Helen Cowie tells radio show she helped her son Robert take his own life in Switzerland Police are considering the circumstances surrounding the death of a man whose mother took him to the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas to help him take his own life. Helen Cowie told a radio chat show how she helped her son Robert, 33, kill himself after he was left paralysed from the neck down. Cowie, of Cardonald in Glasgow, told BBC Radio Scotland’s Call Kaye programme how her son went to Dignitas in October and “had a very peaceful ending”. A Strathclyde police spokeswoman stressed that there was no investigation at present, but said the matter was “being given consideration in an effort to establish the circumstances”. Cowie said her son was once a “big fit healthy boy” who went training four times a week. He was reportedly paralysed in a swimming accident three years ago. She said: “His life was terrible. He suffered every single day. He couldn’t do anything for himself but sit there. He was just a head and just didn’t want to be like that any more.” She described Monday’s BBC documentary Choosing to Die, presented by author Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s, as “brilliant” and empathised with the mother who helped her disabled son to die in the television soap Emmerdale. She described the Dignitas experience as “wonderful, relaxed, peaceful and happy”, and said her son died to strains of the Oasis song Listen Up. The song includes the line: “One fine day I’m gonna leave you all behind. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had more time.” She said: “We were in Zurich for four days with my three sons and his friend, and one of my sons said it was the happiest he had seen his brother in three years. “I would rather have been able to do it in this country. That really upsets me that I had to take my son to Switzerland, and I had to leave his body there and wait for the ashes to come back. “It should be allowed here, but not willy-nilly to everybody. It should be investigated hard because you have to be in a sane mind to have it done.” Cowie added: “We are a very close family. We asked him not to do it but it was his decision. “As a mum, your first reaction is that you don’t want them to do it. “There’s a scene going on in Emmerdale right now, and I would have loved to have done what that woman had done but I couldn’t because my son didn’t want me to get into trouble so the only option was to go to Switzerland with him. “That’s what he wanted and nobody could change his mind. We tried everything to change his mind, because he wasn’t a burden, and I am a carer. He just wanted to end his life. He was really unhappy.” Cowie said after his death “the first thing that came to my mind was peace”. She added: “He was at peace, because he was tormented in the body that he was in.” Assisted suicide Scotland guardian.co.uk
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Italian child killer tells American student’s appeal hearing that fellow convict Rudy Guede gave him information in prison A convicted child murderer has told an Italian court that he has information clearing Amanda Knox of the killing of British student Meredith Kercher. Giving evidence at the American student’s appeal hearing in Perugia, Mario Alessi recounted a confession made to him in prison by Rudy Guede, who was also convicted of killing the 21-year-old. The Ivory Coast national confided in him that Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were innocent, Alessi said. Knox, 23, from Seattle, is appealing against her conviction and 26-year prison sentence for the murder of her University of Leeds student housemate in November 2007. Sollecito, 26, who was sentenced to 25 years for the murder, is also trying to clear his name, and Alessi was called by his defence. Alessi told the court that Guede made his claim about the pair’s innocence in November 2009 during recreation time at the Viterbo prison. Guede, who was convicted in separate proceedings from Knox and Sollecito, denies the claim. Kercher, from Coulsdon in Surrey, was studying in Perugia when she was found with her throat slit in her bedroom at the house she shared with Knox and others. Prosecutors said the murder followed a sex game that went too far. Amanda Knox Italy guardian.co.uk
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Republicans used their weekly address to call for progress on pacts to expand trade with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. (June 18)
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Thank goodness for the Internet! Tonight’s total lunar eclipse — the first of 2011, and the longest in nearly 11 years — isn’t visible in North America, but the video below from Sky Watchers Association Of North Bengal (SWAN) is live streaming the entire spectacle. (CLICK HERE for photos of the lunar eclipse.) According to NASA, the lunar eclipse begins at 1:24 p.m. EDT, though the 100-minute long totality (when the Earth’s shadow completely covers the moon) will happen from 3:22 p.m. EDT until 5:02 p.m. EDT. SWAN isn’t the only group documenting the rare spectacle and sharing it with the world. Google announced that a live stream of the lunar eclipse can be watched on their YouTube channel (also embedded below) or by using the Sky layer in Google Earth. The feed comes from the Slooh Space Camera, and they have a live interface to let users take part in the lunar eclipse, as well. CLICK HERE to read more about the lunar eclipse. UPDATE: Because the lunar eclipse is now over, we have replaced the live feeds below with video of the event. WATCH:
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Syndicated columnist Mark Shields said Friday that today's low income tax rates are “fundamentally un-American.” Such happened on PBS's “Inside Washington” (video follows with transcript and commentary): MARK SHIELDS, HOST: I assume that the President has a position which Joe Biden represents, and he is going to be confronted to make that known before August 1. I mean, he is playing golf with the Speaker this weekend. I imagine that will come up in those discussions. But this is the reality, and Evan is absolutely right. You have to have everything on the table. And it has to be, you cannot, Charles says 25 percent spending. That’s in large part because we have two wars and, and in fact the stimulus package. But we got 14 and a half percent in revenues, Charles. That is unsustainable and it’s unacceptable and it’s fundamentally un-American. Imagine that. People not being taxed more than they currently are is fundamentally un-American. Would our Founding Fathers agree with Shields's sentiments? Hardly. What folks like Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison would say is that almost half of the public not paying taxes while the other half shoulders all the burden is what's un-American. But liberals like Shields don't see it that way. For them, taxation is a means to redistribute from those that have to those that don't, a concept our Founding Fathers would have been appalled by. Of course, one quite imagines Mr. Shields and his accountants do everything in their power to make sure his tax burden is the lowest they can get away with. I doubt they think that's un-American.
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Human rights council narrowly votes to protect rights of gay people, despite opposition from Islamic and African members The United Nations issued its first condemnation of discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people on Friday, in a cautiously-worded declaration hailed by supporters including the US as a historic moment. Members of the UN human rights council narrowly voted in favour of the resolution put forward by South Africa, against strong opposition from African and Islamic countries. “You just witnessed a historic moment at the human rights council and within the UN system with a landmark resolution protecting human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people,” the US representative to the UNHCR, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, told reporters after the vote. Couched in delicate diplomatic language, the resolution commissions a study of discrimination against gay men and lesbians around the world, the findings of which will be discussed by the Geneva-based council at a later meeting. The proposal went too far for many of the council’s 47-member states, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Pakistan. Speaking on behalf of the powerful Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva said the resolution had “nothing to do with fundamental human rights”. “We are seriously concerned at the attempt to introduce to the United Nations some notions that have no legal foundation,” Zamir Akram said. Nigeria claimed the proposal went against the wishes of most Africans. A diplomat from the north-west African state of Mauritania said it was “an attempt to replace the natural rights of a human being with an unnatural right”. The resolution passed with 23 votes in favour and 19 against, with three abstentions, including that of China. Backers included the US, the European Union, Brazil and other Latin American countries. “If you look at the history of human rights and the ever-expanding circle of who counts as human, every time that circle has expanded there have been those that have dissented and in every case they have been proven wrong over time,” Daniel Baer, a US deputy assistant secretary, said after the vote. Baer told reporters the administration of Barack Obama had chosen what he described as a “course of progress” on gay rights, both domestically and internationally. In March, the US issued a non-binding declaration in favour of gay rights that gained the support of more than 80 countries at the UN. This has coincided with domestic efforts to end the ban on gay people openly serving in the US military and discrimination against them in federal housing. Asked what good the resolution would do for gay and lesbian people in countries that opposed the resolution, Baer said it was a signal “that there are many people in the international community who stand with them, and who support then, and that change will come”. “It’s a historic method of tyranny to make you feel that you are alone,” he said. “One of the things that this resolution does for people everywhere, particularly LGBT people everywhere, is remind them that they are not alone.” Gay rights United Nations guardian.co.uk
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United Airlines passengers across the country were stranded five hours Friday after a computer crash grounded its flights. The airline says it’s in the process of resuming normal operations, but flights will be affected over the weekend. (June 18)
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President Barack Obama says kids need quality time, structure and unconditional love from their parents, calling being a dad sometimes his hardest job, but also the most rewarding. (June 18)
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enlarge Credit: Salon.com Great scoop from Gawker, who confirms that Roger Ailes, the alleged news executive, is one of NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s confidential advisers: The office of Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is claiming that Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is a confidential adviser whose interactions with the governor should remain secret under New Jersey’s executive privilege. Last month, after New York magazine reported that Ailes met with Christie last summer and called him this year to urge him to run for president, Gawker filed a request under New Jersey’s Open Records Act seeking any correspondence between the two men, as well as any records of meetings or phone calls with Ailes from Christie’s schedule or call logs. Last week we received a rather surprising response: While declining to confirm the existence of any such records, Christie’s office said they “would be exempt from disclosure…based upon the executive privilege and well-settled case law.” In other words, Christie’s staff refused to search for any records—which, given the undisputed reports of a dinner and phone call, almost certainly exist—on the basis that Ailes is a confidential adviser whose comments should be shielded from public scrutiny. New Jersey has a rather robust executive privilege—former Gov. Jon Corzine successfully employed it to keep his email exchanges with his ex-girlfriend and former union boss Carla Katz secret in the face of a public records act request—and there’s nothing particularly unusual about Christie invoking it. What is unusual is his attempt to use it to cover conversations with someone who is, ostensibly at least, a news executive. It amounts to a rather bald admission that Ailes provides Christie with political advice. New Jersey’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s executive privilege extends to “communications pertaining to the executive function,” a judgment based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition of the “president’s need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers.” It was obviously never a secret that Ailes, who spent most of his career as a communications guru to right-wing politicians, is still a communications guru to right-wing politicians. But it’s strange to see it spelled out in writing. Christie’s office did not respond to questions about the nature of his communications with Ailes and whether the privilege should apply. Ailes said in a statement, “Whatever the Governor wants to do is his business.”
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The much-vaunted Republican pledge not to raise any taxes is crumbling. Today 34 Senate Republicans voted to end the special tax breaks for ethanol. According to no-tax-increase purists like Grover Norquist, this is tantamount to a tax increase. The truth is, Republicans are divided between those who want to bring down the budget deficit and those who want to shrink government. Ending a special tax subsidy helps reduce the deficit but doesn’t necessarily shrink government. That’s why Norquist and his followers have insisted any such tax increase — including even the closing of tax loopholes — be directly linked to a corresponding tax cut. In order to save face on today’s vote, Norquist says renegade Republicans will still be considered to have adhered to the pledge if they vote in favor of an amendment offered by Senator Jim DeMint to eliminate the estate tax. Talk about grasping at straws. DeMint’s amendment isn’t even up for a vote. In short, the no-tax pledge is evaporating in the fresh air of reality. What are anti-tax Republicans to do now? For one, continue to distort the arguments of those who believe corporations and the rich should pay more taxes. For example, in the lead op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Cato Institute fellow Alan Reynolds claims a higher marginal tax on the super rich will bring in less revenue. Reynolds uses my tax proposal from last February as his red herring. “Memo to Robert Reich,” he declares, “The income tax brought in less revenue when the highest rate was 70 percent to 91 percent [between 1950 and 1980] than it did when the highest rate was 28 percent.” Reynolds bends the facts to make his case, picking and choosing among years. In truth, the most important variable explaining the rise and fall of tax revenues as percent of GDP has been the business cycle, not the effective tax rate. In periods when the economy is growing briskly, tax revenues have risen as a percent of GDP, regardless of effective rates; in downturns, revenues have fallen. Reynolds also distorts my proposal, implying that the bracket on which I call for a 70 percent tax is the same as in today’s tax code. Wrong. My proposed 70 percent rate would apply only to incomes over $15 million. $15 million, Alan! Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be subjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate. Importantly, my proposal calls for a substantial rate reduction for families with incomes under $100,000. (Conveniently, Reynolds fails to mention this.) Reynolds entirely ignores my central argument, which is that rather than depress economic growth, higher taxes on the rich correlate with higher growth. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when the top rate was between 70 percent and 91 percent, average annual growth in the American economy was 3.7 percent. Between 1983 and the start of the Great Recession, when the top rate dropped to between 35 percent and 39 percent, average growth was 3 percent. How to explain this? Easy. Since the early 1980s, a larger and larger share of total income has gone to the top (the richest 1 percent of Americans got 10 percent of total income in 1980, and get over 20 percent now). That’s left the vast middle class with insufficient purchasing power to boost the economy – without going deep into debt. Lower tax rates on the rich — including lower capital gains rates — have exacerbated this regressive trend. Finally, having misread the facts, distorted my proposal, and ignored my argument, Reynolds fails to rebut my conclusion that raising middle class purchasing power by lowering their tax rates while raising the rates at the top will help spur growth, to the benefit of all. Top earners will do better with a smaller share of a more rapidly-growing economy a larger share of a slower-growing one. If I were a cynic, I’d say the Republican right is showing signs of desperation. Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
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