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Showing posts from September, 2011

We Are All Troy Davis

First morning in ages that BabyG has napped, allowing me to shower at a decent hour and get on with things, and I can't stop watching coverage of the now-delayed pending execution of Troy Davis . It brings back memories of the 2005 execution (scroll down) of Australian man Van Tuong Nguyen - the sickening helpless feeling of waste, pointlessness and the horror of the state committing murder. Whilst the death penalty is never justified, the difference in that case was that Van Nguyen was guilty of the crime he was executed for, although he did not deserve to die for it. Troy Davis is innocent, almost certainly, with no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and one of the two witnesses who testified against him who hasn't retracted their testimony looking like a very credible suspect for the crime Davis was convicted of. You don't even have to be against the death penalty itself to oppose this execution. The death penalty itself is horrific enough, its mundane details

When All Is Said and Done

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Proving that no nightmare scenario lasts forever (although god knows, it felt like the Howard era would do so), on 1 September we fnally had our beautiful son BabyG. Which considering he was due on the 20 August, clearly meant things took a little longer than planned. Plans went out the window anyhow, as my original wish for a waterbirth was scrapped and I ended up having every intervention imaginable to try to extract my little guy, finally resorting to a c-section when all else failed...and even then, he had to be plied out with forceps. Using the emergency exit proved to be for the best when to everyone's surprise, he weighed in at four-and-a-half kilos. I don't know how. I avoided all the foods you're supposed to avoid and swallowed bucketsful of prenatal vitamins but my fruit and vegetable intake was sometimes neglected in my insane desire for chocolate milk (which makes me feel a little ill now I think of it; my lifelong loathing of milky drinks returned as soon as I