Monday 21 January 2008

Human Embryo cloned from Skin Cell

I Am Legend is one of the few Hollywoodian sci-fi films I can say to have appreciated.

The message is clear (ignoring the disappointing "happy ending"): meddle with life, and life will spiral out of control; try to further harness the malfunction and this will backlash even further.

That is the moral of the film as I took it: The imaginary scenario in which a cure for cancer is found, which ultimately causes those 'cured' to be mutated and de-humanised.

Is it right to interfere with life? Should scientists be playing with the creation of life?

Should we be able to manufacture and use life as we please to then cut up, and produce body parts like machinery components?

Well, what ever is right or wrong, science already has it, the first skin cell has been 'successfully' developed into an embryo.

No this is not a sci-fi film, this is true, and already past as it was announced already a week ago.

Like many people, I could wish for a cure to cancer to have existed two years ago when someone I loved, died from it. But I, as that person also did, believe in life as it is.

It frightens to realise that in a few decades we could be farming embryos as we do trees for matches and sawdust furniture, or like replacement parts.


Who dies and who survives?

Are WE, humanity to control this portal too now?

On one side far too many 'developed' countries and superpowers command death through legal systems; on the other, lives are to be artificially created to be snapped when needed.

Monday 7 January 2008

Kenny Richey returns home after 21 years in prison

Kenny Richey should arrive tomorrow in UK after the ordeal of 21 years spent in prison in USA accused of arson and the involuntary death of a two year old girl.

One hour from being executed 13 years ago, his sentence was halted, and his life put on pause, once again until yesterday, when officially his case reached a final verdict after he pleaded 'no contest' in Ohio.

Imprisoned since 1987, he is to be free, having 'already spent' the years he was sentenced to in yesterday's court for entry breakage and involuntary man slaughter.

One cannot conceive of the infinite desperation of time he has lived, locked away for a crime that was not proven he committed.

Is that right?

Who has the right to steal 20 years of someone's life for a crime not proven?

Who has the cold courage to tell him that he will be freed, as he has 'already spent' the years convicted to him yesterday?

Not only is the death penalty a dangerous topic to venture into, as opinions differ sharply, but that of incarceration, and crime punishment is a vast debate, pulling many questions and aspects into cause.

Is the American judicial system moral? Are those of the European Court or other systems in Asia or Africa moral?

Law has to exist of course and it would be insane to pretend that a functional state could exist with no strict rules, but it seams to me, not enough attention and consideration is given to improving and developing this vital part of the judicial system.

Laws have to exist, so do punishments, but to throw away people that might never have caused any harm, voluntarily or involuntarily, is not only a waste of taxes, but a waste of human life.

It is not surprising to find this blind-folded mechanism often corrodes half-decent people into criminals, out of sour bitterness, thanks to faith in humanity dissolved into capitalist, capitalist and capitalist ideologies driving all other moral, political, and nationalist attitudes in most countries of our globe.

Cynical? Yes.

Not condemning a specific country, or institution, but the millennium’s worst disease, which I believe to be the dead-end race off the edge off the edge of reason.

I see bugs eating and destroying a planet, climbing a senseless pile resembling the tower of Babel, hoping the earth won't sink, not just yet.

A staggering step higher, up the pile of digits, as Oxygen get thinner, but the important is the digits get bigger, right?

I feel sorry for Kenny, I’m not sure though, whether for his shock in having to adapt to this virtual-run reality we now live in, or the meaning that life is moulding into.

Friday 4 January 2008

What price do you give to life?

Who says buying free-range, organic chickens and eggs makes no difference?

Those attached to their pennies, more than to their usual fashionable talk of animal cruelty, while they go and stuff them selves with MacDonald's chcken nuggets and buy value chickens at supermarkets.

What price does decency have?

What price does life have?

Is it really worth the unconceivable pain and sufferance endured by chickens?

An article from today’s Independet says it all in, " The true cost of cheap chicken", by Martin Hickman, The Independent.

Watch the video shot by an animal welfare group, Compassion in World Farming(CIWF), which is also available via the link above, leading to the full online article on the Independent website.

It whtnesses the reality of chickens in mass-production farms.

Check this out: Compassion in World Farming: www.ciwf.org.uk

Musarraf speaks on Bhutto's assassination.

Musharraf:

“No intelligence, or secret service in Pakistan, I think, is capable of induction a man to do such a thing.”-says Musharraf on Bhutto’s assassination.

The president of Pakistan has called in help from England and France to investigate although many key traces were probably destroyed: he admitted it was perhaps, not a good idea: that of having ordered the site of the attack hosed down. (No comment…)

Bhutto’s husband decided to save Bhutto’s body from undergoing autopsy, explaining: “I know where and how autopsies are done here” (taken from BBC article).

Her supporters believe her death was caused by a gun shot at the head, but the government say she hit her head on the car during the explosion.

At any rate the elections will probably be postponed, and this, would only be right, in sign of respect of the yet sensitive mourning process for Bhutto.

Thursday 3 January 2008

Bomb explosion believed to be terrorist attack in south-eaast Turkey.

It was thought to be a terrorist attack,the bomb blast in Dyarbakir, south-east Turkey, in which 50 people were injusred, pssibly aimed t the military bus passng bye at the moment of the explosion.

In the area, the population is mainly Kurdish; the attack is thought to have been in response to recent Turkish military activities on both sides of the border, and in north Iraq, with the scope of containing separatist Kurdish militants.

Was it right for Turkey to enter north Iraq in the first place?

Although the separatist Kurdish rebells did antagonise Turkey with violence over last year, it seams the attempts of Turkey to put things right have only helped the friction increase, escalating rpidly out of control.

I believe Turkey should, and will join EU, but before, certain approaches need to be altered, resisting violent intimations, as, how ever testing this would be, it would probably end up better than reacting with force.

I feel for the Turkish, but two wrongs do not make a right.

Odinga speaks of genocide and insists for a peaceful protest.

“What I have seen today defies word […] one can only describe this as genocide. I have seen many dead children” -the words of Odinga, one of the main opposition leaders of Kenya, this morning on a report on EuroNews.

Watching the news this morning I was surprised while listening to a short report in which Odinga was visiting the morgues, result of the violence fired up after the allegedly mishandled elections; speaking the above sentence, his tone implied the fault of an opposing body.

How can he not see that as the whole world has being watching through news reports, that it is his supporters who also are causing this violence?

It is not only them, no, but his aggressive attitude does not inspire for peace either.

Why does he keep inciting his supporter’s unconstructive anger, worsening the violent situation with protests, when anyone, sane of mind, would know this will only bring more blood shed?

Protests are not needed.

Many would agree: the point of outrage has already been put across.

If he continues on this line without calling his people at to peace and trying to set the example of solving the issue in a democratic and peaceful way, or he will only be greatly part of the cause of the 300 people already died.

He might be intending for a peaceful protest, but, at this stage, a peaceful rally seams impossible to remain contained by already ignited supporters.

Perhaps if Leaders were to stop accusations of genocide, leaning on tribal sentiments, then less tribal

Kenya: Tribal tensions brink civil war

Kenya, one of Africa’s ‘most stable political systems’ saw 300 people killed, 35 of which, women and children burnt alive in a church hidden from an angry mob; this is the aftermath of the Presidential elections that took place Thursday.

Savage violence still runs wild amongst opposition supporters of Mr Odinga, after election results saw Mwai Kibaki’s re-election.

Supporters of Raila Odinga claim elections were falsified and call for Mr Odinga to be named winner.

Mwa Kabaki, who relied on the largest ethnic group, and Raila Odinga, who promised to defeat marginalisation of minor ethnicities, have both been exchanging accusations of corruption.

Outrage has ignited violence in Kenya as thousands flee their homes, in fear of armed mob and the threat of ethnic cleansing growing.

Tomorrow, Odinga’s promised rally threatens inevitable further blood shed, as his supporters demand justice, claiming democracy will only be possible once Odinga is made president.

Africa has come a long way but blood-tainted footprints continue to mark the struggle for Democracy.

Is this the true path though: claiming democracy as a double-bladed knife?

Benazir Bhutto's abyssal absence reverberates in Pakistan

Only a few days ago the assassination of Benazir Bhutto threw Pakistan in the whirlwind of uncertainty.

With the New Year changed for Pakistan was only the gap left by its most needed opposition leader after she failed to escape yet another assassination attempt.

Once again Musharraf has the lead and it seams, he is to continue the only game he's played recently: postpone the elections and then what?

How long this disarrayed status of Pakistan will stand is difficult to estimate.

At his first public speech he stated Al-Qaeda's involvement to the assassination but nothing is for certain and now England will send Scotland Yard to help in the investigations.

Benazir Bhutto is dead, but she made a point.

Her absence is just as strong (or stronger) than when she was alive and her determinations has stirred up the waters, which now need to be channelled to make a change in Pakistan for 2008.

Her son, Bilawal has been named successor of her fight.

Only nineteen years old he is to take up the task of driving the battle for Democracy in his mother's name, which he vowed to revenge.

The steps he walks into where filled similarly by his mother, when at an early age, she became the first female Prime Minster of an Islamic society after the assassination of her father.

This boy faces an arduous task with a traic history in his familly.

He is not alone though, with his mother's surviving passion and the world's eyes watching perhaps this time democracy will pierce the dead-end cycle of violence.