Beneficiary of America’s Class System Admonishes Everyone Else To “Sacrifice” July 3, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

[Venugopalan K M]

http://godlessfeminist.wordpress.com/

Beneficiary of America’s Class System Admonishes Everyone Else To “Sacrifice”
July 3, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can
Possess", "Eyes of a Monster," and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

In an article titled “Has the American Dream Become Our Nightmare”
appearing today on Alternet admonishing the middle class to live a
little less large and rethink what the “American Dream” really means,
Dr. Mary Sykes Wylie misses the boat — by a long shot.

First off, to couple capitalism with democracy is as paradoxical as
fucking for virginity. In her word salad of Machiavellian
psychobabble, Wylie says:

“…like the threat of imminent extinction, our current troubles
concentrate our minds wonderfully, or at least enough to consider
possible alternative meanings of “wealth”, besides frenetic getting
and spending.”

That “frenetic getting and spending” might mean a trip to the shopping
mall — for her. For many others a hell of a lot less fortunate (like
the 6 million poor, uninsured jobless/long-term unemployed whose sole
income is food stamps), it means scrounging enough money through
begging for crumbs of inadequate help from charities and collecting
aluminum cans to keep the electric and water from being terminated
after the gas and telephone were cut off from inability to afford
basic needs. Or worse: It may mean scrambling desperately to get the
funds in order to travel across state to a Planned Parenthood clinic,
or to pay for an abortion resulting from a rape, or contraceptive
failure, when you have no health care and no economic security in your
life thanks to a legacy of exploitation, discrimination, and
dehumanization.

I have a few other quibbles about the article, too. What Mary Sykes
Wylie, PhD, author of the article, missed was the fact that all of
humanity can be divided into three groups — A, B, and C.

Group A is made up of those who live primarily off of stock dividends,
interest payments on their bond investments, royalties on their land
and mineral rights, inherited money, and rents for their real estate.
In other words, Group A derives its livelihood from passive or
unearned income generated from the capital it owns.

Groups B and C comprise the remaining 99% of humanity. Group B lives
primarily off of wages, salaries, tips, commissions, fees or pensions.
Group C are those remaining billions of people across the world who
don’t even get that — they live hand-to-mouth on whatever crumbs they
can scrounge. Group C can be thought of as “the reserve army of labor”
that is deliberately socially excluded and economically marginalized
and only permitted by Group A to exist to keep Group B “in line”
(although the ravages of poverty often takes its toll on the poor
people’s employability).

Group A obtains wealth by imperialist or colonialist measures by
deracination— driving the people off of the land either by genocide,
incarceration, or other means of expulsion, and de-skilling and
disenfranchising the remainder by forcing them to work for subsistence
wages out of lack of options. Group A can also be called the “Owning
Class” since they own most of the world’s resources and means of
production. Group A also owns a lot of the government or the state.

Group A has very politically active elements that make careers out of
protecting the interests of Group A. Those politically active members
of Group A become presidents, parliamentarians, prime ministers,
Congressmen, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the US Department
of Defense, CIA directors, Joint Chiefs of Staff, FBI directors,
military intelligence, etc., whose function is to keep the world safe
for the Fortune 500 companies — the people in Group A — so that they
can extract the value from the natural resources and exploit the
surplus value from the labor of Group B, and squash any populist
uprising.

I don’t know what world the article’s author lives in, but it sure as
hell isn’t in the “Other America” — the no-man’s land of the
Underclass that nobody gives a fuck about where kids get to go to
Prisonyland instead of Disneyland; where poor white women have no
opportunities for the few remaining living wage blue-collar
male-dominated union jobs or the opportunity for college and grad
school (unlike the author, who has her PhD that landed her a good job
with dignity), leaving only two alternatives for making enough money
to afford food, shelter, basic utilities (and MAYBE some
health/dental/vision care): prostitution or strip dancing.

I am talking about the “Other America” where, if you’re a poor woman,
you’re never “good enough” to “deserve” to be loved, married, and
supported by some middle/upper class woman’s law school bound son (or
some middle/upper class widower) because everybody “knows” that poor
women are nothing but “trash”, “gold-diggers”, and “whores” who get
pregnant just for the “windfall” of that paltry (non-existent) welfare
pittance.

Meanwhile, affluent demagogues with narcissistic personality disorder
and delusions of grandeur denounce abortion and contraception for poor
women and expound the merits of marriage as the end-all cure-all
anti-poverty program from their talk radio and Faux News pulpits —
making their pile by promoting discrimination and their ideology of
classism, racism, sexism and misogyny under the “family values” banner
cloaked in the “respectability” of religion, “morality”, freedom, and
liberty.

There is no “freedom” or “liberty” for those in poverty who never got
a fair fighting chance in the “land of opportunity” — due in no small
measure to the inherent exploitative nature of capitalism. And it is
very easy to target a group of people to oppress, discriminate
against, dehumanize, and exploit when they’re a different gender
(except for the few token “winners” among the ranks of the dominant
class).

But nobody wants to talk about that.

Classism, like feminism (the crazy notion that women deserve equal
rights such as having the right to their own bodies), is a taboo
subject.

The blindness of unearned privilege — middle/upper class privilege —
ignores the realities of America’s poor, 84% whom are women and 63%
whom are white, who aren’t even seen as human enough for harm against
us to matter.

The author also says:

“For generations we’re told that “money doesn’t buy happiness”,
which probably nobody in America believes.”

There’s a difference between believing and thinking. In the middle of
“believe” there’s a “lie.”

When being poor, jobless, and uninsured means you get to go blind from
undiagnosed and untreated glaucoma, or prematurely lose your teeth to
dental caries, or join the ranks of the 45,000 poor uninsured
Americans who die for lack of access to health care each year, or from
any other malady caused directly by poverty (like loss of winter
heating utility service); capitalism is the problem because it takes
money to buy the only things that make a shot at happiness possible:
your health and your life.

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

Tags: poverty, liberty, freedom, capitalism, classism, economic
stress, economy, psychology, Mary Sykes Wylie, PhD, psychotherapy
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Freedom in the Homeland
June 7, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can
Possess", "Eyes of a Monster", and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

While checking out Paul Street’s page at Znet, something leapt out
from the computer screen and gripped my throat. An article titled “A
Comeback For Chattel Slavery?” by Geraldine Winstanley published
through the Associated Newswire on April 1, 2010 quoted a top Obama
administration aide on condition of strict anonymity in an extensive
interview in which the aide stated that Obama is considering an
executive order to resurrect slavery on an experimental basis here in
the US.

The aide said that the program under consideration would be called
“Freedom in the Homeland.” It would begin in two selected Washington,
DC ghettos where unemployed men and male high school drop-outs would
be purchased by a joint public—private consortium. This program would
be operated and overseen by the US Department of the Interior.

The article quotes this anonymous White House official as saying that
under the Freedom in the Homeland program, these slaves would provide
a wide range of services for senior members of participating firms;
including shining shoes, washing cars, picking up children from
daycare, laundry, personal care for lobbyists’ aged parents, planting
and tending lobbyists’ vegetable gardens, working in lobbyist-owned
sweatshops, and auto repair. In return, these poor and mostly
inner-city enslaved males would get food, clothing, shelter, and
(quoting Winstanely’s article):

“a feeling of being at the real center of power in the world’s
greatest empire — priceless. It should move a bunch of them off that
destructive, personally irresponsible inner-city culture that the
president has been criticizing for years. Knowing that Barack Obama
stands behind this program will be useful for garnering cooperation
from the young men selected for service to their country. It will help
them see bondage as an opportunity for growth.”

This official also added that Obama’s “vision for this is color-blind
and post-racial. Although Freedom in the Homeland might initially
target poor urban blacks, it would eventually include poor Latinos,
Asians, and poor whites. Several top corporate Obama sponsors —
Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, and Exxon-Mobile —
have already expressed an interest in participating as slaveholders in
Freedom in the Homeland.

My initial knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss Geraldine Winstanley’s
article at Paul Street’s Znet page as a twisted April Fool’s joke. But
there’s nothing funny about it. The only ones who realize any
“opportunity for growth” in a system of chattel slavery are ruthless
exploiters — those profiting from the trafficking in human beings.

Although the overwhelming majority of Americans should be outraged
enough to march on the White House lawn, most probably won’t. This
society has already accepted the time-honored tradition of degrading
the poor and supporting abusive economic and social policy that
targets capitalism’s losers with punishment for the status crime of
being poor.

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

Americans applauded the assault on women’s basic human rights and
personal liberties with specious “conscience clause” laws and “fetal
personhood” laws which put every woman’s uterus and genitalia in the
realm of male dominated church and state owned property; expropriated
for patriarchal capitalism’s benefit — guaranteeing the reproduction
of a reserve army of labor. The conscription of unwilling women into
childbirth chattel slavery without any regard for how the “breeder
livestock” feels about it (or if the reproductive chattel survives
pregnancy and childbirth) was welcomed by society under the “pro-life”
banner.

Nobody cares if women suffer trauma from the permanent negative
impacts of compulsory maternity — we’re not human enough for harm to
us to matter.

Nobody cares that rape victims are denied EC in emergency rooms, and
why 87% of all US counties have NO abortion provider while women in
most regions of the US (excluding large coastal cities) are forced to
travel 50 miles or more to the nearest Planned Parenthood for
free/low-cost reliable contraceptives.

Pregnant women in US delivery rooms are routinely deprived of privacy,
basic human dignity and civil rights under the aegis of “fetal
personhood” laws and degrading (and often sadistic) “routine” medical
procedures.

Being denied the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy and
bodily integrity IS chattel slavery. Only rich women enjoy the
blessings of liberty in a nation billed as the beacon of freedom.

The public accepts slave labor for inmates in our prison-industrial
complex under AR 210-35. The assaults on workers’ rights and the
gutting of social programs for the working class and the poor
beginning with the Reagan Revolution precipitated a burgeoning
underclass and skyrocketing drug-related crimes — to which the
response was “Three Strikes” laws and mandatory minimum sentencing.

The state and federal prison system has replaced HUD Section-8 as the
nation’s largest subsidized housing program. With an increasing number
of drug offenders from the dispossessed working class, more money in
federal tax dollars goes to the communities where prisons are built.
The prime beneficiaries are businesses using prison labor and private
prison corporations. There are two corporations that dominate the
privatized prison industry in the US: Corrections Corporation of
America and GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut). These two outfits
control 75% of the for-profit prison industry.

“The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a
very fine hypnotist, partly because it is indeed exciting to see an
African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery.
However, this is the 21st century, and race together with gender and
even class can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so
often overlooked and what matters…is the class one serves.” ~ John
Pilger

Wackenhut’s founder was an ardent John Bircher who made his pile
during the McCarthy era by compiling dossiers on those suspected of
“un-American activities” (Communists); achieving over 4 million files
by 1966 — one for every 46 American adults. The company was founded in
1954 by George Wackenhut, a former FBI official. It was a publicly
held corporation from 1966-2002; after which it merged with Group 4
Falck, creating the monster private security firm Group 4 Securicor
(now known as G4S). Prior to the merger, the chairman was George
Wackenhut, the CEO and vice chairman was George C. Zoley, and the
president and COO was Wayne H. Calabrese. The company’s upper echelons
included ex-CIA, FBI and other government officials.

Wackenhut is a subsidiary of G4S, a UK based global security firm. It
has profited handsomely from the school-to-prison pipeline created by
an agenda of deliberate disinvestment, which escalated during the
Reagan Revolution. The Reagan administration aimed its malevolence at
poor single mothers and cut social programs for the working class —
including CETA, the federally subsidized jobs placement program.
During the 1980’s, the US got “tough on crime” by implementing “Three
Strikes” laws. Wackenhut entered the prison business in 1987 and was
reaping annual profits of $630.3 million by 1992. By 1997, Wackenhut
controlled one third of the prison market contracts and provided
prison slave labor for IBM and Microsoft. Prison industry officials
admit that there is a vested interest in ensuring a burgeoning prison
population, and how those prisoner slave laborers are treated is of no
concern.[[i]][[ii]]

The permanent loss of jobs and aggressive union-busting left the most
vulnerable members of the working class with few alternatives other
than the illicit economy. Most of the crimes committed by the poor are
illegal drug sales out of economic desperation for lack of any real
job opportunities. The semi-skilled $7/hour worker who loses his job
due to disinvestment finds himself unemployed and alienated by a
society that was indoctrinated with the meritocracy myth. He turns to
crime to survive, then gets arrested and imprisoned where he is given
a new job by a private corporation doing business with the prison
system under the federal guidelines framed within AR 210-35, where he
is put to work for 22 cents an hour. He went from worker to unemployed
to criminal to convict slave laborer.[[iii]]

Inmate slave labor is the goose that lays the golden eggs for wealthy
corporate interests. There’s no unionizing, no strikes, no
unemployment benefits, no workers’ comp insurance, and no employers’
portion of the social security taxes. It’s not a coincidence that the
working class is overwhelmingly represented among the prison rolls.

Nothing You Can Posses

Prisoners across the US work at data entry jobs for Chevron; taking
telephone reservations for TWA, raising livestock, making electronic
components for computer motherboards, making waterbeds, and making
sexy lingerie for Victoria Secret. The beneficiaries are the
corporations using slave labor, the investment banking firms, mutual
fund managers, and the rich who can afford to have stock portfolios.
Saloman Smith Barney, American Express, and GE (to name a few) are
major shareholders in the privatized prison-industrial complex — of
which Wackenhut has cornered the market. By 2001, Wackenhut’s revenues
topped $2.8 billion as the leading provider of security at US national
defense sites with a global presence on six continents. It serves as
the US division of a global corporation that provides security
officers, customs protection officers, property security, training
programs and investigative services. It handles law enforcement
duties, “operations maintenance”, and airfield management for the
Justice Prisoner Transport System (JPATS).

In 1997, Professor Ian Stewart — science fiction writer and world
class mathematician — met with Alexander B. Cuppett to discuss what he
knew firsthand about the implementation of a fascist totalitarian
regime through FEMA and Wackenhut under REX-84 (Executive Order by
Ronald Reagan for constructing concentration camps to detain
“subversives”). Cuppett is a retired US Army /Joint Chief of Staff and
US Department of Defense inspector. Cuppett extensively documented the
infrastructures set up under REX-84. He told Dr. Stewart that as of
1999, there were heavily fortified FEMA bases throughout the US. This
is corroborated by the fact that FEMA contracted with Haliburton
subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) to build “black site” prisons
and detention camps at undisclosed locations throughout the US as a
final preparation phase of REX-84. According to former diplomat Peter
Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a US Department of Homeland
Security plan called ENDGAME. The stated purpose of ENDGAME is the
“removal of all removable aliens and potential terrorists.” No
Congressmen spoke out against this no-bid contract with
Haliburton.[[iv]]

To be clear, a “potential terrorist” is anyone who agitates against
the corporatocracy. Under the Patriot Act passed and reauthorized by
both Democrat and Republican Congressmen, anyone can be charged with
the status crime of being a “terrorist” and indefinitely incarcerated
— habeas corpus has been replaced with corpus juris[[v]] for this
status crime.

In 1995, right before KBR got its no-bid gulag building contract, the
air fleets of the US Marshals Service and ICE merged, creating JPATS.
This merger created a frighteningly efficient “Con Air” airline for
the transport of prisoners and detained undocumented workers. JPATS is
managed by the US Marshals Service. It handles over 1,000 requests per
day to move prisoners between judicial districts, prisons, and foreign
countries; performing over 300,000 transports prisoner and alien
transports per year. JPATS is the only government-operated and
regularly scheduled airline in the nation, routinely serving over 40
domestic and international cities on an as-needed basis. It transports
prisoners for a fraction of the cost that privately owned commercial
airlines would charge. JPATS flight schedules are kept secret.

The infrastructure is already in place to reintroduce slavery. The
public has already accepted the deprivation of rights and the
enslavement of certain subgroups of the US citizenry on “moral”
grounds.

The notion that a black man, especially the first black president,
would contemplate issuing an executive order to reintroduce slavery
for unemployed males is not an unlikely prospect. Nor would Barack
Obama be the first wealthy black man to participate in slavery on US
soil.

When the axe entered the forest, the trees said, ‘Behold! He was once
one of us.’ ~ African proverb

In the antebellum South, the majority of black slaves were owned by
“slave magnates” — wealthy plantation aristocracy in the top 1% income
bracket. Of this top 1%, some were black.

In 1860, at least six wealthy freed blacks in Louisiana owned about 65
slaves apiece. A wide, C. Richards and her son, P.C. Richards, were
wealthy blacks who owned a sugar cane plantation with 152 slaves.
Another wealthy black slave magnate in Louisiana was Antoine Dubuclet
who owned well over 100 slaves. Dubuclet owned a sugar cane plantation
and according to 1860 tax and census records, his estate was valued at
$264,000 ($7 million in 2010 dollars), while the mean wealth of
southern white men was $3,978 ($93,978 in 2010 dollars). In
Charleston, South Carolina, 125 freed blacks owned slaves and 69 freed
blacks in North Carolina owned slaves. The most famous wealthy black
slaveholder was William “April” Ellison. [[vi]]

Obama is one of America’s fortunate sons. In the antebellum South,
blacks couldn’t vote whether they were free or not. But that same
imperialist tool of oppression — legalized slavery — still permitted
some blacks to gain freedom and wealth, which they used to get even
richer by owning their brethren.

How impossible would it be today in post-racial America for a black US
president to use his wealth, power, and privilege to resurrect the
despicable practice of chattel slavery as a matter of social policy in
dealing with the poor?
[i] Palast, Greg, “Wackenhut’s Free Market in Human Misery”, London
Observer, September 26, 1999

[ii] Silverstein, Ken, “America’s Private Gulag”, Prison Legal News,
June 17, 2000

[iii] Evans, Linda and Goldberg, Eve “The Prison-Industrial Complex
and the Global Economy”, 1999

[iv] Homan, Jacqueline S. “Nothing You Can Possess”

[v] Corpus juris: the imperial pronouncement of the force of law
without due process; based on the ecclesiastical courts set up under
the Roman Curia.

[vi] Johnson, Michael P. and Roak, James L. “Black Masters: A Free
Family of Color in the Old South”

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Tags: South Carolina, slavery, forced birth, privilege, patriarchy,
capitalism, Obama, Paul Street, slave labor, AR 210-35, REX-84,
Reagan, black slaveowners, prison-industrial complex, John Pilger,
socialism
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Capitalism’s Legacy, the Auschwitz of Palestine and the Attack on the
Free Gaza Flotilla
June 6, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can
Possess", "Eyes of a Monster," and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

Israel’s government claims its military was defending Israel against
“terrorists” aboard the Freedom Flotilla that was bound for Gaza with
humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees in Gaza. The coalition of
international human rights volunteers had no guns. The IDF was heavily
armed.

Israel controls all entry points to Palestinian territory in Gaza —
which is not part of Israel — essentially blocking access to
Palestine. Journalists, doctors, students, and humanitarian aid
volunteers have all been denied access to Gaza. The Palestinians who
struggle to subsist there are locked in. They cannot leave except
through points of entry and exit controlled by Israel — including by
sea. They languish in destitution.

Their homes and infrastructure destroyed by IDF bulldozers, tanks, and
heavy artillery, Palestinians have no means of building their own
viable society. They are denied the means to provide for themselves
the most basic of human needs. One and a half million people are
living there in the largest open-air concentration camp in the world.

Israel deploys well-heeled, well-armed military forces against a
trapped and defenseless civilian population in Palestine, deliberately
keeping Palestinians from being able to build and sustain viable life.
Israel controls everything that enters or exits Palestine by air,
land, and sea. Not just the ingress and egress of people; but medical
equipment, food, building supplies, textiles, children’s toys, and
school supplies. It’s not about defense against “terrorism”, or about
Israel’s “right to exist.” It’s about a vicious form of capitalism
known as colonialism. Consider:

All of humanity can be divided into three groups — A, B, and C. Group
A is made up of those who live primarily off of stock dividends,
interest payments on their bond investments, royalties on their land
and mineral rights, inherited money, and rents for their real estate.
In other words, Group A derives its livelihood from passive or
unearned income generated from the capital it owns. Groups B and C
comprise the remaining 99% of humanity. Group B lives primarily off of
wages, salaries, tips, commissions, fees or pensions. Group C are
those remaining billions of people across the world who don’t even get
that — they live hand-to-mouth on whatever crumbs they can scrounge.

Group A obtains wealth by imperialist or colonialist measures by
deracination— driving the people off of the land either by genocide,
incarceration, or other means of expulsion, and de-skilling and
disenfranchising the remainder by forcing them to work for subsistence
wages out of lack of options. Group A can also be called the “Owning
Class” since they own most of the world’s resources and means of
production. Group A also owns a lot of the government or the state.

Group A has very politically active elements that make careers out of
protecting the interests of Group A. Those politically active members
of Group A become presidents, parliamentarians, prime ministers,
Congressmen, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the US Department
of Defense, CIA directors, Joint Chiefs of Staff, FBI directors,
military intelligence, etc., whose function is to keep the world safe
for the Fortune 500 companies — the people in Group A — so that they
can extract the value from the natural resources and exploit the
surplus value from the labor of Group B, and squash any populist
uprising.

In order to deracinate Palestine — including Gaza, the West Bank, and
Arab communities within Israel itself — Israeli military operations
have damaged infrastructure and the Israeli government crafted a list
of forbidden goods that cannot be delivered by humanitarian
organizations to the Palestinians which have absolutely nothing to do
with Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism. Instead, it
has everything to do with ethnic cleansing and genocide with land
expropriation as the motive.

Imperialist governments of the West have long defended Israel’s right
to exist. Since its artificial creation by European and American heads
of state in 1948, Israel has only allowed its indigenous Arab peoples
— the Palestinians — the right to barely subsist. Power and privilege
are a dangerous narcotic; more potent and addictive than any opiate.
Violence used to protect privilege destroys those who bear the brunt
of its force, and it consumes those who use it to become masters of
the universe.

Israel uses sophisticated aircraft and navy vessels to bomb densely
crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums.
To attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy,
no army, and no artillery units, no mechanized army or command to
control — and calling this “war” — seems ludicrous. But in a sense,
it is a war — a class war. It’s class genocide. For its victims,
capitalism is cruelty; not freedom.

Israel speaks to Palestinians in the language of intimidation,
contempt, and death.

Those who orchestrate such aggression do not understand the insatiable
rage born of long-standing policies of humiliation, violence, and
human rights violations. A mother whose child dies because of a lack
of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget.

A child that witnesses his sick or injured grandmother dying while
being detained at an Israeli check point does not forget.

Pregnant women denied access to hospitals who suffer permanently
maiming injuries from difficult labors and births; and who are
stripped of their dignity by being forced to give birth in front of a
hostile audience of gawking, lewd, racist soldiers that harass them in
their most vulnerable state — peering between their legs while
pointing a loaded gun at them — do not forget.

Parents who carry their child’s broken body to a bombed out hospital
do not forget.

These crimes against humanity are engraved forever upon their memory.
They sear the psyche and become like a virus in those who survive. Is
it any wonder that 71% of Palestinian children interviewed in Gaza
recently said that they wanted to be a suicide bomber?

The collective refusal of our government, our media, and our scholars
to speak out in defense of the rule of law and fundamental human
rights exposes our shambolic espousal of “freedom” and “democracy.”

The blind acceptance of Israel’s pogroms against Palestinians cloaked
under the pretense of Israel’s “right to exist” contradicts reason as
the images of the victims of Israeli policy seep out from behind the
sealed ghetto of Gaza before the world’s eyes. It is a betrayal of the
memory of all those killed in other genocides in other times and in
other lands.

The lesson of the Holocaust was not that Jews are eternal victims. The
lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to stop
genocide and fail to do so — regardless of who carries it out and who
is targeted — you are culpable. And certain US government leaders,
lawmakers, and multinational corporations are very culpable. The F-16
fighter jets, the Apache helicopters, and the 250 lb smart GPU-39
bombs are all part of the multi-billion dollar annual military aid
package that the US gives Israel.

Dispossessed and disenfranchised children trapped win the world’s
largest open-air gulag are being killed right now with US-made
weapons. The American public’s indifference to this suffering and
injustice should come as no surprise as capitalism’s architecture of
aggression led us to go along with the program of killing even more
women and children on a grander scale in Iraq and Afghanistan — so
much so that Afghan women and girls who were atrociously oppressed
under the Taliban are now fleeing in terror of their “liberators” —
into the arms of Taliban mujahedeen.

From December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, Israel launched a brutal
attack on 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. On March 9, 2010, a group
gathered near the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York and began reading
from the Goldstone report; the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza
conflict. Afterwards, hundreds of human rights activists and concerned
citizens formed a single file procession to carry the evidence
revealed in the report to the Waldorf Astoria where a gala was
organized by the Friends of the IDF to honor Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi,
the Israeli commander-in-chief of the military forces during Operation
Cast Lead — the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Over 1,400
Palestinians were killed by Operation Cast Lead alone.

This operation entailed the IDF’s use of depleted uranium weapons
against the civilian population of Gaza, resulting in loss of sight
and limb amputations. Cluster bombs and depleted uranium usage is
prohibited under the Geneva Convention and international law. Yet, the
very ones responsible for these crimes against humanity were honored
at a $1000/plate dinner at the Waldorf Astoria — raising $20 million
for the IDF through a US tax-exempt organization, “Friends of the
IDF.” We are judged by the company we keep. We should beware of what
sort of “friends” we choose.

One of the authors of the Goldstone report, Colonel Desmond Travers,
was interviewed by Rory McCarthy of the UK Guardian. Travers said that
the IDF attacks were “intentional and precise and carried out for the
purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population. Gaza is the
only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies,
closed off from food, water, and air.”

Although both sides of the conflict are culpable, the degree of
Israel’s culpability was far greater because of the extreme power
differential. Travers said IDF tactics included “hostage-taking,
felling of homes, destruction of the judicial police infrastructure,
destruction of hospitals and medical infrastructure, destruction of
the agricultural, water, and sewage infrastructure.”

Israel claimed this massacre was an “error.” The orchestrated
mechanized maiming and killing of civilians; the deliberate targeting
of schools, hospitals, homes, and mosques is not something that
happens by accident.

Israel claimed that mosques and schools were frequently used to store
caches of weapons. But the UN mission found no such evidence of that.
Travers says those claims are part and parcel of a negative propaganda
campaign that stereotypes Palestinians (and Arabs in general) and such
prejudicial unfounded claims would never withstand criticism by the
world community if leveled against any other group.

“During the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, if a
British public figure or military official had said, ‘Catholic
churches were warehouses for Semtex’ there would have been an
international outcry, especially in the Catholic world over such a
slur.” ~ Colonel Desmond Travers

But the Catholic world enjoys something that Palestinians do not:
enormous wealth and centuries of unearned privilege. The Vatican is
the world’s oldest imperialist multinational corporation. Privilege
insulates its beneficiaries from the consequences it poses to others.
Privilege is the central ingredient in imbalanced and unequal
relationships. Capitalism and all of its varying forms — imperialism,
fascism, feudalism, and colonialism — require imbalanced and unequal
relationships in order to thrive.

Capitalism is an architecture of aggression built upon the
exploitation, disenfranchisement, coercion, intimidation, and
dehumanization of others.

When you can see that a group is female, disabled, old, or a different
race, that makes it easier to target and oppress them. Thus,
capitalism’s “winners” get what they’ve got unfairly and protect their
gains by breaking the backs of their victims — namely, those who dare
to defy capitalism’s injustices of discrimination and the social
damage inflicted by expropriation and the crushing of capitalism’s
victims on a playing field that is anything but level.

If capitalism’s “losers” get restive, they are swiftly reminded of
“their place.” They’re harshly pressed back in line and their backs
crushed — their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for a chance in life
bulldozed and run over — like 23 year old Rachel Corrie, the unarmed
peace activist deliberately hewn down by an IDF-driven Caterpillar D9
armored bulldozer on March 16, 2003 in Gaza. The cold-blooded murder
of a 23 year old American college student was no more of an accident
than colonialism — or any other form of capitalism — is. To believe
otherwise is to believe there is capitalism without capitalists,
imperialism without imperialists, fascism without fascists, and
colonialism without colonists.

You don’t have colonialism without colonists, capitalism without
capitalists, or imperialism without imperialists.

These things don’t just happen in a vacuum. Left to their own devices,
they devour themselves after consuming their hosts. Only the rule of
law and a strong enough collective backbone of can prevent the social
destruction and collateral damage left in capitalism’s wake. And
international justice needs a spine of our collective human solidarity
that is too strong to be crushed by tyranny, bribery, divisiveness and
intimidation and to oppose death squads, slave labor, torture,
artificially created poverty by capitalist disinvestment, armored
bulldozers and all of the ideologies that promote discrimination and
the dehumanization of others.

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Tags: religion, poor people, capitalism, Gaza, Free Gaza Flotilla,
Palestinians, Middle East, human rights, discrimination, West Bank,
Israel, IDF, Rachel Corrie
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
Utopia For the Rich, Dystopia For Everyone Else
June 4, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can
Possess", "Eyes of a Monster", and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

The following article was submitted to Alan Colmes’ site at Liberaland
whom I occasionally write for as a guest author. Apparently, this
piece was a bit too liberal for Liberaland. So it is being re-posted
here and also submitted to other alternative media venues. It is
highly controversial and steps on more than just a few privileged and
very ruthless toes. For that reason, Alan Colmes (whom I do respect,
BTW), understandably feared potential reprisal if he kept this piece
at his site.

I am not, however, afraid of the rich and shameless capitalist class
of misogynists, bigots, and social parasites who have left me and
countless other Americans poor, without a chance or hope for good
jobs, and a chance in life despite having done “all the right things.”
In a nation without enough jobs that pay a living wage to go around
for everyone, guaranteeing that women (capitalism’s biggest losers)
and unemployed workers over age 40 will be excluded regardless of
education, skill sets, and experience — I have little left to lose. I
would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

[Originally posted in Liberaland by Jacqueline Homan • June 3, 2010, 4:29 AMET ]

New Mexico-based investors teamed up with Samsung Heavy Industries to
build a fleet of floating castles to serve as a safe haven for the
uber rich. Wall Street’s darlings have planned billion dollar luxury
liners to keep the poor, starving masses at bay after they’ve
plundered them in case their gated communities are besieged by hordes
of pissed off Americans posed to take a cue from Hannibal’s invasion
of ancient Rome. And why would the masses be feared? Maybe they’re
enraged at the economic cannibal class of social parasites who have
forcibly relieved them of their social programs, jobs, homes, and
pensions.

The first of these sea-faring fortresses has already been named
“Utopia.” The $1.1 billion dollar ship is due to be launched in 2013.
Orders are already being taken to buy one of the Utopia’s 200 or so
mansions for sale ranging in price from $4million for a small luxury
condo to $26 million for 6,000 square foot estates. The Utopia’s
largest mansion is 40,000 square feet priced at $160 million. These
are permanent residences.

The Utopia has plenty of recreation opportunities on board to amuse
its inhabitants: outdoor movie theater, casino, golf course,
nightclubs, restaurants, and upscale clothing boutiques for the
“Stepford” wives of the “masters of the universe”, and a water park
with a rock climbing wall. The Utopia is 1,000 feet long, almost as
long as a nuclear powered Nimitz class aircraft carrier.

This concoction is a laissez-faire Tea Bagging oligarch’s wet dream —
a means to escape without having to face the masses of vulture
capitalism’s impoverished losers or be accountable to the government
they’ve bought that tricked out like a gaggle of hookers for some
token baubles from K Street’s coffers.

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

Since these plutocrats grew rich from exploiting America and other
nations’ peoples across the globe, they have plenty of leisure time
and money to fund think tanks that promote right-wing totalitarianism
like the Cato Institute and projects like the Seasteading Institute.
The latter is run by Patri Friedman, grandson of disaster capitalism’s
guru Milton Friedman, and is financed by ultra right-wing Facebook
investor and PayPal founder, Peter Thiel.

Last year, Thiel wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and
democracy is compatible” around the same time that Friedman announced,
“Democracy is not the answer.” Thiel believes that America went to
hell in a hogcart ever since women were enfranchised with the vote.
Their neocon drivel was published by the billionaire Koch family
Libertarian dispensary Cato Unbound. Friedman’s solution to Thiel’s
democracy dilemma is to build off-shore Libertarian compounds where
social Darwinism rules.

While Thiel and Friedman hash out the details for their Libertarian
“haven”, the Frontier Group investment firm entered the actualization
phase with the Utopia. The Frontier Group is an offshoot of the
Carlyle Group. It was founded by some of the big names from Carlyle,
which was the private equity firm that brought American right-wing
oligarchs like former CIA director and former president George Herbert
Walker Bush together with billionaire buddies from Saudi Arabia — the
Bin Laden family — all of whom profited enormously from the War on
Terror launched by their spawn: George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden.

The Frontier Group’s founding director is Frank Carlucci, former
chairman of the Carlyle Group from 1989-2005. Frank Carlucci (a.k.a.
“Creepy Carlucci” and “Spooky Frank”) is one of America’s fortunate
sons who attended Princeton where he roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. At
age 30, Carlucci was appointed vice consul of the US embassy in the
Congo — the African nation that suffered one of the worst human rights
violations under European imperialist colonialism: the Belgians
exterminated nearly 10 million Congolese between 1885 and 1908 and
introduced the barbaric practice of hacking off the people’s forearms
to terrorize them into submission. This remained a widespread practice
that Foday Sankoh’s R.U.F. routinely employed in DeBeers’ blood
diamond zone of Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

When the Congo was granted its independence, America’s elite didn’t
like the way the Congolese voted. Carlucci was implicated in
facilitating Patrice Lumumba’s murder[1] two months after his popular
election. Lumumba was dismembered and his body parts dissolved in
sulfuric acid after he was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup which
installed Joseph Mobutu, the dictator who embezzled more than any
other corrupt African dictator.

"Nothing You Can Posses", by Jacqueline S. Homan

After his role in destabilizing the Congo, Carlucci transferred to the
embassy in Brazil in time for the fascist military coup in 1964. After
Brazil, Carlucci went on to become deputy to his old Princeton buddy,
Donald Rumsfeld, in the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) under the
Nixon administration where Dick Cheney was making his bones. The first
thing Carlucci, Rumsfeld, and Cheney did was purge the agency of
“subversives” — staff who might be sympathetic to democratic
principles. Approximately 25% of the OEO staff was fired. After
gutting the OEO, Carlucci was appointed ambassador to Portugal where
he ensured that the Communists who overthrew Portugal’s dictatorship
were overthrown themselves by pro-IMF “moderate” socialists. Later,
Carlucci returned to DC to a job as the CIA’s second-in-command under
the Carter administration.

After the Reagan Revolution in 1981, Carlucci was appointed as Deputy
Defense Secretary. In 1983, Carlucci left his cabinet position to head
up Sears World Trade, a company involved with shady arms deals and
described by Fortune Magazine as a front for CIA and military
intelligence operations. After the company’s collapse, Carlucci was
rewarded by Reagan with the job of National Security Advisor and
Defense Secretary based on his “merit.”

In 1989, Carlucci became chairman of the Carlyle Group and used its
prestigious A-list as a lobbying force to get corporate welfare in the
form of generous defense contracts paid for by the taxpayers — while
extolling the virtues of the “free market.”

Carlucci is among his peers in social parasitism at Frontier Group,
whose executive ranks overwhelmingly comprise rich white males on the
Who’s Who list of Carlyle directors, such as former McDonnell-Douglass
CEO Sanford McDonnel and Riggs Bank former director Norman Augustine.
Rigss’ legacy is pregnant with endless scandals, including money
laundering for Augusto Pinochet’s stolen loot — blood money
expropriated from Latin America’s “dirty war” and Operation Condor
victims. One of Riggs’ top executives was Jonathan Bush, uncle to
Dubya.

The Libertarian brainchild of the Utopia is the uber-rich’s
fantasy-come-true where they can flee social repercussions for their
actions of economic cannibalism. Being “responsible for your actions”
is the Kool-Aid flavored pablum that serves as the mass line to cover
up the class line. Those who create the biggest messes leave their
victims to deal with the fallout. The Libertarian non-aggression
principle, as stated by the Cato Institute, apparently does not apply
to damage inflicted on others caused by abusive economic and social
policy that promotes age, race, disability and sex discrimination that
Libertarians, neocons, and neoliberals think should go unfettered by
“Big Government.”

How ironic that the same people who arrange their system of unearned
privilege to steal your last penny and keep you from getting on your
feet have the moxy to sell you the notion that they should be free
from regulation. Anyone not in the top 10% who is led to believe that
they would benefit from such as system ought to be arrested for
possession of brains with intent to use.

______________________________

[1] Stockwell, John “In Search Of Enemies“

Tags: Anarchism, capitalism, fuel poverty, Libertarianism, poor
people, privilege, rich, suffering, Tea Baggers, Tea Party, Wall
Street
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Utility Shut-offs, Death, and Victim Blaming
March 26, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Expiring rate caps, utility deregulation, and lack of help resulted in
increased utility shutoffs that directly caused deaths among the poor.

Over 5.7 million US households suffered utility shutoffs as of
December, 2009. Over half a million of those are in Michigan with the
majority in Detroit — America’s poorest city. Between January 1, 2010
and March 3, 2010, fourteen Detroit residents died in house fires as a
result of utility shut-offs, forcing them to use unsafe alternative
heating. The most recent tragedy happened on March 2, 2010 when Sylvia
Young, a poor single mother, lost three of her seven children in a
house fire after DTE Energy shut off her gas. The fire was caused by a
malfunctioning space heater given to Young by her landlord.

Ms. Young tried to get help from agencies to prevent utility
termination, but was turned away.

Media, spokespeople from the offices of Detroit’s mayor David Bing,
Michigan’s governor Jennifer Granholm, and DTE PR spin doctors blamed
the victim, claiming “there is plenty of help” for those unable to
afford their utility bills. Not long after the fire, the Detroit Free
Press ran an article titled “Mom Was At Store When Children Died In
House Fire” , saying that Young had gone to a “party store.” A victim
of abusive economic policies was made into the criminal. The truth
came out in a subsequent hearing: she had gone to buy a space heater
so her children wouldn’t freeze to death. Detroit Free Press never
apologized.

“The way it is presented in the media is like I don’t deserve my kids,
that I was only interested in the Family Independent Agency taking
care of them”, Young said.

The offices of Mayor David Bing, Governor Jennifer Granholm, and DTE
insisted that “there is plenty of help” for those unable to afford
their utilities. They claimed that Sylvia Young didn’t seek help,
which was not true.

Like millions of other poor people facing utility shut-offs, Young
tried to get help from every social agency she was directed to only to
be given a run-around that failed to yield any real help.
Investigations by WSWS journalists revealed that there was no help
available when Sylvia Young sought it because funds had been depleted.
Judy Panlau of Michigan’s Public Service Commission told WSWS that
“there are a number of programs available.” Mayor Bing said the same,
citing the Department of Human Services (DHS), LIHEAP, THAW and United
Way’s 2-1-1 program.

The United Way’s 2-1-1 and DHS are referral networks. They do not
provide direct help with utilities. That leaves only LIHEAP and THAW.
Owing to funding shortfalls, only about 20% of those eligible for
LIHEAP help can get helped. What they get doesn’t cover one month’s
gas bill in the winter.

Eligibility guidelines on THAW’s web site are stringent. Many needy
don’t qualify. Applicants must have an income, which fails the jobless
receiving nothing but food stamps. Those who received help from THAW
within the prior year are ineligible, which fails seniors and disabled
people on very low fixed incomes. THAW recipients must meet a DTE-set
payment arrangement which is not based on the customers’ income; plans
are based on highest consumption estimates without regard to
customers’ ability to pay. If customers can’t pay they’re shut off.

THAW is DTE’s non-profit arm, making DTE look like philanthropists
that “give back” to the community. DTE gives generously to lawmakers.
According to opensecrets.org, DTE’s PAC spent $293,883 since January
2010; 69% of which went to US Congressmen and the Democratic Party. In
2008, DTE’s PAC spent $539,709 on lobbying. One of the biggest
recipients was “pro-life” Senator Bart Stupak, who got $16,000 between
2008-2010. What a comfort this must be for poor mothers like Sylvia
Young.

Tags: Bart Stupak, fuel poverty, LIHEAP, THAW, utility shutoofs
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage | RHRealityCheck.org
February 22, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage | RHRealityCheck.org

Posted using ShareThis

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Pregnant Nicaraguan Woman Denied Treatment for Metastatic Cancer |
RHRealityCheck.org
February 22, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Pregnant Nicaraguan Woman Denied Treatment for Metastatic Cancer |
RHRealityCheck.org

Posted using ShareThis

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Unholy Trinity: The Iron Triangle of Big Religion, Big Business, and Government
February 20, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

The Past 30 Year History of the War on Poor Single Mothers:

Poor women/single mothers are poor and downtrodden because of a legacy
of ongoing discrimination in a patriarchal capitalist system. Long
before this “second Great Depression” was even acknowledged, the
middle class was on perilous ground.

It began with the multi-pronged attack on women’s most basic human and
civil and Constitutional right to have control over their own bodies
with birth control and abortion (which in many cases, saved women’s
health and lives — something “pro-life” males care nothing about since
women are nothing but breeder chattel solely for male exploitation in
their patriarchal worldview) and Big Business support of Reagan
undermining workers’ living standards — beginning with Reagan firing
the air traffic controllers.

It was barely a decade after women FINALLY won the right to advanced
educations and career opportunities as lawyers, doctors, professors,
etc., after the Roman Catholic Church and The Moral
Majority-influenced patriarchal assault on women’s most basic human
rights began in earnest — starting with the Hyde Amendment.

Today, even access to affordable contraception and voluntary
sterilization and early term abortion are largely unavailable for
women in most rural/semi-rural communities across the US.

Another prong attacking the poor and working class was what Mimi
Abramovitz calls the “Feminization of the Underclass”, which drew on
the stereotype and gender-oppressive ideological notions of women’s
“proper roles” narrowly defined as wives and mothers only. These
gender-discriminatory stereotypical ideas fueled theories on poverty
that demonized women and popularized the idea of an underclass as
“less than”, as undeserving of the same rights as rich or middle class
white Christian males in our capitalist society which is inherently
patriarchal — justified, normalized and legitimized by the Bible and
the Roman Catholic Church’s prolific political influence.

By treating women punitively, especially poor women, according to
their value based solely on their sex appeal to alpha males (who have
all the money and liberties they frequently seek to deprive others of)
which determines their abilities to conform to the terms of “the
family ethic”, welfare safety net programs have always been able to
regulate women’s lives in ways that support the dynamics of capitalism
and patriarchy.

"Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie", by Jacqueline S. Homan

The “family ethic” says that women belong in the home, married,
economically dependent on and subordinate to the male breadwinner.
Noncompliance (for whatever reason, whether or not within the locus of
any given woman’s control) meant penalties for stepping out of role.

But this “family ethic” failed to account for the realities faced by
battered wives, poor white unmarried women (whose opportunities to
marry middle/upper class men were zilch because of classism),
immigrant women, and poor women of color whose life circumstances
prevented them from being able to comply with patriarchal
religion-justified terms and definitions of women’s “proper places and
roles.” The “family ethic” is one defined by, and viewed through the
lens of, middle/upper class white Christian male privilege. It failed
to remotely consider the needs of poor women. White Christian male
dominated society — rife with the political and wealth influence of
the Roman Catholic Church — not only refused to recognize the needs
and rights of poor women (especially poor women of color), but in
accomplishing its own greed-driven imperialistic ends, routinely
politically assaulted the families of the poor, of poor women of ALL
races.

The general premises of the “family ethic” are deeply ingrained in
social welfare programs. Welfare programs defined white married women
with disabled husbands or white widows as more “deserving” of aid than
poor single mothers, abandoned wives with children, and women whose
male breadwinner failed to provide steady secure support.

Welfare, as meager of an entitlement as it was prior to Slick Willie’s
evisceration of it in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, was not only a
vital component ensuring that poor women and children could survive;
it also served to buttress the wages and living standard of the middle
class.

With assaults on women’s human rights to have control over their own
bodies regarding abortion and contraception access, the war on poor
welfare mothers was simultaneously racheted up throughout the Reagan,
Bush, Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr years. This jihad against women was
really a jihad against the middle class and the poor whose tactical
primary targets were (and are) women.

In garnering voter support for eliminating welfare (as miserly of a
benefit as it was even in its heyday); the rich — backed by the Roman
Catholic Church and other Christian organizations — stigmatized poor
women on welfare as “bad mothers” unable to raise their children
properly. In reality, poor single mothers on welfare should have been
valued (and paid adequate compensation!) if not praised for protecting
their children from unlicensed childcare workers, the absence of
medical coverage, abusive fathers and pedophile priests.

The Weaponized Language in the Marriage of Misogyny to Classism:

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

Poor families on welfare were defined as disorganized by virtue of the
absence of a male breadwinner. The truth: poor families suffer
disorganizing impact of endless poverty fueled by racial, gender, and
class discrimination in a shrinking pool of middle class jobs in our
Serengeti economy.

The uncertainty that accompanies irregular poverty-wage employment,
the risk of losing badly needed Medicaid and food stamps
disproportionate to any paltry earnings, and the threat of utility
shut-offs and homelessness — what could possibly be more disruptive to
organized family life than constantly worrying if you will have enough
money to feed, clothe, and house your family?

In the mad rush to vilify welfare female-headed households (and poor
unmarried women without kids who were “taking away men’s jobs” in
order to be able to live) for their lack of a “good” husband; the
majority of American voters forgot that as a social institution, the
“traditional” family was also very problem-ridden, frequently violent,
and historically structured on the subordination of women as
second-class citizens with NO rights outside of their role as breeder
livestock property owned by men.

The “traditional” family notion is centered on the Iron Age Roman
pater familia system, which was (unsurprisingly) incorporated into the
Roman Catholic Church’s teachings which promotes the subordination and
oppression of women. Catholicism’s bastard progeny — Protestantism,
Evangelical Christianity, and Fundamentalism — are also joined at the
hip with Roman Catholicism’s treatment of women.

Poor women on welfare have always been regarded as “lazy” and
“irresponsible” and unmotivated to work. They’re regarded as
“free-loaders” without any work ethic who “only got pregnant for the
money” so they can “live high on the hog” off the taxpayer’s backs —
rather than suffering from job discrimination, poor education, abusive
economic policies, and limited opportunities.

Middle class married women who have additional children and get
generous EITC payments are never accused of “only getting pregnant for
the money” so they can “live high on the hog.”

Middle class men who get vasectomies reversed, or who routinely use
Viagra and impregnate a woman are never castigated as being
“irresponsible.”

Middle and upper class women who need to take longer work leaves than
normal to heal and recover completely from pregnancy and giving birth
are not accused of being “lazy” and “lacking work ethic.”

Calling welfare mothers “lazy” and pushing Workfare (more
appropriately called “Slavefare”) requiring welfare mothers to work
outside the home at ANY minimum wage job implied that women at home
are NOT working.

But they were/are working: without ANY pay, they produce enormous
benefits for their families and for the rest of society — especially
for men.

They are enduring pregnancy and childbirth — at great personal
sacrifice to their own bodies and health, suffering excruciating pain,
even dying or almost dying — bearing children (rather than getting
abortions “for convenience”) whom they raise. They are feeding,
clothing, cleaning up after, sheltering and taking care of family
members; keeping them fit for another day of productive labor. They
are providing care for those who are unable to work due to age,
illness, disability, or lack of a job.

All of these tasks are critical to the smooth functioning of the
patriarchal capitalist society that has been our legacy, and vital to
the smooth running of our economy. But these tasks are only counted as
“work” and renumerated when they’re performed outside the home — and
even then, as “women’s jobs”, they command very paltry wages.

Welfare mothers have been demonized for being dependent on the state,
which sharply contradicts societal directives to other women to be
economically dependent on men — even though lots of men were/are
selfish in keeping all their money from their “breadwinner’s jobs” for
themselves instead of supporting women and children because in our
patriarchal Christian-dominated, capitalist society, everything is
always all about them and to hell with poor women and children.

Poor women and children go without health and dental care, nutritious
food, proper clothing, and homes while middle class and rich men had
plenty of money to blow in stripper joints, bars, and on expensive
toys. Poor men who have been left out economically frequently end up
in prison. (But ex-felons get more economic support and help with job
placement in living wage jobs than poor women with clean records and
educations). That’s where the Ponzi scheme of Biblical-influenced
patriarchy, “traditional family values”, and capitalism gets us:
fucked without kissed.

The Carrot-and-Stick Dominance of Double-speak:

While welfare mothers are subjected to routine social abuse and
personal value judgments for relying on the crumbs of what remains of
the tattered and torn welfare safety net, the media celebrates
well-off professional women who “give it all up” and return to home
and husband — implying that this is where they really belong and it’s
about time they realized it.

While media and many church-supported campaigns funded media’s and
government’s assault on poor women, over-privileged Ivy League
scholars formulated the “dependency argument” of welfare being the
cause for family break-ups, illegitimate births, teen pregnancy,
crime, and inter-generational reliance on welfare as a way of life.

The idea that welfare is a “free ride” which produces character flaws
and poor personal habits that are transmitted from mothers to children
— perpetuating dysfunctionality — had been challenged long ago (and
many times since) by the findings of a massive longitudinal study
undertaken by Greg J. Duncan, Martha S. Hall, and Saul Hoffman and
published in 1988. ["Welfare Dependence With and Across Generations",
Science 239 (January 29, 1988) pp. 467, 469]

This study examined the economic status of poor families over the span
of 19 years. It found that the majority of daughters raised by poor
welfare mothers never applied for welfare at all. It also showed that
daughters from middle/upper class families were least likely to need
financial assistance as adults. The results also suggested that the
few cases of inter-generational welfare dependency related directly to
the difficulty of escaping poverty due to systemic classism, and also
because of discrimination, lack of enough jobs for everyone who needs
one, and lack of access to education and other social resources — not
the welfare program itself per se.

Life During the Better Times Wasn’t Good For Poor Women:

Even before the massive American jobs exodus due to “free market”
deregulation free-for-alls, NAFTA, GATT, and globalization, the job
market was very hostile towards poor women — especially poor single
mothers. Lack of childcare, lack of accommodating employers, and lack
of equal pay for equal work (or even an equal opportunity for a good
paying “man’s job”) was the norm for poor women.

Another problem unmarried women (whether they’re mothers or not) face
is a lack of the safety net of a spouse’s employer-provided health
insurance and the safety net of a spousal income in the event the
woman loses her job and suffers prolonged unemployment.

Single mothers are also faced with having to do the work of TWO
adults. Raising and taking care of children plus financially
supporting them are two demanding jobs that even many married mothers
have difficulty pulling off.

Even though many married mothers work out of economic necessity
(especially if hubby lost his job), most are employed only part time
so they get to spend more time with their kids than single mothers
forced to work two minimum wage jobs and spend two to four hours each
day commuting by buses since many can’t afford a reliable car. They
also have a spouse who is occasionally willing to help pitch in with
housekeeping and childcare — a benefit single mothers don’t have.

The Feminization of Poverty:

By linking poverty to the rise of female-headed households suggests
that a person’s gender and marital status makes them poor.

Being female does not cause poverty; discrimination against women
does. Facing job discrimination, education discrimination (especially
in the “hard sciences”), low-wages, higher health insurance premiums
than men get charged, lack of access to contraception and abortion,
plus having full responsibility for children DOES make one poor.

These are economic and social problems that disproportionately harm
women because of our patriarchal capitalist social arrangements
centered on a Christian/Biblical patriarchal system, flavored with
traditions from ancient Roman paternalism.

Reserve Army of Labor:

The threadbare rug of meager welfare support as an entitlement was
pulled out from under poor women’s feet. The women thrown off of
welfare after exhausting their 5 year lifetime limits have not been
absorbed and welcomed into the middle class job market. In fact, many
have been denied even the low-paying dead-end menial jobs, too —
because of lack of reliable childcare and transportation.

But the rich, who own the means of production, orchestrated (with the
backing and complicity of the Church) attacks on women’s right to
birth control and abortion — while simultaneously dismantling of the
meager welfare safety net — grew poverty by creating a larger pool of
desperate workers. And the pro-forced birth policies will only
exacerbate this.

Between that and a steadily shrinking pie of good paying jobs because
of “free trade” agreements and globalization, the ground on which the
middle class once stood eroded.

Employers began requiring Bachelor degrees for lower-middle class (and
often dead-end) entry-level jobs that only required a high school
diploma 30 years ago. At the same time college degrees were
increasingly required by employers, need-based student aid was slashed
by the Gramm-Rudman Bill under the watch of Bush, Sr. while college
tuition soared and outpaced inflation. Grad school, med school, law
school, etc., was put totally out of reach for those in poverty and
the lower-middle class. Student loans used to be dischargeable under
personal bankruptcy. Not anymore. That changed in the 1990′s.

And the dismantling of further protection under the bankruptcy laws
has caused more middle class people to fall into poverty and
destitution (mostly from medical bills). The 2005 amended bankruptcy
law is for the middle class what welfare reform is for poor women
(particularly poor single mothers). And it was the same bunch in
Congress who passed both.

Simply put, the rich got richer by taking from the middle class and
the poor by attacking and undermining the few hard-won rights and
gains women finally managed to get only one generation ago — after
centuries of oppression, abuse, enslavement, and discrimination
promoted by the Roman Catholic Church and its spin-off denominations,
justified and legitimized by the Bible.

All of this has led to the impoverishment of the majority of Americans
of both genders, all races, and all ages. Our power of the vote has
been dwarfed by the most recent anti-American SCOTUS fig-newton folly
of granting corporations full citizenship status so they can use the
1st Amendment right of “free speech” through use of their wealth and
lobbyists to determine America’s geopolitical landscape in terms that
favor them, which necessarily and patently disenfranchise the rest of
us. Things are only going to get worse for everyone not in the top 1%
club — the super rich elite.

As of 2004, a US Dept. of Labor report stated that for every job
opening, there were 100 jobless applicants looking for work. If we
only include full-time jobs that pay a living wage with health and
pension benefits, that ratio is very similar to that recently seen in
Massilon, OH (one hour’s drive from where I live) where 700 desperate
job-seekers applied for ONE job opening — a janitorial job with the
Massilon School District.

For the one applicant who got lucky and got the job which pays a
living wage and health benefits plus pension, 699 job-seekers got sent
home poor and empty-handed.

Due to the collapse in the housing and financial markets, the fate of
America’s poor and jobless got a hell of a lot worse. The economic top
1% of the population now owns 70% of all financial assets — an
all-time record. To be clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155
million people combined.

2009 was a stellar year for Wall Street executives’ bonuses as firms
gave $150 billion to their executives — 100% of which are directly
from our tax dollars.

Rich men at the helm of corrupt, ruthless corporations, insurance
giants, and banks got generous welfare benefits — money that dwarfs
the paltry TANF welfare benefits doled out begrudgingly to all the
poor single mothers in the US.

If that welfare for America’s rich on Wall Street had instead been
used to create jobs rather than for the unjust enrichment of a handful
of executives, we could have paid an annual salary of $30,000 to 5
million jobless poor who certainly need the money more than Wall
Street’s economic cannibal class — who have produced nothing except
corporate bankruptcies, corruption, and consumer and taxpayer fraud.

Not one penny of the welfare given to the rich has gone to create a
single living wage job for a poor jobless person — 6 million who have
NO income at all and are only getting food stamps.

This should make every last over-privileged welfare mother mugger too
ashamed to live with themselves. Poor women and children have suffered
first and foremost from the collective rejection of social and federal
responsibility for the downtrodden.

Mean-spirited welfare cuts and reforms and attacks on abortion and
contraception — women’s right to have control over their own bodies —
over the last 30 years are neither innocent nor unrelated. It was
deliberate: Poverty by design to create a Reserve Army of Labor to
suppress wages and make workers too desperate and fearful to demand
better pay and conditions because there’s a line of desperate poor
people waiting to take your job.

Tags: abortion, church and state, contraception, patriarchy, poverty,
privilege, pro-life, Roman Catholic Church, single mothers, welfare
Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments »
When Religion, False Morality, and Medicine Collide — EC and
“Conscience Clauses”
January 27, 2010 by Jacqueline S. Homan

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can
Possess", "Eyes of a Monster," and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

Most hospitals across the US have emergency rooms. Emergency rooms
deal with the full gamut of medical emergencies ranging from accident
victims to emergency childbirths involving women who may be poor and
uninsured without any other access to medical care. Emergency rooms
essentially triage care in order of medical emergency priority.

And one of those medical emergencies that ER staff commonly see are
victims of rape. According to the US Bureau of Crime Statistics, one
woman in every five has been raped.

Because rape involves multiple types of physical and emotional trauma,
and because rape is a crime involving the need for forensics, most
ER’s have at least one member on staff who is specially trained as a
Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) — a specialty forensics nurse.

Becoming a SANE requires at least 40 hours of didactic training in
addition to other intense training in order to qualify to sit for the
SANE-A exam. Additional training is required to sit for the SANE-P
exam. SANE-A refers to a SANE who is Adult/Adolescent certified and
SANE-P refers to a SANE who is Pediatric certified. Both are highly
specialized health care and forensics fields. The training and
credentialing standards are very tough.

Being board certified as a SANE is a statement that a nurse has
accepted the challenge of preparing for and passing difficult and
demanding examinations demonstrating a mastery of refined knowledge
and critical thinking skills in clinical practice.

One cannot become either a SANE-A or a SANE-P (or both) without
successful completion of extremely rigorous education. This specialty
certification is increasingly becoming an essential nursing
credential.

SANE candidates are taught about the trauma and PTSD suffered by rape
victims because rape is traumatic. Female rape victims must not only
deal with the fear of developing or contracting an incurable STD as a
result of the rape, they must also worry about getting pregnant as a
result of the rape.

Since pregnancy and childbirth are non-benign medical conditions even
under the best of terms where the sex AND the pregnancy were
consensual and desired, the last thing society should be doing is
forcing women and girls to endure a pregnancy and childbirth that
resulted from a rape.

Yet, 47 states have enacted “conscience clause” laws that allow health
care practitioners and pharmacists the right to impose their objecting
religious beliefs on women by denying them access to contraceptives,
and, if need be, abortions. [It would be almost a valid argument if
their "moral" objections involved anything besides making sure women
are made as miserable and socially devalued as possible.]

These widespread “conscience clause” laws that are now in effect in
all except three states (Alabama, New Hampshire, and Vermont) came in
on the heels of the US Supreme Court Webster ruling. Disenfranchising
women has become an accepted and approved political tool by
Congressional candidates such as the newly elected Massachusettes
Republican Senator, Scott Brown.

Lawmakers win votes by draping themselves in this “pro-life” mantle
which is not about valuing life or about morality — rather it is about
oppressing women by forcing them to get pregnant and remain pregnant,
even at peril to their own health, well-being, and lives at the
expense of their liberty, their happiness, and their freedom. It’s
about compulsory maternity against their will.

"Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie", by Jacqueline S. Homan

The Center for Reproductive Health Rights states that almost
immediately after the Webster ruling, over 500 various fetal
personhood laws and “conscience clause” laws have popped up and were
enacted. Unprecedented numbers of health care professionals and
pharmacists have increasingly denied women across the country access
to birth control. Many drug stores in rural areas have even refused to
stock condoms, diaphragms, and contraceptive sponges and Nonoxinol-9
spermicide jellies and foam — none of which require a prescription.
This has left countless women and girls unable to defend themselves
from unwanted, high risk, and medically dangerous pregnancies.

The answer of telling these women to “just go someplace else” is not a
realistic or minimally feasible solution because in many areas, there
may not be a “someplace else” they can go. In the Bible Belt and in
rural Rust Belt communities, it is not uncommon for every medical
facility and pharmacy to refuse to stock and dispense contraceptives —
leaving women as hostages with NO choice at all.

And these moves which are causing deliberate harm and inflicting
intentional cruelty on women are promoted by politicians — most whom
are rich white males who don’t give a fuck about women. At all. Men
like Scott Brown who recently won the Senate Congressional seat in the
state of Massachusetts. Men who will never have to endure the risks,
the permanent bodily damage, the excruciating pain, and possibly death
from pregnancy and giving birth.

To give their misogynist pro-childbirth chattel slavery agenda
legitimacy, they also trot out and support rich women like Ann Coulter
and Alaska’s former governor and US vice presidential candidate Sarah
Palin who are no more of a friend to women than Pat Robertson or Rush
Limbaugh.

Privileged and powerful lawmakers, governors and judges have done
everything they could (and are still doing all they can) to
disempower, abuse, endanger, and enslave women.

From Sarah Palin denying funds to reimburse Alaska hospitals for rape
kits to the majority of Republican Congressmen who voted on laws that
served to deny rape victims their day in court (as well as deny them
access to pregnancy prevention) — the Republican (and sell-out
Democrat) platform of being “tough on crime” holds that rape victims
deserve some rights; so long as those rights do not conflict with
those of ruthless corporations, tea-baggers, “patriots”, or super
devout Christians — all who want government off their backs but in
between your legs.

Scott Brown falls into the last category (at minimum). In 2005, Brown
sponsored legislation to allow doctors and nurses to turn away rape
victims from Massachusetts emergency rooms if they objected to
providing rape victims with emergency contraception (Plan B). Brown
stated that a rape victim “could be referred to another facility at no
additional cost.” He also said “It’s not about the victim.” Rather, it
is about the SANE and the hospital’s “right” to deny contraceptives or
abortificants to patients if they’re morally opposed to doing so.

Now, SANE training is supposedly “patient-centered, promoting the
health and well-being of rape victims. Why would anyone choose to
become a SANE if imposing their “moral” views on traumatized rape
victims is more important than that patient’s well-being? A rape
victim has already had control over her own body, her bodily
integrity, forcibly taken from her against her will by the rapist. How
“healing” or “patient-centered” is it to deny rape victims emergency
contraception after a rape? And Brown claims this is “not about the
victim?”

Really? Okay, so who is it about if it’s not about the victim?

It’s not about the hospital administrators, or the ER staff — the
doctor, nurse, or SANE — because they do not have to take emergency
contraception themselves if they don’t want to and they are
professionals in what is supposedly the humanitarian field of
providing “patient-centered” care and healing. So if it’s not about
the patient — the rape victim — then who is it about?

Pro-lifers want everyone to believe that it’s all about life, that
it’s about “the baby.” But in the case of rape, it is the woman rape
victim — not a zygote, a blastocyst, or even a non-viable fetus — who
is the patient, brought to the hospital’s ER by police for
“patient-centered” care and healing. It’s not about “the baby” unless
we’re talking about an infant rape victim. And it’s not about “the
baby” because we’re talking about contraception — preventing
pregnancy. So again, who is this about?

There is only one logical conclusion here. Denying rape victims
emergency contraception is about the rapist.

It’s about giving the rapist’s (or rapists’) sperm (that was implanted
without consent) more rights than the woman in whom it was forcibly
injected. Denying rape victims in the ER access to emergency
contraception isn’t about anybody’s rights except the rapist’s
“rights.”

So let’s call it for what it is: denying emergency contraception to
rape victims (or any woman for that matter) is a Rapists’ Rights
movement.

As for health care providers including pharmacists who refuse to
dispense birth control, including emergency contraception, because of
their “religious beliefs” or “moral objections”; they are in the wrong
field and they don’t deserve their jobs.

With emergency contraception such as Plan B, there is a narrow time
window involved (72 hours) for it to be effective in preventing
pregnancy. Rape victims cannot be taxied from hospital to hospital
before someone is finally willing to give them Plan B as part of the
rape kit that also takes time to complete.

Becoming a SANE is a choice. Becoming a rape victim is not.

If one chooses to become an ER doctor, nurse, or SANE, expensive and
exhaustive training is involved. Any SANE, ER doctor or nurse with
such strong objections to providing legal medical services and care
should exercise their right to choose a different profession — not
enter the medical field just so they can impose control and degrading
abuse on patients who are female rape victims.

The rights of a hospital, pharmacy, and health care professional
should never be allowed to supersede the rights of patients —
especially women rape victims. It isn’t the well-being, health, or
future life of that health care worker that is at stake. It is the
woman rape victim’s.

And every pregnancy is a potential threat to a woman’s health,
well-being, and life — including her economic well-being. Anyone from
a nurse to a doctor to a pharmacist to a lawmaker or a judge who
deprives a woman of the choice to prevent a pregnancy, to end a
pregnancy — especially as the result of a rape — should be forced to
contribute to the support of every unwillingly pregnant woman and to
both mother and child after that fetus becomes a post-born child.

Rape victims who are ER patients should not be made victims again by
hospital staff and religious organizations — especially religious
hospitals that qualify for tax-exempt 501(3)(c) status for whom the
public at large must pick up the shifted tax burden tab.

There is nothing decent, caring, or moral about forcing a physically
and emotionally traumatized woman to risk pregnancy or track down an
emergency contraception provider. There is nothing moral about
stopping a rape victim (or any other woman) from preventing a
pregnancy she does not want, or cannot endure.

Rapists do not have a Constitutional right to force a woman to breed
for them and ER staff, hospitals, et al, have no Constitutional right
to force rape victims to bear their rapist’s progeny.

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Tags: abortion, contraception, EC, pregnancy, rape, sexual assault
Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments »
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You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot
build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you
will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a
whole.
-AMBEDKAR

http://venukm.blogspot.com

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