200th DNA Exoneration

I see that the 200th DNA exoneration occurred recently with the release of an alleged child murderer. `

"I don't have a dog in that fight," I've always thought to myself regarding the death penalty. So I've ignored it. After all, there is so much wrong out there, and who am I to judge one way or the other? But the argument against the death penalty gets stronger with each exoneration. I wonder how many innocent people the State has killed in the name of "justice"?

People like me ignore social problems like the death penalty because it is distant. Can we continue to ignore the death penalty when innocent people are being killed and we could have at least said something? Have I been like "a good German"?

I think that we need to end the death penalty because 200 innocent people have been proven innocent when they could have gone to their deaths. If I had been one of the victims of the death penalty, I am certain that I would want to have ended it by now. It is barbaric, I suppose. There must be a better way.

Crime Scene Cleanup, Blood, and Nature's Complexity

I am humbled by the complexity of nature when cleaning a death scene. Blood alone creates a sense of awe in me when I clean death scenes.(Return to Blood.)

The tenacity of blood to remain fixed, its sticking tenacity (like glue), and its tenacity to remain moist when sheltered impresses me to no end. How many eons have passed as blood's development made it what it is today?

I have read that blood is not simply fluid or liquid, but an actually existing tissue within the body. I can believe this idea, this idea about blood being a tissue. It has so many properties that I have discovered while cleaning. I am pleased that medical science has figured it out, at least to the point of analyzing it thoroughly.

Nature, I have read and realized is "very complex to think about , and probably more complex than we can think." I think it was Barry Commoner that made this remark.

Deep Ecology

There are a number of competing ideas for cleaning up the Earth's environmental problems. Usually these competing ideas protect the interests of capital. Here's an idea that goes to the one for sure solution, which we will not see voluntarily implemented. Just the same, it may come to pass as a dominant system of ideas given the conditions that the Earth is being lead in the name of "government" and "business."

Deep Ecology - A bio-centrally oriented articulation of humanity's biological or ecological embeddedness in nature as a species biologically equal to others. The issue of "equalness" applies to the obvious biological similarities between humanity's needs and that of other species - - habitat, food, water, shelter.

Equality in terms of moral imperatives is another issue entirely, leading to a life-boat ethics outcome: Given the choice of saving one and only one of two species-populations in the wild, which of the two does one save? George Sessons and Arne Ness object to this dilemma, but comment that the species nearest humanity would probably be the preferential choice. Deep Ecology holds that humanity's loss of valuing other species for their intrinsic (inherent) value leads to an eventual destruction of biodiversity as well as humanity's sense for oneness with nature, alienation.

Corporate State - US President Eisenhower warned against allowing the inter-weaving interactions of corporate, military, and government officials. He called the result a "military industrial complex" that would develop by its own agenda and justification for existence. His perception was accurate, although the issues are more complex than he imagined.

Historically, the corporation met strict guidelines of operation under community charters that could be withdrawn for infractions of the charters' mandates. The "tyranny of the bottom line" coupled with capital's tendency to accumulate then centralize give it State-like powers. With its political influence at local and national levels to justify intervention world-wide, the corporate-state has an imperial agenda.

Corporation wealth and influence also often far exceeds that of surrounding communities and host nations. As a consequence, the corporate-state manipulates major political parties and media World-wide to create and re-create the conditions for its existence, one generation to the next as it grows inwardly and outwardly.

CRITICISM of the President

"TO ANNOUNCE THAT THERE MUST BE NO CRITICISM of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is MORALLY TREASONABLE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC."
---Theodore Roosevelt.

Ideology

Ideology - A system of beliefs that may include figures of speech, stereotypes, and social and cultural assumptions based upon the dominant culture's definitions of nature and social relationships. Ideology is often used by the ruling elite to justify acts that are criminal in content while couched in patriotic rhetoric.

Ideological categories arise and subside as hierarchical power relationships change. Industrialized and post-industrial nation-states make wide use of publicity owned media to sustain power relationships for social, political, and geographic purposes, as did their predecessors use central forms of communicating ideas. Propaganda becomes a category of the dominant ideology as needs arise.

The core of the dominant ideology remains intact until a paradigm shift over several hundred years obscures what was once the dominant ideology. Examples can be found in early Egyptian religions that justified their existence from Pharaoh's relationship to their deity. Papal justifications came to work in a similar fashion. Recall the flat earth and earth-centered solar system arguments based upon ideology and scholasticism. Sub-categories of the dominant ideology may change within years or even overnight (Nixon being the "only one who could go to China."). Hence, examples are commonly found in ideological shifts with US presidencies and text book editions.

Today, official pronouncements are often couched in ideological rhetoric to justify wars, shifting tax burdens to the poor, and attacks on the "New Deal."

Which of these two World views tends toward the criminal?

Any reader familiar with these posts will begin to notice an ethical and moral component. This is intended. Blood and gore is easy. Writing for the unborn generations (human and nonhuman) is more important. So I write about cleaning up the BIG CRIMES against all of nature, too.

We need to think of "crime" in more general and meaningful terms for posterity.

- Concern for all life forms	- Concern for limited human life
- Sustainable Economies	- Growth Economies
- Decentralized Economies and Governments	- Centralized Economies and Governments
- Egalitarian	- Power over others
-Honors Diversity in Society and Nature	- Standardization, Shallow Environmentalism
- Long-term Thinking and Ecological Protection	- Short-term Thinking and Ecological Denial
- Heedful use, Development of Science and Technology	- Heedless use, Development of Science and Technology
- Ecologically Sensitive Environmental Ideology	- Nature as Instrument Environmental Ideology
- Environmental Ethics	- Situational Ethics
- Ecological Wisdom: Nature is very complex to think about. Nature is possibly more complex than we can think. Live for benefit of next seven generations -- soft technology.	- Ecological Arrogance: What can be done to nature will be done. Ignores or discounts destruction, future generally ignored -- short-term market remedies.