The meeting of Law Students Against the Death Penalty was well attended by the ghosts of executions past and future. However, not a single law student attended other than the two current officers.

This is one of those issues that you are either for or against - there is no middle ground - so in an attempt to stay relevant and reflect the true sentiments of the student body, we are changing our name to Law Students FOR the Death Penalty.

Our new statement of purpose reads:

• We want revenge for innocent lives lost, and nothing short of death will do. Even the mistaken execution of an innocent person or three is better than no execution at all.
• We believe that encouraging grieving family members to participate in the violent, agonizing death of the offender will help them heal and make their family whole again.
• We will lobby legislators to reduce due process requirements so that executions can be processed as quickly as possible.
• We believe that executing people will make our communities safer by removing flawed human beings from the gene pool.
• We believe that executions will serve as a warning to criminals, in the same way that putting severed heads on stakes at the entrance to the city deterred crime in medieval Europe.
• Texas is our inspiration.

Oh yeah... I have a blog... I have a lot of things on the internet these days, and not enough time or interest to maintain them all properly. But since this blog has a special place in my heart for oh so many reasons, I shouldn't neglect it.

The big news is that I survived the first semester of law school. It is yet to be seen whether I passed, but I'm still alive and feeling not entirely destroyed by the experience. I learned a lot of interesting things: the law does not recognize the use of deadly force to defend property; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was prejudiced against the mentally ill; and Antonin Scalia is concerned that people who engage in homosexual sex will inevitably copulate with animals if the Supreme Court doesn't stop them.

> Was told us by Ibr'im our teacher,
> How to find us a nasty old breacher.
> With coat hanger gestures
> and page-ripping pleasures
> Sometimes he comes off like a preacher!
>
> Oh! Woe the breacher for all he loses
> Even if he sues, the other party chooses,
> The obligation theory
> and the remedy
> All the worse if he be intermeddley
>
> The courts of old were very cold
> To every breacher, young and old
> No Recovery was had
> If their faith was bad
> For the precedent they must uphold
>
> Then along came the Britton case:
> It was the breacher's saving grace!
> They restored the remiss faith in justice,
> For they couldn't find justice in faith.
>
> They said a boss must admit
> If a worker's neither fired nor quit
> He must pay for the value each day
> In Quantum meruit
>
> If you hear this from Ibrahim
> You must know just what it means:
> Be on your toes
> If you're in the front rows
> And he hasn't had his caffeine.
>
> He gets a kick from scholarship
> There's no doubt he's smart as a whip
> But he gets excited
> If the right case is cited
> And might throw a binder clip

Ok, call me a geek, but I found this in one of my responses to a suitor on an internet dating site, and I think it's worthy of publication on my little haphazard blog site here:

----

What I do for fun... well... the only things I'll admit to in writing are: dancing, bicycling, watercolours, gardening, reading, blogging, xchat with my friends in Australia, beers with my friends in Tucson, giving politicians & bureaucrats ulcers, and writing steamy emails to complete strangers...

As for the meaning of life and the pursuit thereof... I have been reading some very interesting tomes in preparation for law school, including "The Trial and Death of Socrates". I have also done some internal research and development in the area, and by way of reason and logic, I can find no greater meaning in life than the practice of copulation. Being an atheist, I don't believe that there is a God who has a plan for human life on earth... so I can only assume that the meaning of life is natural evolution. Certainly the only consistent theme in evolution (other than death) is biological mutation through the semi-random pairings of unique sets of DNA. While I don't intend to produce any offspring, I try to appease Mother Nature by enjoying as much sex as I can :)

But when one leaves the realm of the proveable, which is inevitable, we must face the silence after the orgasm and ask ourselves, "what now?" The examination and evaluation of our own behaviour, and questioning the value of a life turn to questions of ethics, and the immortality of the soul. I'd like to think that there is a grand scheme to it all, and that George Bush will be made to feel the pain of a hundred thousand widows, but in my more cynical moods, I tend to think that fucking is really as good as it gets...

I had a sappy, treacley, saccharine blog entry here about love and how I thought I'd found it again... but instead I'm posting this dry, bitter, blistering tribute to Jerry Fallwell from Christopher Hitchens. If you haven't seen this yet, you'll thank me for it... I hope...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=52yTqMcwuQE

And just because it's the only thing I'm intimate with at the moment, I'll regale you with tales from law school. In the same way that the U.N. lost its illusion of grandeur for me when I discovered that they put the World Bank and IMF in charge of both social and economic reform goals in Mexico and other countries, I have also lost the illusion that the U.S. Supreme Court was an honorable, wise, reflective and philosophical body of thinkers. As I read their opinions over the last 200 years, I get a picture of very flawed and insecure, but also shrewd and ambitious political operators. At times they snatch power surreptitiously by merely mentioning it in an opinion about another issue entirely like Marbury v. Madison. Other times they grant unprecedented power to the other branches, based on reasoning that leaves my professor dumbfounded, like in U.S. v. Lopez and Gonzales v. Raich. He described the court by using the metaphor of a trained puppy, with Congress as the Master. I agree... when nobody's looking, it chews up the Master's new leather shoes. But its good having a puppy around... it makes the kids happy... so the Master can't take it out the back and shoot it. And sometimes it goes and fetches the paper... and its so cute when the justices sit at the Master's feet and look up adoringly at them...

Ok, maybe its not that bad, but it's a helluva lot worse than I thought it was. If this is supposed to be a triangle of powers balancing each other, the judicial corner is threatening the others with a wet noodle.

This is my edit of the front page article for the next 'Just Us', the Jusice Action newspaper for prisoners and their communities. The concept of Terra Nullius is one of the more odious concepts created by white Australians to justify the slaughter and mistreatment of Aborigines.

Prisons are Today's Terra Nullius.

It is no coincidence that Aboriginal people are imprisoned at 13 times the rate of white Australians. Ever since the colonization of Australia, the penal colony authorities choose not to see certain people if it happens to suit their colonial agenda. They see "empty land", and by doing so, criminalize the people in it.

With the white people came the penal colony, and Terra Nullius. But did the antipodean conquistadors declare Terra Nullius, or did they build it? Australia was one big jail cell so that the English didn't have to see or deal with the social crises happening in their own home. So they sent them to Terra Nullius. The prime lands were cleared and fortresses built. The first white government of Australia consisted entirely of prison guards. Since then, the percentage of the country's resources devoted to imprisonment has diminished, but scores of prisons still remain as the foundation of the "free", civilian government we claim as our democracy. But there was never a point, in over 200 years, when the "free" citizens of Australia demanded that the power of the prison-guard government be checked by any other authority. And so we find ourselves with an unbroken line of prison guards with the power to make people disappear.

These pockets of Terra Nullius are anything but fortresses today, with their 'invisible' inhabitants coming and going on a regular basis. Recidivism has increased from 2% in the penal colony days to 40% today. During our stints in this modern Terra Nullius, they try in various ways to make us into non-people, before sending us out again into the communities of whole people. Prisoners have been stripped of our right to vote, to smoke, to reproduce, to participate in our own community, and to pray to Allah without being labelled a terrorist.

Visitation rights and access to family and loved ones are receding with the tide of compassion from those in Parliament House. This reached a new low recently when the government attempted to remove the use of technology to preserve sperm and eggs for inmates, an attack on the fundamental ability to reproduce (regardless of incarceration).

The injustice does not stop at loss of liberty. The entitlement to practice the religion of our choice was removed when Muslim converts in the HRMU were paraded on the front page of the Sunday paper amid claims of terrorist rings operating within prisons. The attacks on Hicks, Habib and Haneef show that the Rule of Law and due process are neither respected nor available as viable mediators between the government and its citizen.

There are even prohibitions against participating in communities of prisoners. 'Framed', a previous Justice Action magazine by and for prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families and friends was banned from the prisons for being critical of Corrective Services. The President of The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC), John von Doussa QC, found that the government's practices breached the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: "...the right to freedom of opinion and expression... includes freedom to hold opinions without interference to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

But in this Terra Nullius, there can be no human rights where there are no humans. Consider the case of Craig Behr. He was kicked to death after being placed in a cell with a psychotic, homicidal prisoner who once thought he was the champion race-horse Phar Lap. That's one way to make people disappear.

Another way is to deny them a voice. Consider the NSW Government's response to the case of Cory Brough, a mentally ill Aboriginal boy who was stripped naked and placed in isolation in an adult prison when he was just 16 years old. He managed to file a complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The government argued that he had other options of redress such as the proper channels or even a court challenge. Cory observed that, "...complaints within the prison are received by the prison governor, the very person who authorized (my) conditions of detention...". The Committee noted that, "Australian courts will not interfere with administrative decisions of prison authorities..." (CCPR/C/86/D/1184/2003).

Is this not a wink and a nod reminiscent of that wink and nod that must have happened some time in the 1770's between Cook and Phillip? 'Do you see anybody, Art?' 'I don't see anybody, Jim.'

It is beautifully ironic therefore that an Aboriginal woman prisoner recently fought the government and won back the right to vote. In 2006, the Howard Government passed legislation which denied all prisoners the right to vote. This law was challenged in the High Court by Vickie Roach, an Aboriginal woman at the Dame Phyllis Frost Prison in Melbourne. In orders made on August 30, 2007, the High Court struck down the blanket prohibition on prisoners voting.

Speaking after the decision was handed down, Philip Lynch, Director of the Human Rights Law Resource Centre which ran the case, said, "This is a common sense decision. The Howard Government disenfranchised prisoners on the spurious ground that to do so would promote respect for the social contract and the rule of law. Far from achieving this, denial of the fundamental human right to vote results in social exclusion, isolation, resentment and unaccountable and unrepresentative government."

We wonder who she's going to vote for...

When will they learn that simply refusing to see us does not make us go away? If you feel like an invisible person, you can get involved in Just Us. We publish to give voice to those who are told to be quiet and so that prisoners can stay informed about their rights. Justice Action encourages all prisoners to submit articles, letters or poems in any language or format. Those of you reading Just Us on the outside can help us by donating money and volunteering. Contributions keep Just Us relevant.

I arrived at the camp at Arivaca on Sunday evening, clean and fresh, and somewhat prepared for the heat after the weekend riding mountain bikes on the migrant trails. We ate dinner and discussed the plans for the following day. There was supposed to be 19 tons of bottled water delivered to the pedestrian port in Nogales Arizona/Sonora, very close to the office where it would be stored in Mexico. This was meant to be easier than driving it through in loads, as had been done last year.

The water never showed up, so 14 people went over to the Mariposa port to see the repatriated migrant station that NMD & the Sonoran Commision for Aid to Migrants share responsibility for. A border agent on the U.S. side stopped us all as we went to cross the road at the crosswalk on a busy industrial freeway. No, we couldn't go that way... we had to cross through the turnstile in the U.S. port structure. The Mexicans have no port structure of course, just a rickety gate that is never closed. Steve argued with the man that it was much safer to cross at the crosswalk. But the other was the official entry and we were advised to use it. Was he saying that we *must* walk through that way? Yes, he said, we were compelled to use the U.S. entrance. OK then, Steve started off towards the structure. No, he had to wait, the officer was not finished with us yet. We were basically under inspection. Basically? Yes, we were under inspection. Ok then, what do you want us to do? We could leave if we wanted to. I explained that we were with No More Deaths and going to the migrant repat station. He already knew. Ok then, can we go? Finally he led us back to the structure. We only stayed a short time and then headed back through. The same officer was there, but didn't see the fellow standing at the adjacent turnstile checking our I.D.s. I stopped on the other side and waited for the others. Suddenly, officer dickwad comes over. "You can't just walk through you know. You have to wait." Crikey, what now? Then I realized that he couldn't see. I said we had already been cleared and pointed. He conceded. I was tempted to say, "You know, I'm really sorry about your penis, but please don't waste our time."

We returned to camp and waited for the afternoon patrol. It is true that the heat in Arizona is dry, but at 110F (44C) it is still very dangerous. One volunteer from Minnesota was already vomiting on the first night, and both of them ended up leaving after 2 days. You can sit in the shade and drink cool water, but your skin is still hot. The sweat dries very quickly everywhere except where you are sitting or your beltline, or under your backpack if you are walking. Sometimes you don't even experience yourself sweating because it is dry before you are aware it is there. But you can never escape the heat out there. In the city you have AC or swamp coolers, but there is no electricity in camp. The best you can do is improvise by wetting down your shirt or spraying water on your skin. We sat around the table, talking and drinking copious amounts of electrolytes until 3 or 4, when the afternoon patrol goes out. (click on title for more)

I have given in and gotten a flickr site. I've only just uploaded my pics from my trip around mainland Australia in November '05. They still take my breath away... There's lots more to come... http://www.flickr.com/photos/7603469@N07/

Here's Mr. Thomas: And two of his oil paintings:

In Australia, the term "bush bashing" refers to hiking or biking through dense or difficult trails, literally "bashing" the "bush" (wilderness) to get to where you're going. In the U.S. the same phrase means 'criticising the President'.

I suppose what I did this morning would be valid in either sense. Shanti and I went out on our mountain bikes and rode the migrant trails, charting the way on GPS, and looking for migrants in distress. I was carrying 25lbs of food and water in my paniers, and Shanti carried tools, supplies, and a first aid kit.

We didn't find any migrants in distress, but we covered 4 miles, charted several points on the GPS, and proved that humanitarian work and trail riding are not incompatible.

It was 107 F today, and we were out from 11:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. If I had stayed out another hour, I would have started to get really cranky, but as it was, we both managed the ride with energy to spare.

On the way back to camp, we saw a Wackenhut bus loading up migrants who had been caught in the desert that day. We tried to bring them food and water, but the Migra said "no". Agent Eggers declared that he had to have a 50 foot perimiter to safely do his job. We took his name and badge number and left. At the next meeting with Border Patrol we will tell them that their agents are not saying the same things as the cardboard hack they send to negotiations.

Earlier in the day we had gone to a site where coyotes force their clients to drop all their worldly posessions. Many thousands of backpacks, medicines, toothbrushes, cans of food, baby bottles... everything. All that stuff just sits there after the rush of humanity has been frog-marched down the trail, probably scared about being in the middle of the desert at night and angry at having to leave their things behind. When the sun rises, the radiation hits the surfaces of the newly decorated landcape... denim, polyester, polypropelene, and organic matter alike begin the bleaching process, draped in the spines of cacti, and molded to the surfaces of hot rocks. Time is merciless in these places.

We took out a few dozen backpacs that will be given to deported migrants at the port in Nogales. If they are lucky, they will be the next ones in that saddle in the mountains, dropping that backpack with new contents... but next time, they will know a little better what to expect.

"It's not right"

Damn straight girl. Prison sux. You'd better hope they don't find you mentally ill...

How much does it take to make someone feel empathy? At what point will Paris Hilton think, "Gee, imagine what this would be like without a rich family supporting me and constant media coverage? What would it be like if I couldn't afford an appeal? What if the system wasn't being watched, judged, and second-guessed by millions around the world?"

I'm not holding my breath...

It's not right? Darlin, that's about as right as it gets in this country. You couldn't find a fairer process anywhere. Democracy works best when people are watching and opining about the fairness of the process and the sentence. When no one is looking... that's when it starts to turn sour, rotten and corrupt.

That's when they come in and kick the crap out of you in the middle of the night for no reason at all. That's when they put you on too much of the wrong medication and you don't know which side is up for most of the day. That's when you die of thirst because you were strapped to a table for too long.

It's not right.

Imagine what this world would be like if we paid attention to all State-sanctioned punishment with that much interest and passion...

I arrived in McRae, GA in the afternoon on Saturday, June 2nd after driving 300 miles from Charlotte, NC. It rained the whole way, and continued raining through the night. The town of McRae has a population of 2000. The prison holds 1700. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that prisoners are counted as residents... the town is tiny. At the point where two railroad tracks intersect, there is a block of old, boarded up shops. Farther down the main road there is a strip mall with a grocery store, discount clothing, and other assorted shops. The dairy queen marquee says "Jesus Loves You". I stopped at the Travel Lodge and inquired about a room. "$55" said the man from India.

"That's a bit high for me, is there anything else in the area?"
"There's one across the street and another at the other end of town."

I went to the one across the street, the Budget Motel. Another Indian woman greeted me, this time with a price of $35. I took it. I unloaded my luggage and drove into town. Mr. Thomas had warned me of the "gizmo" at the prison that can detect drugs on you, even if you touched something that had drugs on it at one point. Having spent two days travelling to see him, I wasn't going to take any chances, so I went to the discount clothing store and bought a new set of clothes. The only shoes that fit the bill (no sandals allowed) were a pair of brown leather clogs with a black faux fur lining... absolutely hideous... but shoes would be the major offender, second only to money.

I returned to the motel and turned on the TV. I was immediately confronted by hard-core porn. I had trouble getting to sleep, so I watched Pirates of the Carribean: the curse of the black pearl, and re-read Mr. Thomas' letters in the commercials. He was a creature of the sea before going to prison, and to the sea he will return when he gets out. He was even arrested whilst smuggling in the Carribean, but I will get to that later. He wrote, "20 months - maybe 16 if I'm lucky - and then rapidly arrange another boat - Oh yeah!! - Me & Jack Sparrow - Ho! Ho! Ho! You will always be welcome wench - ar ye strong? - can ye fight?"

I finally drifted off to sleep about 11:30. At midnight, there was a knock on the door. I ignored it and fell asleep again. At some unknown time later, the phone rang. I couldn't understand the heavy Indian accent at first, but eventually I understood it to say, "Is Michael there?". Nooooooo..... SLAM!

I had set my alarm for 7am, but because of the loud air conditioning, I didn't hear it, and woke on my own at 8:15. I had planned to take a shower, to further rid myself of any rogue drug traces, but I decided to just pack and go.

The prison was just up the road leading out of town. I went in with only my freshly washed driver's license and a $20 bill. Everyone else had bags full of quarters, and there was a change machine in the lobby, but it only accepts $1's and $5's. I went back to my car and got all the $1's I had, which was only 7. I changed them and proceded through the metal detector... there was no drug-detecting 'gizmo'.

The room looks like a high-school cafeteria, with rows of square tables fixed to the floor, and four grey, plastic chairs around each. The chairs were not fixed to the floor. At one end of the room, two guards sat on a raised platform behind a railling. There were 4 vending machines with soda, water, coffee, and various chips and sandwiches. There was an alcove with carpeting on the floor and half way up the walls. A TV was on at the end of the alcove and children played there. I was assigned a table and sat down to wait. After a few minutes, Mr. Thomas was escorted through a door.

He is tall and in good shape for 62. He has long strawberry blond hair and a thick white, trimmed beard and mustache peppered with strawberry blond. His face is smooth and free of age spots. Only the skin around his sharp blue eyes is wrinkled, which gives him a young, but infinitely wise look. We embraced. I had been instructed by Leo to cover him with hugs and kisses, but also warned that he had not touched a woman in 12 years, so it might be a bit messy...

We talked about Leo, our mutual friend in Arsetralia, as he calls it. Leo grew up with Mr. Thomas and his son in Capetown, South Africa. Leo was drawn to Mr. Thomas' "60's attitude", and contributed to his own deliquency as well. Mr. Thomas told me about going for a walk in the hills near Table Mountain, in search of the fly agaric mushroom. They found one, and Leo said that he was going to eat one filament of the shroom, and if he died in 3 days, they would know why. He didn't die, and they threw a small, exclusive party. Mr. Thomas said that Leo had cleared out his living room of all furniture except for a shelf with glassware on it. Suddenly, Leo came running out of the hallway and ran three or four steps straight up the wall. He fell backwards, and knocked some of the glassware off the shelf onto the floor where it smashed into bits. Getting up, he went back down the hall and did the same again, this time landing on shards of broken glass. Upon rising, Mr. Thomas said that Leo didn't have a single cut on him. Leo said that this was what the Vikings took before going into battle, and that was how they got the reputation of being fierce fighters, and totally insane.

Mr. Thomas told me the story of his capture. His wife of 20 years was having an affair with a fellow invloved in drug dealing. The wife and their daughter disappeared one day, and Mr. Thomas was led to believe that they would be killed if he did not take a load of cocaine into the U.S. He almost made it, but was dobbed in by the wife's lover.

He has been in prison for 13 years, being shuffled from prison to prison according to the needs of the Corrections Corporation of America. He has researched the private prison industry and is convinced that a deal was struck with legislators; they received shares in CCA and Wakenhut/GEO in exchange for mandatory sentencing laws which keep the prisons full. The corporations receive $25,000 per person per year in tax money. The prisoners are used as slave labor for other industries, and receive substandard care, adding to the corporate profits.

I was transfixed by him. He urged me to look into his eyes as much as possible and not break away. His face is compelling, and easy to watch. Combined with tales of adventure, corruption and decadence, the time flew by. At times, I could see nothing but those eyes. The room disappeared, and we were completely alone inside each other's minds. The room was very cold though, and I was not allowed to go back to my car to get more clothes. I drew my arms inside my shirt, which concerned Mr. Thomas greatly. He asked the guard if there was something I could wear, or if they could adjust the air conditioning. No and no. "I'd love to give you some of my heat" he said, as his eyelids drooped over his pupils, leaving no doubt about his meaning.

I was not surprised, shocked or offended at his lasciviousness. Only the most naive person would expect any less from a man in prison for 13 years. I was pleased to be able to indulge him in a rare treat. At one point he interrupted me and said, 'This is marvellous, I feel like I'm sitting in a pub again!"

He asked me about my relationships, and why I had no children. I did my best to explain. He told me about his beliefs about the body and the spirit. He has become a member of the Lakota religion and goes to a sweat lodge inside the prison every Saturday. He said that in the intense heat, the spirit becomes distinct from the body for a short time. We talked at length about spirituality, and my rabid atheism. At times, he strayed into the realm of what I consider to be 'kookville', but I threw a few leading questions in, to see how far he would take it. He always stopped at the edge of looniness and offered a caveat that he had no proof, but was going on instinct. We wrangled with the question of life after death.

A prisoner sat at a small desk in the corner. He had a digital camera. Mr. Thomas proposed that we have a photo taken together to send to Leo. He could not accept my money, but agreed to let Mr. Thomas pay him later. We went into the carpeted alcove for the photo.

I invited him to visit me in Tucson when he gets out, but he said that he will be deported to Ireland immediately. He wants nothing more to do with the U.S. Government. Fair enough. He has a friend who will meet him in Ireland and help him get settled again.

As the time drew towards 3:00, our gaze was still locked. He informed me that I would be easy to hypnotize. He told me to count down from ten slowly, staring into his eyes. When I finished, he did the same. I locked into his gaze, and his face seemed to change. I saw age spots where there were none, then his face metamorphosed into what looked like an indigenous Mexican. Then told me to close my eyes. "Some flickering" he said. "What's the flickering?" I asked. He said that it is the eye movements from REM sleep.

"Visitation is over" announced the guard. We stood and hugged, and kissed, and hugged again. He thanked me for the visit and the intimacy. I said I would try to visit again over the Christmas break.

I left with the other visitors. A young black woman guard asked me if he was my husband. "No, just a friend." She raised an eyebrow.

On Cecil Robinson's Death
by W. Edward Morgan
Oct 1990

I beat upon death's door
Summoned friends departed
Bare response
Null
Dry; Wept; sad
given
Held only by
empty embrace

Thundering anger
in silent mouthings

Roar in my
pain demented head.

-------------------------

If I believed in such things, W. Edward Morgan would be my Godfather. He is the reason for my existence, and surpassed only by my mother's obstetrician in being my oldest friend... longest and most elderly.

Ed was the lawyer in the case of Elfbrandt v. Russel in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case challenged the requirement that public school teachers sign an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Government, including a statement that you were not a communist. Barbara Elfbrandt was a tenured teacher at that point, so she could not be fired for refusing to sign the oath, but the school refused to pay her. A community of supporters formed around Barbara and her husband to provide support for them while the challenge was working its way through the system. My parents met on the campaign, and the rest is history...

Today is/was/woulda-been pred's birthday. Of course, it should have no significance now, since the 3rd anniversary of his death is June 4th. I wondered if I should do something predlike, or something to remember him by. But then I suddenly knew that he would rather I be able to forget him... to pass the day in blissful ignorance. This voice... this opinion... I know that it is him. It is my memory of him, but that is all I ever had anyway. You only know people by how your brain interprets their speech and behavior. It's like etching chemicals on glass... the more you know someone, the stronger the impression... but it is still just an impression. Pred's impression is fading every day, but there are scratches that will remain in my mind until I die. Those scratches _are_ him, even if they spell out: "go on and forget me, get on with yer life dude."

Like a scene from "The Life of Brian", my mind repeats the conversation. I just wanted him to know that he was very special to me and to many people, and a very hard person to forget. But he half laughed, half cried the reply as I cradled him on his last night at home. The morphine pills weren't helping anymore, and the trips from the bed to the hot bath kept him up all night. In the morning his father took him to the hospital for the last time.

"MOnday 24th. My birthday. I go to Edgecliffe to get more ascorbate shot up me then to Randwick to scream at my oncologist. I can't walk straight. I think I will have to end the log here since I am perpertually weak. I am dying. Goodbye.

Broadcast message from root@pred:
Sending all processes the TERM signal.

<predator>"

I suppose a quick death was the best present he could have gotten. Well, happy bloody b'day, dude... and I _am_ getting on with my life, but I still won't forget you.

Yay! Everybody jump up and down and rejoice! Smile! And remember... at all times, all things are working together for good! Ok... now that you're all happy, come help me stuff (no folding, thank Dwight :), stamp, label and seal 3000 envelopes containing letters to mostly white, relatively affluent Americans, begging for money so that mostly brown, relatively poor Mexicans don't have to drink their own urine :) C'mon, it's a good cause and you know it! just 2 hours of your time Saturday morning at 11:00 (late enough to sleep off a hangover) at St. Mark's. I'll even bring danish and coffee :)

I keep getting flashes of places in Sydney. I've been dreaming about it lately. Mostly places that I modelled in... perhaps because I was forced to study them in minute detail for 3 or 4 hours a week... Brandling St., a dusty, crude barn with an outdoor toilet and stuffy artists, but the only place with a rope hanging from the ceiling to use for balance and creative poses... The Royal Arse Society in Lavender Bay... more stuffy artists, but a nice room above the art gallery. Surprisingly one of the only studios that had any kind of lighting system. By far the most appreciative teachers and students...

And I think about places I frequented on my bike... the ride from the icecream factory to work and back, I must have done nearly a thousand times... I can still see the place where the path winds under the train tracks near Wolli Creek. Sometimes the path would be flooded, and it is near enough to the sea that the water is very salty. I rode through the water once and it nearly ruined my bike. Sand and salt got in everywhere. So if it was flooded, I had to turn around and ride over the tracks at Tempe train station. I remember riding past the abortion clinic every day. Some days there would be one little old lady out there with a sign, talking to women going in and out. That was something I loved about Australia... there was no real debate about abortion... the whole country seemed to agree that it was none of their business. There has been a rise in opposition in the last few years, but compared to this country, they are insignificant.

But this appeared recently on Sydney Indy, and I thought it was a brilliant description of my all time favorite place in Sydney: Newtown...

Kicks in Newtown
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 07/05/2007 - 14:58. Creative Writing | Sydney Basin | Features

Twisted Bent & Messy on an afternoon in Newtown

Its night time, almost naturally you could say. The night scene shifts into gear along King St. unperterbed and unshaken; It just comes – it wants to come. It strikes down, not like lightning or a waterfall, but like a jovial parade, eager and keen and always on the lookout for kicks.

Well... it seems the story was just a practical joke on us by the japanese :)
The Sydney Morning Herald put up an error message. The New York Times has this:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/like-herding-poodles-and-sheep/

But by far, the best pic was here:

http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-poodlescam,0,3319027.story?coll=ktla-news-2

Just click on it... it will make you smile, guaranteed =8) http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/26/1177459875122.html

"Death has a life of its own" said Rudy Gerber, former superior court judge, in a dramatic flourish to his second speech during question time. His point was that it is so expensive to put people to death because every case is different. You may think you've defined some essential element of the death penalty, but it keeps coming back over and over again with a new subtlety to ponder.

"Death is different" is another saying that opened the conference on the death penalty on Saturday. Meaning that when the state decides to kill someone, it must be given more consideration than when it decides to send someone to prison. And yet different deaths are different from each other, claimed Bill Montgomery from the Arizona Voice for Victims Enforcement Project. He claimed that there is "a fundamental difference" between the murder of an innocent victim and the state executing a murderer. That fundamental difference is that Bill wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he thought otherwise. He claims that his clients believe that death is a just punishment for the killing of their loved one. He stared straight ahead and a bit down while listening to the other victims' perspectives that he was sandwiched between. Two women, one of whom lost her daughter to a violent crime, and another whose son had committed murder and was now on death row. Both of them said that killing a killer doesn't help to heal the pain of loss, and in some cases can even make it worse. If the executed person turns out to be innocent, the family now has innocent blood on their hands. Even if they were guilty beyond any doubt, many families say that it's not fair that the killer is now at peace, whereas they still have to live with their pain.

I'd wager that Bill Montgomery has never lost a loved one. I'd bet that he thinks revenge can lessen the pain of loss. He makes his living off of convincing people that they have a right to that revenge. He drags the victims families through endless appeals and forces them to relive the horror over and over again. He beats the drum of vengance, until victims' families are frothing at the mouth. He beats the drum for years, increasing the pace, dangling the bloody carrot until finally, they get to watch the final ecstatic moment when they lay out the body on a bed that looks like a cross, but with straps instead of nails, and inject the poison that is supposed to make the horror more tolerable.

Then the drum beats stop, Bill is no longer there with them, counselling them, they are alone again, and their loved one is still dead. But now there is another sound... the sound of another family wailing their grief, but that family knows they will never get revenge.

Nobody has sympathy for prisoners. We have images of psychotic killers and manipulative masterminds, but very few people know who is inside our community's cages. I don't know. I've never actually been inside a prison, for any reason. I've been outside a couple of them, but never even farted near enough to annoy the guards at the front door.

But everybody has a crime victim story, real or imagined. Everybody knows, or likes to think they know, what it's like to be robbed, raped or murdered. I've been robbed... one a snatch and grab in Rome, and the other a slimy roommate at the icecream factory, but not the other two mercifully.

So it should be in all our interests to reform criminals whilst they are in prison, so that we don't end up victims of crimes that could have been prevented when the person was in the 'care' of the state.

In my wildest, anarchist fantasies, I'd like to represent a class action lawsuit on behalf of the Future Crime Victims of America. I want the prisons to be transparent to all media and community members. We should be allowed to talk to any prisoner, at any time and demand accountability for their progress. We should be allowed to consult with the education and medical staff about their classes and treatments. And we should be allowed to be satisfied that every prisoner has a support network to go to when they are released. Not surveillance, but support... so that they know all the people they live with, and they know that their wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of their neighbors.