Wednesday, March 30, 2005
EMAIL FROM LEE PENN
A round-up of stories about the execution of Terri Schiavo ...
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First, this story by Nat Hentoff, a Jewish atheist pro-life/pro-disability rights/pro-civil liberties writer ... he sums the whole thing up accurately in this Village Voice article:
village voice > news > Terri Schiavo: Judicial Murder by Nat Hentoff
The article starts thus:
"For all the world to see, a 41-year-old woman, who has committed no crime, will die of dehydration and starvation in the longest public execution in American history.
She is not brain-dead or comatose, and breathes naturally on her own. Although brain-damaged, she is not in a persistent vegetative state, according to an increasing number of radiologists and neurologists.
Among many other violations of her due process rights, Terri Schiavo has never been allowed by the primary judge in her case—Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, whose conclusions have been robotically upheld by all the courts above him—to have her own lawyer represent her.
Greer has declared Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state, but he has never gone to see her. His eyesight is very poor, but surely he could have visited her along with another member of his staff. Unlike people in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo is indeed responsive beyond mere reflexes.
While lawyers and judges have engaged in a minuet of death, the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die."
The article ends thus - and recall that most of Hentoff's readers are liberals:
"Many readers of this column are pro-choice, pro-abortion rights. But what choice did Terri Schiavo have under our vaunted rule of law—which the president is eagerly trying to export to the rest of the world? She had not left a living will or a durable power of attorney, and so could not speak for herself. But the American system of justice would not slake her thirst as she, on television, was dying in front of us all.
What kind of a nation are we becoming? The CIA outsources torture—in violation of American and international law—in the name of the freedoms we are fighting to protect against terrorism. And we have watched as this woman, whose only crime is that she is disabled, is tortured to death by judges, all the way to the Supreme Court.
And keep in mind from the Ralph Nader-Wesley Smith report: "The courts . . . have [also] ordered that no attempts be made to provide her water or food by mouth. Terri swallows her own saliva. Spoon feeding is not medical treatment. This outrageous order proves that the courts are not merely permitting medical treatment to be withheld, they have ordered her to be made dead." In this country, even condemned serial killers are not executed in this way."
Go read the whole thing.
Hentoff is not new to this; he has been writing against euthanasia and for the rights of the disabled since the 1980s, in the Village Voice and elsewhere.
Nor is he a right-wing "Bushie". His view on the state of liberty in post-9/11 America is in this book, which I recommend highly:
Amazon.com: Books: The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance
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Truth and justice are on the side of giving Terri food and water .... but so are some money-grubbing right-wing opportunists.
The New York Times > Washington > List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm
Quote:
"List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: March 29, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 28 - The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.
"These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. "These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"
Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.
"I think it's amusing," said Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant. "I think it's absolutely classic America. Everything is for sale in America, every type of personal information."
Executives of Response Unlimited declined to comment. Gary McCullough, director of the Christian Communication Network and a spokesman for Ms. Schiavo's parents, confirmed that Mr. Schindler had agreed to let Response Unlimited rent out the list as part of a deal for the firm to send an e-mail solicitation raising money on the family's behalf."
and
"Mr. Sheldon - whose father, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, has also sent appeals urging support for Ms. Schiavo - apparently played a dual role as a partner in RightMarch.com, which is working with the anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, and as a broker for Response Unlimited. Mr. Sheldon did not respond to phone calls yesterday.
"I think it sounds a little unusual right now because of the situation where she is in the process of dying," said Richard Viguerie, another major conservative direct-mail operator. "If you came across this information six months or a year from now, I don't think you would give it too much thought.""
Just lovely ... compassionate people who oppose euthanasia will now get tons of far-right junk mail, for a long to come.
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Here's more on the right-wing exploitation of this case:
The New York Times > Washington > The Money: Conservatives Invoke Case in Fund-Raising Campaigns
Conservatives Invoke Case in Fund-Raising Campaigns
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Videotape of Terri Schiavo blinking at her parents has inspired donations from people around the country to the foundation set up to help pay for the family's legal battle. But many other groups are soliciting donations in her name as well, some for a much broader agenda.
"Help Save Terri Schiavo's Life!" says the Web site of the Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian conservative group best known for its campaigns against gay rights. Next to a link to the Web site of her parents' foundation is a pitch to "become an active supporter of the Traditional Values Coalition by pledging a monthly gift."
"What this issue has done is it has galvanized people the way nothing could have done in an off-election year," said Rev. Lou Sheldon, the founder of the group, acknowledging that the case of Ms. Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman, had moved many to open up their checkbooks. "That is what I see as the blessing that dear Terri's life is offering to the conservative Christian movement in America."
Mr. Sheldon, whose organization is based in Anaheim, Calif., said his group had sent e-mail messages and direct mailings telling supporters to call elected officials about the Schiavo case and usually asking for donations as well.
Voice for Terri, a coalition of anti-abortion and Christian conservative groups, is one of several organizations that has sent e-mail messages and set up Web sites pointedly criticizing Ms. Schiavo's husband, Michael, who has fought for years to have his wife's feeding tube removed over the objections of her parents. Troy Newman, the president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and a spokesman for Voice for Terri, said the coalition was spending the money it raised to cover the costs of rallies, of hotel rooms and of rental cars for organizers of protests in Florida, and of e-mail and letter-writing campaigns.
"This is not something you make money off of," Mr. Newman said. "It is a tragedy."
The Web site of Ms. Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, terrisfight.org, warns visitors that their foundation and Web site are the only legitimate places to contribute to her legal defense.
"Any other source that claims to be a fund-raising effort on her behalf should be brought to our attention here," the site says.
Paul Nelson, the president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which certifies the accounting of many of the best-known evangelical charities, said his organization frowned on groups raising money for causes peripheral to their work. And Mr. Nelson said any accusations or criticisms against Mr. Schiavo or others that were raised on Web sites and could not be proved would stretch his organization's requirement that all fund-raising be truthful.
None of these conservative groups would say how much they had raised so far by invoking the Schiavo case.
The connections can be complicated. Ms. Schiavo's parents invited Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, who is estranged from the group, to help organize rallies and protests for their cause. Mr. Terry, in turn, asked his friends and fellow conservative activists, William Greene and Philip Sheldon - the son of Lou Sheldon of Traditional Values - to help raise money through their organization RightMarch.com.
The two founded RightMarch.com two years ago "to counter the well-financed antics of radical left-wing groups like MoveOn.org," according to the group's Web site. Often quoting Ms. Schiavo's father's endorsement of Mr. Terry, their organization has taken out advertisements in USA Today and The Washington Times, and on radio stations around the country, directing supporters to its Web site. It has also sent millions of e-mail messages to its mailing list urging "Save Terri Schiavo from starvation!" and asking for donations.
Mr. Greene, who is also president of Strategic Internet Campaign Management (the acronym is pronounced "sic 'em," according to the group's Web site), said he did not expect to raise more than the group spent on advertising and computer services for the battle over Ms. Schiavo, but any surplus would be spent on conservative causes.
"General operating procedure for anyone, I guess," Mr. Greene said.
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And on the anti-Terri side, there is this book, available from Amazon, from George Felos, the attorney for Michael Schiavo:
Litigation as Spiritual Practice describes the excitement and drama of the courtroom, and the ecstasy and anguish of spiritual evolution in a combative environment"
Neale Donald Walsch, the best-selling New Age author, loves the book.
Quote:
"Neale Donald Walsch, Author of Conversations with God
"This book could be called 'God in the Courtroom.'"
One of the book's reviewers found these lovely quotes from Felos about the Holocaust:
About the Jews, George Felos wrote,
[ quoting from a reader's review on Amazon:]
"The Jewish people, long ago in their collective consciousness, agreed to play the role of the lamb whose slaughter was necessary to shock humanity into a new moral consciousness. Their sacrifice saved humanity at the brink of extinction and propelled us into a new age." (pg 240)
Felos further wrote, "If our minds can conceive of an uplifting Holocaust, can it be so diffucult to look another way at the slights and injuries and abuses we perceive were inflicted upon us?" (pg 240)"
If these quotes are taken in context (and what context could justify them?) then Felos is providing a justification for atrocity.
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A Catholic mystic from Portugal comments thus on the Schiavo situation:
Quote, from March 27:
"Regardless of the wording used, Terri is being murdered in the most painful way - slowly. We do not need Theologians to Theologize nor Popes to Pontificate - murder is murder. Regarding this atrocious situation we have the following to say:
(a) We are witnessing the failed Evangelization that we keep talking about as we strive to deflect the blame for the world's conditions from God to man, who pretends to play the role of God.
(b) We are not impressed with the theatrical religious outpouring by so many Christians in the U.S. How come they are not doing the same for the 8 million humans who die every year because they are to poor to live? These brethren of Terri Schiavo are also children of God and while most of these theatrics performers - without a doubt - could feed millions with the excess of goods and resources, spiritual (*) and material, that they have available to them, they chose to look the other way.
They may look the other way, but God is looking at each an every one of them straight into the eye. Yes, we all love to chant God Bless America! but when is America going to really Bless God? Talk is cheap and faith without works is sterile.
(c) It is notable the extraordinary efforts President Bush and Governor Bush are putting forth on behalf of Terri. Why are they not placing the same extraordinary efforts in preventing the preventable yearly death of 8 million of our brothers and sisters? Because poor Africans do not vote in U.S. elections - it is that simple!
As we have said - we encourage America to Bless God for "The Invoice (**) Runneth Over" and after it is presented, it will be too late.
(*) Suffering that they may have to endure, sacrifices that they may be able to offer.
(**) Our debt to God is greater than the National Deficit and the Collection Agency is about to call.
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My closing assessment of this:
The left, which opposes the war, the Patriot Act, and the US torture policy, has blood on its hands because it supports the murder of Terri and the abortion of millions of babies since 1973.
The right, which opposes the murder of Terri and abortion-on-demand, has blood on its hands because it supports torture and murder of America's "enemies," imperialist wars in the Middle East, the death-by-neglect of those denied health care by the insurance companies, and the impoverishment of the American working class in the name of "free trade" and "outsourcing."
The American majority has blood on its hands in two ways .... first, because "we" re-elected Bush (knowing of his unjust war in Iraq and the torture of prisoners), giving him a clear win in 2004 and increased percentages of the vote in almost every state, compared to 2000. And second, because the recent opinion polls show that the public strongly supports the starvation of Terri.
Herod and Pilate, once enemies, were friends after they condemned Christ.
The left and the right in America now shake blood-stained hands over numberless corpses.
For now, the forces of death are the victors in this affair.
The solution begins with prayer: repentance, and the request that God may have mercy on, and save, our enemies.
As the Fatima Prayer says:
"O my Jesus! Forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy."
Lee
