Death Penalty…

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08pool 

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-Because the death penalty is the punishment given by a neutrel judge, there is no vengance in it. Therefore, there is no moral objection to be had with the death penalty.
-The death penalty defends human rights by establishing a mentality that “we will not tolerate any violation of any innocent person’s human right’s

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-It holds people responsible for the horrible content of their character. This fulfills what MLKJ always wanted: judge not by the color of your skin, but by the content of your character. The character of these criminals warrants death
-It holds the criminal responsible for his actions
-appeals aside, it’s cheaper than prison
-it decreases the prison population, which saves even more taxpayers money

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Darfur Movie…

Ireland and Immigration

 

February 25, 2008

Border Crossings

Born Irish, but With Illegal Parents

By JASON DePARLE

Kieran Dodds for The New York Times

DUBLIN — Cork-born and proud of it, George-Jordan Dimbo is top to toe the Irish lad. He studies Gaelic, eats rashers, plays hurling, prays to the saints, papers his walls with parochial school awards, and spends Saturdays at the telly watching Dustin the Turkey, a wisecracking puppet, mock the powerful.

If the Irish government has its way, he may soon be living in Africa.

George, 11, is an Irish citizen and has been since his birth when Ireland, alone in Europe, still gave citizenship to anyone born on its soil. His mother and father, Ifedinma and Ethelbert Dimbo, are illegal immigrants from Nigeria, who brought him back to Ireland three years ago, judging it the best place to raise him.

Since then, the unusual trio — the Irish schoolboy and his African parents — have shared a single room in a worn Dublin hostel while facing a prospect dreaded by children on both sides of the Atlantic, a parent’s deportation.

“Dear justice minister,” George wrote when he was 9. “I heard my Mommy and Daddy whispering about deportation. Please do not deport us.”

“Remember,” he added, “I am also an Irish child.”

Thousands of Irish children face similar risks, living in a country where one or both parents do not legally reside. Their stories find abundant parallels in the United States, where an estimated five million children — including three million American citizens — have parents who are illegal immigrants. New efforts to catch them make fear of deportation a growing factor in American life, the flip side of generous laws that make infants instant citizens.

The battle over the “I.B.C.’s” — Irish-born children — stems from a decade of head-turning change that has brought this island of red-haired Marys and blue-eyed Seans the demographic version of an extreme makeover.

For centuries, Ireland was a racially homogenous land of emigrants. Now it is a multicultural nation of immigrants, whose share of the population, 11 percent, is nearly as high as that in the United States.

Years of Irish prosperity have drawn Polish plumbers, Lithuanian nannies, Latvian farm workers, Filipino nurses, Chinese traders, and sub-Saharan asylum seekers. The town of Portlaoise, about 40 miles southwest of Dublin, has the country’s first African-born mayor. The Synge Street School, where George Dimbo says his Hail Marys beneath a plaster Virgin, is walking distance from the city’s first mosque and rents classroom space to two Chinese academies.

“I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one,” writes the Irish novelist, Roddy Doyle, in a collection of short stories called “The Deportees” (Viking, 2007). They depict characters as diverse as an African war survivor on his first day of class, and Fat Gandhi, a gay tandoori vendor who “quickly realized that his loud embrace of Christianity was very good for business.”

The Dimbos are the kind of memorable figures who might have tumbled from Mr. Doyle’s pages. A former graduate student in Cork, Ms. Dimbo, 42, wore a Yoruba headdress to a recent parent-student event, and has just written a feminist novel about a migrant prostitute. Mr. Dimbo, 43, releases his frustrations with a daily run through the Dublin streets, and George is so unusually courteous that his sixth-grade teacher thought he was “taking the mickey”—Irish for pulling his leg.

“He’s the most mannerly child I’ve taught in years,” said the teacher, Brendan O’Boyle. “He’s very, very good, very upright, very honest.”

“He’s one of the best guys we’ve ever had,” said last year’s teacher, Gerard Mooney.

Not long after George arrived, a classmate told him that he disliked black people.

“But I’m black,” George recalls answering.

“No,” the boy said. “You’re Irish.”

So Far, Little Conflict

Ireland’s dash to diversity has so far provoked little of the conflict found elsewhere in Europe or the United States. There are no major anti-immigrant political parties and little anti-immigrant violence. When a Dublin high school student, Olukunle Elukanlo, was deported to Nigeria in 2005, his protesting classmates won his return.

Government officials here often credit Irish history for the tolerance. “There’s an emotional sense of understanding about what immigrants are going through because of our experience as immigrants,” said Conor Lenihan, the minister of integration.

But others see undercurrents of racial unease that could boil into conflict, especially if hard times return. “In Irish literature there’s a big fear of the returned immigrant who brings all sorts of chaos with him,” said Mary Gilmartin, a geographer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. “Many people here feel threatened.”

As recently as the 1980s, young Irish were fleeing unemployment in droves, many to work illegally in the United States. By the late 1990s, an economic boom called the Celtic Tiger was luring them home, along with droves of foreign construction workers, farm hands, waitresses and nannies. A wave of asylum seekers joined them, many from Africa.

Some had escaped harrowing wars or genital mutilation. But officials grew skeptical of their claims as their numbers surged to about 12,000 in 2002 from a trickle a decade before.

Ireland not only offered citizenship to children born upon arrival; until 2003 it also allowed their illegal-immigrant parents to stay, a shortcut many asylum seekers used to win residency. Word got out: with a visa to Britain, a pregnant woman could reach Northern Ireland, take a cab across the border, and gain residency by giving birth.

Ms. Gilmartin argues that reports of abuse were exaggerated. But a 2004 referendum changed the rules, reserving citizenship for the children of longtime legal residents. It passed with nearly 80 percent of the vote.

By then, Ireland had about 18,000 mixed families of Irish children and illegal-immigrant parents. Wary of the costs of large-scale deportation, the government ran a one-time legalization program that gave residency to about 95 percent of those parents. The Dimbos were among the 1,000 or so families whose cases were rejected, and they have appealed to the Supreme Court.

Their situation, like that of millions in the United States, pits competing interests: those of children (to live in their country with their parents) against those of states (to enforce borders for the perceived common good).

Odyssey to Ireland

Ms. Dimbo first came to Ireland legally, to get a master’s degree in sociology in 1995. She was recently married, two months pregnant, and unaware, she said, that Irish law would make George a citizen. She gained legal residency through his citizenship, but they returned to Nigeria when George was 2 to join his father, who ran an import business.

With Ms. Dimbo working as a bank manager in Lagos, the family lived comfortably, but came back to Ireland twice, believing each time that George’s citizenship and their past residence gave them the right to stay. The most recent time was in 2005, to apply for the legalization program, not realizing, they said, that it only covered families who had remained in Ireland, which disqualified them.

With their savings gone, they have spent nearly three years in a government “accommodation center” — a dormitory where they share one room, line up for meals, and are barred from working.

“You feel like you’re a prisoner,” said Mr. Dimbo, a proud man dismayed by his forced dependency. “If we had known our lives would be like this, we never would have come.”

George said if his parents left, he would go with them — “every child needs his parents” — and wrote the justice minister to convey his fears. “I am very worried,” he wrote.

Gathered at another accommodation center, an hour outside Dublin in Mosney, many parents said their fears of deportation had begun to affect their children.

“My daughter knows I’m depressed,” said a single mother from Nigeria, who declined to be identified for fear of harming her case. “She goes, ‘Did I do anything wrong?’ ” Another single mother said, “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt my child.”

Other complaints come from men sneaking into Ireland, to join their children and wives who got residency through the legalization program. To avoid new waves of migration, the program gave no right to family reunification. “Unless we control the flows of people, public attitudes will turn against the whole process of immigration,” said Mr. Lenihan, the government minister.

But in denying children their fathers, the men say, the government may create the kind of immigrant underclass that plagues other parts of Europe.

“Our children are going to be growing up angry,” said one of four illegal-immigrant fathers from Nigeria who met with a reporter in Balbriggan, a Dublin suburb.

Another father blamed race. “If our kids were really Irish to them, they would not say, ‘Take the fathers away,’ ” he said.

At the same time, many of those facing deportation marvel at Ireland’s virtues, including the freedom to protest without getting shot and ambulances that come when summoned. When Lynda Onuoha joined Mosney mothers to demonstrate outside Parliament, they waved Irish flags. “We wanted people passing by to see that even though our kids are black, they are Irish by nationality, and we want to make a home here,” she said.

Even after tightening its rules, Ireland remains more generous than most of its European peers. The United States is the rare country that gives immediate citizenship to the children born inside its borders, whether their immigrant parents are legal residents or not. A 2007 bill to end the practice, which stems from the 14th Amendment, drew nearly 100 Congressional co-sponsors, though legal scholars have traditionally argued that a change would require a constitutional amendment.

Fear for U.S. Children

Deportations in the United States have been rare, but with enforcement on the rise, migrant groups warn of a new generation of American children haunted by fear. Border control advocates respond that the parents have only themselves to blame, for migrating illegally.

At times, Ms. Dimbo says the same. “To come here without papers, we are wrong,” she said. “We are cap in hand, saying for George’s sake, let us forgive and forget.” Adding her own note of Irish chauvinism, she said it was only when she got to Donegal that she appreciated the phrase “deep, blue sea.”

Mr. Dimbo added, “I love this country.”

George has spent 6 of his 11 years in Ireland, including most of his school years. What he recalls of Nigeria is mostly the heat and the corporal punishment in school. Asked if he feels more Irish or Nigerian, he answered politely in a Dublin lilt.

“I think I feel more Irish,” he said. “For one, because I am Irish.”

Marianne Williamson and Coach Carter

I recently watched Coach Carter, I must admitt I was somewhat reluctant when I took it out of its box. I felt like I had seen it before, like the genre was done with. NO more beating all the odds kind of movies for me, but man I was wrong. Great movie, great story, great message and also a great speech at the end. This movie may have been as good as, gasp, Remember the Titans…

But here is the speech. Its one of those ones that will make you think…

Think, do we hide our light? Think, do we realise that we were made in Gods image? Think, do we see that we heirs of the King? 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Get the Gun

At work i am creating a handbook on Uganda, hence the prayers and articles that I have been bombarding you all with. And this is an extract from an article by Human Rights Watch. It really highlights the dilemnas that face the people of Uganda. Dilemnas that are faced by many in this region and this continent of Africa. WHy is such a beautiful place so dogged by war, death and destruction. A lady who I know calls it the ‘devils playground’ its hard to argue that some terrible evil has happended in Africa in the last Century.  Buy why do we let it happen? A question many have asked but really we let it happen because we can, because its not my human rights that are infringed upon, and because we have dulled our minds with western capitilism, and luxery.  Think Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, DR Congo, Algeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone…they happended on our watch. NOt ok.

 Human Rights Watch Report 

The soldiers asked, “Why are you here?” We said, “We don’t know why

we are here.” Then they said, “You are here because we want the

gun.”… If you say, “I don’t know about the gun,” the soldiers get the

stick and begin beating you …. They say, “Get the gun! Get the gun!”

—I.N., detained in Kaabong barracks, September 2006

I heard the army vehicles and just ran out. I was trying to run but I saw

that the soldiers were already there surrounding the [homestead]. I

didn’t even know I was shot until I lay down and saw the blood.

—B.P., young girl shot during disarmament operation, Kaabong district,

December 2006

In the remote Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda, pastoralist herding

communities struggle for survival amidst frequent drought, intercommunal cattle

raids, and banditry. Gun ownership is pervasive, and armed criminality and cattle

raiding by civilians in Karamoja exposes the population there, as well as those in

neighboring districts, to high levels of violence, and restricts even the movement of

humanitarian workers. It poses significant challenges to the government’s

responsibility to provide for its citizens’ security and human rights.

Since May 2006 the national army, tasked with law enforcement responsibilities in

the region in the absence of an adequate police presence, renewed a program of

forced disarmament to curb the proliferation of small arms. In so-called cordon and

search disarmament operations, soldiers surround villages in the middle of the night

and at daybreak force families outside while their houses are searched for weapons.

This report, based primarily on field research in Kampala and in the Kaabong and

Moroto districts of the Karamoja region in January and February 2007 and

additionally drawing on reporting by the United Nations (UN) and other sources,

documents alleged human rights violations by soldiers of Uganda’s army, the

Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF), in cordon and search disarmament and

other law enforcement operations in the region. These violations have included

unlawful killings, torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, and theft and

destruction of property. While the Ugandan government has a legitimate interest in

improving law and order in Karamoja, including stemming the proliferation of illegal

weapons, it must do so in a manner consistent with human rights.

Human Rights Watch welcomes steps taken by the Ugandan government in the past

year to curb such human rights violations during disarmament and other law

enforcement operations, in response to international and domestic pressure. The

Ugandan government, however, has not adequately held to account those

responsible for past abuses, and allegations of human rights violations continue to

surface periodically in connection with disarmament and other law enforcement

operations in Karamoja.

The government has mounted several disarmament campaigns—some voluntary,

some forced—in Karamoja since 2001 to collect what it now estimates to be as many

as 30,000 unlawfully-held weapons in the region. At the same time, however,

government programs to improve security, including programs of disarmament, face

a fundamental dilemma: guns are used to defend from raiders as well as to rob and

steal. The dynamics behind weapon possession in Karamoja include, for some, the

desperate need to secure and defend their cattle and access to limited resources

essential for their cattle, a matter of life and death. Removing weapons while not

providing sufficient guarantees of safety and security renders, in their view, many

communities vulnerable to attack.

Weak government institutions in the region exacerbate these vulnerabilities and

leave law enforcement responsibilities in the hands of the UPDF. The present

disarmament campaign is just one of these responsibilities, which also include

recovering raided cattle, apprehending and prosecuting criminal suspects, and

protecting livestock in UPDF-guarded enclosures.

In Kaabong district in December 2006 and January 2007, UPDF soldiers shot and

killed 10 individuals, including three children, as they attempted to flee during

cordon and search operations. Only one of the individuals killed was reported to

have fired on the soldiers, while one other was running away with his gun. Four other

individuals, including two children and one youth, were also shot and injured. In

four armed confrontations with Karamojong communities between October 2006 and

February 2007, at least two of which were preceded by cordon and search operations,

dozens of civilians were killed, while the lives of an unknown number of UPDF

soldiers were also claimed.

Soldiers routinely beat men, at times to uncover the location of weapons. In Moroto

district victims of three cordon and search operations described an almost identical

pattern of mass beatings by soldiers of the entire male population: men were first

rounded up outside of their homesteads, and then subjected to collective beatings

with sticks, whips, guns, and tree branches accompanied by soldiers’ demands that

they “get the gun.”

Following cordon and search operations, soldiers detained men in military facilities.

Although one UPDF spokesperson described such detentions—purportedly for the

purpose of inducing the surrender of weapons—as lasting no longer than 48 hours—

Human Rights Watch interviewed some men who were detained without access to

family members for at least two weeks. Former detainees reported to Human Rights

Watch that military authorities subjected them to severe beatings and violent

interrogations, along with deprivation of food, water, and adequate shelter.

Communities were also the victims of property destruction and theft. During one

cordon and search operation, soldiers drove an armored personnel carrier through a

homestead, crushing six homes, and narrowly missing a crowd of people.

By conducting cordon and search operations to seize weapons, rather than to

prosecute firearms offenses, the government may be seeking to avoid legal

requirements authorizing searches, arrest, and detentions in the context of law

enforcement operations and that protect the rights of persons under national and

international law. Consequently, post-cordon and search detentions lack judicial

control, and, at times, are not specific to individuals suspected of criminal activity,

thereby violating the rights to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention. Moreover,

searches conducted during these operations are authorized by military order alone,

and not court-issued warrants mandated under national law, violating individual

privacy rights.

Apology…from the Australian Government

This article makes me think about the movie ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ which is about Australia’s policy in the mid 20th Century to try and eliminate the native Australian Aborigines through separation in what where effectively prison schools and so on. I wonder is an apology really enough in these types of things? And what impact does such an event have on the psyche of the Aboriginees? Or even what effect did an event like the famine have on the Irish nation, on the ones left behind or those that emigrated? How far does an apology go? It is ironic that people who left Europe many of them Irish and went to America and Australia, people who were persecuted at home would go on to be the persecutors themselves. I guess people will do anything to seem powerful over someone or something. And just because I am persecuted does not mean that I wont dish it out as well…just some thoughts that this article sprung in my mind…

But Australia I salute you and I hope that its a small step to all people being reconciled with eachother, a small step to kingdom come when all the colours bleed into one…

Article can be found at – http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/

Removing the “Stain” on Australia’s Soul

By The Editorial Board

Bravo to Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for boldly leading the effort to ease ancient tensions by organizing an official apology to his country’s indigenous people, the Aborigines.Even better, Mr. Rudd said he will now move to back up the apology with a plan to ensure, within five years, that every four-year-old Aboriginal child in remote regions of Australian attends kindergarten.The apology was the first priority of Mr. Rudd’s center-left Labor government when it was sworn in on Tuesday, replacing the 11-year administration of John Howard, who for years refused to apologize for the wrongs of past governments.It was directed in particular at the so-called “Stolen
Generations,” tens of thousands of indigenous children who were removed, sometimes forcibly, from their families in a policy of assimilation that only ended in the 1970s. Even today, Aborigines are Australia’s poorest and most disadvantaged group, one with extremely high rates of unemployment and alcoholism and shorter-than-average life expectancies.

“To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry,” Mr. Rudd said in a speech to parliament. He also spoke of removing “a stain from the soul of Australia.”

The United States, of course, has its own stain from the way it horribly mistreated, and in some ways still mistreats, Native Americans. Native Americans still fare woefully on a wide array of social measures, from education to health, and our own government is doing too little about it.

We wrote about one example of mistreatment only yesterday — the nuclear power industry’s talk about resuming uranium mining near a Navajo reservation.

We hope that Australia uses the apology as an opportunity to move forward. That means implementing the kindergarten commitment and going beyond that to further reduce income and other disparities between Aborigines and other Australians. Mr. Rudd’s proposal for a “war cabinet” on indigenous policy — and the decision by opposition leader Brendan Nelson of the Liberal Party to co-chair the group — is a welcome bipartisan start.

Perhaps now real reconciliation in Australian society can begin.

America – A Christian Country

A recent poll suggests that 85% of Americans call themselves Christians.  This translates as 257,905,955 people. A lot of people by any standard.  On the US Dollar it says “In God We Trust”.  Who is this God that 85% of Americans say they believe in and our money says we trust in?

What do these statistics say about this 85%?

In America there are 3.5 million homeless people

In America there are over 51 million people who live below the poverty line

In the year 200o the USA was reported as being the bottom of a 15 country poll that measured the amount of aid given as a percentage of GNP (0.14% in 2003 or $20billion a year…US military spending $500 billion a year)

The number of children around the world who die of hunger every minute…20.

In North America for every 100 births, there are 33 abortions.

In America around 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Do these numbers suggest that 85% of Americans are Christian? There is someting amiss here, either I have got the message and teaching of Christianity wrong or a large proportion of people are no that serious about their faith.

Christianity demands we look after the poor, and the sick, and the lonely as if they were Jesus himself, the second greatest commandment being to love your neighbour as much as you love yourself. 

Then why are we so zealous about defending our borders and really lets get real here our way of life, if 85% of us believe in loving our neighbour? Who is my neighnour you may ask…your neighbour is whoever God puts in your path and whomever God gves you the ability to help, and this includes your enemies…

why are we complacement with our marriage vows when 85% of us are christian? Why is the covenant between us and GOD broken 50% of the time?

Like I say something is amiss here. Maybe I have it wrong maybe I am wrong and should not be repulsed when I hear how much we spend on the military every year, or maybe I am wrong when I see politicians claim God and renounce abortion yet support the death penalty, maybe I am wrong when I get angry when we exploit Mexicans for cheap labour…maybe I am wrong and maybe Jesus doesnt care about injustice or poverty, or divorce or abortion or the death penalty…but I have a feeling that he does care.

I have a feeling that the 85% need to take a good look at what it means to be a Christian, what does it mean to be revolutionised by grace? What does that do to a persons life. their job, how they spend their money, or the choices they make?

Dont get me wrong America is a great country that I am very happy in, but when I hear that 85% are Christian and I watch the news or read the newspapers I wonder how this can be. i really wonder who is being lied to here, because I am pretty sure that someone is.