Category Archives: Viva!

Race Commissioner: Australia is going backwards on racism

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In his final speech as Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Tim Soutphommasane says “there has never been a more exciting time to be a dog-whistling politician.”

Boris Johnson told to apologise over ‘totally out of order’ burka comments

Thumb in your eye Boris is having his fun any one’s expense he can unless he is run out of Tory Party!

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British Prime Minister Theresa May and other senior Conservatives tell former foreign secretary Boris Johnson to say sorry for a newspaper column in which he wrote burka-wearing women looked like “letter boxes” and bank robbers.

US sanctions target Iran’s access to US banknotes and key industries

North Korea can start selling its fake $100s and $50s again. Russia will sell steel and aluminum to Iran, and oil will be sold to Russian agents and repackaged to run overseas Trump resorts?

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The United States re-imposed a wave of tough, unilateral sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, bringing back into effect harsh penalties that had been lifted under a historic, multi-party nuclear agreement that President Donald Trump abandoned in May.

Charlottesville’s first black female mayor: ‘We’re not a post-racial nation’

I feel like the majority of the city council, when I walk in the room, the conversation shifts. People are quiet. I’m kept out of a lot of discussions. It’s still worth it. It changes the conversation. They are no longer in control of the narrative. Whether they exclude me or not, I’m in the story.

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A year after white supremacists marched through the liberal city, Nikuyah Walker says the left needs less talk and more action

A year ago, white supremacist groups marched with torches through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. The city reacted by electing its first black female mayor, Nikuyah Walker, 38, a fierce critic of how city officials had handled last year’s far-right protests.

An independent, Walker ran under the campaign slogan “Unmasking the illusion”. She argued that Charlottesville’s Democratic politicians had failed to do enough to tackle systemic racism and economic inequality, and that it was time for a deeper change.

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Planet at risk of heading towards irreversible “Hothouse Earth” state

via aleksey godin

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06/08/2018 – Keeping global warming to within 1.5-2°C may be more difficult than previously assessed. An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of the planet entering what the scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions. A “Hothouse Earth” climate will in the long term stabilize at a global average of 4-5°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures with sea level 10-60 m higher than today, the paper says. The authors conclude it is now urgent to greatly accelerate the transition towards an emission-free world economy.

“The Evils in the World” – A Response to Prosecutor Joe Deters

On Thursday, August 2, the catechism of the Catholic Church was officially updated to deem the death penalty always “inadmissible” because it “attacks” the inherent dignity of all humans. As Prosecutor Joe Deters is currently seeking the death penalty in the trial of Anthony Kirkland, he was asked about how his faith impacts his decision to seek the death penalty. He remarked, “There is evil in this world and there comes a point where society needs to defend itself.” Sr. Andrea Koverman published a response that we have sent to the Cincinnati Enquirer but it has not yet been published. 

Andrea is a Sister of Charity of Cincinnati and manages the Anti-Death Penalty and Peace/Nonviolence Programs at the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.


Yes, Mr. Deters, there are evils in the world, and capital punishment is one of them.

My day at the Intercommunity Justice & Peace Center began on a hopeful note as I read that Pope Francis announced a change in the Catholic Church’s official position on capital punishment. Though generally not supporting the practice for the obvious reason that it breaks God’s commandment not to kill, the Catechism of the Catholic Church left a loophole that has been used to justify executing high profile murderers. Pope Francis prescribes to the idea that society can be protected without killing perpetrators, and so do I.

I manage the Anti-Death Penalty programming, and it is my job to create opportunities to educate the public about the realities of the death penalty. In all that we do, we acknowledge the lives taken by those who are on death row, while we advocate for abolition. We are supported by some faith-based communities but our information is not only for people of faith, it is for all of society. Everything I’ve learned while in this position would affirm my opposition to capital punishment even if I weren’t a sister, a Catholic, a Christian, and was simply a rational human being.

In 2007, the American Bar Association found that Ohio failed to meet 93% of the guidelines to ensure a “fair” and “accurate” death system. That is evil. In 2014, a task force formed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio and the President of the Ohio State Bar Association made 56 recommendations that would have gone a long way to reduce the institutionalized injustices within the system. To date, only a few of them have been addressed through legislative action. That is evil. Color of skin and level of affluence have more to do with receiving a death sentence than the circumstances of the crime. That is evil. Legal errors, misconduct and negligence result in high rates of wrongful convictions, near-death experiences of innocent people, and wrongful state sanctioned killing. That is evil. Families of murder victims are promised closure but must endure decades of reliving the loss of their loved one while awaiting an execution, only to discover that it did nothing to stop their grief. That is evil. We ignore the well-documented fact that our death-row population is characterized by mental illnesses and/or horrific abuse and neglect during their formative years, expecting that they would overcome the damage such trauma causes without assistance simply by reaching the age of reason. We choose to spend the precious revenue that could be used to better fund our foster care, mental health and social welfare systems instead to kill those who failed to be good victims of these failing systems. That is evil.

But the implication that Catholics, including Mr. Deters’ “dear friends who are priests” who oppose the death penalty on moral grounds “just don’t understand what we’re dealing with” is both condescending and inaccurate. A litany of names of Catholic activists come to mind who do get it, Fathers: Oscar Romero, Roy Borgeois, Greg Boyle, James Martin, John Dear, Lawrence Hummer, Neil Kookoothe…Not to mention women, like Sr. Helen Prejean. Did they, did she just not understand the evils in the world? Hardly.

Catholics and all Christians claim Jesus Christ as their God and Savior and profess to be followers of the way of mercy and love for all people, but in particular those most rejected by the rest of society. There are no people more demonized and devalued than those on death row, and hard as it is to recognize and respect the inherent value in human beings who commit heinous gruesome crimes, that is what Christians are called to do. That isn’t always popular. Sometimes it’s downright dangerous, as it was for Jesus. Who, may I remind you, was wrongfully convicted and became a victim of state-sanctioned killing by execution.

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