Part Two: Where's Your Bloguero's Dough?

(Amig@s, you will recall yesterday's banking drama in which your Bloguero learned to his surprise and horror that, alas, five of his accounts had been emptied. And they all said they had no dinero in them. You might want to check that out before beginning today's installment

Last night was a sleepless one for your Bloguero. He couldn't figure it out how so much money could be so swiftly syphoned from all of his accounts. It did not help that his bank has no 24-hour contact number. It did not help at all that he had to wait until after 8 am to contact someone at the bank to find out what in the world had happened. Your Bloguero knows this part of the time space continuum too well: the more he wants time to pass, the slower it crawls. Call it Watched Pot Syndrome. Call it anything you want. Your Bloguero was crazed, sleepless, fearful, anxious. Not sleeping

Instead of sleeping, Your Bloguero reviewed in microscopic details all of the potential causes of his loss of all of his money. He had not confirmed that the funds were actually stolen even though all the accounts were zero or minus. Maybe they were just seized by the IRS or Big Brother or Mr. Boh. On one hand, maybe it was a hack. Maybe it the eBay and payPal transaction in which he bought of all things not now needed an antique bottle opener? Or maybe it wasn't a hack and it was your Bloguero's fault in some regard and Agents of Government or other nefarious force had restrained his accounts. Was it some transgression he had committed in probating his father's estate? Was it some tax he owed in a distant state a decade ago? Was IRS and everyone else unwilling to give him prior notice of their horrendous acts? Maybe even some crazed creditor of someone else had mistakenly restrained every penny he had. These thoughts, these fantasies are not conducive to restful zzzzz's. No. Au contraire. They are the entry level for insomnia, anxiety, shallow breathing, horror and maybe (if it was something your Bloguero did) shame. Ouch. Double Ouch.

8 am found your Bloguero staring at the second hand and dialing.

This is what he learned. His money was not gone, it was being held. By the bank. And they were quite willing to give it back to him instantly. But did he know that somebody had actually tried to steal his money and that the bank had foiled the attempt? No, he didn't know that. He wished he knew it yesterday, but he's happy to know it now.

The details: somebody sent an email to your Bloguero's bank using his usual gmail address. They followed it up with a phone call or two and some request to wire money to an account in South Carolina. Your Bloguero knows no one in South Carolina. Period. To your Bloguero, South Carolina is something you fly over. It was once where South of the Border was.

The problem with these people, these wanna thieves, is that the branch manager knows your Bloguero and has for years. And she (your Bloguero is flattered by this) said that she doubted that the emails she received could be from El B. Their syntax and word choice was awful. Plus El B usually calls on the phone when he's screwed things up.

Anyway, after taking the information, the branch manager called back the person who was supposed to be me AND HAD MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. And she quickly determined that said person did not know El B's Mom's maiden name. So she, the bank branch manager, took steps to protect his money. She froze every last one of El B's accounts. Said she, "I'd rather have you have a sleepless night than lose your money." Your Bloguero concurs with this.

So the would-be thieves didn't get a penny of El B's money. He is totally filled with gratitude for his bank, his branch manager, and her entire crew.

And this morning, after taking various steps to safeguard his identity, no he did not by a new Luchador mask, your Bloguero went to visit some policemen, who are really very interested in this because, living in a small town, the investigators know your Bloguero and they know the he thinks they are incompetent. El Bloguero has shown them more than once why he thinks this. Your Bloguero hopes that justice prevails.

So although some of the commentators to your Bloguero's earlier essay opined that "this doesn't sound good," El B is here to assure you that all is well. He still has his money.

Now he hopes that the miscreants are caught and tried for identify theft 1st degree and attempted grand larceny. And he hopes that there is something he can do next week to express his gratitude to the bankers who truly saved his bacon by being alert. All gratitude to them.

Where's Your Bloguero's Dough? He Wants It Back!

Your Bloguero's brain is about to explode. Where is his dough? He wants it back. Yes, he knows he's repeating himself.

Your Bloguero was going to write an essay about how none of us has any privacy at all from Government or from Corporations, and that maybe the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence on privacy interests needs to be upgraded because of relatively recent technological advances. And disclosures brought about by Edward Snowden. Your Bloguero was going to carry on about how the supposed innocence of collecting megadata has been transformed by technology, and how conceptions of what privacy means need to be reconsidered. But then your Bloguero got hacked. Yes, he did get hacked.

It's odd. At about 1:08 ET today the bank called on your Bloguero's casa phone to say he should call them as soon as possible. Your Blogueo was working so he didn't get to the phone until after 5 pm, when banks are closed. Your Bloguero figured he bounced something, made some stupid error they wanted him to fix. It is after all a small town, local bank. He's made mistakes before. So your Bloguero went online to see whether he could transfer some funds to fix whatever bookkeeping error might have cropped up.

That Internet visit was like plunging head first into Alice's rabbit hole. Join your Bloguero in fantasy land.

Wow. Your Bloguero discovered on the web that the five accounts he has were all empty or overdrawn. Jeepers. How, your B wonders, could that possibly have happened?

Was it the small Ebay and payPal transaction your Bloguero made last night? Did that provide data that allowed the withdrawals?

Was it those blank checks your Bloguero had delivered to a colleague in Mexico so that monthly expenses for a project could be paid?

Was it his spouse doing something odd in Germany with an ATM card or check?

Was it his son, who is in Mexico? Did he do something?

Was it documents he threw in the garbage at his house, at his job?

What is it? There is no clue at all on the bank web site. Just huge red minuses. And what the red minuses signify: no money.

Hmmm.

Your Bloguero finds himself in the middle of an unfolding mystery. The following voicemails: the bank president (told you it was a small town bank), the branch officer who called at 1:08, two lawyer friends No information. Friends called your Bloguero back, they say he needs to call the Bank Prez. In other words, it's a loop.

The bank does not have a 24-hour number to access a person. Or a even a machine. This is hard to accept in the 21st century, but that's how it is. The 24 hour fraud number allows one only to turn off one's credit or debit card. If your Bloguero reaches the bank prez at home, what can he do? He has no access to the "system" from his home. Why? That would be insecure.

And so, your Bloguero finds himself on paper much, much poorer at the moment. And much in doubt as to where his money might have gone. And anxious. And fearful. And of course, upset and angry.

No doubt the story will unfold more in the morning. It better, says your Bloguero. It better lead to the money is returned.

For now, though, there are only questions. They all boil down to this: any illusion your Bloguero might have about the security of his data (or his money) is utterly misplaced. Both are not secure. At all. Any illusion your Bloguero might hold about his privacy is also utterly misplaced. He has none. Absolutely none. Your Bloguero wishes it were otherwise. Sadly, it isn't.

Maybe this is the start of your Bloguero's living a life in which he fully accepts that there is no security of data or money or privacy. That's all fine. In the interim, however, your Bloguero wants his dough back. And after he publishes this essay, he doesn't want to see a zillion advertisements for banking. Or security.

Clinging To Fossils: FM Radio, Blogs

This might be about time. And change. Or those things and impermanence. It might also be about technology. It's just that things are always dying. And sometimes I don't realize it. And then there are times when death is foretold.

WAMC is again conducting a fund drive. It started on Monday, and the goal is $1 Million. That’s right $1 Million Dollars. When I say that, I sound like Dr. Evil. Regardless, this $1 Million Dollar Fund Drive happens three (or is it now four?) times in every year. And it goes on and on and on. Yes, WAMC is a large enterprise. Yes, it has lots of listeners across the Northeast. Yes, it has 20 transmitters. Yes. But I’m wondering whether it’s a fossil. Whether FM (now HD radio) is DOA. Whether all of this fund raising is for something that might gracefully be saluted, and appreciated, and let go. An old love that’s now gone. A sweetheart who’s leaving. A companion who has lived a full life and can’t continue. An old, but beloved car. This fills me with sadness. And probably denial. I don’t want to see it go, but the obit’s in the draft file.

Of course, I haven’t been able to listen to WAMC’s regular programming because they are on the Fund Drive. So what. I can hear NPR news on my iPhone. I can hear streaming features from NPR and its many affiliates across the country on my iPhone. In fact, I can hear almost anything I want on my iPhone (Thanks and all praise be to Spotify and Pandora and ESPN). So I don’t really need WAMC now. I don’t really need it at all. Even in the car. Nor do you. As far as I’m concerned they can fund raise perpetually and then get stuck in a loop of replaying Prairie Home Companion. I don’t care. And if Verizon has enough bandwidth, and I have enough money to pay for it, I can listen to whatever I want from NPR (read: Government Radio) or anywhere else (Al Jazeera, e.g.), streaming on 3G or 4G or where there is Internet access for free on demand. I’m not tied to a schedule. And I never have to turn on the FM radio ever again. So, does all of this mean that WAMC a fossil? Yes, a once beloved one, but a fossil nonetheless?

A nephew who shall remain nameless is in the radio biz. I asked him, “Is FM going to be transformed into something new and useful or is it going to die?” Said he in essence, “Get your suit dry cleaned for the funerals.”

Which, sadly, brings me to WGXC in Hudson at 90.7. A community FM station. A new one. One that has had some wonderful moments. And some equally dreadful ones. A station that has explored both the zeniths and the nadirs, and often in the same hour. I tried to be an underwriter for WGXC. I don’t know whether my ad ever ran. I don’t know when the ad expired. Nobody ever showed me the information about when it ran, if it did, and then, oddly, nobody ever called me to ask me to re-up, to pay for more ads, to solicit my money. No, I called them instead. Crickets. This may be yet another reason to dry clean the black suit. It’s hard to have a community FM station survive when nobody’s collecting money from easy donors like me. Or am I unreasonable to want to know that what I paid for was actually carried out?

And then there’s blogging. Blogger friends tell me that blogging is dead, that social media is what is now important. To some extent I agree and I understand what they are saying, but I keep writing this blog, The Dream Antilles. And I keep praying that Google, which owns blogger which owns the blogspot.com domain, won’t have an infarction and lose everything I’ve written for the past 6 years. So, yes, I guess it's obvious, this blog, too, may be a fossil. And maybe I won’t be able to let it go, even when it’s completely obvious to everyone but me that it’s outlived its useful life. And that it has no readership. The latter probably doesn’t matter to me. At least not today. I suppose I’ll just keep going. I’ll keep writing this blog. And I’ll quietly compare myself to WAMC. And I’ll wonder what exactly it might be that keeps any of these fossils slogging perpetually along. Beyond their useful lives.

Enough With The Cats! Please!

I've had it. Maybe it's because it's going to be beastly hot here in 12037 today:

Partly cloudy with a chance of a thunderstorm and a chance of rain. High of 90F with a heat index of 104F. Winds from the SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.

.

Maybe it's because the hoped for thunder showers didn't arrive last night so the just planted seedlings and the just weeded garden may have to be wateredd by hand. Maybe it's because I'm sore from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet from two days of weeding and planting and digging in the sun. Or maybe it's just because I'm fed up. Hasta la madre!

I have no idea how it happened. The Internet's fixation with cats, which runs second only to its obsession with creating and disseminating porn, has created a tsunami of felines doing feline things on video. How cute. How wonderful. How like my very own cat. How predictable. This comes replete with stupid (cute, funny) captions and ridiculously cheerful, synthetic music. How awful. How revolting. This cat genre has gone entirely too far. Enough already. Basta ya! Just stop it, please.

Let's quit all of this anthropomorphic "cuteness." All of this "cheerfulness." It's killing us all. It's making our brains look like Swiss cheese. It's making us look like utter morons to people from other galaxies who are watching us. Have we no self respect? Enough Lolcats, enough ceiling cat, enough I can haz cheeseburger, and this latest from Maru. Maru 4? Enough. Please stop. Please.

Get away from the screen. Go for a walk. Take videos of dogs and horses if you have to wean yourself from this addiction. Let this be the last video of cats. The last one ever:



Did you watch the video? Did you hear that sound track? Did you see how clean that house was? How shiny the floors? OMG. Rescue us all from this. Surely life has more meaning that this.

Can we please stop now before it gets even worse? I shudder at the possibilities.

This Must Not Be 1Q84

After all. One moon. No greenish second moon. So it's empirically not Haruki Murikama's world (spoiler alert). But note: in this 2012 Internet world, if you don't believe your eyes the first (or second) time you see something, the thing you do is go to Google. And you find things like this:



Empirical proof that a second moon is not riding around the planet. This makes it a lot harder to write into a story a plausible, iconic, literary signifier (a world with two suns, a world with two moons, a world with a nearby visible orange planet) of a fantastic or magical realist earth set in the 21st Century. But if the story is set in a 1984, voila!

I'm Not Going Nowhere

Today the New York Times reports that blogs written by children are waning because young people have gravitated to Twitter and Facebook. It neglects to note that many of those blogs, especially those written by junior high schoolers, weren't anything you would ever want to read on a regular basis. There are exceptions: if the blogger were your own kid, and you wanted to know what s/he was up to, a service well provided now by Facebook and Twitter, you might find the blog interesting. Or at least telling. This has something to do with the evolution of the Internet.

Writes the Gray Lady:

Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people — particularly the younger generation.

The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.

Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

Yeah, ok. Does that mean that blogs are waning, as the headline pronounces ("Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter")? Well, only sort of. It means that people select the service or platform that serves their needs.

There's not much of a story here. In the beginning, before blogs, there were Listservs. They're still around. They put an email in your box about something you're interested in. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing mysterious. You could send the same email to a thousand people, all of whom were willing to receive it. In the beginning, the Listserv was all there was, so it had to do everything.

Then there were blogs. And blog-like things, Livejournal and MySpace. These bloggy-like things, I think, are now pretty much fossils. Real blogs? Not at all.

Initially, a lot of what got put up on blogs was awful to read, but that didn't matter because again that was all there was. Heaven knows how many abandoned blogs there are. Blogs with one entry, "Oh, so now I can blog, see?" Blogs that haven't had an entry in 5 years. Blogs that nobody ever read. The list goes on. The extinction level was and is enormous. Blogs require writing and a certain level of persistence. If I returned to a blog and saw that nothing had been posted for 90 days, I knew it was most likely dead. That happened frequently. Still does.

Then along came Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is great to keep in touch with people. You can return to what was posted last week or last month if you want to. Twitter on the other hand is much quicker, but doesn't leave much of a trail. If you have a lot of people you're following, it scrolls fast and is always on to the next thing as fast as you can refresh.

All of this depends entirely on what you want. And because people probably will want something that these outlets don't yet provide (I don't know what that is), there will probably be the next new something launched right after I post this.

People who use the Internet find the services that let them do what they want. I use Twitter (@thedavidseth), I use Facebook (my real, 3 word name). I have a couple of Listservs I use (e.g., this one about the death penalty) that I've kept going since 2002. The idea, and it's a very modest one, is that various platforms are good for some things and not so good for others. When there were few options, everything got used for, well, everything. Now there are enough options that people can gravitate to what seems works for them, and they do.

This particular blog, The Dream Antilles, serves me excellently to do what I want it to do: it provides analysis and opinion, and it has particular subjects that it is about. I spare you a list. If you're reading this, you know what the focus is (or can easily find out) because there are more than 950 posts. And you no doubt know (and hopefully forgive) the idiosyncrasies and extremes of your humble bloguer@.

So this blog is not waning. No, it's continuing. Here's Dylan:

A Piece Of Internet History

The following screenshot marks the end of a period of Internet history, and I think the end of the influence of dailyKos on the left-blogosfero. I think that enormous group blog will now be divided up in a way that the previous vital cacophony will die down, groups will be isolated, and ultimately, it will feel and look a lot like Left Coast Facebook^TM:

I, as I said before, will not follow the masses to the new format/platform, because I am not providing big sites with any more free content.

Today's Cyber War

It's not a secret: the Internet was always going to radically change the world of information. That's nothing new. What is new, is that the struggle over who controls and possesses information isn't going to be fought solely in the courts or in the legislatures or the media. It's going to be fought out as well on the Internet itself and the weapons are going to be computers.

The present battle, fought between Wikileaks and its allies, on one side, and its well organized adversaries, including financial organizations and governments, on the other, may eventually bring information democracy, in the form of unprecedented and simple access to all kinds of information, even classified or secret information, to anyone with a modem. Or at the other pole, it may eventually bring unprecedented censorship through even tighter control of information to the Internet and harsh penalties for publication of various kinds of information.

The New York Times reports from today's digital battlefront:

LONDON — A broad campaign of cyberattacks appeared to be under way on Wednesday in support of the beleaguered antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, which has drawn governmental criticism from around the globe for its release of classified American documents and whose founder, Julian Assange, is being held in Britain on accusations of rape.

Attacks were reported on Mastercard.com, which stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks; on the lawyer representing the two Swedish women who have accused Mr. Assange of sexual improprieties; and on PostFinance, the Swiss postal system’s financial arm, which closed Mr. Assange’s account after saying he provided false information by saying that he resided in Switzerland.

At least some of the attacks involved distributed denials of service, in which a site is bombarded by requests from a network of computers until it reaches capacity and, effectively, shuts down.

It was unclear whether the various attacks were independently mounted, but suspicion was immediately focused on Anonymous, a leaderless group of activist hackers that had vowed to wreak revenge on any organization that lined up against WikiLeaks and that claimed responsibility for the Mastercard attack.

Anonymous, according to the Times, has expressed its philosophy in two manifestos released this past week, and is battling for nothing less than free information on a free Internet:

The group, which gained notoriety for their cyberattacks... released two manifestos over the weekend vowing revenge against enemies of WikiLeaks.

“We fight for the same reasons,” said one. “We want transparency and we counter censorship.”

The manifestos singled out companies like PayPal and Amazon, who had cut off service to WikiLeaks after the organization’s recent release of classified diplomatic documents from a cache of 250,000 it had obtained.

In recent days, Gregg Housh, an activist who has worked on previous Anonymous campaigns, said that a core of 100 or so devout members of the group, supplemented by one or two extremely expert hackers, were likely to do most of the damage. Mr. Housh, who disavows any illegal activity himself, said the reason Anonymous had declared its campaign was amazingly simple. Anonymous believes that “information should be free, and the Internet should be free,” he said,

Information, as the law now stands, is anything but free. But the Internet for more than a decade and a half has eroded much of the traditional deference to ownership of information. Napster and its progeny have brought a generation of people who think music and film should all be free. Readers of Blogs are never disturbed by what amounts to wholesale infringement of copyrighted photos and videos and text. Wikileaks has carried this a step further by publishing enormous amounts of material officially designated "secret". The trend on the Internet is toward free and unfettered access to all information. But those who own the information have no intention whatsoever to allow it to flow without charge and without a fight.

Today's attacks, I think, mark the Cyber Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Seven Years Of Writing About State Killing

To be completely honest, when I began, I never expected that over the course of the next seven years I would write more than 200 essays about ending state killing in America. But today I noticed-- I usually miss the date-- that March 18, 2009, is the seventh Anniversary of my starting a listserv about ending the death penalty. And I see that I've written more than 200 essays about the topic.

When I started the listserv I described it like this:

The views and opinions of an experienced criminal defense lawyer who is also a buddhist. About pending executions, legal developments, the media, the abolition movement, contemplation, prayer, and engaged, nonviolent activism. Sent sporadically. Only for those who value all lives and are opposed to the death penalty. Not for debate.

I have pretty much stayed on point for the whole way. And I've written virtually every month for the whole way. And now, what was "cutting edge" technology, the listserv, is the poor step cousin of blogs and flogs and tweets. But I persist using the now antique machinery.

There is something bittersweet about commemorating seven years of writing advocacy. It's a nice milestone, but I wish state killing had been abolished so that I couldn't get to this point. I do want, however, to mark the date, and wonder, openly and aloud, how many more essays it will take before state killing actually ends.

What better way of commemorating this milestone, especially in light of Friday's historic and optimistic vote in New Mexico to abolish state killing (now awaiting Governor Richardson's signature) than to republish one of the early posts from March, 2002, noting the 100th Death Row Exoneration:

100th Death Row Inmate Exonerated

I bet you didn't read much about this news item in your local newspaper or hear about it on the TV news. And the odds are pretty good that the requisite editorial calling for abolition or a moratorium wasn't there either. You should have seen something at the top of the editorial page that said, "Now that 100 innocent people have been released from death row, maybe it's been adequately demonstrated that innocent people might be executed and might have already been killed. It's time for a moratorium, and it's time to end the death penalty." At least the New York Times had it correct.

Think about this: these 100 people haven't been released on the "technicalities." They weren't released because their trials were unfair, or they suffered from prosecutorial misconduct. They weren't released because they were discriminated against because of race or the region of the country where they were charged, or because they were retarded or the mentally ill. These weren't cases in which courts ruled that constitutional principles were offended by a judge's jury charge or evidence that should not have been admitted or other trial or appeal defects. This is nothing like that. This is about being released because the convicted person is proven actually to be innocent.

It's mind boggling. The 100th case is as good an example as any. After being in prison for a decade, and spending part of the time on death row, a DNA test comes back and says to someone whose conviction has been consistently upheld by the courts, "You're innocent. This other guy did the crime. Go home and be free." The DA apologizes. Surprisingly, this does not set off a national riot. It does not trigger a legislative convulsion and a sudden moratorium on killing people. Congress does not rise up in indignation an enact the Innocence Protection Act. Nobody jams a screwdriver into the gears of the machinery of death. Instead we shake our heads and scratch our heads and read the following article:

Former death row inmate Ray Krone was released from prison on Monday in Arizona after DNA testing showed that he did not commit the murder for which he was convicted 10 years ago. Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley and Phoenix Police Chief Harold Hurtt announced at a news conference on Monday that new DNA tests vindicated Krone and that they would seek his release pending a hearing next month to vacate the murder conviction. Romley stated, "[Krone] deserves an apology from us, that's for sure. A mistake was made here. . . . What do you say to him? An injustice was done and we will try to do better. And we're sorry."

Krone was first convicted in 1992, based largely on circumstantial evidence and testimony that bite marks on the victim matched Krone's teeth. He was sentenced to death. Three years later he received a new trial, but was again found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 1996.

Krone's post-conviction defense attorney, Alan Simpson, obtained a court order for DNA tests. The results not only exculpated Krone, but they pointed to another man, Kenneth Phillips, as the assailant. Prosecutor William Culbertson told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Alfred Fenzel that the chances are 1.3 quadrillion to one that DNA found in saliva on the victim's tank top came from Phillips. (The Arizona Republic, 4/9/02)

Krone is the 100th inmate freed from death row since 1973 and the 12th in which DNA testing played a substantial factor. In all, the 100 inmates freed from death row due to actual innocence spent a combined total of approximately 800 years on death row.

The state of Florida leads the nation in wrongful convictions, with
22 innocent people released from death row since 1973. Illinois
is second with 13; Oklahoma and Texas are tied for third with 7,
followed by Arizona and Georgia, with six each.

(sources: DPIC, NCADP, Rick Halperin, Arizona Republic)

How do we understand this? Right this minute the 101st person to be exonerated is sitting somewhere on death row. S/he didn't commit the crime, and the courts have determined over the past 10 or 12 or 15 years of appeals and motions that s/he had a fair trial, and reasonable assistance from counsel, and a complete appeal, and full access to the courts. And the courts are all saying that it is OK to execute him/her. There's just one small problem. Sometime in the next weeks we're going to discover that, guess what!, this person who was convicted by a jury and whose appeals have been denied is actually innocent. We might discover this because of DNA. We might discover it several other ways. Rest assured: it will be discovered. Then the 101st person will be released. And the 101st person will receive an apology and go home and maybe eat steak and maybe drink margaritas and maybe swim in a swimming pool for the first time in a decade (see, Arizona Republic, 4/10/02).

But wait a minute. What happens if we don't discover this proof of innocence in time? What if the 101st person is actually executed before anyone proves that this person is actually innocent? What then? What if the person who should have been the 100th person, or the 23rd, or the 73rd wasn't able to be released because he was killed instead?

Meanwhile, what is happening to the 101st and the 102nd and the 103rd persons, who are surely on death row awaiting their release as I write this? They are floating and nearly drowning in a vast sea of great suffering. As Ray Krone told the Arizona Republic about how guards reacted as he was taken to death row 10 years ago: "I was something they looked at on the bottom of their shoes, that they were trying to scrape off," he said. And they are not suffering alone. Those thought to be their victims, their victims' families, those who guard them, those who prosecute them, those who are their judges and juries, those who defend them and their families, those who report their stories, those who read their stories, all of these, and those they talk to, and those who think about any of these, and those who try to prove them innocent, on and on and on, all find themselves immersed in this ocean of unnecessary suffering.

I pray that all on death row will be spared. May all beings affirm the preciousness of every single life. May all beings refrain from killing and prevent others from killing. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all beings be free from danger. May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all beings have equanimity, so they have neither too much grasping nor too much aversion, so they may dwell in the perfection of each successive moment. May all beings have abundant love, prosperity, comfort, healing, delight. May all beings have peace. May all beings realize their enlightenment. May all beings have the spiritual bliss that is beyond sorrow. Om tara tuttare ture svaha! peace, david

Things have changed in the past 7 years. There have been even more death row exonerations. States have voted to abolish the death penalty. Other states have abolition statutes before their legislatures. Public approval for state killing is down. Economic concerns may lead to a view that the death penalty is a wanton luxury: states cannot afford it because it gives them nothing valuable. But sadly, state killing persists in all its barbarousness.

Meanwhile, I hope that I don't have to commemorate the tenth anniversary of my listserv because state killing will have come to an end. I hope that in my lifetime it ends. My plan then is to have an enormous party and invite everyone I know to celebrate. I'm optimistic that I will actually have this party, and I hope you, dear reader, can come to it.