In Swaziland, a tiny country surrounded by South Africa, sub-saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy maintains a regime of tyranny over the women of the nation. Under Swazi law, women are considered minors, and cannot own property, acquire a bank loan, or enter into a legal contract without the consent of a male relative. The King is promising that a new constitution will be written sometime soon now, but with no commissions or discussion at all in the palace about gender equity, its’ likely that this new constitution will merely recycle status quo ante as far as women are concerned.

In a recent fit of misogyny that veers into the completely senseless, Jim Gama, a power behind the throne and Right-wing hate radio host near the capital Mbabane has ordered that soldiers strip women wearing trousers in the royal villages. (One is reminded of the Shah’s charming little habit of having soldiers tear off women’s chadors with bayonetts during his campaign of forced Westernization.) According to women’s rights activist Pholile Dlamini, Gama became the most powerful traditional authority in Swaziland because he "endeared himself to the national leadership by being a super traditionalist who regularly belittled women on the air."

Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news that I don’t at all intend to link with the preceding story: power-behind-the-throne Dick Cheney decided to spend the anniversary of the September 11^th massacre building national unity and currying mainstream consensus by sitting down for an interview with Rush Limbaugh, a Right-wing hate radio host who endeared himself to the national leadership by being a super-traditionalist who regularly belittles women on the air.

But I digress.

In memoriam… 9/11/2001

One year ago today, the world stood still as carnage and madness consumed New York City and Washington DC. I remember that just a bit before I was supposed to leave for school at 9:00 my mother came in and told me that she’d heard on the car radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned on the television next to my computer and saw it there. The massacre unfolding before all our eyes on live television. The home video of that explosion and the screams. I don’t even remember how I went through the rest of the day — I know I went to school. Silent crowds of people—a few whispering around the edges—stood fixed in front of the television screens in Haley Center. None of us knew what to do but stand there.

I’m not going to wax elegiac or maudlin about it today. I’m told that there has been wall to wall media coverage for the past week or so, but I’m cut off from TV right now so I have been mercifully spared most of it. I am tired of the soft violins and the misty-focus interviews and the incessant attempts to wrap up this ugly, horrible crime in some kind of lyrical closure. Well, closure doesn’t exist. Some 2,000 people were brutally murdered and there is nothing that can close the wounds — no heartfelt words, no bombing of foreign lands, no teevee specials will ever bring them back.

Solace is the best we can strive for. Take a moment at 8:46am and 10:30am to silently remember those who died in that awful day. There will be performances of Mozart’s Requiem being sung around the world (including here in Auburn)—take the time out of your evening to listen to it, if you can. You don’t need to put on any big production of mourning. Just remember, and be still, for a while.

All you Fifth Column Leftists and pantywaist liberals fess up. You thought that all this sabre-rattling against Iraq was just a cynical political maneuver by the Bush administration for an October surprise to undermine Democratic prospects in the upcoming Congressional races, didn’t you? Well, you’re just going to have to give up your sorry little paranoid delusions. It turns out that political maneuvering is only a fringe benefit. Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) has shone the light of good old conservative moral and strategic clarity on why we need to bomb Baghdad as soon as possible:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The United States should no longer buy oil from Iraq, but steal it, U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, R-Wolfeboro, told hundreds of New Hampshire Republicans gathered last night at a party fund-raiser.

Why don’t we just take his oil? Smith bellowed to the crowd during a fiery 13-minute speech, referring to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Why buy it? Take it!

Thanks, Bob, for clearing that one up for us. The oppressed petrochemicals of Iraq must be liberated from Saddam Hussein’s iron fist as soon as possible.

The LGBT community in California suffered a tragic loss when Jeffery Tod Owens was murdered on June 6. A gang of four to six men attacked Owens and Michael Bussee at about midnight outside of the Menagerie bar in Riverside. They stabbed Owens at least four times as they spat out anti-gay slurs, including "You want some trouble… fag, here it is." There’s been no motive at all uncovered other than simple, blind, blood-thirsty hatred.

The campaign of terror against gay men, lesbians, and transgendered people has got to stop. I’m tired of reporting on savage attacks, and I’m tired of celebrating the lives of people who should still be alive to celebrate with us. I urge everyone to join grassroots efforts for awareness and acceptance of the queer community, such as National Coming Out Day on October 11 and the Day of Silence against hate crimes on April 9. Str8 allies, help out wherever you can; we need the support. And I think we need to start talking as a community about what kind of efforts we can make to really track and fight back against anti-gay terror. I mean grassroots groups that move beyond the HRC style of top-down lobbying and feel-good cultural activism (that’s valuable, but it’s not enough on its own). How can we organize locally to defend ourselves and the people we care about? I don’t have any answers, but I hope that we can start asking the questions.

For further reading

• GT 12/10/2001 Gender Terrorism in Nashville
• GT 8/25/2001 Terrorism Against Gay Men in Hawaii
• GT 4/09/2001 Savage Anti-Gay Violence in Pennsylvania
• GT 8/03/2001 Anti-Queer Terrorism in Our Schools
• GT 5/05/2001 Religious Right Attacks Queer Students’ Safety in Washington Schools

Some bad news coming out of Alaska: the ballot initiative to institute Instant Runoff Voting state-wide in Alaska was soundly defeated, with 64% of voters rejecting the measure.

If implemented, the measure would have used IRV in all state and federal elections other than governor (the Alaska constitution specifies plurality voting for the gubernatorial race). IRV is a ballot reform where candidates are ranked by voters in order of preference. If there is no majority winner of first-place votes, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and an "instant runoff" is held using the second-place votes of the people who had voted for that candidate. IRV uses a single paper ballot to create as many runoff rounds as are necessary to find a candidate with majority support, whereas our current first-past-the-post system simply throws up its hands and gives the election to the person who got more votes than any of the others, even if a majority of voters voted against her or him.

The first-past-the-post system creates all sorts of problems, especially the "spoiler" phenomenon: if there are more than two candidates running in an election, candidates with similar positions can end up splitting the vote, and the first-past-the-post system will just throw the election to a candidate with a minority of the vote, but with enough votes to get more than either of the two candidates who represented the majority position. This creates the old "Wasting your vote" brickbat used against every third party candidate. Instant Runoff Voting would mean an end to "lesser of two evils" politics as we know it, and allow breathing room for a vibrant, growing independent party movement.

Unfortunately, the Alaska League of Women Voters played a major role in smears and distortions which helped defeat the initiative, in spite of the LWV’s overwhelming support for Instant Runoff Voting nation-wide.

The Alaska League of Women Voters opposed the measure, saying there was too little public debate about it and too many potential problems. League President Cheryl Jebe said preferential voting violates the principle of one person, one vote.

This is just a lie. IRV has been repeatedly upheld against court challenges that it violates one-person-one-vote. It does not violate one-person-one-vote any more than a traditional run-off violates it; indeed, it respects the principle more, since all voters have the same opportunity to make a run-off vote, whereas in traditional run-off systems, voter turnout always decreases in the run-off because people cannot necessarily make it out to two different elections.

Jebe said the measure was too confusing and too costly to implement.

This is also a lie. IRV has been used in elementary school elections and is no more difficult to understand than counting 1-2-3. Since Alaska often has to use traditional run-offs, which require a second election, IRV would also result in substantial savings to Alaska taxpayers.

Oh well. You win some, and you lose some. Does this mean that the people aren’t ready for democracy? No, it just means that some powerful interests are lined up against us and ready to use any lie or manipulation they can to try to stop IRV from taking power out of the hands of political cronies. We have to do a better job of presenting how IRV works and why we all benefit from it. The campaign for IRV is still building steam, and as it becomes adopted from the bottom-up more and more across the country, I believe that serious ballot reform will still see its day.