Gündem Haberleri

    A Bird’s Eye View: Invading private lives

    by Advena Avis
    25.04.2009 - 00:00 | Son Güncelleme:

    As time passes, we birds are beginning to understand more and more some of the reasons that have created the human global financial crisis. One such reason, which we briefly commented about in one of our previous columns, has to do with the tendency that you humans have to put a monetary value on everything, whether it is good or bad.

    Let us be more specific. In the United States, capital punishment has been banned in only 14 out of 50 states. Now we will soon have eight other states that are considering banning capital punishment. But the death penalty in those eight other states will not be banned for reasons of morality but only for reasons of cost. Studies are showing that administering the death penalty on humans is usually more costly than keeping a human in prison for life. According to one such study, a case resulting in a death sentence costs $3 million, almost 2 million more than when the death penalty was not sought. Prisoners on death row are obliged to have private cells and of course this takes up space in the prison, thus increasing the costs, etc. So they will cut costs in order to confront huge budget deficits by abolishing the death penalty.

    While we welcome the abolishment of the death penalty in eight more states of the U.S., we still find it shameful to abolish the death penalty for financial reasons rather than for moral ones. At least the global financial crisis is having some positive results. This should make some NGOs who deal in protecting human rights reassess their strategies and prove in numbers that violating human rights is more costly to any country than not violating them.

    The price of human life
    By the way, we wonder what the price of human life is? Is it more than $40 per kilo or less? Does the U.S. have a study on that? Perhaps. But from the actions of the previous U.S. administration, we have the impression that the price of human life might be even less than $40 per kilo.

    The human rights situation in the U.K. is slowly but steadily deteriorating as more and more U.K. citizens are being put under constant surveillance by the state. Under the excuse of combating terrorist threats, the London Metropolitan Police have undertaken a terrorist campaign that incites humans to snoop on the contents of their neighbor's garbage for suspicious items like empty chemical bottles, etc. The police are also requesting citizens to report on other citizens who look toward public surveillance cameras. We find these measures stupid and ineffective in preventing terrorist attacks for the simple reason that if everybody starts snooping into each other’s trash cans, they will, of course, always find something suspicious, like an empty bottle of iodine or alcohol, etc. The police will be inundated by thousands of telephone calls every day, which would incapacitate them by not allowing them to have the time to deal with true terrorist threats since they will be examining garbage all day. And why can’t a citizen look at a camera? He or she may be, after all, saying hello to a family member who would be on the monitoring team. But why should the state look at the citizens and not vice versa? So please, U.K. humans, wake up and do something before you return to "1984."

    Ponder our thoughts, dear humans, for your benefit.


      Sayfa Başı