HEY GOVERNOR!
Mark Robertson, a member of
the Anthroposophical Society and the School of Spiritual Science,
was scheduled for execution in Texas on Wednesday, August 20,
2003, for murders committed 14 years earlier. This was brought
to my attention by anthroposophists who encouraged writing a
petition to the governor.
GREETINGS FROM NORWAY
Dear Governor Rick Perry and First Lady Anita Perry,
HOWDY!
It's been almost fifteen years since I lived
in Pasadena, Texas. I had to leave the state and the country
in a hurry because my father became terminally ill in Oslo, Norway,
and died only a few days after my arrival. And I'm still here
after all these years. Wanna know why? An old rap for cannabis
in Norway, dating back to 1969, did the trick of preventing my
re-entry. It's those federal statutes - Section 212 (a) (23)
of the Immigration and Nationality Act, actually. You see, I
was an amnesty applicant at the time during President Reagan's
temporary immigration reform act, which allowed illegal aliens
to come out of the bushes and apply for green cards, provided
they could document being in the country continually for at least
five years. I had been there for more than ten years since my
six months' visa expired in 1976, and I was automatically issued
a temporary work permit valid for six months when I filed my
amnesty application that cost $185 - a hundred and eighty-five
bucks! - along with all the other applicants, most of whom were
Latins. I must have been the only non-Latin in that long, long
line around the building in Houston that spring day in 1988,
but I was probably the only wetback, because I had crossed a
big ocean while the Latin Americans were scratchbacks perhaps
crawling under some barbed wire, which certainly doesn't make
you wet - well, only up to your knees if you wade across the
river. But as the story goes, my application for amnesty was
rejected because of Section 212 (a) (23) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act, which makes people like myself criminals for
life because they were busted for cannabis or marijuana when
they were teenagers, in spite of the fact that this behavior
was mandatory in the 1960's, and I would have been deeply ashamed
if I had not done my share and my socio-political duty. Ask my
favorite Texan, Willie Nelson.
Well now, to make a long story a little shorter
and a whole lot more entertaining and cultural and so on, I'll
sum up my sentiments about the federal government, illegal alienism,
and the INS:
Federal Agent
Well, this reminds me: To the best of my recollection,
the Lone Star State has a constitution that makes it possible
to cecede from the Union. Something to consider? I hope you would
think about it, because I can't return to the United States,
but if Texas becomes an independent nation, I can return to Houston
and you and I can smoke a few joints with Willie Nelson on his
ranch. How about that?
Undocumented Aliens
I've been told this one is John Ashcroft's
favorite. It bugs me to think about the fact that ever since
nine-eleven, Ashcroft and his federal puppies have been so hard
at work closing down all the old holes that were so useful for
Canadian and European scratchbacks and wetbacks like myself in
the good old days. Like if you were denied re-entry by the INS
after spending a Christmas holiday in Europe, you just flew to
Canada and crossed the Hudson. Try anything like that today,
and they probably take you to Cuba before you get to say goodbye
to your family.
The
Immigration Trial of Tarjei Straume
This is my story in a nutshell, with Richard
Nixon as my defence attorney and Jerry Falwell as my prosecutor.
This two act play became such a hit at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo
- where they still keep my original longhand version - that they
played it out there, reading a part each. The cultural setting
is very dated, though - anno 1989.
I'm writing this mail to you for a reason,
with a purpose, but in order to remember why I started writing,
I have to shoot the breeze along the way so that you and I can
get a comprehensive picture of what I'm all about and what this
has to do with governing the state of Texas.
You see, I have some ethnic roots of sorts
in your state. My grandfather and my uncle were Galvestonians,
sailors who had moved down from New York, where my mother was
born. So the reason why I ended up in Texas all the way from
California in 1986, was that my uncle had passed away in Galveston
under most tragic circumstances. He had been on the bottle for
a long time and ended up burning to death in his house during
a drunken stupor - a destiny not uncommon among sailors going
on early retirement in that area.
Considering the fact that my father died from
liver cancer because of 40 years of too much whiskey, you may
wonder why I smoke pot, and why the
picture of me on my website shows me asleep on the floor
after too many beers?
Well, Hank Williams Junior came up with the
right answer when he wrote the song, "Family
Tradition":
So don't ask me Hank why do you drink?
Hank, why do roll smoke?
Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?
Stop and think it over, try and put yourself in my unique position.
If I get stoned and sing all night long, its a family tradition!
My grandfather passed away in an old folks'
home in Austin back in the sixties. So I not only left a piece
of my heart in Texas, but two members of my family, who were
Texans, are buried there.
I left something else behind there, too -
my Anthroposophical Society membership - but I'll get to that.
You see, I've been back in Norway for almost fifteen years now,
after an absence of eighteen years. So it took me a long time
to become properly repatriated in soul and spirit. Now I'm as
repatriated as I'll ever become, but not in the conventional
selse, because I'm still a homeless soul, as we call it. My home
has always been wherever I hang my hat, although I never wear
any headgear except on occasions when I might like to conceal
my almost waist-long hair, like Charlie Daniels sang about in
"Uneasy Rider" when he was stuck with a flat tire in
Jackson, Mississippi on a Saturday night, at "The Dew Drop
In."
To put it as bluntly as I can, governor Perry:
I'm an outlaw of the old-fashioned kind, an unscrupuolously honest
outlaw whose primary objective is to keep governments and cops
and authorities at bay. I've never done anyone any harm - good
golly, I haven't even owned a gun, and I'm past fifty! I have
successfully boycotted military service as well as jury duty
with impunity, and I'm proud of it. And I encourage everyone
to break the law in some way, either by helping people they're
not supposed to help, or by doing harmless things that are illegal
for totally irrational reasons, like picking a funny mushroom
or smoking a little weed that you find growing along the highway.
It's like Gandhi's salt march in a way. If everyone makes a note
of breaking the law in a harmless or benevolent way on a daily
basis, a better world and a better society will evolve. All of
this is part of a philosophy that I have chosen to call "Anarchosophy,"
the next generation of anarchism. And when this is said in a
mail to a governor, it should also be noted that there is an
additional statute against my re-entering the United States,
although I don't remember the paragraph or section for reference.
A law was passed exactly one hundred years ago that bans all
alien anarchists from entering the United States. The background
for this law was that President McKinley was assassinated by
a Polish anarchist named Leon Czolgosz in 1901. (I wonder if
all alien Catholics would have been banned from the U.S. if Czolgosz
had been one.)
Anyway, I love Jessie James, John Dillinger,
Billy the Kid, and all the legacy surrounding the honest American
outlaw. Minus their guns, perhaps. We have to move on through
evolution and recognize that physical violence should be left
to the past. The wars of the present are the wars of ideas. They're
the wars about who came up with the best ideas, like copyright
wars and so on. Not outlaws alone have to learn this, but governments
too. Let me amend that to 'people in influential positions,'
because governemts ought to become dinosaurs as well, in a not
unforeseeable future. Are you with me so far, Governor? I hope
so. And no, I haven't been smoking today. As a taxi driver in
Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Houston, I used to smoke quite a lot
with my colleages at the airports in those cities, but with my
advancing years, the frequency of the habit has been reduced
to twice or thrice per annum, basically for image, appearance,
and old anti-Establishment grudges. It's not a recommended lifestyle,
but I do encourage certain people to smoke, especially politicians.
Ask your local police; they probably have a decent supply.
There's a poem by Henrik Ibsen that's been
reverberating in the back of my mind when I've been writing this,
but unfortunately, I don't have it at hand. It was written in
1865, following the assassination of President Lincoln. I do
recall, however, Ibsen's main thought. "Over there,"
he wrote, "society is ruled by the gun and by the gallows"
- or "the gun and the gallows sit at the head of government"
or something. And then he goes something like: "Over there,
they kill with guns, but here, we kill with words."
A contemporary of Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne
Bjørnson, once told about a childhood memory. (We're talking
early 19th century here.) As it turns out, Norwegians didn't
always stick to words alone when they wanted to kill someone.
What Bjørnson recalled having witnessed as a child, was
the sheriff and the local farmers taking a 20 year old boy into
the woods and chopping off his head with an axe. I don't remember
what the young man was supposed to have done, or if Bjørnson
himself remembered that. But this was probably one of the very
last throw-backs to the days of the Vikings almost a millennium
earlier. It's reminiscent of the fact that several Muslim countries
like Saudi Arabia are still stuck with a culture that is quagmired
in the fourteenth century. They practice public executions by
beheading lawbreakers in the town square, sometimes for blasphemy
or for marital infidelity.
It is very interesting to notice, especially
when going through readers' letters in various international
newpapers, that some people in the West applaud such Sharia laws
and would like to see similar legislation implemented and enforced
in their home countries. The motives and reasons given for such
thinking vary, from arguments about Western culture being too
permissive and promiscuous to ideas about deterring refugees
from repressive and brutal regimes to seek haven in the West.
What is very interesting, however, is that the political community
that has become known as the "religious right", consisting
for the most part of Christian fundamentalists who would like
to see their national constitutions replaced by the Torah or
perhaps the law of Odin, has an awful lot in common with Muslim
fundamentalists - something that is easily overlooked because
of the mutual emnity of these groups.
The fact remains, though, that honest Christianity
is, and has always been, totally incompatible with emnity, revenge,
and the violent affairs of government, police, and the military.
(Ask a Quaker.) Christ refused to judge or punish his fellow
human beings. Instead, he allowed himself to be judged, sentenced,
and executed. By doing this, he set an example for his followers.
For this very reason, I find it somewhat upsetting to see a political
leader of any ilk wage wars or condone executions in front of
his church with a Bible in his hands. It is true that the history
of the church is paved with so much blood, torture, mayhem, injustice
and violence that the Christianity of the future would be better
off without churches altogether - especially when abuses such
as described above still prevail.
I believe that perusing anything I write by
mail or website would constitute a violation of explicit warnings
from your pastor as well as from your president. (That's why
Bush is saying "I
want you to ignore this website".)
For almost 40 years, I've been haunted by
the closing verse of Bob Dylan's song, "It's
Allright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.
Perhaps this is what would worry me the most
if I should ever make the endeavor to return to Texas. It was
in France they used the guillotine. Do they still use it in Louisiana
Cajun country for sentimental reasons? Or have they advanced
along with the science pioneered by the Germans in the 1930's,
using gas instead, or perhaps electricity or poisinous needles?
I don't know, because we don't get to see anything like that
here in Europe anymore, after they did away with all that fun
and banned it. Britain abolished the death penalty approximately
at the same time they abolished the draft, or mandatory military
service, around 1960. All European countries abolished the death
penalty, and in 1991, the Norwegian parliament went so far as
to pass a law that constitutes an amendment to the constitution,
banning the use of death penalty forever, even if the country
should be at war! (In spite of the high probability that military
personel will take the law into their own hands in case of war,
the point is that it's outlawed. And I might add that there are
certain prohibitions I approve of in spite of being an outlaw
myself.)
Incidentally, the death penalty has not been
used in Norway since 1945, and it was banned in peacetime immediately
after the war. (The only thing achieved by the execution of Vidkun
Quisling was the deprivation of historical knowledge and understanding
among future historians and scholars.)
In other areas, however, Norway is lagging
behind. We still have slavery in terms of mandatory military
servitude, and we have the worst drug laws in Europe, while Germany,
Switzerland, and especially the Netherlands, are moving in the
right direction, and so is Britain, where cannabis and marijuana
were recently decriminalized. My hope is that we'll all move
in the right direction in Europe and America alike with regard
to all these issues.
America is the leader when it comes to free
speech, the first amendment. It's very important that this be
not eroded by the dark forces of fear, which FDR truly identified
as the worst threat of all.
It's needless to say that we're experiencing
serious international political problems these days. It is also
well known that in addition to the enormous problems that the
West is experiencing with regard to the Arab world, there have
been serious tensions evolving between Europe and the United
States during the past decade, and the death penalty issue is
part and parcel of this problem. When it comes to executing child
offenders, for instance, the United States has not only gone
to bed with Pakistan, Iran, and Congo, but the United States
executes twice as many children as those three other child-killing
countries put together:
Executions of child offenders
For this reason, it's sometimes difficult
from my geographical corner in Scandinavia to regard the U.S.
as a Western nation, except in the sense of the Old West, ruled
by the guns and the gallows like Ibsen pointed out. And yet I
do, not only because of my own deep roots in America and my affection
for the country, but because of the innumerable organizations
and websites dedicated to the abolition of the death penalty
in the United States - a grassroots effort to push the greatest
nation on earth in a direction that will bring it on par with
the civilized world of the third millennium.
Statistically, Texas is leading the execution
rate in the United States by a long shot, beating many nations
combined in the process. If the death penalty is supposed to
be a deterrant, I am surprised that Texas obviously also leads
the capital crime statistics. If executions were really a deterrant,
Texas would have fewer capital crimes than states and nations
that do not have this barbaric practice that dehumanizes state
employees in such a way, poisioning their souls.
Before I move on, I'd like to point out that
I have already vented my anger and disgust with relation to the
death penalty on the following webpages. These pages were written
when George W. Bush was still governor of Texas:
About
Capital Punishment in America
(Warning: This article contains heretical
Christian theological notions that may be anathema to your church.)
The
Face of a True Monster
(Warning: This webpage may be experienced
as offensive to loyal patriots.)
Now for my challenge: If America is to take
a step in the right direction and mend its ways and become a
full-fledged member of civilized humanity, Texas needs to take
the lead with regard to turning the tide in the execution department.
I don't care if it's a moratorium or what. The idea is to effectuate
a turning of the tide in America with regard to the death penalty,
where Texas is clearly leading the pack. If Texas made a turn-around,
i.e. with a moratorium followed by the passing of a new bill
that makes a move in the direction of banning the death penalty
in Texas by declaring it unconstitutional or something of that
nature, it will have a tremendous impact on the rest of the country,
and we'll be getting somewhere.
It takes a lot of guts, because many people
will be very angry. And they'll be angry for quite some time.
But the next generation will be grateful, very grateful, and
deeply relieved. Under certain circumstances at least, it takes
a helluva lot more guts to put your guns down than it takes to
fire them.
Start on Wednesday by intervening in the execution
of Mark Robertson. I know extremely little about him and his
case. Someone sent me a mail about a petition to your office
about this guy because he is a member of the Anthroposophical
Society - and I recalled that I was also a member of that organization
when I lived in Texas. But that's not the point. I don't feel
any special loyalties like that, although perhaps Freemasons
and Catholics do, and perhaps even Quakers, Theosophists, and
other Anthroposophists. I'm only responding to the request because
I find executions, or state killings, so horribly revolting,
and my deepest concern is for those poor souls who have to "do
their jobs" by actively participating in this nightmare.
I once talked about this issue with a man
from Atlanta, who argued: "You don't have crimes in your
country [Norway] like we have in the United States." Well,
that's not quite true. Three years ago, two girls, eight and
ten years old, were brutally raped and stabbed to death by two
young men in Kristiansand, a city on the southern coast of Norway.
The perpetrators were caught, tried, and convicted. The mother
of one of the mujrdered girls is a brave and beautiful soul who
has founded an organization to help crime victims, and to implement
changes in the legislature that will serve and protect victims
and also prevent capital offenders from being released. But please
pay attantion to this. Throughout the media coverage of this
awful incident and the trial that followed, the death penalty
was never even whispered about. Not by anybody, including the
victims' families.
I don't believe that the thirst for blood
is something that comes natural to human beings who experience
such trauma. I believe it's injected into them by their culture,
by their politicians, by their preachers and pastors. Like it
says in that song from the musical "South Pacific":
"You've got to be carefully taught."
I am also a parent, just like you. My son
is now thirteen - having come as a gift right after I lost my
father - the very same age one of those girls would have been
if she had not been murdered. At one of my part time jobs, I
also work with children in a local public school in Oslo, ages
8 to 10. So I'm certainly very sensitive to children and their
safety. What I'm trying to get at here, is the mentality that
views the protection of innocent people as something inseparable
from a pro-execution stance. From my vantage point, that comes
across as an alien mindset from a different galaxy, a very dark
galaxy full of black holes eating up the suns.
I read on your website that your father was
a tailgunner during World War II. Well, my father was one of
the "Heroes of Telemark" if you're familiar with that
through the Kirk Douglas movie with that title. He was a telegrapher
for Milorg, the underground resistance organization in Telemark.
He also supported my own conscientious objection wholeheartedly.
I don't care who the tyrants against liberty are, if they're
at home or abroad. It makes no difference whatsoever. And the
Pentagon has been combatting the Flower Children ever since they
emerged, and they still do. That's the military industrial complex
in a nutshell.
Anyway, I hear that Mark Robertson - is it
true that he is the nephew of Pat Robertson, that nutty preacher?
- committed his capital crimes some 14 years ago, and that he
was twenty-one years old at the time. Not a juvenile offender
exactly, but young indeed.
I'm willing to make a bet with you, although
I'm a very poor man with nothing of value to stake except my
proud, criminal, anti-Establishment honor: I bet you that if
you decide to turn the tide of executions in America by beginning
with Texas, starting this very week, you'll sleep a lot better,
and you'll feel more invigorated. And so will your whole family.
I'm pretty convinced of that, because you'll be doing the right
thing, and the Risen One (if you know whom I mean), will be with
you a hundred per cent. Oh, at the very beginning it may be the
opposite, and even your own kids may ask if you've gone crazy,
but they'll thank you profusely in 20 years when your role in
history becomes evident.
So think about it, but do this thinking with
your hearts. Yes, think with your hearts.
Only a suggestion, nothing else. Here are
a
few links.
(The rotating skull has a link to a page that
you may find interesting.)
And now a few words on the brighter side:
This is a greeting from Norway, where we've had a dynamite summer.
Plenty of swimming and barbequing. The climate is great here,
not too humid, no tornadoes or hurricanes, no sharks in the ocean
or alligators in the rivers. So take a trip next summer and let's
have a get-together with our families. Norway is expensive, though,
much like Japan, but perhaps Ambassador
Ong , who has a mansion here similar to yours in Austin,
will put you up for a few nights.
Cheers,
Tarjei Straume
Slettelokka 39a
0597 Oslo, Norway
+47 22 25 37 68
http://uncletaz.com/
mailto:tastraum@uncletaz.com
Mark Robertson's life was
spared, but this had nothing to do with Governor Perry. The Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals halted the scheduled execution on Tuesday,
August 19 - on the eve before the execution. Robertson received
life in prison.
Quentin Jones of North Carolina
was not so lucky. He was executed on Friday, August 22.