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Show 4 Wednesday February 12, 2014 OPINION www.dailyutahchronicle.corn U.S. must not give in to gov't corruption ROSE JONES •■ ki0 Columnist T Duensing also points out that capital punishment isn't much of a deterrent to crime, since criminals do not intend on being caught. The murder rate has been higher in death penalty states than those that have abolished it, and 88 percent of criminologists believe it doesn't prevent violent crime. Some may argue the death penalty is more humane than letting criminals rot in prison, but since four states allow euthanasia versus the 35 that still have the death penalty, the subject's will does not seem to be of high priority. Given such disdain from the EU and a system that has to scramble, cheat and improvise at the risk of those already receiving the ultimate punishment just to maintain its quota, the U.S. needs to put this archaic practice to rest. here is something exciting and tranquil about spending a month or two in a thatched palapa in the middle of a living jungle in Mexico during the rainy season. During a couple of pulse-pounding storms, my old police friend Leslie and I opened up to each other and shared our mutual nightmares and how we were damaged, mentally and physically, by years of police work and the unjustified war for wealth in Iraq. We both risked our lives, had our hearts broken and lost people we loved to do what we thought was right. We got out before security landed its role in big business, and police work became synonymous with militant suppression of peace activists. Corporate demands, and the U.S. plutocrats' love affair with the wealth they get from them, drove the military invasion and occupation of Iraq. Without knowledge of weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaida connections or threats from Saddam Hussein, the attack was planned, executed and instituted by a team of corrupt lobby puppets, former President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It is common knowledge now that the Bush-Blair fame held secret talks prior to any public word about Iraq to facilitate the United States and U.K. into a war for weapons and oil investors. Propaganda had to be designed in order to uphold the valor of the U.S. military in the eyes of the families that would be sending their children off to war. As former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan stated in 2004 regarding the U.S.-led Iraq invasion, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter point of view, it was illegal." Bush and Blair moved ahead anyway, proving they were willing to sacrifice thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives for the sake of financial benefit. Leslie thought she was fighting an enemy that hated the U.S. and democracy. She fought with honor as a defender of the U.S., acting on the orders of the Bush administration and a Congress who would never send a loved one into battle. As I helped feed and bandage Iraqis who were wounded and starving from the same war Leslie was fighting in, I felt bitterness and shame. The Iraqis with whom I stayed were the most loving and gracious people I had ever met. And even though little Yasmeen was missing four of her fingers because of a night raid in her Iraqi neighborhood, she laughed and smiled and moved ahead with her life. I couldn't understand how we were supposed to allow this atrocious killing of innocent people. It was good for Leslie and I to spend time together in Yelapa, because understanding the perspective from our differing yet similar experiences was and is a tremendous step forward in healing. We are now in the U.S., a country ripe with governmental aporia and media propaganda, but the American people learned from the Iraq war. And if President Barack Obama tries the same secret tactics as Bush did with Blair, we will know it, and we will do everything in our power to stop another war from happening. letters@chronicle.utah.edu letters@chronicle.utah.edu GREY LEMAN/The Daily Utah Chronicle Internet should be equal opportunity T StaffWriter he debate over net neutrality or whether Internet service providers should give preferential treatment to certain websites — giving more bandwidth to some websites to make them faster while others remain slow or almost nonfunctional — is a very real one. Recently, a federal court ruling struck down a regulation that ensures net neutrality. This is a problem. Websites should be favored by how well they cater to visitors, not by the whims of Internet service providers. Retaining net neutrality is important in the digital age. With net neutrality, Internet providers have to treat all websites the same. They can't give more bandwidth to one or the other to make different websites faster. Without it, this equal opportunity disappears, which could facilitate sketchy business practices. For example, one provider could make the websites of its competitors slower. Service providers could favor different email or video websites, depending on what alliances they have and what might be better for their business. Without net neutrality, service providers could demand that websites pay for better treatment. Some companies, such as Google and Amazon, could easily afford that, but smaller websites couldn't. So the rich would get richer, and the poor would get poorer. The larger web companies would have increased traffic because they can afford to provide better service for their customers, while the websites who couldn't afford it would suffer from the reduced traffic. One function of Internet service providers is to continually improve so customers will keep paying. Without net neutrality, Internet service providers have new ways to make more money, such as charging companies exorbitant fees for broadband, as I mentioned earlier. They wouldn't be as concerned with keeping customers satisfied. The quality of the Internet would go down for almost everybody. There have been recent suspicions that Verizon has been intentionally slowing Netflix down, which raises another concern. A lot of Internet service providers also provide cable TV. They would get more cable viewership if it weren't for websites like Netflix and Hulu, which are cheaper than cable. Providers could make it slower to stream online videos, which would give them more cable business. Net neutrality doesn't hurt any businesses. Small businesses on the Internet can stay afloat while large web companies and Internet providers still do just fine. Getting rid of net neutrality creates unnecessary problems with the system. It hurts small businesses when the large ones aren't threatened at all. It also inconveniences everyone with higher fees and slower Internet. In the 21st century, the Internet is an important part of everyone's life. Net neutrality is important and should be a priority. letters@chronicle.utah.edu Death penalty cruel, impractical, archaic StaffWriter 4%4) I t took 26 minutes to kill Dennis McGuire, using an untested lethal injection. Considering the Eighth Amendment clause against cruel and unusual punishment, the state of Ohio doesn't have much of a defense against the lawsuit McGuire's family filed as a result. According to the Christian Science Monitor, criminal justice departments are allowed to use shifty practices that border torture for a punishment over half of Americans and nearly every other country in the Western Hemisphere are opposed to. CNN reported that the European Union has begun to deny sales of drugs that are going to be used in lethal injections, which also limits them for medical uses. In response to the shortage, some states have tried to fake orders to American pharmacies concealing the drugs' purpose, while others have been attempting different combinations. It takes the Food and Drug Administration over a year of testing to approve even the mildest of drugs, and a state government is allowing experimentation with an unwilling human subject, even after Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley, wrote it is unknown "how long it will take or what he will experience." The death penalty is inhumane. No member of the U.S. legal system and no jury has the authority to pass that kind of judgment on a person. Families of the victims of death row inmates may want to see that person meet the same fate as their loved ones, but this "eye for an eye" GREY LEMAN/The Daily Utah Chronicle punishment does little to separate the law-abiding members of society from the criminals. It is impossible to know the mental state or social pressures the accused was in at the time of the crime. Is it unreasonable to consider that the person may be suffering from an unidentified mental problem? To say that an individual deserves death is an absolutist way to look at this issue. Death gives the defendant no chance for any sort of redemption and leaves no room for flaws in our far-from-flawless legal system. One hundred and thirty people on death row have been released for wrongful conviction since 1973. Giving even a few innocent people their lives is worth giving slightly more empathetic sentences. A life's sentence of incarceration protects society from future crimes, but there are no practical reasons for the death penalty. It does not benefit the state or taxpayers to execute an inmate. With all the appeals and sentencing hearings, understandable for those who are fighting for their lives, there is a large sum of money spent on lawyers and judges. Sarah Duensing, a junior in environmental and political science, wrote in a research essay: states that have an average capital punishment case in Texas costs as much as keeping a prisoner in a maximum security prison for 4o years. Furthermore, Kansas State Sen. Carolyn McGinn (R-Harvey County) estimated that $500,000 would be saved per case. The cost is further increased because of the extended stay on death row. In 2006 in California, inmates spent an average of almost 20 years on death row, at a cost of $90,000 more than other inmates, because of increased security and special conditions. |