Tag Archives: Opinion

BOSTON SHAME

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It’s Memorial Day and I think it’s sad that on a day we remember those who died in war (for me, all the unnecessary deaths that have occurred throughout my lifetime), I must write about twelve people in a Boston courtroom deciding to kill Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

One person might not seem like much of a do compared to those who’ve died in all our wars, but for me that decision by those twelve people turned a light on how we as a species operate.

! know the two Tsarnaev brothers murdered three and injured hundreds of others. Some see killing him as more than a fair trade—though a poll shows that 73 percent of Boston’s population was against the death sentence a month before it was handed down by those twelve. In a state that outlaws the death penalty.

I don’t see a fair trade. Just another murder to go along with the others.

The day their verdict was announced I was in New York visiting my infant granddaughters. My first reaction was relief that Mari and Vivian can’t read. How could I explain that my home town decided to murder someone? That those twelve people felt it was “appropriate” to kill another human under the federal government cover of the death penalty. The first execution, by the way, of any “terrorist” since 9/11.

What would I have said to them if they had been able to understand? That a human life is worth next to nothing? Really, all you have to do is open a newspaper to see that it’s cheaper than dirt. Bombs, beheadings, drones, and routine day-to-day murders. We seem willing to kill each other as easily as we step on ants.

I could sit here and detail all the “logical” arguments against the death penalty. How it has proven not to be a deterrent. How we might mistakenly murder an innocent person. How it costs the government more to kill people than have them serve life sentences. How many of the victims of the bombing–people who lost loved ones or had been maimed–spoke out against murdering Tsarnaev.

Not gonna do that. That’s not my point today. For me, the questions are: Do we want to step on ants and murder people? Is it possible to have institutions and governments people might learn from and even respect? Or are we willing to abide starving children, fouling our environment, and sanctioning state murder? Is that the kind of species we really want to be? Or can we be better than that?

What kind of world do you want your grandchildren to grow up in?

But, but, look at the rest of the world. They kill, starve their own, slice off heads, and seem more than willing to fight wars. If the rest of the world is like that, why should we be any different?

I grew up when history books touted our revolution as a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world. Which I believed. And still believe that we can become an example of a kind and loving people. But, honestly? I think I’m going to die believing that we’ve contributed at least as much, if not more, barbarism as any country throughout history. Since 1776 the United States has been at war 93% of the time. Call me crazy but from where I sit right now, the only beacon I see is blood.

I’ve written about my issues with Boston’s response to the Marathon bombings before and have been pretty critical about the way my city’s population was more than willing to ignore their own civil liberties. But there is no doubt that in the bombing’s aftermath the town came together: people treating each other with respect and kindness, often  exhibiting the very best of our species’ behavior. “Boston Strong” was a phrase that meant the unification of my city. That we could stand shoulder to shoulder as brothers and sisters. That we, as a city, could be larger, better than those who maimed and killed. That Boston Strong now seems shattered by those twelve people.

My town has a proud but flawed history. An important station destination for the Underground Railroad coupled with the New England slave trade. The first school desegregation case in American history (1848) and rock-throwing racists in the 1970s when desegregation was finally implemented. A city of neighborhoods where it’s difficult to find one that’s actually integrated. And now we have another ugly stain on our history.

I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, Tinkerbell, or even Santa Claus. I don’t believe in Utopia.

But I do believe our species can be a whole lot better than we’ve shown. Don’t you think it’s time to start? Do rivers have to run red before we see the folly of war? Why can’t we try to feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the ill, and begin to turn our back on the notion that it’s everyone for themselves?

What kind of world do you want your grandchildren to inhabit?

What did the people we are remembering today die for?

I think they died believing in making our world a safer, more humane place to live. Where Boston Strong doesn’t crumple into Boston Shame.

What kind of world do you want your grandchildren to inhabit?

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. ~ Thurgood Marshall

PATRIOTS’ DAY

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Dear Brookline Booksmith,

Thanks so much for inviting me to visit your wonderful independent bookstore to read and do a Q&A with fellow mystery novelist Peter Swanson. During the 1990s every time I published a Matt Jacob Novel, you invited me to speak. On top of which, after twenty years and my latest book about Matt Jacob (Ties That Blind), you invited me back again. I appreciate your generosity and love your store. I had intended to put up pictures and comments until I realized this column belonged to Patriots’ Day and not my personal accomplishments. (For those of you who might want to see a couple pictures, please visit my Facebook Authors page and, if so inclined, “like” the page.)

Patriots’ Day is a Massachusetts and Maine holiday commemorating the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. Historically it had been celebrated on April 19th, but in 1969 it was changed to the third Monday of every April. This year both days coincide. (Perhaps an omen given the upcoming sentencing trial of the Boston Marathon bomber.)

I used to really enjoy the holiday. For a ton of years my friend Ed and I would go to Fenway Park and watch the Red Sox, who traditionally began their game at 11 AM. We’d hang there until around the 7th inning, (those days the cost for tickets made leaving early reasonable) then walk to our favorite vantage point to cheer on the Boston Marathon runners as they passed by.

I don’t know why, or even when, we stopped our annual pilgrimage. Long enough ago that I’d even stopped watching the winners cross the finish line on TV.

Patriots’ Day 2013 burst my complacency when two bombs exploded close to the Marathon’s finish line, killing at least three, and injuring or maiming hundreds more. Soon after, the Boston Police and Federal Agents linked the horror to the shooting of an M.I.T. security guard and the theft of an S.U.V., which was eventually spotted in Watertown, a city nearby Boston.

Police from Boston and neighboring towns, along with Federal Agents, converged upon the town and shot one of the suspects who was then killed when his brother (the other suspect) inadvertently ran him over in his attempt to escape. Eventually, this second suspect was seen in a boat placed in a yard behind a Watertown resident who informed the authorities.

A massive gunfight ensued in which the authorities fired over three hundred rounds, despite which the suspect lived, brought to a Federal trial, and recently (April 8th) the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was found guilty of 30 counts, including 17 that carry the death penalty.

In a previous column I wrote and condemned the abrogation of civil liberties imposed upon Boston and its surrounding towns during the entire manhunt. No need to rehash the matter, other than to say that my post found very few people who agreed with my positions.

I expect the same today as I advocate against the death penalty for Tsarnaev.

During the trial, prosecutors relentlessly used the death of eight-year-old Martin Richard (the youngest of those who died) to impress upon the jury the heinous and depraved nature of Tsarnaev’s actions—including submitting Martin’s burnt clothes into evidence. But this 17th of April, Martin’s parents wrote a public letter requesting that the Feds take the death penalty off the table in exchange for life imprisonment without parole and the relinquishment of all the defendant’s appeals. While I laud the humanity of that letter and fully appreciate their desire for “closure,” my reasons are quite different.

I believe the death penalty is nothing less than state sanctioned murder. And, in this particular situation, the “state” isn’t Massachusetts (a NO DEATH PENALTY STATE by law) but the federal government that overrode state law and tried Tsarnaev under federal laws which allow the possibility of execution.

Let me be absolutely clear. What the Tsarnaev brothers did was totally, reprehensible, unconscionable, and, to me, virtually incomprehensible. I was, and continue to be, repulsed by their actions, which make me stomach sick.

But so do hangings, electrocutions, firing squads, and lethal injections—no matter who does the deed, be it an individual, group, gang, or government.

I am in no way, shape, or form a religious person. But I do adhere to Thou Shalt Not Kill and no amount of lawyering or any circumstance other than defense of self, family, or another person (which even the “god” who said the above permits) can convince me that the words Thou Shalt Not Kill are anything other than what they mean. Killing an innocent or a guilty is flat out murder—whatever suit you dress it in.

For those who legitimately question the cost of housing and feeding murderers, in a recent conversation with a judge I was informed that studies have indicated the taxpayer’s share of the costs of appeals and “stays” of state sanctioned murder are even greater. (To say nothing about our burgeoning “for profit” prisons.)

And I haven’t even delved into the issue of whether a judge or jury gets it wrong—as Project Innocence has shown time and time again.

On this Patriots’ Day I think it important to really ask what kind of country we want to be patriots of.

TOUGH TIME OF THE YEAR

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Last Tuesday night, I went out for dinner and drinks with my friend/music teacher Bob. Although he’s a few years younger than I am, our ages are within hailing distance. After talking about the state of the Red Sox we began to reminisce about Brooklyn. He grew up there and it’s where I went to a Hasidic yeshiva during my high-school years. Surprisingly, we both had experiences with the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the transformations of what had been primarily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.

It was those transformations (in plain speak, Blacks moving into those neighborhoods) that sparked the creation of the JDL. For reasons I honestly can’t explain, one of the rabbis at my yeshiva took me to a couple of the early meetings led by Meir Kahane, the rabbi who formed the JDL. This sense of encroachment into what they considered “their” space enraged the Hasidic and Orthodox communities. So Kahane was organizing neighborhood “watch” groups to communicate with each other and follow every Black male who rode a bike and wore sneakers. It was made clear that violence was not off the table.

I lasted two meetings before I told my rabbi I had no interest in Kahane’s mission (which included applying for gun licenses) and suggested that he shouldn’t have anything to do with the group either. I can’t remember what he said, but I quickly lost his support at the yeshiva where he had often protected me from beatings by other rabbis.

So be it. I hadn’t learned much growing up in my nuclear family, but I’d been taught in no uncertain terms that racism was evil, pure and simple, and not to be tolerated. Kahane represented everything I detested even at that early age. I believed Jews were supposed to be on the side of the oppressed. Never Again was never meant to be an expression of hostility, but rather one of defense.

That’s why Passover has become, for me, a major league conundrum. The holiday expresses the belief in freedom, the sin of slavery, at the same time it praises the lord for slaughtering anyone who stood in the way of the Jewish exodus—and anyone included innocent firstborn babies to boot. The older I’ve become, the more deeply I believe in non-violence. And believe it to be the only real salvation for our species. Yet here we have a story where, without remorse, god used horrific violence to set my people free. How is it possible to embrace my history when the beginning of our own freedom was born from the blood and death of people who our own bible calls half-brothers?

That Old Testament god really knew how to wield a sword and didn’t stop after the parting of the seas. Nor has his “Chosen.” Why does the Israeli government use the honorable idea of Never Again to rationalize keeping Palestinians under their thumb, using incomprehensible, reprehensible violence to do so? I’ve written about Israeli atrocities and US support of them before so there’s no reason to rehash the same ugly facts. But knowing those facts and watching Israel become an apartheid country without any interest in a fair two-state solution just makes it harder to celebrate my own peoples’ liberation.

Despite all those years in yeshivas, I’m not at all religious, but I do think of myself as Jewish. And I continue to tell myself that being Jewish still means taking the side of the oppressed, fighting for those in need. I grasp at the straw hoping somehow Jews will actually see what’s in front of their eyes and reject the violence against the Palestinians and even reject the violence of that Old Testament god who vengefully set us free.

I look for other ways, nonviolent organizations like Jewish Voice For Peace that back boycotts, disinvestments, and sanctions as major tools for Israeli political change. I tell myself that this was the way apartheid in South Africa was finally (and relatively peacefully) abolished. But although I support the JVP, I’m not particularly hopeful. Given the amount of money our politicians receive from American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Since 1998, AIPAC has spent $20,269,436 lobbying on the Hill, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to tracking money in politics.) and the blind willingness of our government to dump more and more aid to Israel (After World War II the United States has provided Israel at least $121 billion [current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars] in bilateral assistance.) with most going to their military. So what is there to hope for?

Now, I’m not a historian but I imagine most, if not all, nations have been created from blood and violence of one type or another. And I assume this has been true from the start of our species. But I am also growing to accept the disheartening reality that any people born from bloodletting will eventually use violence against others. Sad to say, I guess that’s what it means to be human.

I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Martin Luther King Jr.

SOME FINE LINES

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Since my books have all been published this month as eBooks and the latest as both an eBook and trade paperback, I’ve been in author mode. As a result I found myself reading their first chapters. Then I thought it might be fun to find some great lines (most are first sentences but not all) that weren’t mine and present them here. As I said in the notice for this column I’d love people to add their own favorites in the comment section. Remember, Umberto Eco once said, “The list is the origin of culture.”

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” – J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” – Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“Unlike the typical bluesy earthy folksy denim-overalls noble-in-the-face-of-cracker-racism aw shucks Pulitzer-Prize-winning protagonist mojo magic black man, I am not the seventh son of the seventh son of the seventh son.” – Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” – Samuel Beckett, Murphy

“I don’t hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I don’t. I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!” – William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.” – Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.” – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, The Inferno

“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.” – Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” – James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

“Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“The night of my mother’s funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband.” – Declan Hughes, The Wrong Kind of Blood

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.” – Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

“You wouldn’t think we’d have to leave Chicago to see a dead body.” – Richard Peck, A Long Way from Chicago

“It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.” – Toni Morrison, Sula

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” – William Gibson, Neuromancer

“The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” – Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” – L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“True! – nervous – very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” – Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

“Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.” – Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” – Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” – James Joyce, Ulysses

“The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Far Worse Than We Thought

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by Kent Ballard

There’s not much I can say about parents who insist on their children wearing crash helmets and body armor when they ride bikes while neglecting their childhood immunizations. Sure, piling up a bike can dent your head or scrape your knee. But the diseases stopped by safe and routine immunizations can kill a child, and not only that child but everyone else he manages to infect. Typhoid Mary (or Timmy) took a stroll through Disneyland recently and the butcher’s bill has yet to be calculated. Kids can ride out the measles. They’ll be sick, have a nasty fever, itchy spots and all that. But measles can kill any adult who’s never been exposed to them. It’s a safe bet we’ll be hearing more about this in the near future.

I don’t know about you, but if I had to forego the advice of medical professionals and trust, say, somebody’s wise old grandmother or a B-list TV personality, I’d probably go with grandma. Jenny McCarthy may have started the anti-vaccination movement which has now been discredited several times over, but without the sheer stupidity of many thousands of parents who listened to her it never would have become the problem it is now.

The parents who refused to have their children immunized should be tied into chairs and forced to watch Penn and Teller’s brilliant YouTube explanation about childhood vaccines. Leave them tied there for a week or so, however long it takes for the truth to soak into their cement skulls. Forget medical journals and hundreds of thousands of written words of research. What Penn and Teller did in around three minutes is the strongest case made for having children vaccinated I’ve ever seen.

But while McCarthy’s advice was both ridiculous and deadly, she did have the laudable goal of reducing the number of autistic children born in the United States. It’s hard to knock her for that, even if she inadvertently created another deadly public health problem. More children are born autistic every year. For some time the reason for this was a mystery. It certainly wasn’t the fault of the children themselves, and study after study could find no fault with the parents or anything they had in their environments.

Until now. And what has been discovered is beyond worrisome. It’s absolutely terrifying.

Stefanie Seneff is a research scientist for MIT. She worked in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence before turning to biology. She’s had papers published on everything from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer’s. In layman’s terms, that woman knows her stuff. Not too many people can be accurately described as brilliant. Ms. Seneff is one of those people.

Around seven months ago (June, 2014), Stefanie Seneff was asked to address a wellness organization in Groton, MA. No one was certain what her topic would be, but anything coming from her would be well-researched, timely, and highly interesting. But with her opening sentence, a hush fell over the assembled throng and she had the riveted, undivided attention of every soul in the room.

She said, “At today’s rate, by 2025, one in two children will be autistic.”

They said there was dead silence for a moment, then a murmur raced through the crowd. Surely they had misunderstood her. What did she say? Is she joking? No, no, no, this can’t be real…

It was. Those were her professional projections. Half of all kids will be autistic in ten years. And she went on to identify the real culprit behind this.

The Monsanto Corporation’s flagship weedkiller “Roundup” began to be heavily used in 1990 and has become more popular every year since. Seneff produced a chart showing the use of Roundup overlayed against the rising incidence of autism. They match almost perfectly. Even a mere glance at the chart indicates a dramatic correlation. She went on to describe MIT’s findings proving Roundup’s active ingredients were far more deadly and long-lasting than Monsanto’s claims, and that even what they referred to as “inert ingredients” in Roundup were anything but. Not only that, she proved exposure is cumulative. We’re all exposed to it daily, regardless of where we live, and we’re exposed often enough that we can’t shake it, can’t rid our bodies of it. It accumulates within us.

“But I live in the city”, you say. “I haven’t even seen a farm since my third grade class trip.” Okay, I have a few questions for you—Do you eat? Do you drink water? Do you have any bloody idea how many products contain corn and soybeans? Your pet’s food even contains both. Any meat you eat (and feed your children) was raised on corn and soybean meal in its feed, too. And after Roundup is sprayed on a field, where do you think it goes from there? It doesn’t just evaporate. The first rain will melt it into the ground. All rains after that press it deeper into the earth and spread it through the nations aquafiers. Millions upon millions of tons of grain are planted, grown, harvested, and sold from fields sprayed with Roundup. Helpfully, Monsanto sells a wide variety of seed to farmers that is “Roundup-Ready,” meaning it can be planted in a field that’s just been soaked with Roundup and will be immune to the poisons therein.

This isn’t the farmer’s fault. Monsanto assured everyone—including the FDA—that Roundup was perfectly safe. To the farmers, it’s just a great weedkiller, no more, no less. Their advanced knowledge of chemistry is probably on a par with any other profession. And you can “go organic” all you want. You’re still going to get thirsty sooner or later and the majority of all bottled water comes from a regular city tap somewhere. Or you might even take a shower or bath.

I live in farming country. Most farmers buy that stuff by the barrel anymore. Huge farms buy tanker trucks full of it. And very few involved with the sale, shipment, or use of that product knows what you know now…but word is spreading fast. Roundup is good, but not that good. And there are other weedkillers that can be used in modern agriculture. But Monsanto is not a humble mom-and-pop country feed and grain store. It’s a multibillion dollar industry giant with lobbyists, deep pockets, and heavy political clout. Roundup is their cash cow. They won’t go down without a fight. There will be investigations, more studies, hearings, and several setbacks before any kind of ban on Roundup and its satellite products can be put in place. But you’d better start supporting one now.

By the way, Monsanto was named “The Most Hated Company in America” several times. Don’t expect them to use their sense of public decency and the common good to kill one of their most profitable products. They’ll protect it at all costs. They will buy scientists, researchers, Congress if need be.

Here are a few things to remember: the number of children with autism has gone from 1 in 5,000 in 1975 to 1 in 68 in 2014. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has been found in the breast milk of American mothers at “dangerous” levels, 760 to 1600 times higher than the allowable limits in European drinking water. Americans have ten times the level of glyphosate in their urine than Europeans. Why the comparisons with Europe? They had the good sense never to legalize glyphosate for widespread use, only in very limited applications, most by goverment-trained and regulated agencies. And we are eating it, drinking it, literally bathing in it every day.

Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” brought an end to the use of DDT, but that took years. Roundup, in ten years, will leave this nation with 50% autism, and if that happens no one can predict the cost, or even if our nation could survive such a catastrophe. Think about that for a moment. Just think about that…and what it could lead a desperate and failing society to do.