Lies, Nonviolence, the Death Penalty

A few more quotes from the book with the catchy title, "Why Bush Must Go" by Bishop Bennet J. Simms


On Governments that lie:

"All regimes that exalt violence use deliberate lies as perverse instruments of power."

"The exposure of deliberate deceit by the administration as preparation for citizen support of the Iraqi war is an alarming sign of social and political decadence."

On nonviolence in human history:

"In light of the best and most recent research, 93 percent of our 100,000 years as sapiential humans we have lived interpersonally in relative nonviolence."

"If all four million years of human evolution were to be telescoped into a single twenty-four hour day, the period of peaceable management and resolution of inevitable conflict would last through the night, the morning, the afternoon, the evening, all the way in fact, until just before midnight. The period we call history, filled with violence and domination, wars and empires, would last barely one minute." from William Ury

Its interesting to see the reaction to the hanging of Saddam unfold. The government of Iraq is ready to collapse from the fallout, and we are hearing more people take the position that it was barbaric. Barbaric it was. The death penalty has been abolished in the majority of countries in the world, with the USA in the company of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China as countries that impose the death penalty.