> What gets on my nerves is
> not human beings but cartoon-like celebrity figures and symbol
> manipulators turning this somber event into a media circus.
> Completely tasteless and disgusting, but quintessentially American.
>
> Wojtek
>
I'm sorry... travesties of "justice" are also "Completely tasteless and disgusting, but quintessentially American.", and it's perhaps worth noting that the callousness inherit in allowing this behavior as a society seems to rubs off on anyone who resides here...
Tookie Williams last words in the "chamber" according to an AP reporter. "You are killing an innocent man."
Portions of this were posted to another list: <...> Schwarzenegger also said that the dedication of a Williams book entitled "Life in Prison" mentions convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and the one-time "Soledad Brother" prison activist George Jackson, the accused killer of a San Quentin correctional officer who was killed trying during an escape attempt from the prison in which three officers and three other inmates also died.
"(T)he inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems," Schwarzenegger said. <...> http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/13970837p-14804839c.html
Honorary mention... Cointelpro, GIUs, Comandante (Barbe)Cinque of the SLA, a "revolutionary" group consisting of dupes and police agents, a police operation in it's entirety. Daryl Gate, and the LAPD of the 80s... perhaps the most corrupt police force in the world at the time (Mike Ruppert knows... He was an LAPD drug cop around that time)
More currently any one who would claim the mantle of Crip or Blood would most likely be a police or federal agent, and since it is mentioned in a number of news pieces that the Crips are still active, (it's also one of the stated reasons why clemency was denied...) even though disbanded by their founder. I read that as meaning the police and feds are still literally selling drugs in impoverished communities around America and the world, and Tookie Williams paid the price for that, for allowing his people to be used as tools by the narco/police state apparatus.
That's what Tookie figured out, and it's why there was no clemency... He finally became a REAL threat to the state, instead of thinking that the gang he had helped create threatened the power structure that itself causes the formation of social/criminal structures like the crips, bloods, Blackstone Rangers(Chicago '60s).
He figured out that he was working for the "man". Too little, too late, Tookie... R.I.P.
<...> Jonathan Harris, one of Williams attorneys, argued that Williams was transformed and took strong exception to the governor's decision. "I read this statement to be that the governor believes that an innocent man, a man who said he is innocent, has to confess to get clemency," <...>
Note: generally speaking "Clemency" does not need to take into account such issues of guilt, innocence, evidence et al, but is SOLELY at the discretion of the power that grants it, and so, perhaps our Buff Bufoon in the governor's office is, in reality, a powerless little man.
<...> A pardon is the forgiveness of a crime and the penalty associated with it. It is granted by a sovereign power, such as a monarch. Clemency is an associated term which is the lessening of the penalty of the crime without forgiving the crime itself. The act of clemency is a reprieve. <...> http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=define%3Aclemency&btnG=Search
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