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Monday, September 1. 2008
Labor Day parade (from Library of Congress's website). NOTE: This blog entry is duplicated and updated from my Labor Day 2007 blog entry. On Labor Day, sales (handled by labor), vacations (serviced by labor), and the end of summer for too many people eclipse deep thinking and feelings about labor. Every day should be a day to care about working people, to consider them in all our actions, and to take them into account in our purchasing decisions. Millions upon millions of workers worldwide labor and suffer under unspeakably miserable conditions and pay, including countless factory workers in China, whose communist revolutionaries came to power proclaiming justice for the working masses. Imagine, then, how bad the working conditions are for millions of people in countries whose governments and employers barely pay even lipservice to justice for workers. As always, when we think globally and start by acting locally, miserable treatment of workers often starts with the custodial employees emptying our wastebaskets and cleaning our toilets, the dishwashers and plenty of other kitchen workers in the restaurants we frequent, the seasonal farmworkers picking our fruits and vegetables, and the workers who produce the countless cheap products sold at Wal-Mart and countless other discounters (who often are not giving their own workers good pay, working conditions and careers). Those of us who are employers, managers and bosses owe our employees harmonious and just working conditions, fair pay and benefits, and full respect and dignity. A supervisory manager at a previous legal employer told me that he generally followed the misguided lesson from a more experienced teacher of not smiling to his students (when he was a teacher) nor now his new employees until Thanksgiving. Why? So that the employees do not get lulled into a false sense of security and substandard work? Every worker deserves a thanks for the good work s/he does, every day. Every kindness deserves a thank you every time. For those workers doing work that we do not believe in -- whether it be fighting in Iraq, arresting people for marijuana possession, torturing alleged enemy combatants, or anything else one disagrees with -- it remains essential to understand and see each such person as a human being, not to mistreat such people merely because they are mistreating others, but still to be firm in calling for a change of the system that leads them to do such work, and sometimes to call for them to turn away from such work. We have many options to better the lot of workers, starting with our own wallets. An unfortunate irony of voting with our wallets can be to leave jobless the very workers we wish to help. However, if we are willing to send our money and business where workers and justice are better served -- including a willingness to pay more money as a result -- hopefully the same workers will find jobs with the more just employers. For those in jobs involving mistreating other workers or non-workers, sometimes the only option is to leave such jobs if efforts fail to stop mistreating them. As one particular judge -- not one I looked to for much justice -- once perceptively observed from the bench, most people, including cops, are just looking to get through the day. This situation raises multiple issues, including how to approach persuading people. However, if most people just want to get through the day, how much effort are they investing in justice rather than in just surviving for themselves, their families, and their friends? On the topic of judges -- who also are workers, although often wielding tremendous white collar power backed up by the power of the state -- a colleague who has known many local judges since childhood and through the old boy/girl network recently told me that half the judges he knows in a particular county do the work out of a sense of public service, with the other half dreading the grind of the daily docket. No matter how some judges may not seem to give much of a damn about justice, or not seem to define justice very justly, they remain humans including those toiling much longer than a forty hour workweek. While still on the topic of judges, it is important to remember the work of their supporting crew, including the courtroom clerks, office staff, clerks' office staff, people cleaning the courts' hallways and bathrooms, and the list goes on. In his book Working, writer Studs Terkel has written of the misery so many face working eight hours daily (if they are fortunate enough not to be working longer days than that). Thus, we are left with the importance of balancing each humans' need to work to live -- rather than to live to work -- with the importance that each human put in sufficient effort and ability to justify being hired, kept, and sufficiently paid for the work performed. Daily, we are helped by working people. How often do we show them sufficient thanks and appreciation? Thanks, again, to everyone who now works for me, who has ever worked for me, and who has helped my clients along the way. Thanks specifically to my current support staff comprised of David and Younghee, who provide caring and effective service to our clients and thereby help me stay focused on my work at hand by my being able to have full confidence in them. Jon Katz.
Sunday, August 31. 2008
People rarely die. Even after their heart stops beating, something about them usually keeps influencing the living and future generations in some small or big way, whether or not that influence is a good one. Someone like Stephanie Tubbs Jones did not have the capacity to die, but she did leave the planet on August 19, of a ruptured brain aneurysm that happened the day before. Joe Biden suffered the same injury two decades ago, but recovered. In late July 2005 on a plane returning to Maryland from depositions of federal employees in Cleveland, I met Stephanie Tubbs Jones sitting next to me. Before I knew she was a member of Congress -- I still carry strong presumptions against politicians, and, to boot, she previously prosecuted and judged -- I was impressed by how genuinely (as it appeared to me) and effectively she engaged so many of the passengers boarding the plane. They were her constituents. I do not know what pet political issue I raised with her -- possibly opposition to the criminal sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences, the general overall unfairness of the criminal justice system, marijuana legalization, or drug decriminalization -- but she was happy to have an engaging and meaningful conversation on the topic that I chose. Stephanie was genuinely upbeat about life and people. She told me that when she would conduct wedding ceremonies, she would recite the Indian wedding prayer. This prayer means so much to me that I spoke it to my wife at our wedding. For that alone, I very much appreciate Stephanie. Stephanie was only thirteen years older than I when she passed. I send my condolences and best karma to her survivors, including her son Mervyn Jones, II. Jon Katz.
Tuesday, August 12. 2008
Image from NASA's website. The Olympics always is political, ranging from nations wanting to shine a light on their Madison Avenue public relations face to nations wanting to whitewash unspeakable brutality. The brutal and virulently racist nazi regime had its day in the sun with the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which at least was offset by the victorious track performance of Jesse Owens, an African American competitor who returned, ironically, to a deeply racist and segregationist United States, which during World War II -- during the fight against the racist nazi regime -- would continue with a racially segregated military. Now with its day in the Olympics sun is China, whose government is extremely brutal, but not on the same level as Germany during the nazis, and apparently without the racism. I have written several times about China's deliberate and rampant human rights violations and its efforts to carefully choreograph a Disney-ized Olympics. The real human rights face of China is not only gross human rights-violative business as usual, but also increased harassment of dissidents in order to try to present a Chinese Neverland, censorship of foreign journalists covering the Olympics, and the deep complicity of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in censoring the Internet in China and helping rat out dissidents to Chinese authorities, who then have their human-rights-violative ways with the dissidents. . Have you been watching the Olympics? If so, how has your enjoyment of the Olympics been affected, or not, by the brutal reality of its government's ongoing and severe human rights violations? Jon Katz
Sunday, August 10. 2008
Isaac Hayes conducting "Theme from Shaft." Isaac Hayes's voice was commanding and well-suited to the theme from Shaft. I remember when the film's soundtrack was released in 1971, but only remember the title theme. Two decades later I saw the film itself, which hardly measured up to Hayes's theme song. On August 10, Isaac Hayes departed the planet. As much as I prefer to pay tribute to people before they leave the planet, I am behind on doing so. Thanks, Isaac Hayes, for you. Jon Katz.
Monday, August 4. 2008
Image from Library of Congress's website. Indonesia had Pramoedya Ananta Toer courageously to write truth about the nation he so loved, despite the hounding, harassment, and lengthy total years of imprisonment from successive dictatorships. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served a similar role in Russia, and I say Russia rather than the Soviet Union or Russian Empire, because Solzhenitsyn was very much the Russian nationalist. Where Pramoedya was a soft-spoken, self-effacing man who got persecuted for his carefully-penned prose, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was blunt, opinionated and insistent, and a masterful writer. His eight-year prison sentence starting at the end of World War II followed his penning a letter to a friend referencing Stalin as the "man with a mustache." Stalin ruled, imprisoned, rang up Soviet-bloc dictators in the middle of the night, and shot people before the days of public relations advisors who urge leaders to gain some popularity by poking some fun at themselves. Solzhenitsyn's imprisonment in the Gulag that is masterfully fictionalized in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich followed his vocal dismissiveness towards a prison superior at a Club Fed sort of prison where scientific intellectuals worked in rather freewheeling think-tank style to develop ideas and inventions for the emerging Soviet superpower. Solzhenitsyn lived a long life, finally realized his dream to return to and die in his homeland from which he was forcibly exiled by the Brezhnev regime, and passed away on August 3. He was not big on democracy, decried the state of American society when in Vermont during his exile and said too few Americans are willing to die for their beliefs (and he certainly was willing to do so, himself), and believed the United States withdrew too quickly from Vietnam. In other words, he spoke his mind, as everyone should have the protected right to do, no matter how vehemently we agree or disagree with their views. He was for me a critical face of the struggle against government censorship by white-out, confiscation of printing presses and copiers and newsprint, coercion, co-optation, imprisonment, torture, and execution, no matter the government, whether Communist, right-wing, or our very own United States (which censors in more sublte ways than the messiness of torture and execution). His struggle to be free to speak his mind is a struggle that must constantly be fought and re-fought, and won and re-won. Solzhenitsyn may be physically dead, but his unyielding spirit, fight and drive for the freedom to dissent openly, directly, and without varnish must live on. Otherwise, everyone will suffer dearly. Jon Katz.
Wednesday, July 16. 2008
Image from Library of Congress's website. My tireless blogging colleague Scott Greenfield has written repeatedly about (partly) consumer-driven lawyer ranking site AVVO (whose spelling can mistakenly be seen as "awo", depending on how closely one's computer screen places the vees in the word). Having learned about AVVO from Scott's site, I answered the site's information questionnaire. Eventually, after my questionnaire information and a few client reviews, I was given a ranking of 9.4 out of ten, or "superb". Although I am happy to receive such recognition, the rankings system does not sound scientific. On July 15, a Maryland Daily Record reporter called me for an article that appeared today, curious about her assertion that "Searching for a Maryland lawyer brings up Katz near the top of the list." If you do not want to be misquoted or distorted out of context, do not speak with a journalist; knowing this frequent risk, I still ordinarily speak freely with journalists about matters not involving my clients, with possibly the most stark example of unprofessional interviewing of me coming form the insensitivity of a reporter (and/or his news organization) engaging in what I thought was sensationalism by telling me on camera rather than off that Deborah Palfrey had killed herself, and then seeking comment -- without ever pausing the camera -- when I had nothing to do with the case. The reporter's somewhat minor distortion in this AVVO article is in writing that I have "suggested that clients write positive reviews" on AVVO. In reality, I was answering her question about how people ended up writing the handful of AVVO reviews about me, by saying that in the past when clients thanked me deeply for my service, I would offer for them the option of sending me an anonymous testimonial for me to post to our website if they wished, and now add the option to post an AVVO review. The AVVO review is a convenient way for a client to eliminate me as the middleman in getting feedback posted. In any event, the article confirms that AVVO's name comes from avvocato, which is the Italian word for lawyer. Curiously, whether or not intentionally, the French word for lawyer, avocat, also is the word for avocado, which is one of my favorite foods. Early on when my law partner Jay Marks and I hosted a call-in Spanish radio show "Legally Speaking: Where your cause is our cause" I got the moniker "gato" for cat/Katz, which then led to the less frequent moniker of "abogato", blending abogado for lawyer and gato for cat. The equivalent in Italian would be avvogatto. Finishing on this tangential discussion of the word lawyer, a very persuasive, dedicated, and intelligent longtime Amnesty International activist who spoke at the invitation of my law school's Amnesty International chapter started out by saying that the law is an ass, because, in his view, it is slow and plodding to achieve beneficial change. He then asked "If the law is an ass, what are lawyers?" I did not get around to asking him if he meant assh--les, but he had me in stitches nevertheless, even though I thought such a view was hyperbole taken from frustration with the legions of lawyers who to this day focus heavily on money and little on fairness and justice. (Only a few years ago, a colleague who includes criminal defense in his practice very seriously asked if I agreed with his view that the law practice is all about making money; I strenuously disagree with him.) My laughter in response to the Amnesty International activist came in the context of having expected that part of my law studies would involve learning the language of the oppressive enemy, so that I could more successfully battle that enemy. In any event, AVVO probably presents serious challenges to the once predominant Martindale-Hubbell legal directory, which is driven by rankings purportedly based on peer reviews, and expanded listings arising from payments for the inclusion. (Disclaimer: Our firm pays for such a listing.)Then again, the Internet has created substantial competition throughout the for-profit sector, including shaking the previous predominance of yellow page directories. Jon Katz
Thursday, July 10. 2008
Connecticut, or is that Quinnehtukqut? (Image from Energy Information Agency's website). Having blogged a few times about the Longest Walkers, here is an update on their activities and my meeting with some of them today. The 1978 Longest Walk was "a peaceful, spiritual effort to educate the public about Native American rights and the Native way of life. Native American Treaty Rights under the U.S. Constitution are to be honored as the supreme law of the land. The 3,600 mile walk was successful in its purpose: to gather enough support to halt proposed legislation abrogating Indian treaties with the U.S. government." This year's Longest Walk II is "with the message: All Life is Sacred, Save Mother Earth." With their environmental message, it is fitting that, on the last leg of their walk, the Longest Walkers are camping at the Greenbelt federal park in Greenbelt, Maryland. On July 9, I visited the campground to observe a signing ceremony of the Sovereignty Declaration of One Nation; however, the ceremony was not held then. My friend and spiritual mentor Jun Yasuda was there, and I also spoke briefly with Dennis Banks, a founder of the American Indian Movement. Jun-san walked with the original 1978 Longest Walk; in the interim, she probably has logged tens of thousands of miles on peace walks. With client and court obligations, I was only able to stay briefly. A highlight of the visit was being in the sacred circle when one of the walkers was beating on a drum and telling the story of coming from Alcatraz to Washington on the walk, which is the same path of the first walk. Those close to Washington, D.C., and interested in the walk might be interested in the walkers' itinerary running through this Saturday. For instance, on Friday will be a Capital Steps pipe ceremony with Harry Belafonte and Dennis Banks (seen here talking about the Longest Walk). On Saturday and Sunday will be a pow-wow near the National Museum of the American Indian. Although I grew up in a state with numerous Indian place names, there were few Indians living there at the time, and I doubt that has changed much through today. The state's very name is Indian, from Quinnehtukqut ("place of the long river"). On the law side, as I recently said, I have just a little knowledge about the law affecting and empowering Native Americans, and have much more to learn about that area of the law and about other Native American issues, including such matters as treaty rights, land rights, and sacred medicine. Jon Katz.
Friday, June 27. 2008
T'ai chi is about being as still as a mountain and powerful as a rushing river, and not about karate kicks. Perhaps someone(s) who has had enough of my t'ai chi blogposts is playing a joke on me. Yesterday, June 26, I drove to National Airport in Virginia (I refuse to use the former president's name in the title; it was National Airport long before he took his throne at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and installed people who would have had ketchup fulfill one of the vegetable servings in the daily school lunch program. My mission: To pickup a Nipponzan Myohoji nun and another activist arriving from Japan to join the Longest Walkers. Ordinary this mission was not. The arriving flight was delayed forty minutes, so I decided to do what I often do to kill time in airports (and sometimes while waiting for the subway to return me from court in D.C. to my office), which was to practice t'ai chi. It made all the more sense to do so, because I had not practiced it yet that day, and it is more important to practice for a few minutes every day, than to skip two days and practice a full hour on the third day. Each day of t'ai chi practice is akin to inserting at least one page into an annual book that totals three hundred sixty-five pages by the end of the year. I found a sparsely traveled section of the arrival area, and did two rounds of the thirty-seven posture t'ai chi chuan yang style short form, as developed by t'ai chi megamaster Cheng Man Ch'ing, and as demonstrated flawlessly here by the Professor. Perhaps partly because I have a long way to go before doing t'ai chi even one percent as well as Cheng Man Ch'ing, and perhaps just because t'ai chi is very new to many people, I get reactions running from amusement and people lampooning my moves with pages from Karate Kid, to intrigued people -- often children -- who sometimes are willing to try practicing along with me. One day practicing in the beautiful park across from our office, a Chinese woman applauded as I did the t'ai chi form, and then showed me the results of years of her own practice of what looked like something similar to t'ai chi or another form. Perhaps one of the amused or stunned people contributed to the police coming up to me as follows. After practicing t'ai chi, I go to the men's room, and as I am starting my standing relief, a cop is near the entrance and says, "I want to talk with you when you're done." My initial reaction to myself is "F--kin' cop. Hassling me even as I am going about such private business." Outwardly and then inwardly, though, I return to t'ai chi harmoniousness and balance. After washing my hands, and leaving the men's room, the cop is standing right outside the exit, and offers his name and his hand to shake. Who in their right mind offers to shake the hand of a stranger who's just left the men's room? Poppy on Seinfeld is but one member of a huge fraternity of men who do not put their hands under the sink before leaving the men's room. The Japanese custom of bowing over handshaking begins sounding highly preferable, unless one has a bad back. Curiously, the other two, and then three, cops watching the potential t'ai chi terrorist do not offer to shake my hand, whether for hygienic, strategic or good-cop/bad-cop purposes. The following transpires: Cop: My name is officer H___________________. You match the description of someone reported doing karate kicks. I just want to hear your side of the story. (Pause.) Please stand over here, so you don't block people's way. JK: The criminal defense lawyer in me says not to answer. My other side says maybe to do so Cop: It will be best for you to answer. JK: Am I free to leave (as I fish my business card out of my pocket to try to get him off my back, which sometimes can backfire)? Cop: No. You're being detained right now. Take your hands out of your pockets. You have a cellphone. (A non sequitur for fellow Zippy the Pinhead fans from a cop decidedly not wearing a muu-muu.) Cop (continuing): Can I see some I.D.? JK: No. (Fortunately, Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 177 (2004), supports no requirement to show cops a photo identification if one is not stopped while driving.) Cop: No? (Feigning surprise or in actual surprise.) JK: Here (I hand him my business card that I already had fished out, but was not required to give. Giving a cop one's photo identification makes it easier for the cop to delay the person longer by running an open warrant check and not giving the identification back right away.) Cop: What is your date of birth? JK: April 1, 1963. (I give it to him. It is already on our Martindale-Hubbell listing linked to our website listed on our business card). Cop No. 2 (playing the good cop role): Excuse me sir. Would you mind stepping over here? (Another choreography direction from the cops while I am not free to leave.) All we want to know is what you were doing if you are willing to tell us. JK: (Do I stay silent, which I tell others to do when they are suspects, or do I wear the hybrid hat of a criminal defense lawyer who stands up to cops all the time for my clients, and someone wanting to be there when my visitors arrive at the gate (how often do cops try to divide and conquer like that?)? It's the Chinese martial art of t'ai chi. I hadn't gotten around to doing it yet today. Cop No. 2: (Already nodding her head knowingly before I finish talking). I thought so. JK: Am I free to leave? (One of the Busted video's most essential lines.) Cop No. 2: Yes. My visitors arrive four minutes later, before I even have a chance to fish out my welcome sign, a practice that is the stuff of so many comedy scenes. Less than an hour later, I am in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House with my visitors, who want to chant the Odaimoku prayer for peace, and then include me for continued chanting clockwise around the president's palace. After that, I tell a veteran Lafayette Park peace demonstrator about the foregoing incident, and he seems to be looking at me like I have just fallen off the vegetable truck. I say: "You probably get hassled all the time by the Park Police like that." "All the time," he replies, regretting that this is the case. What lawful right did cop no. 1 have to tell me I was being detained? None. This was not a valid Terry stop -- Terry v. Ohio, 392 US 1 (1968) -- even though the Terry abortion of justice only requires reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity is afoot to briefly detain a suspect to ask questions (which questions need not be answered, aside from questions about identity, as addressed in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 177 (2004)). What crime might be afoot? Disorderly conduct (the catchall darling of cops, and a part of the unholy arrest triumvirate of disorderly conduct, assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest)? Hardly, and if my actions might have been reasonably suspected as disorderly, what is the difference whether it was my "forgiven" t'ai chi or possibly unforgiven karate kicks (by the way, t'ai chi only involves one circular kick, and three slow extended kicks, as shown by Cheng Man Ch'ing here)? Was there reasonable suspicion concerning the Virginia abortion of a law of intoxicated in public, which cops seem to think gives them a freebee to search incident to arrest for such a charge? My last tipple was but a sip many moons ago. Do the Airports Authority's regulations claim to permit cops to do Terry stops without satisfying Terry. I doubt it, but plan to check. Why, then, was I stopped by a cop with three onlooking cops focused on me rather than on less petty suspected crime (perhaps this was my inadvertent gift towards my goal of decriminalizing drugs by taking the cops away from looking out for possible drug dealers)? Was it just to mollify the so-called civilian complainant? Was it an effort to take control of someone not conforming to the usual bored approach to wating in airports? Was it a result of post-September 11 hysteria? Were some of the four cops receiving on the job training? Did it arise from the cops' failure to distinguish between the increase of people's rights as they proceed from awaiting clearance by customs and immigration authorities to going through security for arrival at the airport departing gates to being in the arrival area, as I was? Is it mimicry by cops of District of Columbia mayor Adrian Fenty's unconstitutional criminal checkpoints? Is it because cops do not want to see anybody displaying the hallmarks of lethal force (I have not come anywhere near making my t'ai chi lethal) and martial arts other than themselves? Is it a bunch of cops with too much time on their hands? Is it a bunch of cops out of touch with the truism that the police are a necessary evil that present the real risk of pulling us further into a police state rather than closer in the arms of the many civil libertarian goals championed in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence? Will I continue practicing t'ai chi in airports, empty subway platforms, outside courts, in parks, and in my own backyard? Absolutely. Join me? Jon Katz.
Wednesday, June 25. 2008
Of Greenpeace, the hunted, and the hunters. Previously, I avoided getting on a vegetarian soapbox. However, I modified that to blogging on the topic while minimizing saying anything to a dining companion who eats steak (even though I am deeply pained by the slaughter of the cow that is killed for the steak, and even when, like last night, the multiple steak eaters are otherwise compassionate fellow criminal defense lawyers), unless I am responding to taunting for being a vegetarian. I have become more vocal against slaughtering animals for food and clothing -- and against testing them for such unnecessary purposes as cosmetics safety (by the way, is it not more reliable to test a medicine or cosmetic on a human rather than a non-human mammal with a different chromosomal and overall biological setup, and is there any practical or moral justification to do any vivisection at all?) -- because, at its heart, I am deeply pained by the rampant mistreatment of animals that is so rampant that too many ordinarily compassionate people are numbed to the cruelty; I am fed up with the meat industry's meat-promoting happy face; and I am convinced that each person who stops eating meat will experience dramatically better health and will contribute to lower food prices and reduced health care costs and health insurance costs, and will contribute to an improved environment and a society where fewer humans will wreak violence against other humans and non-human animals. The International Whaling Commission has been meeting in Chile, where apparently talk is the talk of the day, rather than much action, other than Chile's commendable declaration this week -- apparently a reaffirmation -- that the nation bans whale slaughter. Why stop at protecting whales against slaughter? Do people focus so much against whaling in order to prevent the extinction of at-risk whale species? Or, do people also oppose whaling based on whales being so highly intelligent and loveable? If the latter holds true, why draw the line at whales? Intelligence is witnessed in many other mammals, too, including the dolphins that get caught up fatally in tuna-catching nets. Why draw the line at mammals, then? Do birds not display high intelligence, for instance in finding their way to a specific warm location in the winter, and back to a specific location in the summer? Why draw the line at birds? Do fish not share many of the same qualities as humans? They have hearts, livers, kidneys, brains, and gonads. Is it okay, then, to eat shellfish, which do not flap around in desperation when removed from the water? The typical way to cook lobsters and crabs is to burn them alive; what did they do to deserve that? Many anti-vegetarians then ask: Why draw the line at land and sea animals? Why not just stop eating all plants and animals, thus leaving nothing else to eat? Few people are going to allow themselves to die for such a theory. Of course, I recognize that even if it is assumed that plants feel no pain nor awareness at being alive and being killed, insects are killed in the process of raising and harvesting plant food, and, as a vegetarian, I do not believe in eating insects, either. My best answer, then, is for food consumption to be focused on a harm reduction approach, so as to reduce the harm not only to the living things being killed for human food consumption, but also to reduce mistreatment of workers who ultimately bring food to the market, to reduce environmental degradation from food production (including fecal waste and methane/flatus pollution from livestock), to reduce the harm caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers and genetic plant modification, and to reverse the elimination of animal habitats that result from making way for livestock and growing fields. Protecting whales, then, is but an important start on the road to giving more protection to all land, air and water animals. Justifiably, much has been said and written about the possibility of no painless method for executing humans, let alone the mental torture involved in awaiting an inevitable execution. Why stop there? Why think for a moment that a dinner of animals is not the product of suffering during the animal's short life, suffering while seeing and feeling and hearing fellow animals being slaughtered, and knowing that this will be the witnessing animal's fate in just a few moments, and suffering at the moment of slaughter? I ask a favor to all meat eaters: Before you eat your next piece of meat, poultry or fish, please give a name to the animal from which this flesh came, whether it be Bob, Carole, Ted, Alice or anyone else. If you are eating a hamburger, sausage, or hot dog, it may be a good idea to give the meat several names, as hamburgers and sausages are a convenient way for the meat industry to gather up the scraps from the meatcutting machines. The more we give a name, face, heart, and soul to the humans and non-human animals upon whom we cause suffering, I am convinced we will reduce the suffering. Jon Katz. ADDENDUM I: Back to whales, yesterday's Australian newspaper reports that "Japan says it is misunderstood, denies the 1000 whales it hunts each year for scientific purposes despite a 1986 moratorium are making it to the dinner table, and says it is also in favour of conservation." Either that is an untruth, or else the Japanese fish markets are obtaining whales for food some other way. As I wrote last January: "In 1999, a wonderful family living several miles from central Tokyo hosted me for a few days, which was a great way to experience how regular Japanese folks live. One morning, the son took me to Tokyo's equivalent of New York's South Street Seaport, teeming with wall-to-wall freshly-caught fish. Already a strict vegetarian, I hesitated about even going in the first place, but if this is the fate of countless fish -- I ate my huge share of fish and meat before becoming vegetarian -- I decided to witness part of that fate. "Not only were fish there. Several minutes into our tour of the huge building akin to an airplane hangar, I saw a multi-pound slab of whale corpse. My host confirmed it was what I thought it was, and I started feeling plenty more down than I already was around all the dead fish. Our host was at once concerned about my feelings and hoping to reassure me that all was okay, that this is a deep-rooted part of Japanese culture to eat slaughtered whales." ADDENDUM II: Here are some of my past writings on vegetarianism and animal rights; Karma and your plate; How to reduce hunger and eating costs, and slash methane and fecal pollution?; Of Greenpeace, the hunted, and the hunters. ADDENDUM III: Here are some links to Japanese government writings about whaling: - "We believe it is not appropriate to lightly condemn the behaviors of others as bad, barbarous or primitive, or rather there should be an attitude of respect for the cultures and habits of different cultures." - Whaling promoters have their own lobby, which is the World Council of Whalers. - The Japanese embassy in New Zealand proclaims: "Much has been learnt about the whales [from Japan's whale research program], for instance, it has been found that they consume three to five times the amount of marine living resources than are caught for human consumption. The research also showed that contaminant levels in Antarctic minke whales are very low." What justifies killing whales to obtain such statistics? ADDENDUM IV: Concerned about going hungry or unhealthy by trying vegetarianism and veganism? Now is the most convenient, healthful, and delicious time to eat vegetarian. It is hard to make the transition alone. Check out your nearby vegetarian society and PETA for an easier and more socially enjoyable way to reduce and eliminate meat consumption. Also, check out my vegetarian links.
Tuesday, June 17. 2008
From Library of Congress's website. Singapore is a fascinating place. Certainly, the government for decades has sought an overly-antiseptic and censoring city nation, while jailing dissidents, caning convicts, and executing people for possessing as little as 1.2 pounds of marijuana (with my having snapped a photo of some smiling customs officials under a banner near the Malaysian border proclaiming the death penalty for drug trafficking). Knowing all of that, still I spent a few days there after the bar exam in 1989, as an international air travel hub on my way to a much more colorful and fascinating time in Thailand, starting with an inexpensive Bangkok guesthouse located alongside corrugated rooftop homes near Kao San Road, and followed by a northern trek that included everyone pushing an overloaded converted pickup truck out of the mud numerous times on day one, followed by joining some singing moonshine-drinking revelers at the tailend of a wedding celebration in a tribal village. I got a slight peak on the inside of Singaporean society while spending some time with a friend who had just relocated there and staying as a guest at the home of his brother -- who described himself as conservative -- and spending time with some of the family members going about their daily activities. Part of what makes Singapore so fascinating is its overlapping Chinese, Malay and Indian influences found in such a small geographic area. I write more about my visit to Singapore in the last several paragraphs here, including my surreal midnight arrival at a near-empty airport luggage carousel area with unsmiling machine-gun toting security offset by nobody asking about the contents of my baggage, and my possibly even more surreal experience meeting a fellow diner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant who thought he was paying me a high compliment by likening me to a young Richard Nixon with his new legal career ahead. My time in Singapore was all the more interesting by having gotten off the beaten path several times. Fortunately, Singapore is not the monolithic lockstep place that many of its rulers have sought. Numerous Singaporean dissidents are willing to speak out, and to do so in a vibrant, fearless, calm, intelligent and apparently effective way, as detailed further below. As much as civil liberties remain under assault in the United States -- with it being essential constantly to refight and re-win previous civil liberties victories -- plenty of dissident actions that would get little if any suppression in the United States routinely get suppressed in Singapore. Here are some recent examples of inspirational dissident activity in Singapore: - On May 17, 2008, dissidents screened One Nation Under [Lee Kuan] Yee, without first submitting it to Singapore's ubiquitous censors. Kudos to those who produced the film, the dissidents who screened the film, and Singapore's Peninsular-Excelsior Hotel for allowing the film's screening (although I suspect the hotel did not recognize the implications of the screening or the screening itself). - Here and here is a March 15, 2008, attempt to proceed with a rights march in Singapore. - Gopalan Nair is a lawyer who grew up in Singapore, dissents openly from its government, and practices law in the United States, where he obtained citizenship. He has intentionally blogged himself into being brought into court on pending criminal libel charges relating to Lee Kuan Yew, who previously governed Singapore in authoritarian fashion, and still participates in the running of the government. - A longtime Singaporean dissident is Francis Seow, who went into self-exile many years ago. - The Singapore Democratic Party is active with numerous of the current protests. If you visit Singapore, please let me know. I wonder how much else of the nation has changed after my last visit there nineteen years ago. Jon Katz.
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