Stop the Execution of a Mentally-ill Man in Virginia
Stop the Execution of a Mentally-ill Man in Virginia
Percy Walton, who suffers from serious mental illness, is scheduled to be executed in Virginia on June 8. There is also evidence that Mr. Walton has at least borderline mental retardation and the mental age of a young child. If the crimes for which he was sentenced to death had been committed five weeks earlier, Percy Walton would have been 17 years old and his execution would be illegal under US and international law. By all accounts, Percy Walton is less developed intellectually than most 18-year-olds.
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RESOURCES ONLINE
The Program to Abolish the Death Penalty updates the information below on a regular basis. Follow the links below for the latest information on these topics:
Pending Executions | Case Updates | Select State and National Updates | Upcoming Events
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
30 Years After Gregg
July 2, 2006 will mark the 30th anniversary of the landmark Gregg v. Georgia ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld newly revised death penalty statutes after having called this punishment "arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory" just four years earlier. Executions resumed in 1977, and since then more than 1,000 condemned prisoners have been executed, while about 3,400 sit on death rows throughout the United States.
The 30th anniversary of the Gregg decision provides an excellent opportunity for grassroots activists to call for a thorough and frank assessment of whether the expectations of a fairer and less arbitrary death penalty have, in fact, been fulfilled.
» Learn more
» Get involved
More News!
For special case updates, the latest news stories, and more visit our blog and join the discussion.
» Read the blog
2006 National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death Penalty!
Mark your calendars! Amnesty International USA's National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death Penalty (NWFA) will take place October 20-22, 2006. The NWFA is an occasion for faith communities, interfaith groups, human rights activists, and individuals to examine the death penalty from the perspective of their own faith traditions and values. It’s also an opportunity to discuss personal views in a safe and comfortable space. Set aside some time that weekend for an activity or event that focuses on the death penalty, using the ideas and resources provided by AIUSA as your guide.
How to get started:
- Read more about the NWFA and check out some of the activities that took place last year
- Register as a participant, using a quick and easy form
- Start planning your activity or event for October (a NWFA Organizing Packet will be sent to all registered participants this summer; it contains a wealth of ideas and resources)
Amnesty InternationalTags for this entry:
death penalty,
human rights,
activism.
OntarioClean Air Alliance: Film 'An Inconveniet Truth'
Help AMPCO see the big picture
The recent suggestion by the Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario (AMPCO) that the province should essentially ignore the climate-change impacts of burning coal to produce electricity left us thinking about why AMPCO seems to be so completely in the dark about such a crucial issue.
It must be, we decided, that AMPCO members are so busy running some of Canada’s biggest companies that they have not had time to fully digest the implications of an increasingly erratic global climate – more frequent and severe storms and hurricanes, drought, flooding, soaring summer heat and smog, species extinctions, etc.
Fortunately, there is now a great chance for AMPCO members to catch up fast. The powerful new film, An Inconvenient Truth, details former U. S. Vice President Al Gore’s efforts to shed some light on the potential calamities facing the planet as a result of human-caused climate change.
This is where you come in. We want you to reach out to the members of AMPCO by taking their busy senior managers to a night at the movies. Invite your favourite AMPCO manager to see An Inconvenient Truth. Tell them it’s a “must see,” particularly for those who work for companies that are among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the country. Be generous: offer to pick up the tickets and pay for the popcorn and to even take them out for a coffee afterwards to further discuss Gore’s message that we must make changes now – not a decade from now. (For a list of AMPCO member companies, click here.) Remember, these are busy people, so you will have to be persistent to get them to make room for your movie night in their schedules.
Of course, if you are unable to have them attend with you, please go and see it yourself on opening weekend to show your support of the film.An Inconvenient Truth opens June 2nd in Toronto at the Cumberland Theatre; in Ottawa on June 9th at the Bytowne Cinema; in London on June 30th at the Rainbow Galleria; and in Waterloo on June 23rd at the Princess Theatre.
For more about the movie, visit www.climatecrisis.net
Please pass this message on to your friends.
Thank you.
Jessica Fracassi
Communications & Membership Manager
Ontario Clean Air Alliance
402-625 Church St, Toronto M4Y 2G1
Phone: 416-926-1907 ext. 245
Fax: 416-926-1601
Email: contact@cleanairalliance.org
Website: www.cleanairalliance.org
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is a coalition of health, environmental and consumer organizations, faith communities, unions, utilities, municipalities and individuals working for cleaner air through a coal phase-out and the shift to a renewable electricity future. Our partner organizations represent more than six million Ontarians.
Tags for this entry:
environment,
ontario,
climate change.
Take Action on ExxonMobil today!
This Action Alert is for American readers, as it requires contacting your members of Congress about Exxon Mobil's dirty practices:
Dressed in big oil barrels bearing bold white messages like, “Exxon Funds Global Warming Skeptics!” Exxpose Exxon activists are gathering in Dallas today to protest outside ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting.
Even if you can’t be there in person to show ExxonMobil how fed up you are with its dirty practices, you can still participate in the protest by sending a letter to your members of Congress today. Ask them to reject any bill that lines ExxonMobil’s pockets with more tax breaks and more oil drilling of our pristine lands and shorelines. The message is simple: If it’s good for ExxonMobil, it’s bad for the country. Your letter will help Congress put every bill before it in the right perspective.
Click here to participate in today’s protest by sending your message to Congress now.
Right now Congress is buzzing with talk about price gouging at the gas pump and ExxonMobil’s excessive profits and CEO pay packages. This is a crucial moment and it’s very important that your members of Congress hear from you today regarding your feelings about bills that benefit ExxonMobil instead of the American public.
As you likely know, we cannot drill our way out of global warming or our current energy crisis. Unfortunately, ExxonMobil refuses to accept this simple fact and is actually stepping up its efforts to lobby for more drilling in protected places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In fact, just this month, after a private meeting with ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, House Speaker Dennis Hastert called on Congress to concentrate on prying open the Arctic Refuge for drilling.
Whether your concern is about global warming, clean air and water, social and environmental justice, human rights, wildlife and pristine land protection, peak oil, or national security – the solution is the same.
Our country must end its dependence on oil and begin the transition to clean and affordable renewable energy sources. ExxonMobil is using its profits and influence to stop that from happening. But we have something greater, we have the powerful voice of the people.
Please join today’s protest by clicking here to send a letter about ExxonMobil to your members of Congress now.
Then forward this message to all of your friends, family, and co-workers and ask them to do the same.
In today's email to me, Matthew Rotschild, editor of the
The Progressive has this to say about Bush's latest propaganda speeches during the Memorial Day long week-end:
"Thank God the Memorial Day weekend is over. I couldn't stand another minute of Bush's propaganda.
On Saturday at West Point, he promised a long war in the Middle East and he peddled the fallacy of the Cold War analogy to terrorism, which I debunk on our website.
And then on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, he talked about how "America has always gone to war reluctantly because we know the costs of war.” Reluctantly? Hardly. Bush was in haste for war in Iraq, as I try to point out in "The Horrors of Haditha".
And this review about the rest of
The Progressive's post-Memorial Day offerings:
"Ruth Conniff also writes about the meaning of Haditha, a posting I hope you appreciate.
Finally, we've got an interview up on our website this week with, Mustafa Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian parliament. Dr. Barghouthi, an advocate of nonviolence, is the founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and a co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, an alternative both to Fatah and Hamas. If you listen to the interview, you'll get a perspective you rarely find in the American media.
I hope you enjoy our post-Memorial Day offerings."
BushTags for this entry:
Middle East,
George Bush,
Iraq.
May 31, 2006
Civilian Slaughter Update On Tuesday, May 30
Truthout published my
article
"Countles My Lai Massacres in Iraq".
Here are a couple of recent pieces of information to augment that story.
Today the AP has just released this story:
2 Iraqi women killed by coalition troops:
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two Iraqi women were shot to death north of Baghdad after coalition forces fired on a vehicle that failed to stop at an observation post, the U.S. military said Wednesday. Iraqi police and relatives said one of the women was about to give birth."
And on May 29, Al-Shaqiyah TV reported from Iraq:
"US forces killed five civilians and wounded two others in the city [Ramadi] today. A source at Al-Ramadi State Hospital said that among the dead were a child and a woman. An Iraqi officer in Al-Ramadi said that the US forces were beefing up their presence on the periphery of Al-Ramadi, noting that the city will soon come under siege 'ahead of an all-out attack such as the one that targeted Al-Fallujah' in 2004."
_______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the
DahrJamailIraq.com website. Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com. Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at
http://dahrjamailiraq.comNote: Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches are reprinted on this site with the kind, explicit permission of Dahr.
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 30 May 2006
The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on US Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.
Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi "security" forces has not stopped either.
Earlier this month, I received a news release from Iraq, which read, "On Saturday, May 13th, 2006, at 10:00 p.m., US Forces accompanied by the Iraqi National Guard attacked the houses of Iraqi people in the Al-Latifya district south of Baghdad by an intensive helicopter shelling. This led the families to flee to the Al-Mazar and water canals to protect themselves from the fierce shelling. Then seven helicopters
landed to pursue the families who fled … and killed them. The number of victims amounted to more than 25 martyrs. US forces detained another six persons including two women named Israa Ahmed Hasan and Widad Ahmed Hasan, and a child named Huda Hitham Mohammed Hasan, whose father was killed during the shelling."
The report from the Iraqi NGO called The Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI) continued, "The forces didn't stop at this limit. They held an attack on May 15th, 2006, supported also by the Iraqi National Guards. They also attacked the families' houses, and arrested a number of them while others fled. US snipers then used the homes to target more Iraqis. The reason for this crime was due to the downing of a helicopter in an area close to where the forces held their attack."
The US military preferred to report the incident as an offensive where they killed 41 "insurgents," a line effectively parroted by much of the media.
On that same day, MHRI also reported that in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad, US forces raided the home of Essam Fitian al-Rawi. Al-Rawi was killed along with his son Ahmed; then the soldiers reportedly removed the two bodies along with Al-Rawi's nephew, who was detained.
Similarly, in the city of Samara on May 5, MHRI reported, "American soldiers entered the house of Mr. Zidan Khalif Al-Heed after an attack upon American soldiers was launched nearby the house. American soldiers entered this home and killed the family, including the father, mother and daughter who is in the 6th grade, along with their son, who was suffering from mental and physical disabilities."
This same group, MHRI, also estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the November 2004 US assault on Fallujah. Numbers which make those from the Haditha massacre pale in comparison.
Instead of reporting incidents such as these, mainstream outlets are referring to the Haditha slaughter as one of a few cases that "present the most serious challenge to US handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal."
Marc Garlasco, of Human Rights Watch, told reporters recently, "What happened at Haditha appears to be outright murder. The Haditha massacre will go down as Iraq's My Lai."
Then there is the daily reality of sectarian and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, which is being carried out by US-backed Iraqi "security" forces. A recent example of this was provided by a representative of the Voice of Freedom Association for Human Rights, another Iraqi NGO which logs ongoing atrocities resulting from the US occupation.
"The representative … visited Fursan Village (Bani Zaid) with the Iraqi Red Crescent Al-Madayin Branch. The village of 60 houses, inhabited by Sunni families, was attacked on February 27, 2006, by groups of men wearing black clothes and driving cars from the Ministry of Interior.
Most of the villagers escaped, but eight were caught and immediately executed. One of them was the Imam of the village mosque, Abu Aisha, and another was a 10-year-old boy, Adnan Madab. They were executed inside the room where they were hiding. Many animals (sheep, cows and dogs) were shot by the armed men also. The village mosque and most of the houses were destroyed and burnt."
The representative had obtained the information when four men who had fled the scene of the massacre returned to provide the details. The other survivors had all left to seek refuge in Baghdad. "The survivors who returned to give the details guided the representative and the Red Crescent personnel to where the bodies had been buried. They [the bodies] were of men, women and one of the village babies."
The director of MHRI, Muhamad T. Al-Deraji, said of this incident, "This situation is a simple part of a larger problem that is orchestrated by the government … the delay in protecting more villagers from this will only increase the number of tragedies."
Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist and editor with the New York Indypendent newspaper of the New York Independent Media Center, has written extensively about US-backed militias and death squads in Iraq. He is also the former editor at the Guardian weekly in New York and writes frequently for Z Magazine and Left Turn.
"The fact is, while I think the militias have, to a degree, spiraled out of US control, it's the US who trains, arms, funds, and supplies all the police and military forces, and gives them critical logistical support," he told me this week. "For instance, there were reports at the beginning of the year that a US army unit caught a "death squad" operating inside the Iraqi Highway Patrol. There were the usual claims that the US has nothing to do with them. It's all a big lie. The American reporters are lazy. If they did just a little digging, there is loads of material out there showing how the US set up the highway patrol, established a
special training academy just for them, equipped them, armed them, built all their bases, etc. It's all in government documents, so it's irrefutable. But then they tell the media we have nothing to do with them and they don't even fact check it. In any case, I think the story is significant only insofar as it shows how the US tries to cover up its involvement."
Once again, like Abu Ghraib, a few US soldiers are being investigated about what occurred in Haditha. The "few bad apples" scenario is being repeated in order to obscure the fact that Iraqis are being slaughtered every single day. The "shoot first ask questions later" policy, which has been in effect from nearly the beginning in Iraq, creates trigger-happy American soldiers and US-backed Iraqi death squads who
have no respect for the lives of the Iraqi people. Yet, rather than high-ranking members of the Bush administration who give the orders, including Bush himself, being tried for the war crimes they are most certainly guilty of, we have the ceremonial "public hanging" of a few lowly soldiers for their crimes committed on the ground.
In an interview with CNN on May 29th concerning the Haditha massacre, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace commented, "It's going to be a couple more weeks before those investigations are complete, and we should not prejudge the outcome. But we should, in fact, as leaders take on the responsibility to get out and talk to our troops and make sure that they understand that what 99.9 percent of them
are doing, which is fighting with honor and courage, is exactly what we expect of them."
This is the same Peter Pace who when asked how things were going in Iraq by Tim Russert on Meet the Press this past March 5th said, "I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at …"
Things are not "going very, very well" in Iraq. There have been countless My Lai massacres, and we cannot blame 0.1% of the soldiers on the ground in Iraq for killing as many as a quarter of a million Iraqis, when it is the policies of the Bush administration that generated the failed occupation to begin with.
---
A must read article on this topic which addresses US and International Law concerning this atrocity is "The Haditha Massacre" by Marjorie Cohn posted
here.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for
t r u t h o u t. _______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the
DahrJamailIraq website. Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com. Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at
http://dahrjamailiraq.comNote: Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches are reprinted on my site with kind, explicit permission given by Dahr.IraqTags for this entry:
Iraq,
human rights,
death squads.
