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Thor Hesla Killed By the Taliban

Thor Hesla Killed By the Taliban

Thor Hesla was killed on January 14th, 2008 in an attack by the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan. I may have met Thor once or twice, but I didn’t know him.

My perspective on this tragedy is that I know his father, Professor Emeritus David Hesla. David Hesla is a beloved and somewhat eccentric professor, one of the original members of my home department of the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University. Among other things, he wrote the best book on Samuel Beckett that I’ve ever read (Art of Chaos). Not too long ago, he and my original dissertation adviser were granted Heilbrun Awards to support their current research. Prof. Hesla looked as happy as I have ever seen him, waxing enthusiastic about three projects that he was working on.

This is truly horrible news. Those of us who know David Hesla have been in contact, and everyone is stunned and heartbroken for David.

We weep for ourselves as well. By all accounts, we lost one of the very, very good guys in Thor Hesla. It has taken me several days to be able to write this blog post.

Thor Hesla, 45, of Atlanta, worked for BearingPoint Management & Technology Consultants, which had a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development to help war-ravaged Afghanistan rebuild, a company spokesman said. He was one of the eight people killed in the bombing and shooting attack Monday on the Serena Hotel in Kabul. Authorities in Kabul said an American, a Norwegian journalist and a Filipina who died of her wounds Tuesday were among those killed. A longtime family friend, Margaret Hylton Jones, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Hesla was aware of the danger of Afghanistan, his most recent assignment after stints in Kosovo, South Africa and Kazakhstan. Hesla “put his affairs in order” before leaving for the assignment, which began Nov. 1, Jones said, including updating his will. He took his father, a retired Emory University professor, on a trip to New York and spent time with his 12-year-old niece and 10-year-old nephew.

The Memorial Site for Thor Hesla is http://www.rememberthor.com. There you will find a lot more information about Thor and what he was doing in Kabul, planned memorial services, reminiscences, 100 things Thor didn’t want you to know, official recognition letters, a sTHORy about how Thor was strangled by a dwarf in Pristina, Kosovo, and much more. A book will be made from the site to benefit Doctors Without Borders.

News Links:

Falwell by Hitchens and Reed- oh my!

Falwell by Hitchens and Reed- oh my!

Ok, I waited a few days out of respect for the dead. That’s it. Jerry Falwell, although he seems to have mellowed a bit toward the end of his life, was a powerful corrupter of christianity’s message. He used christianity as a power group to vilify and scapegoat others for political gain. President Bush’s statement acknowledges this: “One of his lasting contributions was the establishment of the Liberty University, where he taught young people to remain true to their convictions, and rely upon God’s word throughout each stage of their lives.” (Or you could check out the parody of Bush’s weekly radio address).

Aggk. Such an interpretation Falwell had! His legacy university, like Robertson’s, will continue to roll out new “christian” lawyers, new haters to work the judicial and legislative – and even executive – branches of government.

“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.” – Jerry Falwell

Instead of bringing out the best in others, Falwell led the movement to appeal to the worst in every christian. Falwell’s interpretation of “God’s Word” required opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, homosexuality, gambling, rock music, Teletubbies, global warming, the ACLU, stem-cell research…. and liberals, even christian liberals.

This via Crooks and Liars (because I only have network tv at home):

Hitchens Brutally Eulogizes Falwell on Hannity Colmes

Oh my. Tell us how you really feel, Chris. Whenever you get Hannity to call you a “jack@ss” on air, you know you must be doing something right.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDfKKWBEZk[/youtube]

Hitch’s assault on Ralph “Tinkerbell” Reed for his ties to Abramoff alone make this an instant classic.

It’s astounding to hear Sean Hannity — the King of demonizing people for single instances of perceived transgressions (for which they apologize profusely — see: Sen. Byrd, Dick Durbin, John Kerry etc.) — dismiss away Falwell’s long record of hateful comments. Apparently it’s not OK to blame American foreign policy for terrorism, but it’s OK to blame the ACLU and gays.

If you think you can stomach it, check out how Coultergeist remembers Falwell. Are there no depths to which this wretched and poor excuse for a human being is willing to sink? I think that question was answered long ago.

Think Hitchens was unfair? Beyond the well-quoted examples about 9/11, witches, and the other blame games, take a look at this excellent article by Max Blumenthal – “Agent of Intolerance.”

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” –Jerry Falwell

MSN Timeline

Falwell in brief:

  • Annual revenues of his ministries total more than $200 million.
  • In 1965, he gave a sermon at his Thomas Road Baptist Church criticizing Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, which he sometimes referred to as the “Civil Wrongs Movement.” He regularly featured segregationists like George Wallace and Lestor Maddox on his “Old-Time Gospel Hour” show. Falwell announced that integration “will destroy our race eventually. In one northern city,” he warned, “a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife.” Later, he disavowed his views on the matter.
  • Falwell founded Lynchburg Christian Academy in 1967, a day school which now enrolls more than 1,000 children through high school. Get ’em while they’re young… His Lynchburg Baptist College is now Liberty University…
  • During a TV debate in Sacramento, California, Falwell denied calling the gay-oriented Metropolitan Community Churches “brute beasts” and “a vile and Satanic system” that will “one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven.” When gay activist Jerry Sloan insisted he had a tape, Falwell promised $5,000 if he could produce it. Sloan did, Falwell refused to pay, and Sloan successfully sued. Falwell appealed, with his attorney charging that the judge in the case was prejudiced because he was Jewish. He lost again and was made to pay an additional $2,875 in sanctions and court fees. (Pro-Israel and Anti-Jewish…)
  • In 1979, Falwell founded the so-called “Moral Majority,” the movement that included such loving Christians as Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, and Tim LaHaye. They brought fundamentalist evangelicals to politics – specifically Southern conservatives into the Republican Party. Moral Majority’s stated mission was to “reverse the politicization of immorality in our society.” In the 1980s, Falwell’s group claimed 6.5 million members, raising $69 million for conservative politicians and helping to elect Ronald Reagan president in 1980. In 1986 Falwell founded the Liberty Foundation as a way to broaden his base. Through these groups, he influenced the election of President George H.W. Bush in 1988, several conservative Supreme Court decisions, and the creation of the so called “Christian Coalition.”
  • By the mid-1980s, evangelical Christianity received a bad name as television preachers such as Jim Bakker went to jail for fraud. Falwell became chairman of PTL, Bakker’s ministry, in March 1987. He resigned months later as PTL’s deficit ran to $70 million and debt mounted at his own organization. Falwell resigned as Moral Majority president in 1987 and dissolved the organization in 1989. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition took over for religious-right Republican politics throughout the 1990s.
  • In her 1996 autobiography, Tammy Faye Messner (you may remember her as Jim Bakker’s ex-wife), accused Falwell of a “history of telling incredible lies.” “Jerry Falwell’s steamroller flattened our lives and everything else in sight, but nobody had the courage to stop his plunder of PTL.”
  • Between 1994 and 1996, Falwell covertly paid more than $200,000 to individuals who made damaging allegations – some of which were either fabricated or grossly exaggerated – in the “The Clinton Chronicles” video. The video claims that Clinton was a drug addict, and that he arranged the murders of political enemies in Arkansas (this seems to have been the origin of the Clinton “body count” urban myth). Falwell helped bankroll the venture via the “Citizens for Honest Government” (CHG) group, and later admitted he didn’t know if the allegations were true or not.
  • In 1996, he became affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (only then?).
  • In 1997, Falwell accepted $3.5 million for Liberty from a “Moonie” front group.
  • Jerry Falwell wrote in America Can Be Saved that “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.” Despite Falwell’s denial, Sword of the Lord Publishing, which produced the book, confirms that Falwell wrote it.
  • In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive.
  • In the aftermath of 9/11, he infamously said “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.'” He apologized, but as with other statements, he later reiterated it in rephrased forms.
  • In 2004, he created the so-called “Faith and Values” Coalition, to support President George W. Bush and promote the nominations of anti-abortion conservative justices to the Supreme Court.
  • In 2005, Falwell spearhearded the campaign to resist the so-called “war on Christmas.”
  • In 2007, Falwell described global warming as a conspiracy orchestrated by Satan, liberals, and The Weather Channel.

Rob Kall at OpEd News sums it up:

There are those who say one should not speak ill of the dead. I disagree. Now is the time when others will try to honor and glorify an evil, small, ugly, meanspirited fool who did immense damage to so many spheres of modern life– modern Christianity, American Politics, television, education and through all of those, the rest of the world. His support of right wing extremists enabled corporations and war hawks to exploit their opportunities to wreak war, havoc, violence, hate, irrevocable environmental damage, poverty and suffering upon millions.

Don’t sing “ding dong the merry-o” just yet, though. Barry Moser depiction of Nancy Reagan as wicked witch The house may have dropped on Falwell, but the movement Falwell helped to get going has moved on – and they’re worse than the other one was. It will take more than a bucket of water to free the guards.

No place

What about the sexism, Imus?

What about the sexism, Imus?

Ok, Don Imus was in the wrong, like Limbaugh with his feminazis, and Ann Coulter with whatever s/he has said this week, and all the other blowhards who are regularly hateful – and with more ooomph behind it.

Actually I think the guy was trying to be “cool” and he was the wrong guy, talking about the wrong women, at the exact wrong time. Of course, he has said a lot of nasty things in the past, and had even vowed to stop, so both public opinion and the voice of the marketplace have now spoken.

(By the by, let’s not pretend those young men at Duke are pillars of society, even if the charges have been dropped. It was a pretty unsavory scene – and a common one for the college sports community.)

Imus does do some good work in service to others, though, and that should be factored into moral judgments as well – as it seems to do rather easily for Sharpton and Jackson. Although they have been leading the attack (on the basis of race), they both have histories of inappropriate remarks of their own. For them to lead the moral outrage response on this is about as hypocritical as Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr attacking Clinton on grounds of sexual morality.

I’m always interested in what motivates someone to throw the first stone.

Here’s what is continuing to bother me about the coverage.

Everybody’s talking about race – what about gender? The sexism across all our communities – black, white, everybody – seems (pretty much) to go unquestioned.

Imus’s remarks were not only about a heavily racially-coded form of hairstyle with a cultural history. They were also sexist – a form of prejudice, contempt, and domination against women.

He called them whores! – or “ho’s” – and yet the pundits make no room for a feminist to speak on that issue.

The coach and the women on the team made the point, but who in the media will pick it up? Is it ok to call accomplished young women whores, but just not to do so in a racially-tinged way? Is that the message?