Prominent Lawyer in Fight for Gay Rights Dies After Setting Himself on Fire in Prospect Park
April 15, 2018 by admin
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Friends said that after he left the organization, Mr. Buckel became involved in environmental causes, which he alluded to in his note as the reason he decided to end his life by self-immolation with fossil fuels.
“Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather,” he wrote in the email sent to The Times. “Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result — my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”
In his note, which was received by The Times at 5:55 a.m., Mr. Buckel discussed the difficulty of improving the world even for those who make vigorous efforts to do so.
Privilege, he said, was derived from the suffering of others.
“Many who drive their own lives to help others often realize that they do not change what causes the need for their help,” Mr. Buckel wrote, adding that donating to organizations was not enough.
Noting that he was privileged with “good health to the final moment,” Mr. Buckel said he wanted his death to lead to increased action. “Honorable purpose in life invites honorable purpose in death,” he wrote.
The police said Mr. Buckel was pronounced dead at 6:30 a.m. in what they said was a suicide.
Susan Sommer, a former attorney for Lambda Legal who is now the general counsel for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said Mr. Buckel was “one of the architects of the freedom to marry and marriage equality movement.”
“He deserves tremendous thanks for recognizing this was in many ways at the heart of what it meant to be gay for many Americans and making it a priority,” she said. “I learned so much from him about the emotional center of what it means for a gay person not to be able to have all the protections for the person they love and that it’s worth fighting for.”
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Christopher Lee for The New York Times
Lambda Legal credited Mr. Buckel for focusing the organization on the rights of lesbian, gay and transgender youth. One of the cases Mr. Buckel spearheaded, Nabozny v. Podlesny, was the first time a federal court ruled that schools have an obligation to prevent the bullying of gay students, said Camilla Taylor, acting legal director at Lambda Legal.
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Mr. Buckel also guided Lambda Legal’s national work to allow gay people to marry. In another case he led, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples and their children were harmed because they were excluded from the rights granted via marriage. When Mr. Buckel suggested filing a lawsuit for gay marriage in Iowa in 2005, it was legal only in Massachusetts.
“It was considered a crazy thing to do because of the notion that Iowa would get to marriage equality before places like New York and New Jersey,” Ms. Taylor said.
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Catherine Varous, a neighbor of Mr. Buckel’s, said he was very active in gardening, and together they worked on the Greenest Block in Brooklyn competition.
She said she often saw Mr. Buckel and his partner at the Park Slope Food Co-op and a farmer’s market. “He was the quieter of the two,” she said, referring to Mr. Buckel. “He was definitely more serious.”
Amy Orr, a kindergarten teacher who lives in the neighborhood, was out for her regular weekend jog at about 6:25 a.m. when she saw police officers standing over something that was smoldering.
She said she first “thought it was a pile of garbage because of the shopping cart” but then she saw the outline of a human body.
Runners and bicyclists continued to pass. But as more police officers and firefighters gathered, they all looked “dumbfounded,” Ms. Orr said. “Nobody could believe it.”
By 11 a.m., the authorities had removed Mr. Buckel’s body, leaving a blackened patch and a circular indentation around which parks officials placed two orange cones.
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The grim scene stood in stark contrast to the rest of the park, which brimmed with activity. Several youth baseball games continued nearby and participants in PurpleStride, a walk dedicated to ending pancreatic cancer, strode along the bike path with runners and joggers.
The field where Mr. Buckel died would ordinarily be filled with activity, too. Warren Beishir, a graphic designer, said it was used for volleyball, soccer and barbecuing.
Mr. Beishir sat across from the field under a tree with his wife, Susan Stawicki, their 2-year-old daughter and their neighbors. They live across from the park and were awakened by sirens and flashing lights.
“How do you do that to yourself? It’s a terrible way to go, and I don’t want to think about it after today,” Mr. Beishir said.
“I hope they are at peace,” Ms. Stawicki said.
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Syria air strikes: US still ‘locked and loaded’ for new chemical attacks
April 15, 2018 by admin
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President Donald Trump has warned Syria’s government the US is “locked and loaded” to strike again if it carries out chemical attacks.
The warning came after the US, UK and France struck three Syrian sites in response to a suspected deadly chemical attack in the town of Douma a week ago.
Syria denies any chemical use and says that attack was fabricated by rebels.
A UN Security Council vote brought by Syria’s ally, Russia, to condemn the US-led strikes was rejected.
The wave of strikes represents the most significant attack against President Bashar al-Assad’s government by Western powers in seven years of Syria’s civil war.
While Western powers have supported rebels from early on in the war, they have not intervened against Syria directly.
- What was targeted in Syria?
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- UK publishes legal case for Syria strikes
After the failure of the Russian motion, the US, UK and France circulated a new draft resolution to UN Security Council members, calling for an independent investigation into Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons, AFP news agency reported.
A similar previous plan had been vetoed by Russia.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has blamed Russian obstruction for the need to launch military strikes, saying they left “no practicable alternative”.
Isn’t an investigation already under way?
Inspectors from the independent Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had already been dispatched to Damascus and they are expected to visit Douma this weekend.
But the OPCW will not seek to establish – and publicly announce – who was responsible for the attack, which is what the UK, US and France want to see.
The new, Western-drafted resolution calls for the OPCW to release their report within 30 days.
UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson wrote in the Telegraph that global powers will not “turn a blind eye” to the use of chemical weapons.
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Syria’s Assistant Foreign Minister Ayman Sousan told the BBC his government welcomed the OPCW delegation.
“The work of the mission is in the interest of the Syrian state as it will uncover the lies, hypocrisy and the misinformation of the sides which had promoted the alleged use of chemical weapons,” he said.
What happened at the UN?
An emergency meeting was held by the UN Security Council on Saturday, leading to some bitter exchanges.
Russia sought to secure a collective condemnation of the early morning air strikes.
However, out of the 15-member council, only China and Bolivia voted in favour of the Russian resolution.
Russia’s UN envoy, Vasily Nebenzia, read out a quote from President Vladimir Putin accusing the US, UK and France of “cynical disdain” in acting without waiting for the OPCW’s findings.
US envoy Nikki Haley said the strikes were “justified, legitimate and proportionate”.
She said: “I spoke to the president [Trump] this morning and he said, ‘if the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded’.”
She added: “We cannot stand by and let Russia trash every international norm and allow use of chemical weapons to go unanswered.”
- Can Trump walk away after air strikes?
Syrian envoy Bashar Jaafari called the US, UK and France “liars, spoilers and hypocrites”, who exploited the UN “to pursue… [their] policy of interference and colonialism”.
What is happening on the ground?
CBS News reporter Seth Doane visited one of the targets in Damascus on Saturday afternoon, and found it to be a smouldering pile of rubble.
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CBS News
The Barzeh complex appears to be totally destroyed
The Barzeh complex is, according to the US, a centre for development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons. Syria denies this.
- What sites were targeted?
- US and allies launch air strikes on Syria
Elsewhere, the Syrian army announced on Saturday that the Eastern Ghouta region, where Douma is situated, had been cleared of the last rebel fighters and was fully retaken.
What has Donald Trump said?
He tweeted early on Saturday, hailing the strikes as “perfectly executed”. He also thanked the UK and France.
Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018
End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
His use of the phrase “Mission Accomplished” drew a warning from President George W Bush’s ex-press secretary Ari Fleischer:
Skip Twitter post by @AriFleischer
End of Twitter post by @AriFleischer
The phrase had been on a banner as Mr Bush declared the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq in May 2003, six weeks after the US-led invasion of the country. The following Iraqi insurgency questioned the validity of the statement.
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At a Pentagon briefing on Saturday, Lt Gen Kenneth McKenzie listed the three targets that had been struck, saying the attacks had “set the Syrian chemical weapons programme back years”.
Gen McKenzie said about 40 Syrian defence missiles were fired, mostly after the targets were hit and none were “successfully engaged”.
The Pentagon briefing conflicted with information given at a Russian defence ministry briefing, which said 103 cruise missiles had been launched and 71 were shot down by Syrian systems.
Both the Russians and the US said there were no reported casualties. Syria says three people were hurt near Homs.
The US said it had communicated with Russia ahead of the strikes through the normal procedures of their “deconfliction” hotline but no details of the attacks were given.
There had been concerns that if the allied strikes had hit Russian military personnel, it would have further escalated tension.
The US says the scale of the strikes was about “double” what was launched in April 2017 after a chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 people.