Self conscious as I am, I immediately asked my 1,044 Twitter followers what they thought about it and I’m really grateful that two of them replied and liked it. Twitter can be funny sometimes. When you want to be left alone, everybody wants to talk to you, but when you actually ask people something you just hear the crickets chirr.

Some other great news is that you can share all the blog posts now on Tumblr, too! Just use the button in the share section right under the blog post. There you also find buttons for Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google+ and many other social networks. Thanks to everyone who shares, will share and has shared my posts. It’s much appreciated.

In case you want to rate my blog posts, from now on you can do this on the home page without having to open the blog post, you want to rate, first. It’s nice to get some feedback, so feel free to give me grades, no matter if good ones or bad ones, or just leave a comment if you have something to say!

Also, welcome to all the new subsribers! I’ve gained a few during the last weeks and it means a lot that you want to have my blog posts in your mail box!

What Next for the African Union in 2012?

As we come ever closer to 2012, I thought I would examine Africa’s recent struggles on its path to unity and a more prosperous region.

Certainly, with 2011′s cataclysmic changes taking place in North Africa, most of the African Union’s attention has been heavily turned towards the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Nevertheless, the organisation has not been without its own crises to manage in the sub-Saharan region.

The Western-backed referendum for self-determination in the South Sudan, finding its roots in the comprehensive peace deal of 2005, put an end to the decades-long civil war between Omar el Bachir’s north and the late John Garang’s (now ruled by Salve Kir) South. Underlying this conflict is a dispute over borders, respect for human rights and, more importantly, the re-partition of Sudan’s petroleum wealth, located primarily in the South but thoroughly sapped by the North.

After an Anti-Semitic Episode, a March With a Message

Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times

Two days after the sight of flaming cars and anti-Semitic graffiti horrified a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, residents, elected officials and others took part in a march on Sunday against hatred and intolerance.

The police were still investigating the burning of three parked cars on Ocean Parkway and the spray-painting of swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs on benches and the initials “K.K.K.” on the side of a van. The police are treating the episode as a hate crime. No arrests had been made by late Sunday afternoon.

“Power the World” Week – Issue #4: African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power

Thanks to this solar panel, Sara Ruto no longer takes a three-hour taxi ride to a town with electricity to recharge her cellphone.

For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.
Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid.
Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.

That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches.
“My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things,” Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.

Remember the Novemberpogrom (“Kristallnacht”), Nov. 9 &10 in 1938

Today is the 73rd anniversary from one of the most horrible events in human history. From November 9 – November 10, 1938 the Nazis in Germany celebrated their “Kristallnacht”, an euphemistic term that isn’t used in Germany anymore, because it plays down the events of the night. In a series of attacks synagogues, houses and businesses of Jews were burned down in Germany and Austria, many Jews were beaten, shot or committed suicide that night, thousands were deported to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, etc.
Read a detailed description of the events here.

Here is the eyewitness report of a fire fighter from Laupheim: