The Sanctity Of (Some) Human Life.

I have heard time and time again about the great canard of “the sanctity of human life”, and I began to ponder some things. Where did it come from? How did we discover it? Who had it and who didn’t have it? The answers to those questions unfortunately led me to a very disturbing place that I feel compelled to share with you.

You see, the mantra is that human life is sacred. But not all human life, some. For the “pro-lifer” the sanctity of human life seems to only matter on very specific occasions. In fact, it is almost exclusively limited to fetuses.

Their dedication to those fetuses is quite startling. Some “pro-life” extremists take their beliefs so seriously, that they come to the other side and become US born and bred terrorists. Case in point: Eric Rudolph. Rudolph certainly had no compunction about the sanctity of human life when he set off pipe bombs at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. The rational conclusion seems to be that fetuses are sacred, but random passersby at the Olympic Games are…well….not.

I began to ponder this rather strange omission of the sanctity of human life. What made Rudolph’s victims so much less sacred than human fetuses? I couldn’t find an answer to that question before I discovered this little thing that’s been going on, that some are calling THE IRAQ WAR.

You see, the United States is currently at war with this little fart of a country called Iraq that’s out there somewhere in this place called “The Middle East”. (seriously, who comes up with this stuff?) The problem seems to have started when the United States put a madman by the name of Saddam Hussein into power. The US was so happy with him that a special envoy was sent to Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, to present Saddam with a pair a golden cowboy boots, a gift of affection from President Ronald Reagan. Reagan loved Saddam so much that he violated Congress by giving him plenty of weapons like anthrax and botulism toxins, and even helped him to build nuclear refineries.

Donald Rumsfeld, back in 1983,
when he was more chariable than he is today.

A short time later (you guessed it) the US invaded that country for having anthrax and botulism, and maybe a nuclear weapon made from those refineries.

So I began to wonder if the sanctity of human life applied to the Iraqi people as well. You never would have guessed what I found. Drum roll, please….the answer is nope. Since Saddam came into power the US has helped him to slaughter his own people. The most disturbing example was when Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988. The suppliers of that gas? Dow Chemical. After the US decided that Saddam wore a black hat instead of a white one, we launched 2 wars against him, and put a 12 year long embargo on him. After two wars and 12 years of embargo, Saddam is still alive and well. The Iraqi People? Not so much. You see, two wars and a 12 year embargo will kill a lot of people. Figures vary, but the best estimates are that the latest war has killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. Just the embargo alone killed 2 million Iraqi adults, and 600,000 children.

The Iraqi People: Bitch-slapped by the Sanctity.

So that got me to wondering. Obviously the sanctity of life just didn’t apply to Iraqis at all. When whoever was handing out sanctity, the Iraqis must have forgot to check their e-mail. So maybe the sanctity of life only applies to Americans? Then a friend told me that we have this thing called THE DEATH PENALTY. Yikes. Talk about diversity. How could a country that values “the sanctity of human life” also have THE DEATH PENALTY? Something didn’t seem right here. Did those people somehow lose their sanctity? You would have to do something awfully bad to lose it, wouldn’t you?

As it turns out, it really helps if you did do something really bad, but you don’t HAVE to in order to receive the death penalty. In fact, in the state of Texas, all you need to get the death penalty is to have a defense lawyer who sleeps through your trial. Sounds like a crappy deal, huh? You get to sleep, I get to die. Not much of a trade off. You could at least throw in a ham and cheese sandwich.

So at this point, I was at a loss. When does the sanctity of life really apply? How do you know you have it? Who gives it to you? Can you buy some of it? I came back to the fetuses. What in the hell made them so special to have this sanctity thing, that it seems no one else has? Then it dawned on me. Maybe it was their age!

Fetuses as it turns out are very new. They’re like brand new people, except they can’t walk, talk, or barely move or think yet. It’s like that brand new car you buy that’s so new it hasn’t even been filled up with gas yet. We all know there’s nothing like a brand new car. People will be happy with their brand new car for at least a year or two. So maybe the same applies to the fetuses, at least for the first year or two.

Then my friend told me about this thing called INFANT MORTALITY RATES. Sounds pretty hairy, huh? You see, eventually these fetuses are born. That’s when they become this thing called “infants”. (I know what you’re thinking, who the hell can keep up with all this stuff?) Some of those infants live, and some of them die. The ones who die seem to be the ones that nobody seems to care enough about to make sure that they live. Infant mortality rates are a very good indicator on how well any particular society values their infants. It would seem to me that a society that is so deeply concerned with the sanctity of human life…or well…the sanctity of human fetuses anyway, would have one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the whole darn world. And guess what I found out? The answer…nope.

You see, the US has a pretty high infant mortality rate. So high that we’re 36th on the list. We’re not talking about just coming in to collect the bronze, we’re talking about coming in 36th place! So what economic and moral powerhouses could have possibly beat us? Here’s some of them: Singapore, Sweden, Hong Kong, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Malta, Andorra, Macau, Slovenia, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Portugal, Monaco, San Marino, Aruba, and Taiwan. Who ever heard of these places? Are they like some kind of fairy tale utopias?

So I started listening to these people who keep talking about “the sanctity of human life”, and see if they also really don’t like certain countries. My theory was if they really hated these countries, their infant mortality rates would make ours look REALLY GOOD. After months of careful listening, I found two countries that most of the “sanctity of human life” types seemed to really hate. In fact, I would go so far as to say they absolutely despised these two bitty nations. They hated, deep down in their guts, these two countries more than any other on earth. Those countries are none other than Cuba and France.

Gee, how bad could their infant mortality rates be? Wouldn’t it have to be so high to make you puke in absolute disgust? The answer…well…not really. You see, France and Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than well…the US. Who would have guessed?

All this was getting very confusing. How could fetuses have so much sanctity that Iraqis, Americans, and even infants don’t have? It didn’t make any sense at all. That’s when my friend told me that fetuses actually grow inside of people.

Now this was a major breakthrough. Fetuses have to grow inside of people. So, logically, everything that grows inside us is sacred. I was so relieved that I had finally found the answer. That’s when my friend told me that no one considers cancer to be very sacred, and so I was back at square one.

What could fetuses have, that nothing else has? What made them so damn special? The answer? Fetuses grow inside CERTAIN KINDS of people called…drum roll please…women.

This had to be the answer. Finally, I had found the holy grail. Growing inside women must be what makes fetuses so sacred. But my conclusion was fatally crushed when my friend told me that the vast majority of women wanted the right to be able to get rid of their fetuses when they wanted to.

I was in shock. How could women possibly want to get rid of their own fetuses? It’s the only thing in this entire world that is sacred! This didn’t make any sense at all. But then my friend explained to me that the vast majority of the people who didn’t want women to have the right were men.

You know that sinking feeling you get in the pit of your stomach you sometimes get when you know something horrible has just happened? That’s what came over me. You see, one thing my friend didn’t have to tell me, that I already knew was that people sometimes lie to get what they want. It’s not pretty, but it happens. It seems that the entire “sanctity of life” concept was nothing more than a fraud, made up for the sole purpose for men to control women. It had nothing to do with Iraqis or Americans. Children or babies. The innocent or the guilty. It had everything to do with POWER. These men wanted the right to tell women how to live their lives, and they were so dedicated to that concept, that they were literally willing to kill people who got in their way.

These “pro-lifers” wanted to right to control not only the majority of the American population, but they wanted the absolute right to decide who will get to live and who will get to die. The sad fact is that there is NOTHING that could possibly be sacred about that.

Fifteen Traitors To The American Middle Class.

Yesterday CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) passed the US House of Representatives by a vote of 217 to 215. You can now expect US jobs to be shipped to countries whose collective GDP is equal to Boston on a bad day. Of course, this bill would have not have passed without the help of fifteen key votes by Democratic members of the House. They are:

Melissa L. Bean, the 8th district of Illinois
Jim Cooper, the 5th district of Tennessee
Henry Cuellar, the 28th district of Texas
Norman D. Dicks, the 6th district of Washington
Ruben Hinojosa, the 15th district of Texas
William J. Jefferson, the 2nd district of Louisiana
Jim Matheson, the 2nd district of Utah
Gregory W. Meeks, the 6th district of New York
Dennis Moore, the 3rd district of Kansas
Jim Moran, the 8th district of Virginia
Solomon P. Ortiz, the 27th district of Texas
Ike Skelton, the 4th district of Missouri
Vic Snyder, the 2nd district of Arkansas
John Tanner, the 8th district of Tennessee
Edolphus Towns, the 10th district of New York

Let them know how you feel about them by calling them toll free at 1-877-SOB-U-SOB.

Who exactly is breeding terrorists, Evan?

I saw this piece and couldn't help but write a response:

This is quite a revolting piece, Evan. What’s even more revolting is that you throw out assumptions that Democrats created such terms as “Hispanic-American” and “African-American”, much less encourage the use of “ebonics”. I don’t see you attacking the idiom of whites in America. You will hear plenty of “that dog don’t hunt” in Alabama, or even during a Presidential debate. Not to mention the typical so-Cal white kid, “That’s, like, totally gnarly dude.” To single out “ebonics” not only shows your racism, but your selectivity. Further, you forget that the purpose of language is to communicate, and if the listener understands that language, then SO WHAT? But what of your larger question, which you seemed incompletely incapable to explain or show any evidence of?

Liberals breed terrorists? Really? Ask the CIA. As Dubya came into office the NIC Global Trends report cited the cause of terrorism to be the result of increasing globalization (the benefits which will not be global), political instability, and economic stagnation. In other words, it is not “Liberals” that breed terrorists, but US foreign and trade policies.

You can trace the roots of this brand of Middle Eastern terrorism to the overthrow of Iran’s democratic Mossedegh government. The Eisenhower administration used the CIA, and happy barrels of taxpayer money to turn Iran over the Shah, who in turn used his CIA trained secret police, SAVAK, to slaughter thousands of Iranians, and wiping out his entire political opposition. That outrage lead directly to Pahlevi’s overthrow and the rise of the Ayatollahs and the situation we now face. But it doesn’t end there.

The CIA have billions of dollars to rebel fighters in Afghanistan during the 1980’s under the Reagan administration, as well as military training and weapons. One of the primary recipients of that tax payer largess was none other than Osama bin Laden. But it doesn’t end there.

Saddam Hussein came to power with the help of the United States. In an attempt to take out Iran, the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations gave Saddam’s Iraq weapons of mass destruction, including bacillus anthracis (anthrax), clostridium botulinum, histroplasma capsulatum, brucella melitensis, clostridium porringers, escherichia coli. It didn’t end there as US corporations like Hewlett-Packard provided Iraq with computers to work their scud and nuclear programs, AT&T provided technology to upgrade Iraq’s air defense systems, Bechtel helped build a petrochemical plant for Iraq, Caterpillar aided Iraq with the construction of their nuclear programs, and DuPont sold Iraq oil for use with those nuclear programs. Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, and DuPont have another thing in common, besides having a heavy hand in helping Saddam to butcher his own people and terrorize his neighboring countries. Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, and DuPont has given at least $187,000 dollars to George W. Bush.

So WHO exactly is breeding the terrorists, Evan?

Republican Congressman Calls On Tim Russert To Be “Shot”.

Republican Congressman Peter King of New York said on MSNBC’s Scarborough program that for giving Ambassador Joe Wilson “a free ride” that “Tim Russert…they’re the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove.”

Republicans Release ‘Talking Points’ To Smear Joe Wilson.

The White House may be staying mum on Rove’s participation in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA agent, but RNC Chairmen Ken Mehlman has been circulating pages of talking points to right-wing pundits to attack Plame’s husband, Joe Willson. The talking points instruct the GOP operatives to discredit Wilson’s fact finding mission to Niger, in which Wilson found no evidence that Iraq was pursuing a purchase of yellowcake Uranium.

Democrats Demand Rove’s Security Clearance Be Stripped.

All the Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have demanded that Bush strip all of Rove’s security clearances and access to classified information. John Tierney (MA-D) said “It is outrageous that even though Mr. Rove has acknowledged, through his attorney, that he disclosed the identity of a covert intelligence officer, he continues to have access to our nation's highest level of classified intelligence.”

Bush Still Mum On Rove’s Treason.

Bush refused to comment on the actions of senior advisor Karl Rove on Wednesday, stating that, “I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports. We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and I will be more than happy to comment further once the investigation is completed.” This has echoed the White House’s Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s words on the topic. Bush made his comments with Karl Rove sitting behind him. Meanwhile, some have recently noted the words of a certain former head of the CIA:

“We need more human intelligence. That means we need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT AND ANGER for those who BETRAY THE TRUST by EXPOSING the names of our sources. They are, in my view, the most INSIDIOUS of TRAITORS.” -George Herbert Walker Bush April 26th, 1999.

WorldCom Big Wig Lands In The Big House.

Bernard Ebbers, the founder of WorldCom, was sentenced to 25 years for his role in the fraud that led to the company’s collapse. The $11 billion fraud resulted in the biggest bankruptcy in US history, resulting in 20,000 workers loosing their jobs and shareholders losing $180 billion.

Gitmo General Linked To Abu Ghraib.

Major General Geoffrey Miller, who claimed that there is no torture going on in Guantanamo Bay, has been linked to the abuse at both Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. The Washington Post is reporting that months before the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke, interrogators at Gitmo used similar torture techniques, approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Major General Geoffrey Miller, who commanded Gitmo later helped to set up US operations at Abu Ghraib.

Fox News Rating Plummet.

Since the 2004 Presidential Election, the Fox News Channel has seen it’s ratings plummet within the prized 25-54 age bracket. From October 2004 to April 2005, FNC’s ratings have dropped by 58%.

Karl Rove Linked To Valerie Plame Leak.

17 members of Congress have demanded that Karl Rove resign if he won't publicly explain his role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Newsweek is reporting that it has obtained an email from Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that confirms Rove spoke with Cooper about Plame just days before her name first appeared in a column by Robert Novak. It is a felony to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover operative.