Although virtually unnoticed in Columbus, Dr. Jonathan I. Groner, the Trauma Medical Director at Children’s Hospital, is spearheading an international debate on the role of U.S. doctors in carrying out prison executions by lethal injection. After being rejected by American medical journals, Groner’s article “Lethal Injection: A stain on the face of medicine” was published in the November 2, 2002 issue of the British Medical Journal. Groner’s article questions the ethics of U.S. doctors who willingly participate in the execution of inmates. The article also points out parallels between the government’s use of doctors to administer lethal injection and a similar procedure that was administered by doctors in a Nazi Germany “euthanasia” program.

Within days of publication, the French newspaper Le Figaro interviewed Groner about the article. “By entering the death chamber, not only do they [U.S. doctors] destroy their relationship with their own patients, but they take the world medical community hostage. Imagine if all the doctors refused, execution would stop in this country, unless a corp of medical executioners was created,” Groner told Le Figaro.

As we go to press, the Bush administration ordered its predictable post-Christmas call-up of U.S. troops. President George W. Bush is busy resurrecting the discredited doctrine of “preventative” war to justify an attack on Iraq. “Preventative” war was last invoked by Nazi party leaders as a defense of their actions during the Nuremberg trials. The U.S. government is engaging in an unprecedented propaganda campaign to justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq. Our government’s plans to seize 119-billion barrels of known Iraqi oil reserves are conveniently ignored. Still, the reality of selling the Iraq war is proving difficult, especially since Iraq has no nuclear weapons, and its only known link to biochemical weapons were those supplied by the U.S. and its allies during the 1980s.

While the U.S. points fingers at Iraq, the press routinely reports that the Bush’s chief Islamic ally in the region, Pakistan, provided the nuclear technology to North Korea. So, Pakistan, a major nuclear power, with direct ties to Al Qaeda and the North Korean nuclear weapons program, is not a threat according to Bush.

January 22, 2003, will mark the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, the landmark privacy ruling that gives women the constitutional right to choose abortion. With the Nov. 5 elections giving Republicans the majority of the House and Senate, and with staunchly anti-abortion George W. Bush in the White House, this triumvirate of power makes the struggle to maintain abortion and reproductive rights so much more difficult and imperative.

It is estimated that prior to the passage of Roe v. Wade, tens of thousands of women died as a result of illegal abortions. Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, women have lost ground to an anti-choice movement whose aggressive behavior has passed many onerous restrictions to abortion rights and threatened to crush the very rights it took generations to win — both through legislation and through Supreme Court decisions.

Local activists put in a full day’s work on December 10, International Human Rights Day. To protest human rights violations and threats against civil liberties, local demonstrators gathered at the federal building in the early afternoon and then brought their message to the offices of the Columbus Police, Columbus City Hall, U.S. Senators, the Ohio Statehouse, the City Center mall, the Franklin County Courthouse and jail, before ending at the FBI building. At each stop, parts of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights were read aloud. The Columbus Police followed the demonstrators from location to location in an obvious show of force. The Human Rights Day Coalition put together a pamphlet that spelled out what they believe to be violations of the UN Declaration. Several speakers demanded an end to the unjust “War on Terrorism” which they argued was really “a war on democracy and freedom.” Eight days later, approximately a thousand Muslim immigrants were rounded up and jailed without charges in southern California.

Minefields continue to be a scourge in many areas of the world, years, and sometimes decades, after the combatants who placed them in the ground have gone home. They continue to kill and maim innocent civilians going about their daily lives of living, working, traveling, and playing. Children account for a large proportion of those affected due to their curiosity and playfulness. Afghanistan, trying to recover from decades of wars between different factions, faces one of the worst landmine tragedies. An estimated 10 million landmines and UXOs (Unexploded Ordinance - bombs and shells remaining on the ground) claim an estimated 300 to 400 casualties each month and prevent the safe use of large areas of otherwise arable land. This makes the restoration of “life as usual” a real challenge for many rural - and urban - people.