Staff Sergeant Robert Bales and the price of life.

In America, money buys everything – even forgiveness, it seems. At least, that is the implicit view of the American armed forces.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is being charged with the murders of 17 Afghan civilians, he shot to death in their homes, at night. There were four men, four women and nine children in the tally. He also attempted to kill six others. He faces a potential death sentence and a minimum life sentence with the possibility of parole, under military law. These facts are well known. What struck me as somewhat bizarre was what America has done in response to these killings. It has attempted to bribe the affections of the deceased’s families. The US has paid 50,000 USD to the families of those killed, per victim and 11,000 USD to the families of those wounded, per victim. Think about that for a moment. America imagines that it can buy the goodwill of the families of those it has murdered. In doing so, it is implicitly stating that it believes there is some exchangeable equivalence between money and life. There is no such equivalence, in their hearts. It is certain that not a one of the survivors would rather have the money than their loved ones back, alive, with them.

Then there is another curious fact about this. The international mass media are expressing amazement at the size of the sums the Americans have offered in compensation. They seem to be saying that these are large sums of money. Now, by comparison to past payments to those killed or injured by Americans in Afghanistan, they are. Typical prior payments have been 2,000 USD for a death; 400 USD for a serious injury and 200 USD for a non-serious injury. So, by that scale these are significant payments. Yet, there is another comparison to be made. America has placed a value on human life, called the “statistical value of human life”. Different agencies place different values on life. The Environmental Protection Agency values a life at 6.9 million USD. The Food and Drug Administration values life at 7.9 million USD. This leads to a sobering conclusion: an Afghan life is worth up to 158 times less than an American life, according to the actions of the American government, in compensating the Afghan families, whose members were murdered by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.

Should the Afghan people ever come to understand this discrepancy between the value of an American life and the value of Afghan life, they might be mightily insulted at the compensation offered. It should be noted that the Afghans have a blood money culture in which compensation for the loss of life is expected – yet, Afghan commentators have remarked, in tune with my words, that no compensation is enough to make amends for these crimes – for it won’t bring back their loved ones.

If America really wants to play this game, of buying off the hatred of the people who have every reason to hate them, then really they should pay the same value for an Afghan life that they notionally ascribe to an American life. Each Afghan victim should have been compensated to the tune of 7.9 million USD. This would have another effect. It might make the Americans more cautious about whom they kill in Afghanistan. It could soon become very expensive to send young, anger prone, gun happy, American soldiers into a combat environment – for reasons altogether unrelated to their pay and support. Were every civilian death to require almost 8 million USD in compensation, there would, I am sure, be suddenly a whole lot fewer of them – and this could only be described as a good thing.

I shall patiently wait for the American government to pay out the balance of the 7.9 million USD payments for each victim. Until then, the US government hasn’t shown that it values Afghan life as much as it values American life – and that is a very grave insult, to this long suffering people. A life is a life – and it should be valued as much from a distant land, as from our own. That is a lesson the Americans have yet to imbibe.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The secret annual Holocaust.

The Holocaust is, rightfully, thought of as one of the greatest crimes against Humanity that there has ever been perpetrated. It involved the systematic killing of millions of Jews, mentally handicapped or disturbed, Soviet POWS, Freemasons, Slovenes, Poles, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Romani.

In all the total of those who died, according to this Wikipedia article was the enormous number of somewhat less than 13 million people. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust). The Nazis are thought of, as a consequence, as one of the most evil organizations ever to have been invented by Man. Of course, it is right to think of them, as so. Yet, there is a greater evil in this world, than the Nazi death machine, than all the efforts of the Holocaust ever managed to achieve. This is an evil which occurs in every country of the world and occurs so routinely, that most people think nothing of it. It is a practice which kills approximately 42 million people per year. It is, therefore, a Holocaust every four months; three Holocausts per year – yet no-one says anything about it. What do you think it is? Please have a good think about what you think might be killing so many people per year, deliberately, systematically and with extreme prejudice.

Please genuinely think of what could be killing so many people, deliberately. I would like you to write what you thought, below, as well.

The answer is abortions by doctors. Doctors, around the world, kill an annual total of 42 million fetuses. Think about that. That is almost enough people to repopulate the United Kingdom, from chopped up, aborted babies. This is an evil far, far greater than ANYTHING the Nazis did – yet it is considered legal, normal, and routine in many countries. Yet, it is an abomination and a truly great crime against Humanity. If you doubt this vast number, please check out this link on abortion statistics: http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

It is notable that 38% of abortions occur among families with incomes of 30,000 to 59,999 US Dollars per year and 13.8% for families with incomes over 60,000 dollars per year (in the USA). So, for many women, abortion is not an economic necessity: it is a social commodity, a selfish luxury of thinking only of oneself and not of the unborn child. Indeed, in the US, 93% of all abortions occur because the baby is seen as “inconvenient” or “unwanted”. Only 6% of abortions are for the reasons of health of the baby or mother.

I rather think that the only type of person who could abort their child, is one who does not or cannot think, long term. They are people who lack the imagination to look ahead and imagine what their child might be like, were they to be born. They cannot foresee the marvelous times ahead, of getting to know their child, of hearing their first jokes, their laughter and, eventually, their wisdom, unfold. They cannot foresee all the beauty inherent in a human life. All they see, instead, is the immediate difficulties that all children bring: sleepless nights, nappy changing and planning life around them, until they are old enough to be a little more independent. Yet, to think in such shortsighted terms, is to fail to balance the whole length of the life ahead, against the short period of dependency.

Mostly it is the mother who wants to abort her own child – and that I find puzzling. Stereotypically, women are supposed to be nurturing and loving towards children yet, anyone trying to understand the problem of abortion, should know this: IN ALMOST ALL COUNTRIES, THE FATHER HAS NO RIGHT TO STOP THE ABORTION FROM PROCEEDING. Yes, that is right. Almost all of these 42 million abortions are SOLELY THE WILL OF THE MOTHERS.

That, to me, is appalling. These mothers are not mothers at all, but murderers. It is only the strangeness of modern law that prevents these “mothers” from being recognized as child murderers. So, too, their “doctors”. These modern abortion doctors are no different in kind, flavour or moral failing than that other famous Dr…Mengele, the Nazi doctor who experimented on humans and then killed and dissected them. Modern doctors who kill hundreds of unborn children each, each year are absolutely no better than Mengele was. The only difference is that we are not blinded to Mengele’s crimes, by socially accepting them. Abortion is socially accepted and legally enshrined in most countries - but ethically speaking, it is still a horrible crime against the most defenseless members of Humanity.

The fact that doctors kill 42 million unborn babies each year tells me something very interesting. Doctors do NOT, on balance, “save lives”. I very much doubt whether doctors “save” 42 million adult or child lives each year, as a whole. However, they do KILL 42 million fetuses. So, it is very likely that, on balance, doctors are members of a murderous profession that kills far many more people than it saves.

If one truly wishes to improve the true mean life expectancy of the human race, one should outlaw medicine, at once. Doctors should become a banned “profession”. Were there no doctors at all, in this world, something very odd would begin to happen: millions of children who would have been murdered would be killed no more. They would be born to have lives.

Now, I realize that aborted children are not considered part of life expectancy statistics, but they should be. If a child is aborted, it has had a very short life. Yet it is not counted in the life expectancy statistics of its nation. It should be. Life expectancy stats should be recalculated for all countries, by including the longevity of the aborted babies. We would then see something very interesting: mean life is much shorter, in the modern world, than one would have thought. It could, indeed, be as short as eras that we look down upon as barbaric for the living conditions that foreshortened the lives of the people of the time. Our statistics are lies. They do not tell us the true longevity of all people conceived, in the modern world.

If stats included all conceptions and the resultant longevity, mean longevity for populations would RISE if doctors were banned from practicing (and all substitute abortionists). Of course, the highest ages reached would decline since, whilst doctors do kill many unborn humans every year, they also help the oldest old, live a few years longer, and sicker than they otherwise could.

Of course, there might be population problems, were all conceptions to be born. However, if women and girls knew that all conceptions would result in births, they would be better motivated to use non fatal forms of contraception, more carefully. So, that potential problem would probably not come to pass.

We like to think of ourselves as morally superior to the Nazis. Most modern countries look on them with horror and a sense of “how on Earth could they?”. Yet, daily, in clinics across the world, crimes as great are being committed each and every day. Doctors, who should be devoted to saving lives, are killing unborn babies. It is monstrous – and it is something which should not happen, in a moral world. However, we don’t live in a moral world. We live in a “convenient” world. A world in which nothing so fragile as a baby’s life should be allowed to interrupt our “lifestyle”. (Ironic that to preserve their “life”styles, many mothers use the death of their children, as their tool of choice).

What is truly monstrous about our world, therefore, is the extent to which most people are unaware of just how monstrous it is. We have managed to make the truly abhorrent seem routine and acceptable, when it is not, and can never be, to those who see things truly.

I would like to see a world in which abortions are history, not current events. I wonder, though, whether I will ever live to see a world such as that: a world of conscience, of humanity, a world that knows the value of life. We are a long way from such a world. It may be, that I shall never see such a world and that such a world may never be. However, people who can see this truth clearly, must not stop at trying to make the world a more humane one. So, if you understand the sadness of the abortion of the millions who die before they are born, please do what you can to create a better world, a world in which such “unwanted” children, might be given the chance to live.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)