Roy Moore, Chief Justice, Alabama Supreme Court

Well, the polls have closed at Vote.com, and the results are mixed.

Two months ago, I reported on Vote.com’s recent online referendum on whether Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore should be removed from office. Our beloved Chief Justice was under fire for his virulently homophobic tirade, in which he used a concurring opinion as a platform to announce that the State would be acting within its moral and legal prerogatives to imprison and slaughter queer people. Despite the nature of his statements, when I first found the poll, 66% of the voters supported him and only 34% voted for removal.

However, supporters of gay liberation stepped up to the plate and fought to make their voices heard.

The bad news is that when the poll was closed, it was still 55% in support of Moore (3,116 votes) to 45% opposed (2,522 votes).

But here’s far better news. Those of us in Alabama, who have to live with the nutbar, came out against Roy Moore by pretty much the same margin (54% voted he should be removed, 46% voted he should not).

Now, online referenda are not scientific. Not even remotely. But, for one, these messages are going to Alabama lawmakers, and lawmakers care about the volume of letters coming from their own constituents. What’s even more important is that were enough of us in Alabama to turn the vote around like that. It’s heartening to see that a lot of people in Alabama are sick to death of Roy Moore, and it’s heartening to see that the Internet can put us in touch to make our organized voices heard.

Roy Moore comes up for re-election in 2006. The next task is to build on what we have accomplished, so that this online poll can be translated into victory at the ballot box.

Yesterday, Irish voters narrowly rejected a referendum that would have tightened Ireland’s constitutional restrictions against abortion, which are already among the harshest restrictions in Europe.

Ahem, I seem to have lost this one. – Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern

Abortion is already illegal under the Irish constitution, but the rejected amendment sought to tighten restrictions by overturning an Irish Supreme Court ruling which authorized therapeutic abortions when the mother threatened to commit suicide, and by imposing harsh criminal penalties for women who received abortions, and the doctors who performed the procedure. Currently, nearly 7,000 Irish women receive abortions each year, but nearly all must have them performed in legal clinics across the Irish Sea in the United Kingdom. Thankfully, EU immigration protections prevent the Irish government from stopping women from leaving the country.

629,041 Irish voters rejected the amendment, while 618,485 voted in favor of it. In urban centers, the vote was much more lopsided, with some 61% of Dublin voters rejecting the new restrictions. Anti-abortion proponents of the referendum urged that it be adopted because a rejection might lead down a slippery slope towards abortion-on-demand in Ireland.

I’m not holding my breath, but let’s hope they’re right.

For further reading:

• GT 2001-03-24: Victory: Abortion Legalized in Switzerland
• GT 2001-03-26: King George End-runs Congressional Review on Global Gag Rule

Whoa there, democracy!

(The Hon. Rep. Bob Barr)

District of Columbia citizens have long had to face the frustrations of being deprived of home rule and micromanaged by the federal Congress, which maintains ultimate control over the government of D.C., while having no members at all who are elected by D.C. residents. In 1998, the antidemocratic nature of D.C. government was made clear to the point of ridiculousness, as Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA) banned D.C. elections officials from releasing the results of a referendum on allowing the use of medical marijuana, fearing that the majority of D.C. voters would approve. Barr thus managed to effectively mimic Third World tinhorn dictators such as Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, who seized ballot boxes and refused to announce results of elections he feared he had lost.

Since the Barr amendment banned the counting of the results of a referendum solely on the basis of the content of the referendum (that it was to legalize a certain use of marijuana), the ACLU filed and won a First Amendment challenge to the Barr amendment, thus allowing the votes to be counted. As expected, the initiative to legalize medical marijuana in D.C. passed by an overwhelming margin of 69%-31%. However, Rep. Barr quickly went back to work in suppressing the will of the D.C. voters, eventually managing to push through a bill overriding the initiative and banning D.C. from enacting or carrying out the bill that they had overwhelmingly voted to pass.

When the Founders created the District of Columbia as a special area set aside from all the several states, the idea was to create a space for the federal capital which would not be beholden to the sectional interests of any of the several states. However, since the 18th century, D.C. has exploded far beyond merely being a city for the top branches of federal government. Within the borders of D.C. lies one of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. It is long past time that the federal area of D.C. be reduced into a much smaller area for the federal office buildings, monuments, and possibly residential space for federal office holders; the rest of D.C. should be granted the full rights and responsibilities of statehood under the U.S. Constitution, thus restoring democratic rights to home rule and representation in Congress to the hundreds of thousands of people within its borders.

Your Secretary of Defense

According to CNN, Donald Rumsfeld has claimed that the Iranian government may have aided Taliban and al-Qaida agents to escape from Afghanistan into Iran, in a desperate attempt to justify Bush’s inclusion of Iran in the axis of evil with Iraq and North Korea.

What CNN has not reported, nor has the New York Times, nor TIME (who first broke the story), is that the Iranian government has angrily denied the administration’s allegations (this was reported in the British paper, the Guardian), and pointed out what our own press had been saying (TIME, MSNBC) earlier: Iran hates the Taliban and al-Qaeda and has no desire to have ties with them or help them out (We hated each other and we never had any commonalities, the head of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, said Friday). Why? Because:

• Iran’s government, and most of Iran’s populace, are Shi’ite Muslims, whereas the Taliban and al-Qaeda are Sunni, and have participated in persecution and massacres of Shi’ites
• Iran’s strategic interests in Afghanistan have traditionally been head-to-head in conflict against those of Pakistan. Iran backed the Northern Alliance against the Pakistan-backed Taliban for years before the US ever got involved.
• Iran nearly went to war with the Taliban after ten Iranian diplomats and a journalist were murdered during the Taliban conquest of Mazar-i-Sharif

So, where did Rumsfeld get the ludicrous idea that Iran is helping out the Taliban and al-Qaeda? From that extremely reliable source, Ismail Khan, the brutal warlord of Herat province (see the TIME report). The main interesting fact of all this is that Khan has historically been backed by Iran, and took refuge in Iran twice while the Taliban was in power. However, Afghan Prime Minister Karzai wants to negotiate with Khan about concerns over Iranian influence [Afghan Radio]. Khan has long been in conflict with other powerful United Front anti-Taliban fighters such as Gul Agha Shirzai, the warlord of Kandahar, and Abdul Rashid Dostum, a northern warlord. There may be reason to believe, then, that Khan wants to solidify his position within the new government by cutting his ties with Iran, which have traditionally been a source of friction between him and the rest of the mujahedeen.

The real issue here is that Rumsfeld thinks we are stupid enough to swallow this ludicrous report. Or if the report does turn out to be true, he doesn’t think he needs to give any kind of explanation for such a bizarre turn of events. He just assumes people will think Oh, Iran, yeah, they’re terrorists, so naturally they’ll help out anyone else who commits terrorism against the US. And the US newsmedia are doing their best to help ensure that happens, since they refuse to report on Iran’s statements or to provide any background on the conflicts between Iran and the Taliban.

Ever since Iran revolted against the US-installed Shah in 1979 and established an anti-US government, many on the Right have been chomping at the bit to conquer Iran and install a new pro-US government. Here is their perfect opportunity. If they can make this story stick, the Bush administration has a sure-fire reason to insist that Iran is a state which harbors terrorists the United States is trying to apprehend — the same reason they used to wage war on the Taliban. And the Right-wing hawks have a sure-fire way of expanding the war on terror into Iran.

Don’t let Rumsfeld take you for a fool. Contact the Department of Defense and demand further explanation of the basis for their allegations against Iran. Contact national media outlets, particularly CNN, and demand that they do responsible research into the background of claims made by the Department of Defense and Afghan warlords, particularly when another war is on the line and everyone is asking where we will start bombing next.

Read the rest of He Thinks That You’re An Idiot …

For the most part, the New York Times’ story on the World Economic Forum beginning its proceedings in New York is just a gooey report on the men who had the air of money and power hobnobbing inside the Waldorf-Astoria, … like the start of summer camp. Now I really wonder if this sort of fluff reporting on a serious conference of the global economic and political elite is necessary. But, more to the point, the Times has decided to creatively reinvent history:

That has not prevented critics from painting the Forum in the darkest colors. The World Economic Forum will celebrate war in Afghanistan and the Middle East, attacks on civil liberties, and corporate tax cuts, proclaimed a group called A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) in its call for demonstrations which will get under way in earnest with marches on Saturday.

At the New York W.E.F. summit, the world’s richest C.E.O.s will collaborate with the world’s most powerful politicians to set the global economic agenda, declared another group, Students for Global Justice.

Whether the protests reach the violence of last year’s meeting in Davos remains to be seen. Some of the opposition groups acknowledge that a clash with New York’s finest in the aftermath of Sept. 11 would not sit well with the public.

Now, it’s a bit irresponsible to spending only two dismissive paragraphs on the fact that there are, in fact, people who have serious problems with what goes at the WEF, while spending the rest of the front-page story gushing about how elite and idealistic it all is (for more responsible coverage, I suggest the Times’ recent in-depth article on anarchism, buried in the New York Region section). What concerns me a bit more, however, is that they are simply making shit up when they say that the protests at Davos last year had any violence to be reached.

In reality, last year’s protests in Davos featured 250 activists staging a peaceful march. In 2000, the worst violence was a few windows being broken at a McDonald’s. In 2001, the worst violence was snowballs being tossed at police barricades.

Well, I should take that back. There was violence at the 2001 protest. See, the Davos local authorities decided to ban any exercise of the right to peaceful public assembly, so protestors were met by over 1,000 Swiss security agents armed with batons and tear gas guns. The demonstrators’ peaceful march was turned back with police barricades and water cannons. But this isn’t exactly the sort of violence that the Times story was claiming had happened.

This is, unfortunately, part of a general press smear campaign against the globalization movement, which has invented protestor violence out of thin air in protests in Seattle, DC, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia… at all of these there was plenty of police violence against demonstrators but the virtually none initiated by protestors. In Seattle and DC, heavy tear gas bombardments were used; in Los Angeles I watched mounted cops stage dragoon attacks with batons on protestors who had done nothing other than run away from rampaging peace officers. And yet the New York Daily News compared protestors to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and threatened them, You have a right to free speech, but try to disrupt this town, and you’ll get your anti-globalization butts kicked. Capish?

Sidebar: I’ve noticed that they’ve been awfully cagey about just how many women are at the invite-only WEF meeting; one article lumped in women amidst everyone else in the overwhelming minority at the WEF (third world leaders, human rights activists, union leaders, etc.). The Times’ editorial column said it was some 3,000 Davos Men, and a sprinkling of Davos Women. For all their apologia, it’s really hard to shade just how reactionary in constitution their Good Ol’ Boys meeting is.

For further reading

• For independent coverage of the World Economic Forum and surrounding protests, visit NYC Indymedia.
• For more on the demonstrations and alternatives to the WEF, check out Another World is Possible.
• GT 9/17/2001 Globalization Protestors Targeted in Post-9/11 Crackdown on Dissent
• GT 9/06/2001 Debate Over Reformist and Radical Approaches to Change
• GT 5/29/2001 WTO Protest videogame announced at E3