"Steve" <
steven...@yahooooo.com> wrote in message
news:su1ol716clgf14neq...@4ax.com...
>
>
> <ROTFLMAO> Porky makes a big thing about a missing "r."
>
> That's from David (Zepp) Jamieson who apparently refused to
> allow the woman he claims to still be married to use of his
> Internet account, and then when she got fined for broken tail
> lights and failure to licence the family pets, he refused to
> help her pay the fines and then after a decade, she was forced
> to do community service.
>
> The truth may be that Zepp has been lying about still being
> married to her and instead, she left him for reasons Zepp doesn't
> want to admit.
>
> What's porky hiding here?
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/ron-jacobs-womens-rights-are-human.html
Women's Rights Are Human Rights
Saturday 10 March 2012
by: Ron Jacobs, The Rag Blog | News Analysis
Besides the fact that it celebrates women in a society primarily controlled
by men, it is the socialist roots of International Women's Day that have
discouraged its celebration in the United States.
On March 8, 1997, workers at the University of Vermont were at the beginning
of a struggle to unionize. The units of the workforce that were prime for
unionization (and most likely to vote in a union) were those units that
maintained the buildings and grounds of the university. These units were
composed of a large number of new immigrants and women.
The union we were working with was the United Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers of America or UE. This union is one of the few U.S. unions that
refused to kick leftists out of the union in 1948 and is therefore not part
of the AFL-CIO. We held a rally that day at the university. We chose March 8
because of its importance as International Women's Day. It was the first
that many of the workers had ever heard of this day.
Unknown to most U.S. residents, International Women's Day has its roots in a
strike by female garment workers in New York City. On March 8, 1857, these
textile workers marched and picketed to demand improved working conditions,
a 10-hour day, and equal rights for women. The police attacked the march.
On March 8, 1908, women textile workers marched again, recalling the 1857
march and demanding the vote, and an end to sweatshops and child labor. The
police attacked this march, also.
Two years later, revolutionary Clara Zetkin urged the international
socialist Second International to adopt March 8th as a holiday honoring the
struggle for women's rights. The motion passed.
Besides the fact that it celebrates women in a society primarily controlled
by men, it is the socialist roots of International Women's Day that have
discouraged its celebration in the United States. After all, this is a
nation that created Labor Day to prevent workers from celebrating May Day,
even though that workers' holiday was established in the United States in
the late nineteenth century.
The insistent capitalism of America's ruling classes will not so much as
even acknowledge a holiday determined by the workers that celebrates
something besides the domination of Wall Street and Washington. Nonetheless,
both holidays continue to be celebrated in the United States, albeit not on
the same scale as elsewhere.
The first that many U.S. residents alive today became aware of International
Women's Day was in the late 1960s and 1970s. Thanks to the leftist
foundations of the feminist movement that developed in those years,
International Women's Day was retrieved from the dustbin of history where it
had been tossed. Since those days, it has been consistently celebrated by
most women's groups, much of organized labor, and even given a mention by
some elected officials.
However, like so many other movements with their current roots in the
struggles of the 1960s, the women's rights movement is much more than a
single holiday. Just like people did not protest, go to jail, fight the
police, and even die so that school children can celebrate Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s birthday every January, neither have women and their allies
fought merely to wear a ribbon or attend a celebration of International
Women's Day every March 8.
Women's rights have always been human rights. The very fact that this day
has its roots in a labor struggle proves that. Women and girls comprise much
of the workforce, the student population and, in some nations, the military.
In today's world, where the wars and economic policies of neoliberalism
force millions of people to leave their homes and countries, it is the women
that make up the bulk of those refugees. Given that females continue to be
the primary caregivers of the human species, it becomes even clearer that
their struggle is synonymous with the struggle for human rights. Yet, every
day the news is full of attacks on those rights.
In the United States, the right wing and many Christian churches are
conspiring to deny easy and affordable access to an essential element of
health care -- birth control. At the same time, budget cuts on both state
and federal levels are targeting low-income children and women, leaving many
of them without essential needs like food, shelter, and health care. These
budget cuts are the direct result of polices that cut taxes for the rich,
fund the war industry at ever greater cost, and attach more and more riders
on the tax burdens of working people.
Meanwhile, unemployment maintains a relatively constant level of several
million capable workers and real wages continue to sink. In other countries
in the western neoliberal zone, like Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the
situation is even direr.
Meanwhile, most women in countries that are part of what economists call the
developing world are in even worse straits. Many of them have never lived in
anything other than a refugee camp. Education is something not even
considered for their male children much less for themselves or the girls in
their families.
Tribal and ethnic wars that are exacerbated by the neoliberal economic
crisis bring death and illness without warning. Other wars brought on by
Washington and Wall Street's perceived need for hegemony create their own
havoc and death. Religious fanatics whose similarities with their kinsmen in
the United States and the Vatican outweigh their differences do their best
to insure women remain subjugated to their medieval belief systems.
The list continues. It is apparent that the need for a women's movement as
represented by those textile workers who took to the streets of Manhattan
over a hundred years ago exists as much as it ever did. From Manhattan to
Mumbai, from Beijing to Bagdad, the struggle for women's rights and lives is
the struggle for human rights and lives.