Casey Anthony already having followers

Undated photo of Zinah Jennings, copied from AP's report (original source: Richard County Jail).

Let me first copy an Associated Press report from today:

"SC police: Mother won't tell them where son is

by Meg Kinnard
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — It's unknown how long investigators would have gone without any information on a missing 18-month-old South Carolina boy if his mother hadn't crashed her car Christmas Eve.
Twenty-two-year-old Zinah Jennings and her son, Amir, were reported missing by the boy's grandmother, who hadn't seen either of them since Thanksgiving.
The mother didn't turn up until police responding to the single-vehicle accident learned she was listed as a missing person.
She's now in jail, charged with lying to authorities about where the boy is, prompting a search by local, state and federal authorities spanning the Carolinas, Georgia and beyond.
Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott says Jennings immediately began giving conflicting statements about where the boy was."

This disappearance of a toddler, unreported by the single mother, finally reported by the grandmother, after which the mother started endless lying, immediately brings to mind an earlier similar case - of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony. After Caylee's skeletal remains were found in a swamp, jurors let themselves be persuaded by defence that her mother Casey Anthony was not guilty of murder, manslaughter and child abuse.

At the Frontpage Magazine's symposium on Casey Anthony verdict last year, blogger Rob Taylor was furious: "The idea of “solid proof” is a myth. A child is dead and her mother avoided reporting her disappearance, then tried to frame someone else. Before juries were populated with armchair forensics experts this would have been an open and shut case... The disregard many people have for the victim, for Justice in the philosophical sense and for the truth is what troubles me here. The legal system worked – Anthony had a fair trial in front of a jury of her peers. That doesn’t mean Justice has been served. Caylee Anthony was thrown out like garbage, found with duct tape on her remains. We all know why people duct tape the mouths of children shut. We know why some drugged out party girl doesn’t report her child missing... The connection between who we give our sympathy to and cultural decline is clear. You can pretend that... there’s some reasonable explanation for not reporting your child missing or even that you truly believe that it’s necessary to let guilty people go free to ensure that innocent people aren’t imprisoned. What you cannot pretend is that there aren’t consequences to your pretense, one of which is the corpse of a Caylee Anthony."

Exactly. Commenting the case in my Sept. 6, 2011 post Unreasonable doubt, I wrote, "Seeing Casey Anthony acquitted and commentators praising the verdict as a victory for the US justice system, other people may be tempted to emulate her." I fear that this is what has happened in South Carolina, and while I wish very much for little Amir to be found alive after all, I have little hope that his grandmother will ever hug him again. We'll see what will follow and whether Zinah Jennings will be let, like Casey Anthony, to step over her child and continue her life as a free woman.

Anders Breivik found insane

Anders Breivik (photo copied from the Guardian).




On July 22, 2011 Anders Behring Breivik, the nice-looking young Norwegian pictured above, detonated a bomb in the center of Oslo, killing eight people. Then, while the capital was in horror and dismay, he sailed to the nearby island of Utoya, where Norwegian socialists organized a youth camp. Dressed as a policeman and heavily armed, he shot in cold blood at the defenceless, mainly young people, killing 69 people. The youngest victim was a girl named Sharidyn Svebakk-Boehn who had just turned 14. She had a blog where the last entry is dated July 20, 2011 - two days before her death.

Breivik was motivated by his Islamophobic and anti-multiculturalist views. For me, it meant that the perpetrator of a most horrific mass murder had views very similar to mine. I admit it created an eerie and uneasy feeling in me, and inevitably led to some soul-searching. I discussed my thoughts on Rose-Anne's post The Look of Crazy. It was not very suitable for this purpose because verbal abuse was guaranteed, but I simply wished to discuss it, and Rose-Anne was the only blogger known to me who wrote a meaningful post on the subject.

Two months later, the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks overshadowed this more recent massacre. And now - sad to say but true - the Norway victims seem all but forgotten. Most people seem to think that in the current situation, we'll have some Breiviks and we have to accept this, period. Just hope that you and your loved ones won't be around a Breivik when he detonates, because, as Rose-Anne correctly stated, usually there is no way to recognize such a psychopath before he has exposed his lethality.

What about his views? I think the observations of Breivik and his description of the current situation in Western Europe are quite true. What is wrong is his proposed solution, his choice of action. And we must admit that every time when we confront a danger associated with human beings, some of us may wish to solve the problem by exterminating these human beings. In the 1970s, some people fought communism by rounding up thousands of suspected communists to a stadium, torturing and killing many of them. In the 1940s, some sought to defeat Nazism and prevent its relapse by ethnically cleansing millions of Germans, sending mothers with babies out at Celsium -20 just because they happened to be German. And in the 17th century, other people tried to fight plague by locking victims inside their houses. All this is inhumane and utterly unacceptable, yet it does not mean that communism or nazism are acceptable, either, or that plague adds beautiful diversity to human population and so should be embraced despite its tendency to kill people here and there. I'd also point out to anyone else worried by the similarity of his views to Breivik's that we are actually comparing our sincere, unmoderated views to a highly moderated version of Breivik's views, because he took much care not to look as right-wing extremist in order not to attract attention by authorities.

From the moment when I heard that Breivik was captured alive, I was worried by the inadequacy of the punishment he could receive under Norwegian law. The maximum prison term in Norway is 21 years, and the treatment of prisoners is reportedly quite benign. The idea is that the criminal is not a source of evil but a poor person who needs help to reform and become a good member of society, rather than punishment. Like every system of morality and justice centered not on actual and potential victims but on the perpetrator, this shows its charlatanism to full degree when confronting a murderous psychopath like Breivik. During the discussion at Rose-Anne's blog, I wrote, "I may be barbarian... but I am glad that Bin Laden was shot dead, and I wish the same had happened to Breivik. We already have more of his oratory than any reasonable person would want. Now, he will have a due process in a country having humane prisons and no death penalty. He will smile from the bar in the faces of victims' parents, adding insult to injury. Yes, it is a principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial... but he gave no fair trial - no trial of any kind - to the kids he murdered."

People, however, have found a way around this problem. In late November, Breivik was psychiatrically evaluated and declared insane. Factually, this is 100% wrong. Breivik is a very intelligent person who planned his actions with great deliberation and self-possession. He bought a farm for the sole purpose to be able to buy nitrate fertilizer needed for the bomb without arousing suspicions. (Other wannabe terrorists who hadn't the resources or far-sightedness to pose as farmers have been arrested soon after buying fertilizer, e.g. two young men of Arab Muslim origin detained in Berlin on Sept. 8, 2011.) However, from a not-so-formal point of view I think the psychiatrists did the right thing. No trial to be used as a tribune by Breivik, no smiling in the faces of victims' mothers, no release (I hope) after a decade or two. The very tissue of what we call our life depends on putting thick walls between ourselves and creatures like this murderer, although we can do it only after it is too late.

I am a National Enlightener

Yesterday, Nov. 1, was the Day of the National Enlighteners (Den na narodnite buditeli) in Bulgaria. National Enlighterners are, above all, the people who led the Bulgarian National Revival during the 19th century which culminated in the April Uprising of 1876 and the restoration of the Bulgarian independence after the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78. However, Enlighteners in a broader sense are considered all who have contributed to the cultural advancement of the Bulgarian nation, including all conscientous teachers and scientists. For that reason, schools and universities have a day off on Nov. 1. I am proud to say that I qualify to be called a National Enlightener not only owing to my occupation but also by the merit of my own deeds.

Of course this pompous statement is tongue in cheek, but it is based on a real recent achievement. Not that I have written a good educational text popularizing science or that some research manuscript of mine has been accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed journal with impact factor (or be it even a journal without impact factor). Nope. Keep in mind, however, that all this intellectual activity associated with "enlightenment" is, as Marxians would call it, a superstructure. To be possible at all, it requires a base - a set of material preconditions. If a person isn't fed, dressed and comfortably positioned, he is totally unable to engage in any intellectual activity. Our students, thankfully, come to us fed and generally well dressed. However, when we come to the comfortable position, we have problems.

The microscopic observation in our teaching labs requires lab chairs with variable height. For many years, it has been impossible for our Department to buy such chairs. The Bulgarian law requires all equipment for government institutions to be bought by a complicated procedure, so our demands must be sent "above", to the Rector's office. The aim of this procedure is to prevent corruption, but the actual result is what you can expect if you let clerks disconnected from teaching and not too interested in its success to buy all items needed for teaching. The most urgently needed things somehow get cancelled from the list, the rest are supplied with great delay (up to a year) and usually in a form unsuitable for the purpose. In the case of lab chairs, some were indeed bought with variable height as required, but the maximum height was about 35 cm. We cannot even figure out how could such close-to-mother-Earth chairs be produced in the first place. Our only reasonable guess is that they have been meant for kindergartens.

So I have for years used some of my time at work to try and repair our available old lab chairs that become fewer and more valuable with each passing semester. Some of them still have their labels indicating that they were produced in the 1950s. I receive little acknowledgement for these efforts. Most colleagues mock me, and the students never think that someone may be doing hard work so that they have something to sit on. However, I know I am doing the right thing. My maternal grandfather, who was a carpenter, would be proud of me if he could know. Unfortunately, sooner or later every chair has its metal part broken, and at that point I give up, because I haven't the equipment and skills needed for welding.

This semester, we have another problem. Our building has been in renovation for more than a year already, with no end in sight. While this process is taking place, normal teaching and research is all but impossible, and if you at least save your things needed for work you are lucky. We have already lost reagents for many thousands euro because of incompetence of some electricians who disconnected the power supply to a freezer full of antibodies. Now, the workmen have come to the task of renovating the central heating. It is a rule in Bulgaria to renovate and repair the heating systems in the autumn-winter season when heating is actually needed. In our building, this was done last in the cold and hungry winter of 1996-97. At that time, apart from writing about cell cycle and protesting against government, I was busy to manage some heating at my workplace. Happily, the room where I spend most of my time had a glassware dryer suitable also as a heater. The same was true for one of our four teaching labs. But what about the other three?

I found two electric heaters which were dispensable at home and brought them to work. One of them was initially not working. I had recently re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig, which claims that everybody has the mental skills necessary to repair moderately complex technology such as motorcycles. I was young, trusting and stupid, so I thought that electric heaters are even simpler than motorcycles and tried to repair it myself. After the attempt, when I plugged the heater into the socket, there was a "puff" and some sparkles, then everything went dark. So I strongly advise readers not to follow Pirsig's theory with any electric device (or anything significantly more complex than a chair).

Close to my workplace, there was a garage turned into a shop. It was conveniently selling and repairing simple electric equipment. I brought there my blackened heater. The electrician said that a short circiut had destroyed all parts of the heater except for its corpus. He added, however, that due to the ongoing hyperinflation, it was still more advantageous to buy and install all these parts than to buy a new heater. So my poor old heater got a new life. Indeed, it had lost its legs long ago, but we are putting it on a metal test tube stand and it is OK.

This autumn, as weather turned cold, I placed the two heaters in two of the teaching labs. But what about the fourth lab? I don't remember how we managed it in 1996-97, but now I am in charge of the practical teaching and feeling responsible for it. My mother had mentioned that a heater had stopped working and she had bought an electric radiator. She immediately agreed to give me this heater for my workplace, as she had given me the two older ones.

Unfortunately, my friends at the garage-shop were no longer in business. The garage was not their but municipal property. The Mayor's office had raised the rent to some ridiculous level (about EUR 350 per month, they said). They could not afford it and moved out. Nobody rented the garage-shop after then. It is locked and slowly deteriorating, illustrating how government attempts to manage business invariably turn to slaughtering the egg-laying hen. I don't know whether the electricians have found a new place, but the fact is that our giant Medical University campus is deprived of their services. Who would repair my heater now?

To cut the long story short - finally, my husband did it. He is a man of technology, not some inspired Pirsig reader. So on Monday I gladly informed my colleages that we already have a heater in every teaching lab. I only asked them (and I keep praying) that nobody forgets to unplug the heater when leaving the room. Otherwise, a fire could easily ensue, we could share the fate of the Department of Pathophysiology, and to cap it all, I would be held responsible for bringing the heaters in the first place.

But let's not think of disasters likely to happen. At least, now we can let Grannie Winter come with all her merry white granddaughters (as a Bulgarian nursery rhyme says) without worrying that we have to teach at Celsium 5. And I have all right to call myself a National Enlightener, haven't I? Just try to say I haven't, to see your comment moderated :-).

How to love

Today's date is special to me, and this post marking it is very personal.
I am now thinking of two loved ones who recently returned from emigration.
Love is not just a feeling. It is a skill that is not always easy. It is expressed in acts that, like all our acts, may have results different from those wished.
When something goes wrong with someone we love, we start the "What if..." thinking. We see grave mistakes in what we have done or not done 15 or 20 years ago. I don't know if this sometimes teaches us to avoid future mistakes; but what is sure is that it is felt as devastating.
I usually respect other people's privacy and rarely try to impose my opinions on them and to tell them how to live. I wish to live my life and understand that others want and deserve the same. When a friend or a relative makes a step I would not make, I do not rush to label it a mistake, because different people want different things. However, when something bad happens , I feel guilty for having done nothing to prevent it.
A month or two ago, I heard of a composer in the city of Varna who set up his own music studio and so gained independence. Because my loved people were musicians, I immediately thought that they could possibly do the same and nobody would need to emigrate. This imagined picture of what might have been, and the feeling of guilt for not having given enough support (to be precise, any support) to make other solutions possible, almost made me cry.
It is especially difficult to decide how to behave if you are in the position of an aunt (uncle) or an in-law. Because people don't choose their aunts and in-laws and we all know how arrogantly some of them intrude into our lives, I prefer not to be intruding. So I do not call those whom I love - and then sit and think that maybe they wish I had called.
If they are reading this, I hope they know that I love them and I am thinking of them, despite not calling. If I can help them in any way, I wish they just tell me. Of course I hope they won't be in any need of help, but if this happens, I'll do what I can.

Ten years since Sept. 11, 2001

Three days ago, the world marked the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.
It is good that the mastermind of this horrible massacre was killed and deprived of the opportunity to celebrate. It is bad that there are still plenty of other people eager to advance his cause. Because, unfortunately, the advocates of Grand Zero Mosque have not yielded to public pressure to build it somewhere else - anywhere else, - this post will be a blog action against Islamism. To honour also the beginning of academic year in Bulgarian schools tomorrow (Sept. 15), I have copied from the Faithfreedom site a text which should interest everybody having a touch with education. Let me warn Muslim readers that they are likely to be offended by the following text.

Sabrina's story

2005/03/10

Dear Dr. Sina,

Your site brought tears of joy to my eyes. It is so great to realize I am not alone!

I left Islam before your site came into existence. I kid you not; I left Islam when I was 7 years old or so! My apostasy was triggered by a very interesting incident.

Kids usually regard textbooks as something sacred and believe every word it says. If an author says that the French revolution is good (or bad), then most students will parrot it. They won’t use their own brains.

My teacher wanted us to use our brains and stop “worshipping” textbooks. She gave us an assignment to write our own book. When we finished, she said that we could now publish it. Some kids wrote that every parent has to buy an ice-cream every day, others wrote that schools and education as a whole must be banned. Nobody could prevent us from publishing our books. If we had released our masterpieces without mentioning our ages, some people would have certainly believed every single word in our books. If we had added the magic abbreviation “PhD” to our creations, many people would have started worshipping it.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that Mohammed, a man whom my parents named “a perfect man”, could have made up the Koran! Why should I believe him? I can create my own religion and claim that I’m the prophet of the only true God.

Since then I have never named myself “a Muslimah”. When I became a big girl, I studied Islam thoroughly and came to a conclusion that Islam is a load of crap. My parents left Islam too. We all now are safe and sound in Paris .

I advise all Muslims to read articles in this site. You don’t need to worship Ali Sina or believe him. He could think out every accusation he has leveled at Mohammed. In my opinion, he is just a man who studies Islam critically. If Ali Sina didn’t exist, Islam would still be a load of crap. Friends, you have your own brains, so use them. How could a prophet marry a 9-year-old girl? How could a prophet have more than 20 wives and concubines but at the same time command his followers to have only 4 wives? Isn’t it strange that God permitted Mohammed to have more than 4 wives? Decide for yourself. Make your own investigation. AND USE YOUR BRAINS!

Today I believe in God. But, I’m afraid, Mohammed had nothing to do with God.

Dear Ali Sina, I am very happy that you exist! Yes, without you Islam would still be trash but it feels so go(od) with you.

Kind regards,

Sabrina

Unreasonable doubt

Undated photo of the late Caylee Anthony (copied from ABC News, originally provided by the Florida police).

"Caylee's law" is a draft considered by several US states that would make it a felony not to report to authorities the death or disappearence of a pre-teenage child within a short time. It is named after Caylee Marie Anthony (2005 - 2008) from Florida who disappeared shortly before her third birthday. Her skeleton, with duct tape on the facial skull, was found six months later in a swamp. Caylee's mother, Casey Anthony, did not report her daughter's disappearance, enjoyed endless parties, then lied to investigators that the child had been kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny. At her trial, the defense claimed that Caylee had drowned accidentally. The jurors acquitted Casey of murder, manslaughter and child abuse - of everything they could, so she was released only days after the trial. The purpose of Caylee's law is to prevent similar cases to be solved this way in the future.
Opponents to the proposed bill argue that laws voted emotionally in the aftermath of high-profile cases are known to have undesired consequences and that such a law, if enforced, will harm innocent people. Of course it will; most laws do it all the time. The real question to me is whether the pros outweigh the cons or, to put it more emotionally, whether America can afford not having such a law after Casey’s “not guilty” verdict.
I admit I fail to understand the meaning of reasonable doubt in Casey Anthony’s case. My head just whorls when I read the opinions of jurors and legal experts that the burden of proof was on prosecution and the prosecution did not produce enough evidence that Casey had killed her daughter. It seems that the jurors demanded the same amount of evidence as if the defendant had been a stranger to the victim. My opinion, however, is that there are some situations when the burden of proof is on you to prove that you are innocent, and this is when you have accepted certain responsibility beforehand. If you are appointed to guard some property or person and you fail to protect the guarded object, you will be expected to prove that you have done your best. And if you become a parent and accept your parental responsibility by bringing your child home, instead of giving her for adoption, you are to prove your innocence if something bad happens to her. Even if she suffers an accident, you still have to answer questions, because young children cannot protect themselves from accidents – this is the duty of their caregivers.
I think that any doubt in Casey Anthony’s guilt was unreasonable because I cannot imagine any reasonable hypothesis (except insanity) under which she could be not guilty. Let’s believe the defense that Caylee drowned accidentally and her panicked grandfather put duct tape on her face to make the accident look like murder (?!) and threw the body into the swamp. Well, wasn’t Casey obliged to protect her 2-year-old daughter from accidental drowning? Recently, a 1-year-old boy named Joseph drowned in the bath while his mother Shannon Johnson was facebooking. Although his death was undisputed accident, the mother was sentenced to 10 years. The judge told her, “(Joseph) was a human being that had a right to life. And you, as his mother, had a responsibility to make sure he got that chance. That was your responsibility.” I think this judge was right. I also think there are deep flaws in a system severely punishing a negligent mother who generally acts as a good citizen while allowing a negligent or (more likely) murderous mother to be rewarded with freedom for her lies.
Let me repeat – I agree with the opponents of Caylee’s law that it will be costly and will harm innocent parents. However, I fear that its absence may spell death for many young children, viewed by their parents as unwanted burden rather than joy. Seeing Casey Anthony acquitted and commentators praising the verdict as a victory for the US justice system, other people may be tempted to emulate her. Things are bad enough as they are. Opponents say Caylee’s murder is a single, isolated case. This not only makes me ask how many cases must happen before something is done – it is simply untrue. Unfortunately, when a child is murdered, parents are the first suspects, and in two-thirds of cases there is no need to look elsewhere.
If you disagree with me, I can only apologize for wasting your time. But if you agree with me and live in the USA, you can consider signing a petition for Caylee’s law. I cannot sign it myself because I am not an American. It is difficult even to explain why I still have so much interest in this country after my brother's family no longer lives there. Perhaps because I believe that in a world where nothing can undo the evils of the past, our only hope can be for a better future, and our deeds are the only way to make it come true.

Debating evolution and God

While preparing for a debate on evolution vs. creation scheduled for next week, I stumbled upon this post or, to be precise, upon a comment on it directing me to a Hugh Hewitt's interview with Richard Dawkins. Below is a quote from the interview - enjoy!

"RD: Okay, do you believe Jesus turned water into wine?

HH: Yes.

RD: You seriously do?

HH: Yes.

RD: You actually think that Jesus got water, and made all those molecules turn into wine?

HH: Yes.

RD: My God.

HH: Yes. My God, actually, not yours. But let me…

RD: I’ve realized the kind of person I’m dealing with now...

HH: It’s Hugh Hewitt with Richard Dawkins. Professor Dawkins’ brand new book is The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution. It’s linked at Hughhewitt.com. Professor, I have one last question, it’s very important for me to ask this, because I just kept coming back to it. You argue in the book at one point that the retina is so poorly designed, that it argues against the idea of a designer, because it’s such a messed up job. Conversely, though, if the object of the designer was to create a world in which faith was possible, but also disbelief, in order to make faith a choice and not an obligation, wouldn’t then you have to say that the world was wondrously constructed to that end, to preserve free will and the choosing?

RD: You mean that God deliberately made mistakes so as to deceive us?

HH: Not mistakes, that God created a world in which faith was possible by an order of its complexity, to allow for the Richard Dawkins of the world to exist, and be completely, absolutely convinced that He did not, that that’s the only situation in which faith is real.

RD: So in order to make that the case, God said well, now let’s make the eye look like a botched up job so that…are you saying…

HH: I think you understand what I’m saying, and you’re saying no, you don’t believe that, that it would not in fact fit that, a giant…for example, have you read the Harry Potter novels?

RD: No.

HH: Do you read any fiction at all?

RD: Of course.

HH: What’s the most complicated bit of fiction you’ve read? Like War and Peace?

RD: Yeah, what’s your point? What point are you making?

HH: That complexity in design, and counterintuitive steps, et cetera, don’t disprove the idea of genius at work. Genius at work often works through complexity and through misdirection.

RD: I think that what you’re kind of saying is that God made the world look as though it had evolved in order to test our faith, when it didn’t evolve.

HH: No, not test our faith. I’m saying that the world has been made as it is to allow for faith, because if it was made too easy for the simple-minded, it would simply be routine, and everyone would believe, and then there would be no faith.

RD: That would be a pretty unpleasant sort of God. I think, I would say you’re welcome to believe in a kind of God who would do that, but it’s not the kind of God that would appeal to me.

HH: Well, it’s not about what appeals to us, it’s about what is. And you also write that a beneficent designer might, you’d idealistically think, minimize suffering. But not if the soul was infinite, and suffering was necessary for its wisdom."