At Sat, 13 Mar 1999 16:33:25 +0100, you wrote:
>
>Joe,
>can you explain me why America, which still allows some of its States to apply death
>penalty, should be worried about Ocalan execution in Turkey, a country which seems to
>have forgotten human rights long ago?
>
I can cite one case which changed my view on the death penalty: the Oklahoma City
bombing perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh. I lived in Oklahoma City for two years, and
my father was a federal employee (an accountant) until his retirement several years
ago, and worked in federal buildings there. Each one of those dead people had
irreplaceable faces, families and lives. The only way the families of the slaughtered
could have received some semblance of proportionality, if not recompense, for their
massive individual and collective loss would have been for McVeigh to have been cloned
168 times, and then for them all to be executed together.
>
>I'm not able to see any immoral policy from the U.S. point of view..
>
Turkey has for too long received a free pass from the US not only concerning Turkish
vis-a-vis the Kurds, but also their actions in Cyprus as regarding the Greek Cypriot
portion of its population. This has been a sad consequence of three interrelated
factors; Turkey's membership in NATO, their geopolitically crucial location and their
willingness to let the US use their country and its location as a staging ground for
US military purposes. The US government does not want to endanger their ability to
conduct parts of the military component of their foreign policy from Turkey, and this
causes the US to be shamefully silent when such actions occur. Unfortunately, as long
as Saddam Hussein remains in power, this calculated strategically inspired lip zipping
is likely to continue.
>
>anyway, in my opinion, Turkey could decide not to kill him (or not to kill him
>"officially"..) just to avoid the birth of a martyr, of a myth, which can cause more
>dangerous consequences and the U.S. will agree with this policy..
>
Would Nelson Mandela have been more inspiring, after a few years had passed, as a
long-dead martyr myth than as the living, breathing symbol of indomitable resistance
he was? It is only my opinion, but I think not.
>
>Marta.
>
Let me also hasten to express my personal sorrow at the unjustifiable verdict rendered
by a military court concerning the willfully negligent murder of twenty of your
citizens. Please believe me when I tell you that I, as well as the overwhelming
majority of citizens with whom I have discussed this tragedy, consider the pilot's
responsibility and guilt to be beyond dispute. The acquittal was an unjust and unfair
judgment rendered by members of a military fraternity which should have been recused
from the case due to an obvious conflict of loyalties.
>
>joe dees ha scritto:
>
>> Recently, the Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was arrested in Italy and
>deported to Turkey for trial. Europe-wide protests followed. The Kurdish population
>has traditionally lived in southwestern Turkey, northern Iraq, northern Syria and
>northwestern Iran, and at 30 million, comprises the largest stateless sthnic group in
>the world. The PKK began its struggle nonviolently, and began violent resistance
>after being targeted by the governments controlling their traditional territory.
>Other leaders who began nonviolent struggle and subsequently resorted to violent
>uprising for possession of their own state include Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela and
>Yassar Arafat. In another 10 years, had he not been captured, Ocalan may have been
>able to reach a position in the statehood struggle resembling Arafat's, with a likely
>disintegration of Iraq following the eventual end of Saddam Hussein's rule ceding
>them the north and Iran the Shi'ia south. However, with the example of !
!
N!
>el!
>> !
>> son Mandela before them, it is all but certain that Turkey will execute Abdullah
>Ocalan, to forestall any possibility of a repetition. The US might be quite willing
>for such a resolution, considering the diplomatic and domestic difficulties which it
>found itself having to negotiate concommitant with the ascendancy of the other
>mentioned leaders and the desire to avoid such problems in the future; however, if
>such is the case, it is an immoral policy, for the Kurcish people deserve their own
>state no less than the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Zulus and the Xhosas.
>> Joe E. Dees
>> Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
>>
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Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
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