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.

I’ll be away from the ol’ weblog game for Labor Day weekend (which, for me, extends through Tuesday thanks to a very nice class schedule). In my absence, feel free to enjoy this editorial cartoon from 1925 and this somewhat more contemporary cartoon from Tom Tomorrow.

Why should we suppose that what is merely necessary to life is ipso facto better than what is necessary to the study of metaphysics, useless as that study may appear? It may be that life is only worth living because it enables us to study metaphysics–is a necessary means thereto.

— G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica §28

According to several reports now reaching Western media, mass graves of slaughtered prisoners have been found in the area of Dasht-e-Leili in Afghanistan [forwarded by RAWA]. The massacre was committed by forces under the control of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the notorious warlord of northern Afghanistan, the pillager of Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, and valued ally of the United States government.

After Taliban militia and al-Qaeda guerillas had surrendered at Konduz, Dostum’s troops locked prisoners into unventilated freight containers, packing about 100 to 120 in each container, loaded them up on trucks, and began a death convey towards Sheberghan prison. Truck drivers who realized what they had gotten into and tried to punch holes in the containers were savagely beaten by Dostum’s troops. The prisoners locked in the containers slowly died from suffocation and dehydration.

By the time the trucks arrived at Sheberghan prison, many were ominously quiet. Mohammed was the driver of the second truck in line, but he got down from his cab and walked into the prison courtyard as the doors of the lead truck were opened. Of the 200 or so who had been loaded into the sealed container not quite 24 hours before, none had survived. "They opened the doors and the dead bodies spilled out like fish," says Mohammed. "All their clothes were ripped and wet."

. . .

Abdul, a 28-year-old pashtun, is one who lived. NEWSWEEK interviewed him in Sheberghan prison. He recalls that his container was packed to the breaking point. After nearly 24 hours without water, Abdul says, the prisoners were so desperate with thirst that they began licking the sweat off each other’s bodies. Some prisoners began to lose their reason and started biting those around them. Abdul’s was one of the containers in the third convoy to Sheberghan: by the time they reached the prison, he says, only 20 to 30 in his container were alive.

. . .

For some, the agony in the containers was intensified because they were tied up. This appears to have been a fate reserved for Pakistani–and perhaps other non-Afghan–prisoners. Mahmood, 20, says he surrendered at Konduz along with 1,500 other Pakistanis. All were bound hand and foot either with their own turbans or with strips ripped from their clothing, he says. Then they were packed in container trucks "like cattle," he says. He reckons that about 100 people died in his container.

The drivers remain tormented by what they took part in. "Why weren’t there any United Nations people there to see the dead bodies?" asks one. "Why wasn’t anything being done?" Another driver shook uncontrollably as he spoke with NEWSWEEK.

The massacred prisoners were thrown into mass graves. From information gathered by Physicians for Human Rights and the Red Cross, well over 1,000 prisoners were slaughtered in the Death Convoy to Sheberghan.

Dostum is considered an ally of the United States in Afghanistan’s provisional regime, and at the time of these atrocities, he was actively supported by the United States Special Forces 595 A-team, commanded by Capt. Mark D. Nutsch. There is no evidence that they participated in the massacre, but a lot of evidence that they knew about it and yet did nothing, and continued to work with the butcher Dostum. Despite frequent attempts to deny all knowledge by the Defense Department, the 595 team was at the prison as the truckloads of dead prisoners were arriving, and a separate U.S. intelligence team was screening all incoming prisoners for further interrogation. Before we went in, we knew that Dostum was a butcher. While we were there, our forces had to know what was going on. Yet the US military supported his elevation to power and prestige, and has rewarded his atrocities by turning a blind eye to what he has done.

We are coming up on the first anniversary of the September 11th crime against humanity and I want to hope that we can mark the occasion as a memorial and a beckoning towards healing of the world. But when all the truth comes out about what has happened since then, when we have seen what our government has wrought at home and around the world, I fear that the crimes committed in our names will be more than we can bear.

For further reading:

• GT 2/03/2002 He Thinks You’re An Idiot
• GT 10/08/2001 Women of Afghanistan Fight Back Against Both Taliban and Northern Alliance