Nagai’s camera is missing from the belongings returned by Burmese authorities.
Current mood: pissed off
THE BURMESE GOVERNMENT SHOULD TURN OVER HIS CAMERA AND THE CONTENT ON HIS VIDEO TAPE OR FACE FURTHER SANCTIONS!!! A BOYCOTT ON ANY OIL PRODUCED IN BURMESE TERRITORY WOULD BE A GOOD START ... PROBABLY WON'T HAPPEN BUT THAT WOULD BE THE RIGHT COURSE OF ACTION.
Japan Considers Serious Measures Against Burma By VOA News 01 October 2007
This series of photos released by the Democratic Voice of Burma shows the sequence of events of Kenji Nagai's death on the street in Rangoon
Nobutaka Machimura did not tell reporters Monday what measures Japan is considering.
Japan has sent its deputy foreign minister Mitohi Yabunaka to Burma to question the government about the death of video journalist Kenji Nagai during a crackdown on democracy activists.
A video of the incident appears to show a Burmese soldier shooting Nagai from about a meter away. The video, filmed from a distance, shows Nagai falling to the ground while holding a video camera.
Japan's Kyodo news agency says Japan will request the return of Nagai's camera, which was missing from the belongings returned by Burmese authorities.
Nagai was one of at least 10 people killed last week when Burmese military and police fired on protesters marching for freedom and democracy.
Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura met with top ministry officials Monday to discuss the situation in Burma. He said Burma ultimately needs democracy.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
AS they marched through the streets of Myanmar's cities last week leading the biggest antigovernment protests in two decades, some barefoot monks held their begging bowls before them. But instead of asking for their daily donations of food, they held the bowls upside down, the black lacquer surfaces reflecting the light.
It was a shocking image in the devoutly Buddhist nation. The monks were refusing to receive alms from the military rulers and their families — effectively excommunicating them from the religion that is at the core of Burmese culture.
That gesture is a key to understanding the power of the rebellion that shook Myanmar last week.
The country — the former Burma — has roughly as many monks as soldiers. The military rules by force, but the monks retain ultimate moral authority. The lowliest soldier depends on them for spiritual approval, and even the highest generals have felt a need to honor the clerical establishment. They claim to rule in its name.
Begging is a ritual that expresses a profound bond between the ordinary Buddhist and the monk. "The people are feeding the monks and the monks are helping the people make merit," said Josef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University. "When you refuse to accept, you have broken the bond that has tied them for centuries together."
Instead, the monks drew on a different and more fundamental bond with Myanmar's population, leading huge demonstrations after the government tried to repress protests that began a month ago over a rise in fuel prices.
By last week, the country's two largest and most established institutions were confronting each other, the monkhood and the military, both about 400,000 strong, both made up of young men, mostly from the poorer classes, who could well be brothers. Rejected by both its spiritual and popular bases, the junta that has ruled for 19 years had little to fall back on but force.
It unleashed its troops to shoot, beat, arrest and humiliate the men in brick-red robes, definitively alienating itself from the clergy whose support gives it legitimacy. Soldiers surrounded monasteries, preventing monks from leading further demonstrations — or from making their morning rounds to collect the alms that feed them.
In Myanmar and other Buddhist nations, many join the monkhood as a lifelong vocation, but many other young men become monks for shorter periods, ranging from a few months to a few years. These young monks remain closer to the lives and concerns of the people whose alms they receive.
Burmese monks have taken part in protests in the past, against British colonial rule and against a half-century of rule by military dictatorship. The most notable recent occasion was in 1990.
Their militant resistance to the British produced the most prominent political martyr of Burmese Buddhism, U Wisara, who died in prison in 1929 after a 166-day hunger strike.
His statue stands near the tall, golden Shwedagon Pagoda, the country's holiest shrine, which was a rallying point for the recent demonstrations and the scene of the first violence against the monks last week.
That attack came as a shock to people who said the military would not turn violently against the monks, and it had the predictable effect of arousing the fury of a devout population.
But monks have not always been in the political front lines. It was students, for example, who led the mass demonstrations of 1988 that brought the current junta to power in a military massacre.
The monks' power comes instead from their role in bestowing legitimacy on the rulers.
"Legitimacy in Burma is not about regime performance, it's not about human rights like the West," said Ingrid Jordt, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and an expert on Burmese Buddhism. "It is something that comes from the potency and karma bestowed by the monks. That's why the sangha is so important to the government," she said, referring to the Buddhist hierarchy and the spiritual status that its monks can convey. "They are actually the source of power."
The junta has gone to great lengths to identify itself with Buddhism. Like their predecessors through the centuries, the generals have been busy building temples, supporting monasteries and carrying out religiously symbolic acts. In 1999, they regilded the spire of the Shwedagon Pagoda, which now glitters with 53 tons of gold and 4,341 diamonds on the crowning orb.
The gilding of the spire was a high-risk ploy for an unpopular regime, an act permitted only to kings and legitimate rulers. When the two-ton, seven-tier finial was added and the spire was complete, the nation held its breath, waiting for the earth to send a signal of disapproval through lightning or thunder or floods, Ms. Jordt said. But nature remained indifferent.
"Aung pyi!" the generals shouted. "We won!"
But their grip on power has never been secure. They have ruled through a security service that keeps order through intimidation. They have arrested thousands of political prisoners and have held the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years.
In that context, the huge street demonstrations were an act of courage and catharsis.
They started tentatively on Aug. 19 after a fuel price increase raised the costs of transportation and basic goods. Veterans of the student demonstrations of 1988 staged small protests, but most were quickly arrested or driven into hiding. The unrest was fading when security officers beat monks and fired shots into the air during a confrontation in the city of Pakokku on Sept. 5.
That became a spark that grew into a broad-based challenge to the government, culminating last week in the breach between those who hold moral authority and those who have the guns.
"This was not an accidental uprising," said Zin Linn, a former editor and political prisoner who is now information minister for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exile opposition group based in Washington. The transition in leadership in the protests — from militant former students to activist monks — was well planned, he said, through secret meetings among young men sharing similar grievances and aspirations for their country. For the most part, it was not the elders who backed the protests. Over the years, the junta has worked to co-opt the Buddhist hierarchy, placing chosen men in key positions just as they have done in every other institution, angering and alienating the younger monks.
After the military clampdown on the monasteries last week, the streets of Yangon were mostly empty of monks. But their gesture of rejection of the junta, and the junta's violent response, had changed the dynamics of Burmese society in ways that had only begun to play out.
The junta's action "shows how desperate they are," Ms. Jordt said. "It shows that they are willing to do anything at this point in terms of violence. Once you've thrown your lot in against the monks, I think it will be impossible for the regime to go back to normal daily legitimacy."
Currently
listening
:
Rage Against the Machine
By
Rage Against the Machine
Release date: 10 November, 1992
"appalled by the death of a Japanese news photographer"
Current mood: angry
Category: News and Politics
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=23790
Japanese photographer killed, another foreign journalist injured
Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the death of a Japanese news photographer on the streets of Rangoon this morning. Kenji Nagai, fifty years old, worked for the photoagency APF. He has been in Burma for two days. Another foreign journalist was reportedly injured. The press casualties came after the security forces opened fire on demonstrators near the Tarder Hotel in the centre of Rangoon.
As the security forces step up their crackdown by firing on crowds and arresting hundreds of monks and pro-democracy activists, communications continue to be severely disrupted by the authorities.
Internet communication has been slowed right down while more mobile phones have been disconnected. Many blogs maintained by Burmese citizens have been made inaccessible by the authorities. Despite these restrictions, pictures and reports continue to get out of the country thanks to the foreign journalists present there and to Burmese journalists.
Dozens of foreign reporters who applied to the Burmese embassies in Bangkok or Beijing have been refused visas to visit Burma. Press visas are severely restricted by the military and scores of journalists and human rights activists have been blacklisted.
September 13, 2007 2 G.I.'s, Skeptical but Loyal, Die in a Truck Crash in Iraq By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — "Engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act," the seven soldiers wrote of the war they had seen in Iraq.
They were referring to the ordeals of Iraqi citizens, trying to go about their lives with death and suffering all around them. But sadly, although they did not know it at the time, they might almost have been referring to themselves.
Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They were not killed in combat, nor on a daring mission. They died when the five-ton cargo truck in which they were riding overturned.
The victims, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were among the authors of "The War as We Saw It," in which they expressed doubts about reports of progress.
"As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day," the soldiers wrote.
Sergeant Gray's mother, Karen Gray, said by telephone on Wednesday from Ismay, Mont., where Yance grew up, "My son was a soldier in his heart from the age of 5," and she added, "He loved what he was doing."
The sergeant's father, Richard, said of his son, "But he wasn't any mindless robot."
Sergeant Gray leaves a wife, Jessica, and a daughter, Ava, born in April. He is also survived by a brother and a sister.
Sergeant Mora's mother, Olga Capetillo of Texas City, Tex., told The Daily News in Galveston that her son had grown increasingly gloomy about Iraq. "I told him God is going to take care of him and take him home," she said.
A native of Ecuador, Sergeant Mora had recently become an American citizen. "He was proud of this country, and he wanted to go over and help," his stepfather, Robert Capetillo, told The Houston Chronicle. Sergeant Mora leaves a wife, Christa, and a daughter, Jordan, who is 5. Survivors also include a brother and a sister.
While the seven soldiers were composing their article, one of them, Staff Sgt. Jeremy A. Murphy, was shot in the head. He was flown to a military hospital in the United States and is expected to survive. The other authors were Buddhika Jayamaha, an Army specialist, and Sgts. Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck and Edward Sandmeier.
"We need not talk about our morale," they wrote in closing. "As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through."
August 19, 2007 Op-Ed Contributors The War as We Saw It By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
Currently
watching
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Gunner Palace Release date: 28 June, 2005
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten25aug25,0,941940.column?coll=la-home-center From the Los Angeles Times REGARDING MEDIA Vietnam war still draws fire Tim Rutten Regarding Media
August 18, 2007
It's curious, but with tens of thousands of Americans still fighting and dying in Iraq, the only sure- fire fighting words in American politics are "Vietnam War."
Jostle the commenting classes' collective psyche, and the wounds inflicted by that three-syllable trauma gape open. People who couldn't find Fallujah on the map with a searchlight or tell Shiites from Sheetrock will leap to apply "the lessons of Vietnam" -- as they understand them, of course.
For that reason, it would be easy to dismiss a great deal of the reaction to President Bush's recent speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Much of the traditional news media initially did just that, treating the president's invocation of Vietnam and its aftermath as if the memories it aroused were a phantom pain.
But stop there and you miss the truly significant response to the speech, much of which initially occurred in the blogosphere. It wasn't until Friday, in fact, that the print media's op-ed pages began to systematically analyze the implications of Bush's remarks.
It all made for a particularly instructive lesson on the well-established but rapidly evolving interplay between old and new media and on their respective strengths and shortcomings.
Much of what was most interesting turned on commentators' reaction to this section of Bush's address to the veterans: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're- education camps' and 'killing fields.' "
In other words, if we precipitously pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, chaos, suffering and mass murder will follow.
Hugh Hewitt, the conservative Republican activist, blogger and talk- show host, agreed quickly and sharply: "When I heard a radio interview with octogenarian Stanley Karnow (author of a Vietnam War history) last night ... ," he wrote, "I knew the president had not just touched a nerve, he'd touched the nerve in American history: Complicity in foreseeable genocide is, after all, a big deal.
"This is the ghost haunting the anti-war left, and the left shudders and screams whenever it floats into the room. All those millions of Cambodians didn't have to die, and all those boat people didn't have to sail into death or exile ... And the Democratic Congress elected in 1974 didn't have to abandon South Vietnam to North Vietnam. America's Vietnam policy of intervention, manipulation, and then withdrawal represented a series of choices. The Democrats of those years, urged on by a hard left anti-war front, finally made a choice to leave, a choice with awful consequences.
"This is the crucial point: The Democratic Party and their supporters made that choice, cheered on by the anti-war left. They own the consequences."
Bare-knuckle stuff, but serious. So, too, was the mirror-image commentary that just as quickly appeared on the blogosphere's left flank. Here's one of the bloggers on the liberal site whizbangblue.com:
"( Bush's) argument is a popular one among neoconservatives embittered by the disaster in Iraq and seeking to shame the American people into supporting a continuation of this debacle until a Democrat occupies the White House and can be blamed for losing the war. But it is historically inaccurate ... We all know who eventually toppled the Khmer Rouge and put an end to the killing fields. Not the Americans. Not the French. Not the British. That's right, it was the Vietnamese Communists who invaded Cambodia and toppled the Khmer Rouge, putting an end to that genocidal regime.
"President Bush, because of his ignorance of the actual history of Vietnam, has clearly drawn the wrong conclusions with respect to Iraq. The conclusion we should draw is that civil wars in foreign countries are best settled by the people in those countries themselves. In Vietnam, our meddling greatly extended the conflict and increased the number of casualties on both sides ... By perpetuating our involvement in Iraq, we are only increasing the final death toll of this misguided and unnecessary war that didn't have to happen."
There was more of the same to be had in greater detail across the Web. But if it seems as if the argument is less about an impending tsunami of Iraqi blood than it is about who should be blamed for it, it's because one of the things this week's exchange demonstrates is how divided politically engaged Americans remain by competing historical memories of Vietnam.
On the right, Vietnam remains an example of defeat snatched from the jaws of military victory by an ideologically motivated defeatist fifth column on the home front.
On the left, Vietnam is a morality play involving the horrific consequences of imperial hubris and political mendacity.
About the only thing on which red and blue agree is that the Southeast Asian war was a historic tragedy compounded by bad American decisions. The Web -- even when it is serious and knowledgeable, as it was in this instance -- remains an intensely politicized medium. People talk past rather than to each other.
By Friday, the traditional print medium had begun to play catch-up. Rosa Brooks took biting issue with Bush's historical causality on t he Los Angeles Times' op-ed page. Max Boot explored a series of nuanced cautions in T he Wall Street Journal; h e urged the Senate Democrats to take a look at what followed the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem before urging Nouri al- Maliki's ouster and warned the administration to prepare for the worst by issuing more visas to Iraqis who have cooperated with the United States.
The online edition of Britain's Financial Times posted an analysis by Kenneth Luce quoting President Carter's national security advise r, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
"Americans have accepted that the war in Iraq is unwinnable," he said. "But that doesn't mean they want to see images of helicopters taking off from the Green Zone and troops abandoning tanks and equipment as they retreat. Bush was appealing to America's desire to avoid another Vietnam-style humiliation, however wrong-headed his underlying analysis."
The controversy over how to parse Bush's speech wasn't the week's only striking example of how our serious political discussion now involves an interplay between traditional and new media.
Last Sunday, T he New York Times published an op-ed piece by seven soldiers and noncommissioned officers currently serving in Iraq with one of the army's premier fighting units, the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. Their conclusion: "In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal."
Seven Army and Marine Corps veterans of the Iraq w ar drafted a reply and submitted it to T he New York Times, which declined to publish it. Friday, the vets' piece was posted on the Weekly Standard's W eb site. In their view, "General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker understand the principles of counterinsurgency and are applying them up and down the chain of command. It's unfortunate that soldiers in the 82nd Airborne have not yet benefited from the new strategy, but it will ensure that their actions, and those of their fallen brethren, will not have been in vain."
This new world in which online and print commentary complement each other already is deepening our civic conversation in ways that clearly matter. Will it help us move from cacophony to consensus? In a democracy, is that ever attainable -- or even desirable?
Currently
reading
:
Vietnam: A History
By
Stanley Karnow
Release date: 01 June, 1997
Two great art shows this weekend in Bloomington!!!!
Category: Art and Photography
One, check out Ryan Wood's painting show at Sweet Hickory. I saw some of these paintings a few weeks ago when he was still working on them and they are RAD!
last chance to see.. photo work by justin clifford rhody. until thursday may 24th 2-8 ! UPCOMING EVENTS... SATURDAY MAY 26th!!!!! OPENING!! THIS SATURDAY MAY 26th 8-11 pm!! Chiara Galimberti, Amy Noblitt, Ryan Woods... paintings, prints, drawings and other constructions @ SWEET HICKORY! 317 e 3rd street in Bloomington daily 2-8 until mid june!! ------------------------ woohoo! xoxo, SH @SWEET HICKORY!!! 317 east 3rd street! B L O O M I N G T O N !
Two, go to the art cookout at Jeremy Kennedy's place.
"CooKout" (group art installation) Saturday May 26th, 2007 4:00pm - 11:00pm 804 South Rogers Street
A group art installation in an open house setting. Featuring new work by Rob Dietz, Shane Edge, Erik and Stephanie Kaye, J. Shelley Harrison, David Hassell, Crab Jackson, Jeremy Kennedy, (knee shy), Josh Kreuzman, Amy Noblitt, Justin Clifford Rhody, Mark Rice, Peter Shear, Robb Stone, Hannah Walsh, and Brad Wicklund. THIS IS NOT A COOKOUT!!! However, this is three floors and a yard filled with fantastic new art and some food. Music spun by D.J. Bundlyn B.Y.O."
Currently
listening
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Hunky Dory
By
David Bowie
Release date: 28 September, 1999
Executed man's last request honored -- pizza for homeless Story Highlights • Hundreds of pizzas were delivered to Nashville homeless shelters Wednesday • Death row prisoner asked that his last meal be pizza for a homeless person • Prison refused to honor his request, saying it doesn't donate to charity • One woman and her friends paid $1,200 to fulfill Philip Workman's last wish By Ashley Fantz CNN
(CNN) -- Hundreds of homeless people in Nashville, Tennessee, ate well Wednesday evening -- all in the name of a man who the state put to death just hours earlier.
Philip Workman, 53, requested that his final meal be a vegetarian pizza donated to any homeless person located near Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
He was executed there at 2 a.m. ET Wednesday.
But prison officials refused to honor his request, saying that they do not donate to charities.
That apparently upset a few people willing to pay for and deliver a lot of pies themselves.
Homeless shelters across Nashville were inundated with donated pizzas all Wednesday.
"I was like, 'Wow, Jesus!' " said Marvin Champion, an employee of Nashville's Rescue Mission, which provides overnight shelter, food and assistance to more than 800 homeless people a night.
"I used to be homeless, so I know how rough it gets. I seen some bad times -- not having enough food, the cupboards are bare. But we got pizza to feed enough people for awhile," Champion said.
"This really shows the people here that someone out there thought of them." $1,200 worth of pies
Donna Spangler heard about Workman's request and immediately called her friends. They all pitched in for the $1,200 bill to buy 150 pizzas, which they sent to the Rescue Mission.
"Philip Workman was trying to do a good deed and no one would help him," said the 55-year-old who recruited a co-worker to help her make the massive delivery Wednesday evening.
"I knew my husband would have a heart attack -- I put some of it on the credit card. But I thought we'll find a way to pay for them later," she said. "I just felt like I had to do something positive."
Spangler wasn't the only person to place an order in Workman's name.
The president of the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals read a news story about the prison denying the inmate's last request and ordered 15 veggie pizzas sent to the Rescue Mission Wednesday morning.
"Workman's act was selfless, and kindness to all living beings is a virtue," said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk.
Not far away, 17 pizzas arrived at Nashville's Oasis Center, a shelter that helps about 260 teenagers in crisis. By 9 p.m. ET, more pizzas had arrived, said executive director Hal Cato.
"We talked to the kids and they understand what this is tied to and they know that this man [Workman] wanted to do something to point out the problems of homelessness."
When Workman robbed a Wendy's in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1981, he was a strung-out cocaine addict looking for a way to pay for his next high, he has said.
He was homeless at the time. Workman was convicted of shooting and killing Memphis Police Lt. Ronald Oliver during the robbery.
Many of the pizzas ordered in Workman's name were delivered anonymously, but the first 17 at Oasis Center came from a Minneapolis, Minnesota, radio station that devoted much of its morning show time talking about Workman's request.
"They were upset about it," said Cato.
He plans to call other homeless shelters in Nashville Thursday and share the pies. "They should be able to benefit from this, too," he said.
Cliff Tredway, the director of public relations for the Rescue Mission, said it's more than pizzas that helped that shelter.
"It's the story of a guy whose execution translated into a generous act," he said. "It's people donating to other people they don't know.
"It's about a group of people who society often writes off getting a pizza party today."
Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/09/execution.pizza/index.html
pissed off
angry
