Sex. Power. Agency.
An excellent article by Kathy Miriam from The Journal of Social Philosophy
In the 1980s, U.S. feminism fractured along political fault-lines defined by
conflicting views of prostitution and pornography and related conceptions of
power, agency, and sexuality.1 The “sex wars”—as they were unfortunately, popularly
labeled—were apparently settled by the end of the decade, with “pro-sex”
advocates declared the winners. The radical feminist anti-pornography and antiprostitution
position has been effectively marginalized—at least within the
academy. Interestingly, the same cannot be said for debates around similar issues
in a new transnational arena of feminist politics. Since the 1990s, numerous feminist
nongovernmental agencies and grass-root groups across the hemispheres
have been organizing to stop global trafficking in women and children.2 In this
context, old feminist debates about prostitution have reconfigured themselves
along familiar theoretical lines. The contours of the debate are largely defined by,
on one side, activists who align themselves with a radical feminist and abolitionist
approach that defines prostitution as an institution of male domination. On the
other side, activists who are “pro-sex-work” aim to distinguish prostitution as voluntary
“work” from “forced prostitution,” and to distinguish voluntary migration
from (sex) trafficking.3 The radical feminist camp has largely prevailed in terms
of how international protocol is currently formulated. The “UN Optional Protocol
of Trafficking in Human Beings,” known widely as the “Palermo Protocol”
was signed by 105 countries in 2002 and specifically does not construct a separate
category for “forced” prostitution but rather, classifies prostitution (unmodified)
as a major component of trafficking.4 Pro-sex-work advocates, however,
continue to press for the distinction between “free” and “forced” prostitution. The
feminist debate over trafficking offers a timely opportunity for feminists to revisit
central philosophical questions concerning agency and power. Given the magnitude
of the problem, namely, the vast numbers of women and children whose
lives have been devastated by sex-trafficking under globalization, such questions
reemerge with a new political urgency.
Richard:
This was excellent. And it reminds me that I really need to track down Pateman’s The Sexual Contract, which unfortunately the Baltimore Public Library does not carry.
6 December 2011, 4:16 pmRichard:
uh, sorry for the unclosed italics tag!
6 December 2011, 4:18 pmLuke Physioc:
Stan,
I didn’t know where else to put this, so I figured your most recent post would suffice. I am a soldier, just returned from my fourth and final deployment. I was recommended your book, “Full Spectrum Disorder” shortly before I deployed to Afghanistan and I was very impressed. Finally, someone else who was as disgusted as I am with the current state of affairs and your presented it so eloquently and passionately. I really enjoyed it. I attempted to get some other soldiers to check it out and I had a relatively high margin of success. All of them completed it and I’d say about 70% were impressed and surprised. Thank you for opening eyes. I just ordered Sex & War and look forward to that as well. Thanks again.
Luke Physioc
12 January 2012, 11:33 amkim sky:
Please do not move into oblivion. I love hearing from you Stan Goff. It’s been a long, long time. I hope that you will post your thoughts again — more often, and feature them. Even if they are not full-on articles.
Thanx, Kim
22 January 2012, 3:39 amStan:
You are so nice, thank you. Just been spending a lot of time prepping something for thing at Penn State, and doing home improvement stuff. I think De is doing den-making tasks, too. We are not dead. (-:
22 January 2012, 8:10 amEric:
I hope she’s part of the minority!
17 February 2012, 8:07 pmhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/fox-news-liz-trotta-rape_n_1274018.html
Michael Anderson:
@ Eric:
Trotta seems to have cast her lot with Andrea Dworkins’ “Right Wing Women.” Except in the military there are no guarantees of safety for fidelity—if such a thing even exists there outside of Smedley Butler’s definition of “A high-priced muscleman for Wall Street, a gangster for Capitalism.”—only defilement and death. I think she may be in the majority now here in Sparta-cum-General Dynamics-land.
A friend of mine. who served in Army Intelligence in Shitosi, Japan in the 60′s spying on “Red”(sic) China said the service was his period of “suspended responsibility”. Looks like that officially carries over into “civilian” life now. (quote marks intentional)
20 February 2012, 4:10 pmHenry:
Liberal Whores
Call a Georgetown law student a slut, and the liberal universe goes into supernova. Destroy Somalia and Libya, or obliterate due process of law, and the same people just yawn. Attorney General Eric Holder “asserts that the president can in fact decide to kill anyone he wants, as long as he claims that person is a terrorist.” Liberals love the guy.
By Margaret Kimberley
BAR editor
March 08, 2012 “BAR” — If liberals are good for anything, it is being outraged about all the wrong things. If one were to measure the amount of media debate in the past week, the conclusion might be that a law student being called a slut was the worst thing happening in the nation and the world. Liberals can’t be bothered to protest against war, even if they did so during the Bush administration, or indefinite detention, or targeted killings, or drone strikes, or the destruction of Libya or Somalia.
Rush Limbaugh, a man who would have to have been invented if he didn’t exist, called law student Sandra Fluke, a “slut” and a “whore” after she testified in favor of religious institutions being required to include contraception in their health care plans.
The liberals then lost their collective minds. There was no limit to their ire. One would have thought that Rush Limbaugh was killing Afghan children with drones, or torturing black Libyans, or planning to attack Iran. Of course, Limbaugh has absolutely no power to do any of those things. He is a celebrity, a media personality who advocates the right wing point of view. He is a sexist and a racist, but he has no power to take anyone’s life. That is Barack Obama‘s job.
Obama, like all American presidents, is among the slickest politicians of all time, but he is certainly no fool. He knew that Limbaugh handed him a political gift and he ran with it. Obama personally telephoned the aggrieved young woman while his liberal sycophants demanded that advertisers drop Limbaugh’s program. Republicans joined in the beat down and admonished the erstwhile standard bearer for his offensive language. Limbaugh was political toast, and Obama was king.
“Obama knew that Limbaugh handed him a political gift and he ran with it.”
What could happen if these same people used as much energy opposing policies that literally kill thousands of people around the world? Quite a lot would change, but they don’t take actions against people in power because they don’t really care about what they do.
At the same time that these angry and outraged citizens were claiming victory against a radio personality they ought to be ignoring, the attorney general of the United States publicly claimed that the president of the United States has the right to kill at will whenever he feels like it.
Eric Holder traveled to an august educational institution, Northwestern University, and told a group of law students that they should get any crazy ideas about civil liberties out of their little heads. Holder asserts that the president can in fact decide to kill anyone he wants, as long as he claims that person is a terrorist. He doesn’t have to bother with indictments, charges, court rooms and other such old fashioned notions. Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son were both American citizens and were both killed by their president because he and a secret panel said they should die.
In making the case against the constitutional requirement for due process, the chief law enforcement officer in the country says that, “Due process and judicial process are not one in the same.” If that statement seems strange, it is because it is a bold faced lie. Never before, not even in the Bush administration, did lawyers make such bizarre arguments.
“What could happen if these same people used as much energy opposing policies that literally kill thousands of people around the world?”
Despite being the attorney general, Holder is like middle level managers everywhere, saying that black is white or up is down if his boss says so. If his boss says that a person is a terrorist, then that person is dead and the rules will be changed to make it all very legal.
It is too bad that no one leapt to the defense of the Northwestern University law students who were forced to hear Holder’s offensive statements. There was no Sandra Fluke treatment for them. No one will call them and sympathize because they were exposed to vile language. In this case the offensive language came straight from the top, so if anyone was offended, well it is just too bad.
Perhaps liberals are sluts and whores. They are people of easy virtue, they don’t really have any principles and they sell themselves pretty cheaply. If Eric Holder isn’t a whore, then who is?
The same can be said for his boss too. No one becomes president without making the rounds on many a casting couch, the rich people’s casting couch. If they give the thumbs up, then the presidency is within reach. No one should be called a whore merely because they are sexually active. Selling oneself in order to be the head killer in chief on the planet is another matter. That is slut work of the very highest order.
http://scrollpost.com/blog/2012/03/07/liberal-whores
8 March 2012, 9:44 pmStan:
This is a most unfortunate piece by Kimberly, comparing apples and oranges, for one (Limbaugh is a sexist jackass, and he did need to be called out), and missing the point completely about why it is not okay to call people whores… even the people you don’t like. Prostitutes are not “people of easy virtue.” They are victims of male supremacy, no less than black folk are victimized by white supremacy.
9 March 2012, 6:55 amm.c.:
o.k. so they’re not whores. Sell-Outs? A__ Kissers?
9 March 2012, 1:14 pmHenry:
Be that as it may, it seemed to me that the point was the rather monstrous lack of sense of proportion in the reaction of liberals. And I think the underlying point regarding the lack of principle, backbone, authentic compassion, not to say poverty of imagination, and sheer self-indulgence and narcissism characterizing so much liberalism is of greater importance. It is by no means “unfortunate” to point this out.
9 March 2012, 9:53 pmMichael Anderson:
http://www.truth-out.org/julia-gillards-rise-marks-triumph-machine-politics-over-feminism/1331559852
“In 1963, a senior Australian government official, A.R. Taysom, deliberated on the wisdom of deploying women as trade representatives. “Such an appointee would not stay young and attractive forever [because] a spinster lady can, and very often does, turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years [whereas] a man usually mellows.”
On International Women’s Day 2012 on March 8, such primitive views were worth recalling; but what has happened to modern feminism? Why is it so bereft of its political, indeed socialist roots that any woman who “achieves” within an immoral system is to be admired? Take the rise of Julia Gillard as Australia’s first female prime minister, so celebrated by leading feminists such as writer Anne Summers and Germaine Greer. Both are unstinting in their applause of Gillard, the “remarkable woman,” who, on 27 February, saw off a challenge from Kevin Rudd, the former Labor prime minister she deposed in a secretive, essentially macho backroom coup in 2010.
On 3 March, Greer wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that she “fell in love with” the “matter-of-fact” Gillard long ago. Omitting entirely Gillard’s politics, she asked, “What’s not to like? That she’s a woman, that’s what. An unmarried, middle-aged woman in power – any man’s and many women’s nightmare.”
That Gillard might be a nightmare to the Aboriginal women, men and children whom this quintessential machine politician has abused and blamed for their impoverishment, while implementing punitive and racist measures against their communities in defiance of international law, is apparently not relevant. That Gillard might be a nightmare to refugees detained behind razor wire, children included, in places that are “a huge generator of mental illness,” according to Australia’s ombudsman, is of no interest.
That Gillard has pledged to keep Australian soldiers in Afghanistan indefinitely and that the overwhelming majority of those killed or wounded has happened during her period as prime minister, is beside the point. Gillard’s feminist distinction, perversely, is her removal of gender discrimination in combat roles in the Australian Army. Thanks to her, women are now liberated to kill Afghans and others who offer no threat to Australia, just like their comrades in “hunter-killer” units currently accused of massacring civilians. In ending the “cultural and other taboos that have kept women from combat roles in the past,” wrote Summers, Gillard has ensured that “Australia will again lead the world in a major reform.”
13 March 2012, 11:54 pmHenry:
From the Amazon rev. on “Ayn Rand Nation”
Thirty years after her death in March 1982, Ayn Rand’s ideas have never been more important. Unfettered capitalism, unregulated business, bare-bones government providing no social services, glorification of selfishness, disdain for Judeo-Christian morality—these are the tenets of Rand’s harsh philosophy.
In Ayn Rand Nation, Gary Weiss explores the people and institutions that remain under the spell of the Russian-born novelist. He provides new insights into Rand’s inner circle in the last years of her life, with revelations of never-before-publicized predictions by Rand that still resonate today. Weiss charts Rand’s infiltration of the Tea Party and Libertarian movements, and provides an inside look at the radical belief system that has exerted a powerful influence on the Republican Party and its presidential candidates. It’s a fascinating cast of characters that ranges from Glenn Beck to Oliver Stone, and includes Rand’s most influential disciple, Alan Greenspan. Weiss describes in penetrating detail how Greenspan became a stalking horse for Rand—slashing and burning regulations with ideological zeal, and then seeking to conceal her influence on his life and thinking. Lastly, Weiss provides a strategy for a renewed national dialogue, an embrace of the nation’s core values that is needed to deal with Rand’s pervasive grip on society.
From The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to Rand’s lesser-known and misunderstood nonfiction books, Gary Weiss examines the impact of Rand’s thinking across our society.
Gary Weiss has uncovered financial wrongdoing for almost a quarter of a century.
AYN RAND NATION (St. Martin’s Press: Feb. 28, 2012), his third book, began as an exploration of the roots of the 2008 financial crisis. It soon became apparent that Ayn Rand’s teachings were a decisive influence, and that her philosophy has come to pervade the national dialogue over the role of government, deficits, and “entitlements” such as Social Security and Medicare. Her teachings have been adopted in large measure by all of the Republican presidential candidates, have a strong influence on the libertarian movement and Tea Party, and pose a challenge to moderates and conservatives as well as the left.
It is a hidden battle for the soul of America – and Rand is winning.
Weiss was for years an investigative reporter at BusinessWeek magazine, where his award-winning cover story, “The Mob on Wall Street,” exposed mob infiltration of the market for small-cap stocks. The article won praise from Louis Freeh, director of the FBI, for paving the way for federal prosecution of mob crimes in the stock market. He uncovered the Salomon Brothers bond-trading scandal, and authored some of the earliest coverage on the dangers posed by hedge funds, Internet fraud and out-of-control leverage.
==============================
From Gary Weiss’ site:
George Montbiot, the noted British writer, has a column out today in The Guardian on Ayn Rand Nation, with the title “How Ayn Rand became the new right’s version of Marx.”
Montbiot make the following reference to one of the book’s main characters, Alan Greenspan:
Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that “capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral”, [Greenspan] mentioned [Rand] in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.
In the book I call Greenspan the “Murray Hill Candidate,” programmed at an early age to assassinate regulation. He was a loyal acolyte for 30 years, a subject he has sought to submerge through obfuscation and denial.
I hope that Ayn Rand Nation sets the record straight about Greenspan’s role in making the nation as vulnerable as it was to out-of-control bankers and speculators.
© 2011 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.
========================================
How Ayn Rand’s Bizarre Philosophy Made the New Right so Toxic
By George Monbiot, The Guardian
Posted on March 7, 2012, Printed on March 16, 2012
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago this month, has never been more popular or influential.
Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as “refuse” and “parasites”, and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.
Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.
The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed. In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing”.
Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed. Yet, as Gary Weiss shows in his new book, Ayn Rand Nation, she has become to the new right what Karl Marx once was to the left: a demigod at the head of a chiliastic cult. Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged, and it now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every year.
Ignoring Rand’s evangelical atheism, the Tea Party movement has taken her to its heart. No rally of theirs is complete without placards reading “Who is John Galt?” and “Rand was right”. Rand, Weiss argues, provides the unifying ideology which has “distilled vague anger and unhappiness into a sense of purpose”. She is energetically promoted by the broadcasters Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli. She is the guiding spirit of the Republicans in Congress.
Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed, secondhand, by people who have never read it. I believe it is making itself felt on this side of the Atlantic: in the clamorous new demands to remove the 50p tax band for the very rich, for instance; or among the sneering, jeering bloggers who write for the Telegraph and the Spectator, mocking compassion and empathy, attacking efforts to make the word a kinder place.
It is not hard to see why Rand appeals to billionaires. She offers them something that is crucial to every successful political movement: a sense of victimhood. She tells them that they are parasitised by the ungrateful poor and oppressed by intrusive, controlling governments.
It is harder to see what it gives the ordinary teabaggers, who would suffer grievously from a withdrawal of government. But such is the degree of misinformation which saturates this movement and so prevalent in the US is Willy Loman syndrome (the gulf between reality and expectations) that millions blithely volunteer themselves as billionaires’ doormats. I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill health.
But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy: as Adam Curtis’s BBC documentary showed last year, the most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Here, starkly explained, you’ll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as “the ‘greed’ of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector of the consumer”. As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a “superlatively moral system”.
Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru’s philosophy to the letter, cutting taxes for the rich, repealing the laws constraining banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US, Greenspan has successfully airbrushed history.
Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that “capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral”, he mentioned her in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.
Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the wreckage of that policy lies all around. The poor go down, the ultra-rich survive and prosper. Ayn Rand would have approved.
16 March 2012, 7:31 pmHenry:
March 26, 2012
Occupy Wall Street Must Battle 70 Years of Corporate Propaganda
Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street
by PAM MARTENS
The high priestess of corporate deregulation and free markets, Ayn Rand, wrote a novella in the 1930s. It was published in the U.S. in 1946 under the title, Anthem, by a corporate front group, a precursor to today’s astroturf groups. Anthem is currently being pumped into high schools across the U.S. and Canada with financial inducements to both teachers and students by a corporate funded nonprofit that has the financial support of some of the largest hedge funds in the U.S.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/26/ayn-rands-nightmare-is-todays-wall-street/
26 March 2012, 2:04 pmMichael Anderson:
Looks like the glass ceiling is back at the top of the shitpile:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd4a3ac0-77f6-11e1-b437-00144feab49a.html#axzz1qL0bkFII
“The image of women as safer managers who are less likely to fritter away a bank’s finances is wrong – and politicians should take note, according to a Bundesbank research report.
Board changes at banks that result in a higher proportion of female executives “lead to a more risky conduct of business”, concluded the authors of an extensive study of German finance houses released by the country’s central bank.”
27 March 2012, 12:32 pmSam:
Re: Looks like the glass ceiling is back…
Germany too. Should make Ms. Merkel happy.
28 March 2012, 2:18 amMichael Anderson:
Some heavy irony here…
http://rt.com/news/spain-banks-escorts-sex-198/
Madrid’s high-class escorts have found a way to regulate the Spanish banking sector. The ladies want to have their say in the economy by withholding sexual pleasures from bank employees.
The largest trade association for luxury escorts in the Spanish capital has gone on a general and indefinite strike on sexual services for bankers until they go back to providing credits to Spanish families, small- and medium-size enterprises and companies.
It all started with one of the ladies who forced one of her clients to grant a line credit and a loan simply by halting her sexual services until he “fulfills his responsibility to society.”
28 March 2012, 1:46 pmSam:
Absolutely priceless!
28 March 2012, 6:08 pmHenry:
The Horrors of an Ayn Rand World: Why We Must Fight for America’s Soul
An Objectivist America would be a dark age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before.
http://www.alternet.org/news/154700/the_horrors_of_an_ayn_rand_world%3A_why_we_must_fight_for_america
28 March 2012, 6:26 pmMichael Anderson:
Lysistrata…
29 March 2012, 8:39 amSam:
Yes, but with a twist: Lysistrata was about wives and husbands, and lovers. This one is about prostitutes and banker clients–illicit sex and spousal betrayal on the one hand, and sociopathic s.o.b.’s on the other.
29 March 2012, 4:41 pmMichael Anderson:
@ Sam: A valid point, but….is not war sociopathic, probative masculinity? Did not Robert Bales (and the many others who get away with killing innocent people for sport every day) commit an act of betrayal? Against the very essence of humanity? Does not the corporate state (or, more generally, the organs of power–ouch!), who has commodified war as prostitution has commodified sex (strictly business, nothin’ personal, M’am), commit betrayal?
As Stan has immortalized, “perfect” masculinity (sic) is sociopathic—whether it’s sex or war. They are 2 halves of the same thing.
30 March 2012, 7:55 amSam:
is not war sociopathic, probative masculinity?
Not necessarily all war. Certainly these horrible corporate-industrial wars in the name of “civilizationism” or “bringing democracy or freedom.” But humanity is not a collection of saints; there exist wars of self-defense, and I could mention a few others, but they go against the “spirit of the age,” and I don’t like arguing.
“perfect” masculinity (sic) is sociopathic
I don’t happen to agree with this. I am neither a “feminist” nor a “masculinist.” I don’t particularly subscribe to these very modernist points of view, to tell the truth. Of course, a lot depends on how you choose to define the terms of discourse. If you choose to define masculinity as sociopathic, well…then it is sociopathic.
1 April 2012, 9:39 pmMichael Anderson:
The spirit of this age is that of dominance and control, by corporations and the merchant class this time around. It was always there, but masked by relative affluence and good media control (thinking of Those Fabulous Fifties here, as a recollection in my own life cycle). Good God, the “divine right” of Kings, Corpos, Technocrats, Soldiers! What’s been the difference?? Excuses any deviance.
Masculinity, as defined by THIS age, and other phases of other historical cycles, involves behavior that can very easily be defined, without bending reason like a pretzel or being a feminist or masculinist, as sociopathic, for the furtherance of power. Guess our little monkey minds can’t deal well enough with reason to engage brain before opening mouth or unsheathing weapon/penis/money.
My ex-brother-in-law, who is an Evangelical minister (his church supports the wars we are persecuting now) used to say “I’ll stop having children when God tells me to.” After 6 kids, God intervened in the form of his wife, who’d had enough, and got her tubes tied.
2 April 2012, 1:32 pmSam:
I think you are what they call a “true believer.” Away with nice distinctions!
2 April 2012, 1:49 pmMichael Anderson:
You know, I really don’t have a problem with being wrong….sure wouldn’t MIND being wrong on some of these things…but I just haven’t seen it proved to my satisfaction yet. Once the blood starts flowing, it’s hard to stop. Humans are builders, and war wastes everything—’cept for those with the most firepower, and that sure doesn’t make it right.
I fought the draft in ’72 because I was not going over there to kill for corporate (even if the reasons were still a bit foggy then). Co-operation is so much better than competition, and the dislike for fighting is, well, a distinction I made in my own heart a long time ago, even if I have carried baggage from the “American Way” for a few years. It might mean death at the hands of someone with an American flag sewn on their shoulder—or on their dirty baseball cap.
If you look at the historical progression up to WW2 (the last “good” war), you can see it was pushed by economics (depression and otherwise). Had some trouble with blowback from the Austrian Corporal, though. It is a matter of historical record that U.S. and German corporations were heavily “intermarried”, so to speak.
And it still means PMV (Probative Male Violence). I don’t have to like it, and I don’t.
2 April 2012, 7:15 pmHenry:
he Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought by Sachiko Murata
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tao-Islam-Sourcebook-Relationships/dp/0791409147
4 April 2012, 12:58 amEric:
Pulled this off F/B:
10 April 2012, 5:21 amhttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/09/ashley-judd-slaps-media-in-the-face-for-speculation-over-her-puffy-appearance.html
Michael Anderson:
Hopeful developments….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/09/feminists-hail-explosion-grassroots-groups?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
Feminists hail explosion in new grassroots groups
Dozens of new organisations are springing up around the UK, campaigning on issues from lads’ mags to benefit cuts
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Feminists hail explosion in new grassroots groups
Dozens of new organisations are springing up around the UK, campaigning on issues from lads’ mags to benefit cuts
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Alexandra Topping
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 April 2012 12.36 EDT
Article history
Isabella Woolford Diaz
Feminists from Camden school for girls with Isabella Woolford Diaz (third left). Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
It was the lads’ mags – with semi-naked women in suggestive poses on their covers – being sold at eye level at her corner shop that did it.
“I just don’t think I should have to look at that – it’s degrading,” said 17-year-old Isabella Woolford Diaz. “If people want to buy it, fine, but I don’t think 11-year-old pupils should have to look at it.”
Deciding to take the matter into her own hands, the student formed a feminist group at Camden school for girls, and before long a core group of 15 teenagers – boys and girls – were attending. “I was getting so frustrated at how women were portrayed and I wondered if I was just being pernickety,” she said. “But I soon realised it wasn’t just me.”
10 April 2012, 11:47 amMichael Anderson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/teen-school-activist-malala-yousafzai-survives-hit-by-pakistani-taliban.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121010
“That such a figure of wide-eyed optimism and courage could be silenced by Taliban violence was a fresh blow for Pakistan’s beleaguered progressives, who seethed with frustration and anger on Tuesday. “Come on, brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a school girl,” one media commentator, Nadeem F. Paracha, said in an acerbic Twitter post.”
” A Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, confirmed by phone that Ms. Yousafzai had been the target, calling her crusade for education rights an “obscenity.”
“She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” Mr. Ehsan said, adding that if she survived, the militants would certainly try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson.”
Are the Taliban taking orders from the CIA-MICC? We (The Empire this time around) generally do not like anything resembling “progressive” government in our colonies (I also think the term “progressive” means something else once you leave the borders of the industrialized West—it loses some of its Orwellian Doublespeak connotation) because it means a thinking population, in this case THINKING women. Whoops, I forgot—-we don’t like them here at home, either!
Our American Talibam, a nice sitcom from the 50′s.
Stand down indeed.
10 October 2012, 10:28 amMichael Anderson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/us/citing-affair-petraeus-resigns-as-cia-director.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121110
This certainly has an Atlas Shrugged-Ayn Rand-ish quality about it…
10 November 2012, 8:09 am