News of the Weird

I really enjoyed this story about the execution of a Texas racist killer who targeted Middle-Easterners in revenge for September 11th, mostly because everyone involved came out looking good.

The Texas racist killer was evil, but he died brave, like a man.

At his execution, these were his last words:

"Even though I lay on this gurney, seconds away from my death, I am at total peace," he said. He later called himself "still a proud American, Texas loud, Texas proud."

"God bless America. God bless everyone," he added, then turned to the warden and said: "Let's do this damn thing."

Don't misunderstand me: I hate murder and racism, yes...but I also despise cowardice. Actual bravery is so shockingly rare.

Besides, he shot Middle-Eastern looking people as revenge for 9/11. There was a lot of anger and revenge momentum after that. In fact, the attack on Iraq was basically just misplaced anger and vengeance. Lots of people, even a lot of liberals, wanted to attack Iraq despite the fact it didn't have anything to do with 9/11.

Hear that, America? You're just like this guy: misplaced bloodthirstiness over 9/11 made you support violence on a bystander, and the only difference is he actually got a gun while the rest of you settled for being craven, jeering little war-cheerleaders. Are you all really such angels of mercy you can tsk-tsk this man with a straight face, especially someone who did what the lot of you jackals secretly wish you could?

Better yet, it sounds like Nark Stroman learned his lesson. Imagine that, actual redemption, something you never see because most people are proud and willfully ignorant, cruel and incapable of remorse. A case might be he was trying to do it to save himself from death row, and that's certainly possible. Prison has a way of breaking you. The thing is, Mark Stroman's been to prison before, for armed robbery no less (at age 12 - damn!). He wasn't broken there, and his death wasn't the death of a guy who was begging for mercy because he realizes he's going to die. He most sincerely came around to actual remorse.



The story gets better, though, in terms of displays of real human virtue and sincerity.

The killer's convenience store clerk victim, Rais Bhuiyan, so sincerely believed in real forgiveness and mercy he fought at the last minute to save his own attacker from the death penalty. He believed his attacker had reformed and didn't deserve to be executed and his Muslim faith urged him to forgive his own shooter.

Now, if anyone in the world would be understandably excused from showing mercy, it would be an innocent convenience store clerk who had an eye taken out by a racist on a shooter rampage who shot him in the face, especially if that shooter is responsible for other murders. If Rais wanted to see a little Texas-style justice done, who could possibly blame him or hold it against him?

I guess there goes to show there are as many good, forgiving Muslims as there are good, forgiving and sincere Christians. Which is to say, they're an insignificant fraction of the population.

Again, other virtues on display that's seldom seen: mercy, and actually practicing what you preach. It's obvious enough why not being a hypocrite is virtuous, but mercy is not seen as a virtue anymore because people forget it is actually difficult to have mercy, and very easy, in fact it's the most natural thing in the world, to want revenge.

If you want to know what palpable evil looks like, check this out

This guy believes that Uganda's anti-homosexuality laws are both Christian and "more American than America."

Note that nowhere does he go into what it is the law actually says. According to the Uganda anti-homosexual law:

• Any free speech or anyone that rallies in defense of homosexuality is punished with 5-7 years in prison;
• Anyone that knows anyone that is homosexual and does not report it within 24 hours receives up to 3 years in prison, including friends and family;
• A conviction of homosexuality receives a life sentence in prison;
• It redefines homosexuality to include "any touching with homosexual intent;"
• Provides the death penalty for any homosexual that engages in relationships with anyone under 18 or the disabled;
• Creates an extradition provision, meaning that any Ugandan convicted of homosexuality living abroad can be returned to Uganda to face trial. This includes non-citizens, so an American that speaks out on gay rights can be extradited to face trial in Uganda.

Whatever a person's feelings on homosexuality, it is obvious the law is monstrously inhuman. To defend it - in the sanctimonious name of Americanism, Christianity and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a perversion of the American spirit and the Christian ethos of compassion.

The great evil of this video is made possible by the belief that morality is determined by authority instead of by reason and examination. Why is homosexuality wrong? Because the Founding Fathers and the Bible don't like it. Nowhere is the natural follow-up question asked...why is it that the Founding Fathers and the Bible didn't like the gay?

What's more, the culty veneration surrounding the Founding Fathers has gone entirely too far. Sure, George Washington didn't like gay sex, but he also didn't believe in women voting and owned slaves. He was a man of his time who believed in many just and unjust things alike. Central to an understanding of history is a sense of moral progress: the notion that as a civilization moves forward our moral understanding increases and immoral practices fall by the wayside (prohibition of mixed-race marriages, slavery, colonialism, child labor, etc.).

Also, I am particularly ticked off by various distorted and untrue things mentioned in his video. For example, his mention of King Mwanga made me very curious about the history of Uganda, and so I decided to look him up. Turns out he had seventeen wives, and the 22 Catholic Martyrs died....not for refusing his gay advances but for their religious beliefs (Mwana was anti-Catholic and the martyrs refused to renounce their faith on pain of death).

His mention of how liberals believe in multiculturalism offends me at a personal level, because there are many occasions where those on the left have spoken against attitudes that should be changed in other cultures. Feminists are always the first to speak out against machismo and anti-female sentiment in Latino, Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, for example, and against the horrific practice of female genital mutilation. Just because a culture believes something is moral does not mean it is or that it is worthy of being defended, or that it is immune to attack.

Finally, his mention of Pastor Rick Warren brings up the role that American evangelicals (even so called moderate evangelicals) played as enablers of this horrific and savage law, and the subsequent cowardice and desire to distance themselves from the savage history their influence helped create. Rick Warren's book, the "Purpose-Driven Life" is read widely in Uganda; according to one Ugandan, almost every Pastor in the country had a copy inside the book. Rick Warren, in Uganda gave many anti-homosexual comments. In other words, he had a great influence.

Here's another example: non-licensed "therapist" Richard Cohen's book, which claims homosexuality can be cured (something no true psychologist believes), is widely quoted by Ugandans. He was brought to task by Rachel Maddow here for producing junk science that Ugandans take seriously.

A traditional tactic of the Right is to enable and empower crazies and then run away from the Frankenstein they created. The textbook example would be the McCain campaign, who featured staffers and used innuendoes that Obama was a stealth Muslim plant with the middle name "Hussein." It was a perfect strategy: McCain stays classy and blameless...it's just staffers on the campaign that McCain hired that bring up the Muslim and birth certificate rumors. It's a real crying shame that McCain, towards the end, got desperate and fought dirty.

Let's not bicker and argue over who spilled what...the ethics of personal responsibility (for others)

On April 21st, 2010, the most extraordinary event in the history of mankind took place. The Finger of God Himself emerged from the heavens and touched the series of concrete and valves that drilled 5,000 feet under the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. But by no means was the Almighty's miraculous intervention limited only to this, of course. God also made sure the well was improperly cemented, increasing the pressure and creating an explosion and spill. In this miraculous and awe-inspiring event of which mortal humans had no involvement whatsoever, God also ensured that the breakers designed to keep in the well also automatically failed and didn't seal the well off. With a single wave of His hand, He caused methane sulfide crystals to form on the containment dome, which prevented it from closing.

According to petroleum industry apologists, this is the version of events as they would have it told: a horrible act of environmental destruction that no maintenance or higher safety and standards could have possibly prevented. C'mon, guys! Let's not bicker and argue over who spilled what...

If the above is a little over the top it's because I took the apologists at their word about the oil spill being an Act of God.

All this, despite the fact that the same exact thing happened before: in 2005, 212 gallons of a lubricant were spilled because of (deja vu!) improper cementing of the well. In 2002, the freshly minted Deepwater Horizon rig spilled 267 gallons of oil because of a broken tube. In fact, come to think of it, the Coast Guard gave no less than six warnings to the Deepwater Horizon rig. What's more, in 2003, a collision hit the Horizon rig and caused $95,000 in damage, which would have allowed the industry to remain blameless, if not for the fact the damage was never repaired.

Yet, if petroleum industry apologists are to be believed, not even Nostradamus could have seen the oil spill coming. This is the essence of corporate apologism: the insistence on personal responsibility (for others).

The Deepwater Horizon rig was contracted out by British Petroleum to (surprise, surprise) Haliburton, who long ago transcended ordinary villainy into the realm of cartoonish super-villainy.

My all time favorite justification was this, by oil rig historian Tyler Priest: "You're always going to have minor equipment failure and human error, and of course they're operating in a hurricane prone environment." How a hurricane could have resulted in this oil spill when there wasn't one anywhere near is anybody's guess (also: minor equipment failure?). Tyler Priest's comments in a nutshell summarize the very attitude I am against here. Yes, human error happens, but the evil here is that this was a rig with a history of problems, including a problem that happened before that no one did anything about that directly resulted in the oil spill. Spill me once, shame on you. Spill me twice, shame on you and the standards of your parent company.

The reason I find all of this so offensive is not just the zero accountability, the denials and the obfuscation...but the notion that nothing we do really can prevent accidents. They are inevitable, blameless creations of machine failure and human error instead of a result of human negligence that can in fact, be prevented. Believing something is inevitable has an interesting way of making something inevitable.

Georgia vs. Russia

It's a bizarre bit of synchronicity that the Russia and Georgia conflict should happen right in the middle of my series about world mythology, because the region of the current conflict - South Ossetia - is one of the most mythically significant bits of real estate in the world.

First, South Ossetia is right at the mouth of the Black Sea and is generally considered to be the site of the end of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. Also, the Ossetians are descended from the Alanii, cavalry barbarians that were frequently employed by the Roman Empire. The Alanii loved to make use of tactics like defeating horses with huge dogs not unlike modern great danes. But more significantly, an Alanii cavalry force was dispatched to Britain led by a fellow named Artorius, who may or may not have been the inspiration for King Arthur. I should go into my theories about the origin of Arthurian legend in the future, but it would suffice here to say I'm not as convinced of the Artorius origin as Hollywood is.

The conflict is shaping up to be a bloody mess. First, it has to be remembered there are THREE actors here: Russia (obviously), Georgia, and the Ossetians. The Ossetians are an independent tribe with a long history that want independence from Georgia, and they've cozied up to Russia, who have never liked the Georgians ever since they rerouted an oil pipeline to the West to compete with the Russians. Also, Russian politicians love to scapegoat Georgians and Georgian immigrants the same way American politicians love to pander to Mexiphobic sentiment. Georgia on the other hand, won't stand for a loss of its territory, and politically giving the finger to the Russians plays well with the voters.

In essence, both sides in the war have decided to be assholes, and it looks like this is shaping up to go the distance. Like the Lebanon conflict, this is a war where everyone sees the advantage in continuing, and it would be political suicide at the polls for Russian and Georgian politicians if they back down. The big fear here is, naturally, genocide: if the Ossetians are creating a problem, a solution, for the Georgian side, is just to wipe them out. In fact, the recent U.N. Security Council meeting used the most hilarious euphemism yet for genocide when they expressed "concern for future demographic shifts in the region."