i've been watching lots of videos and reading up a little. it's quite boring compared to going to school and seeing your friends. but hmm i guess it gives me time to expose myself to stuff different from those in school.
1. 星光大道
haha. got addicted to it since going to junsheng's blog. hmm. i like a few of the singers there. I think my favourite is 李杰宇.
haha. initially, didn't really like his voice cuz it's damn tight. but somehow i don't get bored of it unlike the others. hmm another few videos that I like!
this is 曲终人散. haha. the chorus is addictive.
i like 胡采书 too! (: hahaha. his voice is nice.
and 孙自佑. haha i think he can become a 主持人. he seems so calm on stage.
and the blower's daughter by antoni was good too. haha. i've listened to it before but his version sounds nicer, especially the part "the pupil in denial".
偏心 by 徐詠琳.
okies enough. tonight got another episode. really excited haha.
2. The Death Penalty
Hmm. After jiggy gave the link to this very interesting article about Texas possibly executing the wrong person, I started reading up on more cases of the death penalty. Here's the link to Jiggy's article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=1.
The article brings you step-by-step in the death penalty process, all the way from the day of the crime to the police investigations, trials, appeals and finally the execution itself. Initially, we see how this man, Cameron Todd Willingham, is accused of setting his house on fire to kill his three children. All the evidence pointed to his guilt. Vasquez, the fire investigator, found various evidences that Willingham had spilled liquid accelerant and set fire to the house while leaving the house. The burn marks, the 'crazed glass' all pointed to this. Willingham even took care to block the children's escape path by blocking the escape route with a refrigerator. There was little doubt about his guilt and the defence lawyers appointed to him by the state didn't bother doing much work. He was eventually found guilty and sentenced for the death penalty.
Later on, however, upon analysis by several fire experts and interviews done by a volunteer pen pal of his, people start to question whether or not he really is guilty. Fire expert, Horst, showed that the 'evidence' used by Vasquez was based on ancient ideas about fire science. Better lawyers were appointed to defend Willingham. However, in the US, once a person is found guilty, the stand that a person is "innocent until proven guilty" disappears and the pressure lies with the defence to show that not only is the person not guilty, but that the trial was also conducted in an unfair manner. This meant that even if new evidence came up showing that Willingham had indeed not committed the crime, there was little chance of his appeal being accepted. Instead, the defence had to show that the jury had somehow made a wrong decision given the information then or that the prosecution had withheld information or that police investigation was questionable. With little of such evidence, Willingham could not prove his innocence and was not given a retrial.
I had always thought that only people who were found to be DEFINITELY guilty were put on death row. I'm not sure what happens in Singapore but its quite scary reading some of the cases in America.
There's this case about Carlos De Luna. He was accused for the murder of some stallkeeper and was the only suspect of the case. Even though there was another suspect, Hernandez, who has since admitted and even boasted that he had in fact killed the stallkeeper, his name went missing halfway through the investigation process. Someone had actually tipped one of the private investigators that Hernandez was the one who actually did the crime. However, no investigations were made as De Luna seemed like the prime suspect. There was little evidence against him except that an eye witness had pointed him as the murderer. And even the eye witness has said that he can't be sure whether De Luna was the murderer. He just described the murderer and when the policeman showed De Luna's mug shot, it fit his description so he said De Luna was the murderer. To me, that's definitely insufficient evidence to put someone on the death row, but of course that could be because I'm looking at the issue on hindsight.
And then there was Cantu, who murdered someone in an attempted robbery. The trial was based on an eyewitness, Juan Moreno, who was wounded during the robbery but he now says that it was not Cantu who shot him and that he only identified Cantu as the shooter because he felt pressured and was afraid of the authorities. Moreno said that he twice told police that Cantu was not his assailant, but that the authorities continued to pressure him to identify Cantu as the shooter after Cantu was involved in an unrelated wounding of a police officer. "The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police officer. They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified. In fact, Moreno was shown the photo three times, with the last time being a year after the murder, before he identified Cantu as the murderer.
And there are many other cases. You can read them here: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent.
It's quite scary to see how people are charged with first-degree murder with the basis of usually just one eye-witness or even tip-offs from criminals in the prison. Someone even got executed just because the blood on his shirt matched the blood type of the blood found on the murder scene (he was involved in another fight the day before).
The possibility of executing someone who's innocent is horrifying. There's supposed to by a fail-safe system with all the appeal systems available but the notion that a person is "guilty until proven innocent" is weird. It makes it hard for someone to prove himself innocent, even if he has substantial evidence to do so. I suspect one of the reasons is that states do not want to show that they had made the wrong choice and came so close to executing someone innocent.
Also, it's painful to see how these people are represented by state lawyers who don't really care about the case. As Sister Prejean puts it.
The death penalty embodies the three deepest wounds of our society in the United States that we need to address. The first one is that it is mostly the poor who are scapegoated to bear the burdens of the society. Of the 3500 people who sit on death rows across this country, only poor people are selected to pay the ultimate punishment. There is a direct connection to welath and resources, because no matter what you have done, if you have resources, you get a very good attorney or a battery of attorney and you're not going to death row ... The saying goes Capital punishment means men without the capital get the punishment.
And the second one is racism. Nowhere do we see racism more than when we assign punishments for crimes that we are outraged about. Overwhelmingly, with the death penalty, people who are given it are there because they have killed white people. When homeless people are killed, when poor people are killed, there's not that same rage to go for the death penalty. Very often, in fact, there's not even a vigorous prosecution of the case.
And the third wound is our pension for trying to solve social problems through violence. The death penalty is one more military solution to social problems. And it basically is a profound act of despair and the only thing we know to do with killers is to kill them. The only thing we know to do to someone who has done a terrible crime is to imitate the very crime itself that we are trying to teach our children not to do.
Statistics show that Blacks make up 41% of the prison population but only 12% of American population.
A Russian writer once wrote that a society can always be judged on the way we treat our criminals because it's the test on how much humaness we see in people and whether or not we are willing or desire of throwing away some people or dehumanizing them and seperating ourselves from them and saying they are not human the way that I am human.
Should listen from 10:40-18:00. Her story is quite powerful.
And he said to me an hour before he died,"It's a shame that I had to come to prison to find love. Thank you for loving me".
The shocking thing I found about a murdered victim's family is how alone they felt and how people stayed away from them. And people tend to stay away from them because they don't know how to deal with their pain.
"I can't afford to have vengence because the hatred would eat me alive too and I would lose my life too" - Murdered victim's family
3. LOVE (:
Dr. Leo Buscaglia! (:
Thank you for being with me at my 11th hour. You know that I have always preached that no one should ever cry alone and no one should ever die alone. And the wonder of it is that I have one more hour of life and a captive audience. So I'm in paradise.
Here lies Leo, who died living.
And the wonderful thing is that death is so democratic. It comes to everybody. It doesn't matter how rich or poor, how wise or dumb, how amazing you are, how famous you are. It doesn't matter - it comes and it comes at anytime.
Recently I was in Chicago and I was hunting for the post office. I saw a man standing by the bustop so I went over and I said, 'could you tell me where the post office is?' And he turned and he said 'hey I know you, you're Leo Buscalosie!' ... 'I'm doing a lecture on finding your way to love' and he says 'Oh that's amazing. You're talking about finding your way to love and you can't even find your way to the post office!'
I am suspicious about experts. They are usually no wiser than any of us except that they are a little more organized and they have slides.
Religion is a celebration of life, a celebration of people, a celebration of beauty, a celebration of joy.
You don't love yourself because you are on an egocentric trip. The only thing that you can give to anyone else, including those you love with a passion, is who you are. So if you dedicate yourself to making yourself the most wonderful, the most incredible, the most unique, the most magnicifent person there is, not to stand in front of the mirror but to give it to everybody else. That's a beautiful goal in life. I want to give a perfect me.
There is someone for everyone.
20 22-year-old university kids and I asked them what are your mother's eyes. And 80% of them don't know!
Ah okay shan't put more of his quotes down. But anyway his talk is split into how you should love everybody, love yourself, love learning, laughing about yourself, to compromoise and to be thankful. It's quite simple but his stories are really interesting and funny (:
You should watch some of his other videos too!
haha click on related videos to see the rest of the lecture! (: really hope I can learn his pubic speaking skills haha.
4. xing guang again!
Woohoo! I just watched the latest xing guang videos! (:
haha her testimonial is pro seh. sing harmony with loads of singers (:
woohoo. (:
Anyway, I'm interested in reading Men in White. Lol. Read the Sat Special and it's so controversial (: hahaha. It's quite fascinating to see what happened in the early days in Singapore! hahaha.
5. 9-11 Controversies
Hm. Just watched this. But I don't believe it luh. Too biased liao.
haha shall go sleep now (: nights!
PAT!
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