A gender nonconformity survey

Thanks to Feministing for this link to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force survey on transgender discrimination.

Anyone who knows me very well at all knows that I have very complicated ideas and feelings about gender issues. But I certainly agree with transgender activists that enforced gender conformity is a Bad Thing.

I haven't had chance to take the survey or to look at it in depth, but it seems to be interesting and important.

Economic update

Here's an update to yesterday's post.

I was listening to the radio when I got home from work last night, and just heard an NPR report that the Federal Reserve has just announced an $85 billion loan to save insurer American International Group. Why did the feds decide to bail out AIG and not Lehman Brothers? Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, NPR also reports that US stock markets made a partial recovery from yesterday's slump after the Fed kept something called the federal funds rate at 2 percent. This is the rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans.

Also, the Associated Press reported that "Barclays says it will acquire Lehman Brothers' North American investment banking and capital markets businesses for $250 million in cash."

All this economic uncertainty is apparently causing oil prices to drop. Less economic growth equals less demand for oil which equals lower prices. At the same time, the BBC reports that the US federal deficit is likely to go up to $438 billion in 2009--and that doesn't include the cost of rescuing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

This complicated stuff has a lot to do with the well being of ordinary people. Dean Baker offers a good explanation of how we got into this mess--and some ways that we can get out of it.

With the demise of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, IndyMac, Bear Stearns and now Lehman Brothers, we’ve been treated to the failure of more major financial firms than during any year since the Great Depression. The sight of rich bankers getting the boot might be lots of fun if it were just a spectator sport. Unfortunately, we are in the game with these clowns.

As a result of their incompetence, irresponsibility and greed, the housing bubble was allowed to grow to dangerous proportions. Its collapse threw the economy into recession, putting millions of people out of work and lowering the wages of those who still have their jobs. The plunge in house prices has destroyed much of the life savings for tens of millions of people nearing retirement.

Meanwhile, the bankers who messed up and destroyed the companies who hired them are still multimillionaires. Most of them are still in their old jobs getting multimillion-dollar pay packages. This is a sector that badly cries out for reform and there is no better time than now to put it into place.

Baker says that the public has a right to expect substantial reforms in return for the federal bailout. Baker calls for a cut in executive pay, and also for a financial transactions tax to help rein in speculation.

The entire post (which I found via truthout) is fairly short, easy to understand, and well worth reading. Baker gives a more complete explanation of the financial transaction tax here.

Ukraine government collapses over Georgia war

Common Dreams posted this interesting article from TimesOnlineUK about the situation in Ukraine. Apparently the effects of the war in Georgia are spreading.

Lehman Bros. fails, stock market falls, US faces major economic uncertainty

As the BBC put it, "Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest US investment bank, has filed for bankruptcy protection, dealing a blow to the fragile global financial system" after losing billions of dollars in the US mortgage market.

In the recent past, the Federal Reserve has offered financial backing to prop up other struggling financial institutions. In March, the Fed offered a $30 billion loan to help JP Morgan take over Bear Stearns. Just last week it intervened to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of their crucial role in the mortgage market. This time, the Fed refused to offer financial incentives to potential buyers of Lehman Brothers.

Maybe this is a good thing. Like so many other financial institutions, Lehman Brothers got itself into trouble by making spectacularly bad investments. By letting the company fail, the Fed sent the word to other investment bankers that they can't expect the taxpayers to protect them from their own stupid mistakes.

On the other hand, there are also large risks to allowing Lehman Brothers to fail. Economist Paul Krugman explains:

Like many financial institutions, Lehman has a huge balance sheet - it owes vast sums, and is owed vast sums in return. Trying to liquidate that balance sheet quickly could lead to panic across the financial system. That's why government officials and private bankers have spent the weekend huddled at the New York Fed, trying to put together a deal that would save Lehman, or at least let it fail more slowly.

Meanwhile, Bank of America purchased another troubled investment bank, Merrill Lynch.

The New York Times reports that the US stock market suffered its worse one-day drop since the terrorist attacks back in 2001. The BBC reports that following stock market drops in the US and Europe, stocks in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan fell by five to six percent.

I think that Krugman's New York Times piece (via truthout) gives the best description of the underlying situation. It's short and well worth checking out.

Basically, "depository banks"--banks that physically take money from depositors and lend it out to borrowers--are now much less important to the economy than is something called the "shadow banking system." Our current banking regulations and deposit insurance system weren't designed to protect "non-depository" banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

As Krugman puts it:

The real answer to the current problem would, of course, have been to take preventive action before we reached this point. Even leaving aside the obvious need to regulate the shadow banking system - if institutions need to be rescued like banks, they should be regulated like banks - why were we so unprepared for this latest shock? When Bear went under, many people talked about the need for a mechanism for "orderly liquidation" of failing investment banks. Well, that was six months ago. Where's the mechanism?

And so here we are, with Mr. Paulson apparently feeling that playing Russian roulette with the U.S. financial system was his best option. Yikes.

Latoya on Sarah and Condoleeza

Over at Feministe, there's a writer called Latoya who is one of the most interesting voices in the blogosphere. Sunday evening I was hanging out down at Sauced trying to get started on a complicated post about Sarah Palin and the separation of church and state, when I happened to come across Latoya's latest post, which compares Sarah Palin and Condoleeza Rice.

Latoya starts by citing several of the latest feminist blog entries on Palin, and noting that they take one of two points of view. One viewpoint attacks Palin because her positions are completely opposed to everything feminism has stood for as a movement. The other viewpoint says that feminists should support Palin because she is a strong woman who demonstrates what feminism has done to advance opportunities for women.

As an African American woman, Latoya doesn't see Palin as representing every woman. She says, "Palin doesn’t represent anything close to the womanhood I know." In order to put Palin in context, Latoya compares Palin's relationship to women's issues with Condoleeza Rice's relationship to racial issues.

One reason I found this analysis interesting is that I thought Rice would have been a logical choice for McCain's running mate. She's brilliant and has demonstrated executive experience. More than that, however, I think Latoya gets right to the heart of what the controversy over Palin is all about:

You can hate someone’s policies and still defend them from ad hominem arguments. I hate when people say that Condoleezza Rice is a sellout and that she isn’t black. That’s a ridiculous assertion to make. However, that does not make Condoleezza Rice a civil rights leader just because she is black and in a position of power.

I hate when people say Sarah Palin is not a woman, or she is a tool of the patriarchy, or any of the other non policy related attacks I’ve seen leveled at her from all kinds of places. But that doesn’t mean you need to start sipping the “this is a victory for women” kool aid. It isn’t. Sarah Palin does not magically become a champion for all women, everywhere, just because she happens to be a woman in a position of power.

In this election, people need to understand to vote with their interests, not the symbolic interpretation they may hold of a certain person.

Listen to the words people speak.

Watch the actions that they take.

But don’t let your own ideas on who that person should be mask who they really are.

Register to vote NOW! Oklahoma deadline Oct. 10!

Okay, if you think the upcoming election isn't important, or if you have some carefully thought out reason why you are going to stay away from the polls, I'm not going to argue with you. Otherwise, it's time to get up off your butt and make sure you are registered to vote. Or, stay seated if you prefer, and click through some of the links below.

According to the OKLAHOMA STATE ELECTION BOARD, Friday, Oct. 10 is the last day to register to vote if you want to vote in the Nov. 4 general election. You can download a registration form, or request one to be sent to you through the mail.

Lists of Oklahoma statewide candidates and ballot measures are available, as is information about how to find your county elections board and polling place.

For more information, you can look here, or you can contact

Oklahoma State Election Board
PO Box 53156
Oklahoma City, OK 73152
(405) 521-2391

In case there's anyone reading this blog

It's possible that it will be a few days before I post again. I'm getting over a head cold and playing with some ideas for my next novel. After all, soon it will be November and time for National Novel Writing Month.

I have an idea for at least one long post that I'd like to write later this weekend. We'll see what happens.

Things I didn't know when I worked for PetSmart....

My old job stocking the shelves in the cat food department got me interested in the ingredients in pet food. I read the labels, did a little bit of research, tried to share information with my customers.

I wish I'd had this post (courtesy of AlterNet) to share with my customers.

Post author Jill Richardson interviews Marion Nestle, author of the book Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine. This book examines the pet food crisis of 2007--in which numerous pets died from eating contaminated pet food ingredients--and what it tells us about the safety of the human and pet food supply today.

JR: What was the top reason that allowed the pet food problems to reach the magnitude they did? Was it preventable?
MN: The number one reason is that nobody was paying any attention to food ingredients imported from China. After that, the reasons multiply. Pet food companies had no idea where their ingredients came from. The manufacture of pet foods is complicated, so it is centralized in a few manufacturing facilities that make many different brands. The food supply for pets is so tightly linked to the food supplies for people and farm animals that the food supplies cannot be separated; what affects one, affects all. The FDA has lost so much funding over the last 10 years or so that it can't do its job. And China is an important trading partner as well as an exporter of cheap goods. This is a hugely complicated, interconnected story that I thought was well worth telling.

Indeed.

What's cooking in Thailand?

On Tuesday night I found the news on JOTMAN. Thai Prime Minister Samek Sundaravej was forced to resign by Thailand's Constitutional Court.

As I reported at the beginning of this month, demonstrators have been trying to force Samek's resignation on the grounds that he was corrupt.

Now we in the United States have also seen some of our citizens call for the impeachment of our own president, George W. Bush. Given that I've always thought that Bush's behavior was sort of business-as-usual for the US empire, I've never been real big on impeaching him. The real problem is lots bigger than ol' W. But there's no denying the seriousness of the charges. We're talking things like starting the disastrous Iraq War on false pretenses, warrantless surveillance of US citizens, or dismissing US attorneys for political reasons. And the list goes on.

So what, may you wonder, were the grounds on which the Thai Constitutional Court ordered Prime Minister Samek to resign?

Um, it seems that the court thought he violated a provision of the Thai Constitution that forbids someone from accepting private employment while serving as Prime Minister. According to JOTMAN, Samek appeared on a few episodes of a cooking show on Thai television.

For more details, here's a link to a New York Times post that I found courtesy of JOTMAN. It has lots of background information, and seems to have other interesting links.

Because Samek's PPP party seems intent on re-nominating Samek to the post of prime minister, this ruling is unlikely to end the current Thai controvery, the Times reported.

I have an idea. Given that the anti-Samek protesters think that Thailand has too much democracy, maybe they'd like to have George W. for their prime minister? Maybe we could arrange some kind of a trade?

Sarah Palin and the Alaska Independence Party

I first saw this over on JOTMAN, and thought it deserved more discussion than I though it was getting. But apparently, the story about Sarah Palin and her association with the Alaska Independence Party has gotten a lot more play than I've realized. A Google search on sarah palin alaska independence party brings up quite a list of results.

Palin never belonged to AKIP, according to a New York Times blog linked by JOTMAN. But Lynette Clark, AKIP chairwoman, said that Palin attended their convention in 1994 and 2006, and sent a videotaped message in 2008. A link to that message is here.

Talk to Action reports that

the AIP is the Alaska affiliate of the Constitution Party, founded by Howard Phillips, and has been the political home to leading theocratic Christian Reconstructionism such as John Lofton, Otto Scott, Joe Morecraft and movement founder R.J. Rushdoony himself. It has also been the party of some of the most militant anti-abortion activists in the U.S. such as Matthew Trewhella and Ralph Ovadal of Missionaries to the Preborn and for many years Randall Terry -- until he decided to run (unsuccessfully) in a primary challenge to an incumbent Republican State Senator Jim King (who had stood up to the Religious Right during the Terri Schiavo episode.) More recently perennial GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes unsuccessfully sought the Constitution Party nomination. Currently the third largest political party in the U.S. in terms of membership, it is usually on the ballot in about 35 states.

The Detroit Free Press offers a "primer on Sarah Palin" that addresses other questions and controversies surrounding the GOP VP candidate.

It looks like Sarah Palin is Alaska's answer to Sally Kern--except, as a friend of mine put it, "she's got more power than Sally Kern ever dreamed of having."

Who are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and why is the federal government bailing them out?

The BBC provides a short description of the federal bailout of these two corporations. Not only is it short, it's easy to understand. I recommend that you read it.

My comment: What's happening now is being described by many news outlets as a "takeover," and it's not. Fannie Mae was actually a federal agency from its founding in 1938 until 1968. And it seems to me that the job of buying mortgages from lenders and selling them to investors--thus keeping the mortgage market stable--is one that should be done by the government and not by private corporations. But it doesn't look as if we're going back to that yet.

Addressing breast cancer inequities

Our Bodies Our Blog offers a fascinating but disturbing report on the differences in death rates from breast cancer between black and white women.

According to the California Breast Cancer Research Program, in 1980 breast cancer mortality rates were equal for both African American and Caucasian women. By 1990, however, African American women had a 16 percent higher mortality rate than white women, and by 2004 this difference had increased to 36 percent.

(Um, gee, wasn't that the year that Ronald Reagan was elected US president? Do you think that maybe the country has changed since then? And maybe those changes weren't for the better?)

Post author Brenda Salgado observes that while research into such topics as differences in access to health care and genetics are important, there are also deeper causes of these inequities.

As we seek to identify genes that may be predictive of disease, we may unknowingly turn our attention from talking about other issues like income, racism, access to healthy foods and neighborhood pollution. Like breast cancer mortality, these issues are not distributed equitably in our society, and there is already clear evidence that these factors affect multiple health outcomes.

Earlier this year, the Center for American Progress issued a report called “Geneticizing Disease: Implications for Racial Health Disparities.” The authors tell the cautionary tale of BiDil, the first race-specific medication targeted at African Americans, and the ethical, research and funding controversies surrounding its approval. They also make the case that placing all our emphasis on medicating disease once it has arisen will come at the cost of preventing disease from occurring in the first place.

We need to make sure our policymakers think more broadly than genetics research and health “disparities.” Resources also must focus on addressing the social injustices that lead to health inequities and on improving the social conditions of everyone in society.

Mexican Supreme Court upholds Mexico City abortion rights law

Over at RH Reality Check, blogger Laura Villa reports that the Mexican Supreme Court recently upheld a Mexico City law that allows pregnant women to choose abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy. Villa writes:

When I was born 27 years ago, it was into a city were women died because there was no access to legal and safe abortions. For nearly a decade I've worked to ensure that young women have access to sexual health information and services. In a country where most abortions are illegal, and those that aren't are nearly impossible to obtain, being able to control your own sexual health and prevent pregnancy takes on even greater meaning. It can save your life.

Villa reports that the Mexico City district legislative assembly passed this law in April 2007. Less than a month later, the law was challenged by a representative of the national human rights commission. Villa's post was published Sept. 5. She reports that the Court upheld the law the previous Thursday.

This is a big and much needed step. When society criminalizes women for making decisions about their reproductive lives, the consequences are immeasurable - it has an effect not just on them, but on their children, their families and their communities. The citizens of Mexico have decided to open a sincere, fearless and fruitful discussion about abortion in order to overcome such negative consequences.

Update on the situation in Thailand

JOTMAN quotes the Bangkok Post as saying:

The government on Thursday approved an up-or-down national vote of confidence with a referendum that will ask every voting citizen the question: Do you want the government to continue in office?

Canadian elections likely in October

Look's like they're going to have an election up in Canada, too. Over at BlogHer, sassymonkey reports that elections are likely in mid-October. Their electoral system is much different from ours in the US. sassymonkey provides a helpful description of how the Canadian system works.

At telegraph.co.uk, you can read more details about the issues at stake in the upcoming Canadian election. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party has only 127 seats in the 308 seat House of Commons. This minority government has been in power since January 2006.

Stephane Dion, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, has focused his campaign on a "Green Shift" to fight global warming. The Telegraph says that "the slowing economy has replaced the environment as the main issue in the election."

Journalism Professor David Nayman of Ryerson University in Toronto is quoted as saying, "The real reason for calling the election is the economy is weak and they want to strike now while they feel a majority is within their grasp."

According to the Telegraph, the Conservatives are also facing opposition from the New Democrats, the Greens, and the French separatist Bloc Quebecois.

Andrew Heard of the political science department at Simon Fraser University has a Canadian Elections web site with detailed information on many topics, including this page on Women & Elections.

McKinney/Clemente make New Mexico ballot

Amy at feminist reprise announces that Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, the Green Party candidates for president and vice president, have been placed on the New Mexico ballot for the November election.

You’ll be able to vote McKinney/Clemente too if you live in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, Washington DC and West Virginia, and they’ll be write-in candidates in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Texas and Wyoming. The Green Party is working on ballot access in Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, Wisconsin and Virginia.

But not in Oklahoma.

Hutchinson on Palin

The Hutchinson Political Report has this to say about Sarah Palin:

The probes into Palin’s record on diversity and civil rights have almost exclusively focused on her views on gay rights, gay marriage, and equal pay. These are crucial civil rights issues. But so is racial diversity and civil rights. The on-line site On the Issues gives a comprehensive look at the positions of elected officials on the major issues based on their statements, speeches, campaign materials and policy position papers. Palin has taken no position on immigration, affirmative action, job and housing discrimination, school re-segregation, police-minority community relations, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

As Hutchinson observes:

During her tenure as Alaska governor, Palin didn’t have to say or do much about civil rights. She does now. And we shouldn’t have to wait for her to get to the White House before she does. That’s too great a risk for the country.

The ontheissues.org profile of Palin can be found here.

What might the wars in Georgia and Afghanistan have in common?

Back in August, Russia invaded the neighboring country of Georgia in support of the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were seeking independence from Georgia. Today on truthout, I found this article by Michael T. Klare, which offered the best analysis of that situation that I've seen so far.

As I read Klare's essay, however, I had the eerie feeling that I'd read this same analysis years ago, right after the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001. It's not just that both the war in Georgia and the war in Afghanistan are both wars over oil. Both appear to have connections to efforts by the US and Western oil companies to transport the oil and gas of a particular isolated region to Western markets.

Klare argues that the Georgian war was part of a larger geopolitical conflict between the United States and Russia over the considerable oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Sea Region. The major oil producers in this area are the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, major Western oil companies such as BP, Shell, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil rushed into the region in an effort to exploit these resources.

They had one major obstacle to overcome. The Caspian Sea is landlocked, and all the existing oil and gas pipelines passed through Russia. According to Klare:

What, then, to do? Looking at the Caspian chessboard in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton conceived the striking notion of converting the newly independent, energy-poor Republic of Georgia into an "energy corridor" for the export of Caspian basin oil and gas to the West, thereby bypassing Russia altogether. An initial, "early-oil" pipeline was built to carry petroleum from newly-developed fields in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast, where it was loaded onto tankers for delivery to international markets. This would be followed by a far more audacious scheme: the construction of the 1,000-mile BTC pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Tbilisi in Georgia and then on to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Again, the idea was to exclude Russia - which had, in the intervening years, been transformed into a struggling, increasingly impoverished former superpower - from the Caspian Sea energy rush.

Klare adds that Clinton understood there were serious risks involved in this course of action. For one thing, Clinton's "energy corridor" passed through several conflict zones, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia. To help counteract this risk, Clinton provided substantial military and economic aid to Georgia.

Klare reports that when Vladimir Putin became Russian president at the end of 1999, he made the decision to reassert Russia's control over the region's energy resources. He re-nationalized many of the oil companies that his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, had privatized. In December 2007, Putin also signed an agreement with the leaders of Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan "to supply 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year" through a new pipeline that would connect with Russia's existing supply system to Europe.

Meanwhile, Putin moved to undermine international confidence in Georgia as a reliable future corridor for energy delivery. This became a strategic priority for Moscow because the European Union announced plans to build a $10 billion natural-gas pipeline from the Caspian, dubbed "Nabucco" after the opera by Verdi. It would run from Turkey to Austria, while linking up to an expanded South Caucasus gas pipeline that now extends from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Erzurum in Turkey. The Nabucco pipeline was intended as a dramatic move to reduce Europe's reliance on Russian natural gas - and so has enjoyed strong support from the Bush administration.

It is against this backdrop that the recent events in Georgia unfolded.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili apparently thought that his country's new importance to the US would allow him to recapture the two breakaway regions. Some elements of the Bush Administration may have encouraged him in this fantasy. Meanwhile, Putin may have encouraged rebel leaders in those areas to provoke the Georgians with border attacks. When the Georgians attacked South Ossetia and Abkhazia on August 7th, they gave Putin

...what he long craved - a seemingly legitimate excuse to invade Georgia and demonstrate the complete vulnerability of Clinton's (and now Bush's) vaunted energy corridor. Today, the Georgian army is in shambles, the BTC and South Caucasus gas pipelines are within range of Russian firepower, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia have declared their independence, quickly receiving Russian recognition.

As the US prepared to invade Afghanistan in 2001, supposedly as retaliation for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC that September, I remembered progressive news sources reporting that the real motivation for the war had much to do with protecting the route for a proposed oil pipeline from Central Asia. A bit of searching the Common Dreams archive showed that my memory served me correctly--and that the pipeline was meant to transport oil from the Caspian basin.

Perhaps you are tempted to dismiss this as merely a conspiracy theory that was circulating along with many others at that time. But as recently as June, the Toronto Sun reported that

Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1,680-km pipeline project expected to cost $8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and later oil from the Caspian basin to Pakistan's coast where tankers will transport it to the West.

The Sun specifically ties this pipeline to the conduct of the US war in Afghanistan:

The 9/11 attacks, about which the Taliban knew nothing, supplied the pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial U.S. operation had the legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. But after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the U.S. stayed on, built bases -- which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline route -- and installed former Unocal "consultant" Hamid Karzai as leader.

Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan occupation was to fight "Islamic terrorism," liberate women, build schools and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The Iraq cover story was weapons of mass destruction and democracy.

Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by U.S., Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst Kevin Phillips writes, the U.S. military and its allies have become an "energy protection force."

Meanwhile, today the BBC reported that the US has offered $1 billion to the Georgians to help rebuild in the aftermath of the Russian attack.

More on the situation in Thailand

Directly below you will see a summary of information on the situation in Thailand from mainstream sources.

Here are two other things worth checking out:

A blog called JOTMAN has a long post here, with a wide variety of sources, and links to videos taken on the scene. The post says that it is continuously updated. This looks really interesting and informative, but it is starting to get past my dinnertime, and I don't have the brain cells left to summarize it. Just look at the darned thing, okay?

Then, I also found this fascinating paper on Militarization and Terrorism and counter – terrorism measures in Thailand: Feminists and women human rights defenders.

Among many interesting points, author Virada Somswasdi says that:

In contemporary Thailand, whilst some feminists oppose militarization, a good number of women’s rights activists (however, categorization of feminists and women’s rights activists needs a debate.) are swayed by the hatred of the former corruptible civilian prime minister and impatience in the judicial and democratic process to prosecute him and his cronies, thus give support to the 2006 military coup d’etat, and indeed militarization and patriarchy.

Okay. Time for me to leave the beautiful Belle Isle Public Library and go home to my cat and my dinner.

What is going on in Thailand?

Anti-government demonstrators seem bent on bringing down the government of Thailand, either directly or by provoking the military to intervene and overthrow the prime minister. The progressive and feminist web sources I usually read all seem to be silent on the situation. (Everyone seems to be focusing on Hurricane Gustav, Sarah Palin, and the Republican National Convention.) For what it's worth, here is what I've been able to piece together from mainstream sources.

The Financial Times of London condemns the demonstrations:

Less than a year since elections restored democratic rule after a military coup in 2006, Thailand has plunged into fresh instability. The worst violence seen in Bangkok for 16 years leaves Samak Sundaravej, the Thai prime minister, with few options. Clashes between anti-government protesters and supporters of the administration have left one dead and dozens injured. With air and rail services badly affected, tourism suffering and public sector unions threatening a national strike for Wednesday, the imposition of emergency rule in the capital on Tuesday was inevitable and justified.

The protests began a week ago when supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy occupied and barricaded Government House. The PAD accuses Mr Samak’s People Power Party of being a front for Thaksin Shinawatra, exiled former prime minister, and of buying votes in last December’s election. It says it wants to clean up the electoral system.

If so, it is going the wrong way about it. The PAD is subverting parliament by provoking a bloody confrontation with the government designed to bring about its collapse and the intervention of the army.

According to the Associated Press:

Democracy in Thailand has a history of fragility, with the military staging 18 coups since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. Samak's faceoff with anti-government protesters is only the latest conflict in two years of political tumult.

The group behind the anti-Samak protests, the People's Alliance for Democracy, formed in 2006 to demand the resignation of then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, eventually paving the way for the bloodless coup that ousted him. Thaksin, a telecommunications tycoon, recently fled to Britain to escape corruption charges.

Many of the same allegations behind the uprising against Thaksin — corruption, stifling the media and the ruling party's buying votes from the rural poor with cash and other benefits — dominate the protests against Samak, who led Thaksin's allies to victory in last December's election.

According to economist.com:

Another coup, by some or other bit of the armed forces, is possible. So far General Anupong is backing Mr Samak, who shrewdly built bridges with the army chief. The general strengthened his grip in a recent shuffle of senior soldiers. But the PAD’s backers include several hardline generals who are determined to topple the prime minister.

Within hours of the state of emergency being declared, the country’s Election Commission threw fuel on the flames, saying that it would ask the courts to disband the PPP for alleged vote fraud in the general election last December. The PPP became the vehicle for supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister deposed in the 2006 coup, after courts dissolved his original party. The PPP won by far the most seats in the election, since when it has governed in a six-party coalition with a strong majority. The election suggests that Mr Thaksin and his allies remain popular, despite many allegations of corruption and abuse of power.

Pro-Thaksin protesters are likely to be further enraged by the Election Commission’s ruling. As they see it, a Bangkok-based royalist clique, ranging from the PAD’s leadership to elements of the armed forces, the bureaucracy, the courts and palace officials, is conspiring to overthrow democracy to protect its privileges.

There may be some merit in this argument. The Associated Press points out that the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) actually has undemocratic aims:

Despite its name, the alliance — a mix of royalists, wealthy and middle-class urban residents, and union activists — argues Western-style democracy doesn't work for Thailand. It says the ballot box gives too much weight to the impoverished rural majority, who the alliance says are susceptible to vote buying that breeds corruption. It wants most lawmakers appointed rather than elected.

The Financial Times give more details about PAD's demands:

The opposition group may have miscalculated. Its proposals for a parliament with 70 per cent of its members appointed and 30 per cent elected are less a recipe for democratic reform and more a throwback to authoritarian rule. They have not won broad public support and newspapers have criticised the group’s actions. The Election Commission’s decision to recommend the Supreme Court disband the PPP for election fraud could fuel suspicions that a Bangkok elite, including elements of the army, bureaucracy, court and palace officials, is conspiring to stifle the country’s fragile democracy.

Truthdig - A/V Booth - Amy Goodman, ‘Democracy Now!’ Producers Arrested at RNC

Courtesy of Truthdig, here's an update to Sunday's post about violations of civil liberties at this summer's political conventions.

According to the “Democracy Now!” Web site, producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested Monday afternoon “while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention,” and host Amy Goodman was arrested for “defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.”

You can find the Democracy Now web site here.

Over at feminist blogs, The Goddess has posted more information
about police misbehavior in St. Paul.

Civil liberties violated at both conventions

Despite myself, there were times I found myself being inspired by the recent Democratic National Convention--particularly by the speeches of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. Yet, troubling reports of the violations of civil liberties emerged. The Feminist Peace Network reported a brutal arrest of a Code Pink protester. And the ACLU issued a press release criticizing police abuses including the arrest of an ABC reporter who was standing on public property.

According to Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado,

The arrest of Asa Eslocker is the latest of several troubling incidents in which law enforcement has mistreated dissenters or others exercising their right to free speech dissent during the Democratic National Convention. On Monday hundreds of people were rounded up by police, detained without access to attorneys and denied the most basic due process protections. Arrestees were flexi-cuffed together so that they couldn't even use the bathroom alone, and in at least one case a woman was forced to walk barefoot and in leg shackles into a courtroom. The First Amendment is supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy, but some law enforcement agents in Denver have shown a complete disregard for the right to free speech.

Not to be outdone, police in St. Paul, Minnesota have also staged pre-emptive arrests of activists planning to protest at the upcoming Republican National Convention. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, by way of truthout:

Activists planning protests around the Republican National Convention say they are being targeted in a heavy-handed attempt to chill dissent after police arrested five people, detained dozens of others, and seized computers and protest guides in raids Friday night and Saturday on private homes and the major meeting center.

Theoretically, responsibility for the alleged abuses in Denver and Minnesota rests solely with the police departments involved. But it seems obvious that the police were acting in order to protect the political parties from embarrassment. Thus the Democrats and Republicans both should have to answer for their lack of respect for the First Amendment.

Maybe they are a Republican front group?

P.U.M.A., supposedly a group of Hillary Clinton supporters, has thrown its support to John McCain now that he's selected the inexperienced and ultraconservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

All the women I've talked to are insulted and slightly incredulous at this choice--as was Jill over at Feministe. I'm not sure that I'm either insulted or incredulous--after all, this is the party that sent Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to replace Thurgood Marshall. The G.O.P. often has been unable to tell the difference between diversity and tokenism. I expect even less from the Republicans than I do from the Democrats.

What does astonish me is a supposedly feminist group of women that tries to deny the threat that the McCain/Palin ticket would pose to women's reproductive rights, as P.U.M.A. does in this post: P.U.M.A / McCain/Palin on Roe Vs. Wade…

Commenters to this post have suggested that P.U.M.A. is a Republican front group--a charge that GrandPuma hotly denies. I have no way to evaluate the claims of either side. But it is incredible to me that a group allegedly formed to support the staunchly pro-choice Hillary Clinton would back a slate that opposes everything that Clinton stands for.

The best blog name I've seen so far...

MY CAT EATS BANANAS AND FLIES

NOW decries McCain's choice of anti-feminist VP

I found the following news release from Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women over on Common Dreams:

Not Every Woman Supports Women's Rights | CommonDreams.org

According to Gandy:

The fact that Palin is a mother of five who has a 4-month-old baby, a woman who is juggling work and family responsibilities, will speak to many women. But will Palin speak FOR women? Based on her record and her stated positions, the answer is clearly No.

In a gubernatorial debate, Palin stated emphatically that her opposition to abortion was so great, so total, that even if her teenage daughter was impregnated by a rapist, she would "choose life" -- meaning apparently that she would not permit her daughter to have an abortion.

Palin also had to withdraw her appointment of a top public safety commissioner who had been reprimanded for sexual harassment, although Palin had been warned about his background through letters by the sexual harassment complainant.

What McCain does not understand is that women supported Hillary Clinton not just because she was a woman, but because she was a champion on their issues. They will surely not find Sarah Palin to be an advocate for women.

I can't help but agreeing with Gandy that McCain's choice of Palin will backfire. But Gandy goes a bit too far in describing Joe Biden as a vice presidential candidate who appeals to women.

45 years after "I Have a Dream"

Read this. It's absolutely exquisite: AngryBlackBitch: What I have...

Del Martin dies/Swapping information across generations

These two topics are related. I'll tie them together at the end.

You can find the information about Del Martin here:
Feministe � Today We Mourn the Passing of Del Martin

And here is a link to a fascinating post on Feministe by LaToya on Sharing Information Across Generations. I love this post for its upfront and open-minded effort to deal with controversy and division in the feminist movement. Here's a longish sample:

More than just being feminist starstruck though, talking with Alida [Brill] really illuminates a lot of the personal struggles that come out of a movement like feminism. Like what it means to give so much to a movement that your personal life suffers. Or what happens when you realize you made key mistakes. Or what happens when older things you have said, or done, or written, come back to haunt you.

“We got so much wrong,” Alida told me openly. “We got the race thing wrong, and we got the lesbian thing wrong, and we are still getting things wrong. I just hope we have the time to fix it.”

Hearing her say that reminded me that while we tend to think of movements as immovable, inflexible things - not a reflection of all the people who create a movement or participate in one. Sometimes, as she tells me a story, her pain over something long past is palpable.

But most of the time, her tone is hopeful.

For you see, talking with Alida is not like listening to someone who could care less about what you think. Talking with Alida as a young buck is actually an illuminating experience because she doesn’t address me (or us, rather - there are 10 women in the program) as some insolent child sullying up the grand second wave legacy.

She is my elder, but she is also my peer. She is just as interested in hip-hop feminism as I am, asks a lot of questions about the internet (even if she is a little afraid of it) and is always open to the understanding that her interpretation may need an adjustment for the times. It has been a pleasure talking and learning from a feminist who lived through the struggle, and I look forward to more conversation.

But when LaToya said, "The average librarian is about 55-65 where I live, and they are the people that give me the most hope about living a full active life all the way to the end," I have to admit she threw me a little bit. At 52, I am close to the lower end of that age group. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that I have the chance to go beyond 65. And finding myself wanting to know the histories of women who already have--especially lesbians who already have.

Del Martin was 87. She started the relationship with the love of her life, Phyllis Lyon, several years before I was born, and began her activist career the year before my birth when she and Lyon co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis. The organization Old Lesbians Organizing for Change--of which Martin was a member--has an oral herstory project focused on recording the stories of lesbians 70 and older. These are some of the places where I am taking my inspiration.

(This post was originally entered at 7:09 AM on August 28, and expanded and rewritten later that evening.)

Tuesday, Aug. 26, at the DNC: What will Hillary Clinton and her supporters do?

On Sunday I mentioned the continuing extreme bitterness that some Hillary Clinton supporters still are promoting against the candidacy of Barack Obama. Apparently this is continuing, despite Clinton's firm and repeated calls of support for Obama. Lisa Stone at BlogHer has a fascinating analysis of the situation.

Like Stone, I am puzzled by the feeling of betrayal these women seem to be experiencing. Yes, Hillary Clinton's treatment by the Democratic Party has been influenced by sexism, some of it extreme. But when has the Democratic Party ever provided reliable support for feminism or other human rights activism? For me, a feeling of having been betrayed requires a disappointed expectation of worthy behavior.

From the treatment of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party during the 1964 Democratic National Convention, to Jimmy Carter's firing of Bella Abzug because she said that his policies hurt poor women, to Bill Clinton's betrayal of Lani Guinier and hisshredding of the social safety net, the Democratic Party has given me little reason to expect worthy behavior. It's hard for me to get mad at them for doing what they've always done.

This fall, I'll make the pragmatic decision to vote for Barack Obama. In the long run, I think I need to think about helping gain ballot access for the Green Party in Oklahoma. Dare I say one more time that I wish I had the chance to vote for candidates like Cynthia McKinney?

Meanwhile, there are other occasions for outrage. Feminist Peace Network has a piece on police brutality against a Code Pink demonstrator at the convention--and another piece about the way Comedy Central has "invisibilized" McKinney's candidacy.

Happy Women's Equality Day

Happy Women's Equality Day. Eighty-eight years ago today, the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution gained final ratification. This gave women the right to vote after what Eleanor Flexner called a Century of Struggle.

The first wave of the women's movement in the US worked for, and achieved, a wide range of goals. These included the right of women to speak in public, the right of married women to own property, the right of girls and women to education. Contrary to conventional wisdom, winning the right to vote was not the only goal of the first wave activists--only the most difficult to attain.

This first-wave movement was complicated and contradictory. Just as happens today, achieving rights for women was sometimes set against the goal of achieving rights for people of color.

While much remains to be done, some progress has been achieved. For instance, there are more women in the U.S. Congress than ever before. And women are making inroads in formerly nontraditional occupations.

This is a rich topic that deserves a much more detailed post than I am able to give it at the moment.

Last night, Michelle Obama pointed out that this week also marks the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I found myself liking her and wishing that she were running for president..

Good news on reproductive rights from Canada...

...courtesy of The Galloping Beaver.

The white guy he picked

We can't really surprised that Barack Obama picked a white guy to be his running mate. I think I've wasted way too much time reading blog posts about Joe Biden, but I've wondered if I'm the only one who thinks that his selection was a little bit weird.

I've never been a particular fan of Hillary Clinton, but I found myself wondering what Biden had to offer that made him preferable to Clinton. He was apparently chosen for his appeal to white working-class voters. I think the hidden subtext of that is, he was apparently chosen for his appeal to male working class voters. I wonder how, or if, Obama will reach out to feminist women voters.

Nevertheless, I am astonished by the ferocity of the response by some self-proclaimed supporters of Hillary Clinton. For instance, this post at Tennessee Guerrilla Women seems to be over the top. At the risk of belaboring a point, whatever his shortcomings, Obama's record on women's rights is clearly superior to John McCain's.

Ann at Feministing has one of the best analyses of Biden that I've read. She evaluates his strengths and weaknesses in an even-handed way, but points out some shortcomings that male progressives seem to have mostly overlooked. For one thing, "Biden has a not-so-hot record on choice", and also presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings on confirming Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the post. At the time, Biden was hotly criticized by feminists for his treatment of Anita Hill, who testified that Thomas had sexually harrassed her. In reference to this last point, Ann provided a link to the site of blackhippychick, who was initially so outraged by the choice of Biden that she initially said she wouldn't vote for Obama, but who later said she would vote for him despite Biden's shortcomings.

Ann's post includes links to other interesting analyses of Biden. My favorites can be found at:

• A Slant Truth
• Jack & Jill Politics, and
• The G Spot.
  

I've found some other interesting stuff out on the web at a variety of places. Skeptical Brotha, a fairly vehement opponent of Hillary Clinton, nevertheless argued that Obama's choice for VP ought to be a woman. He was sharply critical of Obama's choice of Biden.

Over at AlterNet, Joshua Holland thinks that Obama "could have done a lot worse."

Well, yeah, maybe so, but he also could have done a lot better. It seems that Democratic Party activists with little else in common share reactions to Biden that range from disappointed to outraged.

Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback

A friend of mine recently mentioned Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California, as an interesting change from old style right-wing Christian leaders such as Sally Kern. I hadn't heard of him before, but this is the guy who sponsored the forum where Barack Obama and John McCain both spoke recently.

This morning I accidentally heard the last few seconds of this public radio program:

Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback [Speaking of Faith-- from American Public Media]

What I heard was Rick Warren saying something like, if you're asking why God isn't stepping in to fix serious problems in the world, God is asking the same thing about you. And Warren said that in order to work on these problems, his church was willing to work with believers, agnostics, atheists, gays...

Yup, that sounds different than Sally Kern all right.

I don't know if I'll have time to go back and listen to the entire show. But I did poke around on the Speaking of Faith website page about this particular broadcast.

I'm sorry to say that in many ways, Saddleback Church sounds like a typical, authoritarian evangelical church, in ways that creep me out a little bit. They say "you were made for God's pleasure." I don't know what I think about God. But I do think that any God(dess?) worth believing in would create beings for their own pleasure, and take pleasure in those beings being themselves.

I don't know what position they take on the role of women, but I'm wary. Kay Warren does seem to play a prominent role in the enterprise. (The pastor's wife seems to play a well-publicized role in many evangelical churches.) She has recently published a book, Dangerous Surrender. This may be about her view of Christian discipleship in general, but the title reminds me of all those books trying to convince us that wives should submit to their husbands and men should be the ones who take leadership roles in church and society.

Nevertheless, the Warrens and their church do seem to represent an interesting shift away from the right-wing evangelical politics of the past.

A civil rights Journey of 50 years; remembering and celebrating

Until I picked a copy of the paper edition of the City Sentinel this afternoon, it had somehow escaped my attention that this week marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the sit-ins that integrated downtown Oklahoma City. These sit-ins were carried out by the local NAACP youth group led by schoolteacher Clara Luper. The group had recently performed a play, written by Luper, at an NAACP convention in New York City, and this experience inspired them to fight segregation in their hometown upon their return.

The nation's first desegregation sit-ins had started in Wichita, Kansas about a week before the start of the Oklahoma City sit-ins. According to the NAACP, "The Dockum and Oklahoma City sit-ins are often overshadowed by the later sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C. and other places throughout the South but were just as groundbreaking."

US troops 'to quit Iraq by 2011'

"Mohammed al-Haj Hammoud, the top Iraqi official negotiating with the US on the status of US forces in Iraq, said a deal had been agreed that envisaged all US combat troops leaving Iraq by 2011."

BBC NEWS | Middle East | US troops 'to quit Iraq by 2011'

This seems almost too good to be true. Robert Dreyfus would argue that it is too good to be true. Spencer Ackerman has a more optimistic viewpoint.

Truthdig - Reports - The Conquest by Presidentialism

I wish I'd written this:

Truthdig - Reports - The Conquest by Presidentialism

Here's my favorite bit of it:

...First and foremost, by ignoring local elections and issue-based organizing in favor of presidential politics, activists make presidential progress less likely. “Even the best presidents need social movements to accomplish transformational change,” warns community activist Deepak Bhargava in The Nation magazine’s latest White House-centric edition. “FDR could not have succeeded without the agitation of the unemployed workers’ councils and the unions, and LBJ’s greatest accomplishments were made possible by the civil rights movement.”

Stephanie Tubbs Jones 1949-2008

I am sorry to say that I had never heard of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones until AngryBlackBitch reported yesterday that she had been hospitalized. This morning the news came that Tubbs Jones had died.

She seems to have been an interesting and complicated person. Her Wikipedia profile says that "despite representing a heavily unionized district, she was a strong proponent of free trade." The Daily Kos quotes the New York Times to the effect that Tubbs Jones worked to expand health care coverage for low and middle income workers. She also opposed "emergency funding" for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to ABB, she was the first black person to represent Ohio in Congress. Tubbs Jones was also an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, but threw her support to Barack Obama in June. Both Clinton and Obama mourned her passage. The Cleveland Plain Dealer also offered full coverage.

Barack Obama's Saddleback Misspeak on Abortion Rights

Barack Obama's Saddleback Misspeak and Drew Westen's Lessons on Abortion Talk | Reproductive Health | RHRealityCheck.org

Another fascinating post on RH Reality Check.

Women's Human Rights in China

Over at Feminist Peace Network, I found a link to this fascinating article on women's rights in China.

Author Marcy Bloom says that there is good news and bad news about Chinese women's rights. China's one-child policy has created an imbalance in which more than 118 boys are born for every girl born in that country. Punitive measures against parents who fail to limit their families include property confiscation and forced abortions. On the other hand, a "Care for Girls" campaign is seeking to educate citizens on the value of girls and women, and the government has instituted an economic support program for girl-only families in rural areas.

The originating site for this article, RH Reality Check also looks like it is well worth exploring.

Any time a dictator resigns...

it is probably good news.

Critical Support for the Obama Candidacy

In the wake of the widely publicized presidential candidate "faith forum" over the weekend, here are two interesting perspectives on supporting Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election while frankly criticizing his coziness with corporate power:

janinsanfran focuses on Obama's support for Bill Clinton's 1996 "welfare reform" act as a way of distancing himself from the needs of poor black people. Despite this, she sees him as clearly preferable to Republican John McCain.

Norman Solomon, believes that

we're in great need of willingness to acknowledge contradictory truths, to sort through them as a means of finding the best progressive strategies for the here and now. While some attacks on Obama from the left are overheated, overly ideological and mechanistic, there's scant basis for denying the reality that his campaign and his positions are way too cozy with corporate power. Meanwhile, his embrace of escalating the war in Afghanistan reflects acceptance rather than rejection of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."

Nevertheless, Solomon, who is an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention, also supports Obama over McCain.

Given that Cynthia McKinney is not on the ballot in Oklahoma, I will cheerfully vote for Obama.

What do Sally Kern and Arianna Huffington have in common?

I went out to the Red Cup on Friday night, brain dead and feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, so I could hear the band 13 Seeds. It was excellent and amazing, though I was certainly too tired after a grueling day at work to give you description of exactly why I'm saying that. They have a new CD. You should check it out.

Somewhere toward the end of the performance, a man named Rob Marlett stood up. One of the band members introduced him, and he gave a little speech. He's a Democrat, challenging Republican Sally Kern in the November election for the District 84 seat in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives. And I stood up and applauded for him, not because I know much about him, but because I wanted to give the guy some credit for taking her on.

You remember Sally Kern, of course. Back in March, she was addressing a small gathering of like-minded right-wing Republicans when she made some statements that ignited a nation-wide controversy.

Here is the crucial part of her speech, as quoted by the Associated Press at the time. "The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation. Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat." (I know the AP said this, because I quoted it in an email to a friend at the time. You can find more background material on this episode, and more of Ms. Kern's bizarre exploits at Wikipedia.)

I am certainly grateful to Mr. Marlett for taking on this campaign. And I think it would be an excellent idea to get Ms. Kern out of the Oklahoma Legislature. Yet, I often find myself feeling hesitant when progressive activists target Ms. Kern for her anti-gay attitudes. As obnoxious as she is, I feel that several important issues end up being ignored.

For one thing, in addition to attacking lesbians and gay men, she attacked the entire religion of Islam and all of its adherents. It wasn't that she criticized it or offered disagreements with some of its tenets. She described the existence Islam as a threat to the well-being and safety of US citizens. This seems like a direct attack on the freedom of religion that supposedly helps to make this a free country.

For another thing, Kern's reference to the threat of "terrorism," needs to be questioned. The criminal attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001 were abhorent. But the so-called War on Terror that followed those attacks has been used to justify the invasion Afghanistan and Iraq. It has been used to excuse torture of "enemy combatants" and to attack the civil liberties of US citizens, and to divert scare resources away from dealing with other serious social and economic programs.

But more than that, the ideology underlying Kern's views has not been examined.

The central theme of this self-appointed "cultural warrior" seems to be that gay people are a threat to "the family." Before we toss this view away as ridiculous, we need to understand what sort of family Sally Kern is defending.

It's not just a family that consists of a husband and wife and their biological children (no other types of families need apply). It's a patriarchal family, one which is ruled by the man, in which the wife and children defer to his judgment.This particular type of family is understood by fundamentalist Christians to be the bedrock on which all of society rests.

This was the same argument used to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, and before that, the right of women to vote. (Given this, Sally Kern's position as a state legislator is ironic, to say the least.)

What Rep. Kern and her allies seem to fear is that given other options, many people will not choose the patriarchal model for families. If society is based on that family model, then society as a whole is threatened.

But at its best, the United States is actually a pluralistic society that provides a place for people with very little common ground to coexist in peace. We are not going to achieve a nation in which everyone shares the same values any time soon. We are going to continue to have deep and difficult differences that can't be patched over easily.

How do we deal with that? Left, right, and center, many activists fall prey to the temptation to blur the disagreements that exist. Thus, it's tempting to single out Sally Kern as a practitioner of hate speech. It's much harder to have an honest discussion about the world view that underlies what she says.

The Religious Right may be past its prime. Its number of adherents may be shrinking. But it is still an important force in US politics and social life. Unfortunately, Sally Kern is not an aberration. She represents a real constituency.

There is always some fool woman who is ready and eager to defend the patriarchal way of doing things. (Remember ita Anita Bryant?) There are always lots of progressive people out there who want to make fun of that poor figurehead, while ignoring the underlying patriarchal reality.

I want to stop talking about the figureheads. I want to talk about the patriarchy.

Which brings me to the second part of this story. The patriarchy is a complicated beast with more than one face.

There is the moralistic, authoritarian patriarchy that thrives on squelching diversity. Then there is the fun-loving patriarchy that thrives on photos of Olympic women's beach volleyball.

This morning I made the mistake of poking around through some old links in my web browser, and on accident I discovered that the Huffington Post was featuring a slideshow of the U.S. women's beach volleyball team.

Women in all sorts of sports at the Olympics are wearing scanty little outfits that appear designed to show off as much of their bodies as possible. Men competing in the same sport are wearing outfits that expose much less skin. Even I have seen enough of the Olympics to notice that.

Apparently, the US women's beach volleyball team wore especially skimpy outfits. Apparently, the beach volleyball competition was much less about any pretense of athletic excellence, and much more about the display of conventionally attractive female bodies in conventionally titillating poses. At least, that was the impression I got from listening to Scott Simon and Daniel Schorr discuss this sport on National Public Radio on Saturday morning. It wasn't what they said, it was how they said it. I could hear the leer in their voices.

And then, this morning, I noticed the existence of that slideshow on Huffington Post. And saw some of the comments from the supposedly liberal men who had taken the time to page through the whole thing. (I could see the leer in their words.) I could have posted my own comment if I'd been willing to register with the site. But I wasn't willing to do that. I wasn't willing to add to their credibility as a supposedly serious alternative to the mainstream media.

Well, darn it, women are certainly beautiful, aren't we? But there is really a big freaking difference between appreciating a woman's beauty and treating her body as a commodity. Appreciating a woman's sexual attractiveness is completely different from treating her as an object to be bought, sold, consumed.

Real appreciation has something to do with perceiving that inner fire that illuminates and animates the body. It also has something to do with seeing the beauty in all the shapes, sizes, colors, and ages that the female body might have.

The phony leering thing that makes sex and women's bodies nasty is the product of the unholy marriage of patriarchy and capitalism.

Most of the nice liberal men who are doing the leering in this case would probably condemn Sally Kern for her bigotry. That disappoints me, but doesn't really surprise me.

The thing I'm still scratching my head over is how this crap ended up on a web site started by a woman who is theoretically challenging the world view of the mainstream media.

Making Women Farmers Visible

This article by Regina Cornwell, posted on the Women's Media Center site discusses women farmers in India and South Africa. But the issues Cornwell raises are familiar to U.S. women as well. The debate over how much work women do versus how much work men do is at least as old as this old folk song. And we in the US are also dealing with the question of how to eat more locally produced food, as I noted in this post last week.

Controversy over SEIU organizaing strategy

This analysis over at t r u t h o u t is a fascinating discussion about the conflict activists face between "practical politics" and achieving the goals that you really want to achieve. Given the importance of the Service Employees International Union in organizing health care workers:

The stakes are very high for everyone. An organized healthcare industry in alliance with consumers could create the strength to win a single-payer health system benefiting every person in this country.

More on the Democratic Party Platform

Yesterday I noted a bit of what looks to me like good news about the Democratic Party draft platform plank on health care. Today I discovered that Jonathan Tasini over on Working Life sees this platform plank as a defeat, as the Dems giving up on the possibility of single-payer. (Tasini's viewpoint is an interesting contrast to the thoughts of Donna Smith, who I quoted yesterday.) Tasini does think the platform is very good on "the right to organize and other similar worker protection issues."

Talk To Action has an interesting analysis of the platform's treatment of abortion rights.

A link to the entire draft platform, courtesy of Working Life, can be found here.

Georgia on my mind

Feminist Peace Network has an interesting set of statements from non-governmental organizations on the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia.

Aren't elections about having choices?

When I go to the poll on Election Day here in Oklahoma, I will have two choices for US president--Barack Obama or John McCain. There will be no other presidential candidates. There's not even a place for me to write in the name of my little cat.

Given those choices, I'm going to vote for Barack Obama. I might wish he were more radical. I'm definitely disappointed that he felt he needed to disown his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. But Obama is clearly a better candidate than John McCain.

But no matter what I do, Oklahoma seems certain to give its seven electoral votes to McCain. Given that McCain is unacceptable to me, there is no reason to worry about giving my vote to his most electable opponent. I would like to have some other choices.

If I had the choice to do so, I would vote for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. I've said this before, and I'll probably say it again--if the Democrats don't get any criticism or competition from the left, they will drift further and further to the right.

Here's another situation in which political opponents are working together for a common goal. OBAR Ballot Access Reform for Oklahoma is working to gain access to the Oklahoma Ballot for so-called minor parties. Sounds like a darned good idea to me.

Of course, there are also activists within the Democratic party who are working to make that party less conservative and more accountable to its activist base. See the post directly below.

Demo Activists Win Healthcare Platform Fight

Common Dreams has this piece from The Nation on good news coming out of the Democratic Party's platform negotiations:

Platform Fight: Activists Win Commitment to Guaranteed Care - CommonDreams.org

The organization that worked for more progressive language on health care is Progressive Democrats of America. Over at the pdamerica site, Donna Smith describes how this victory was achieved, and seems to think it's a pretty big deal. Not a final victory in the battle for universal health care, but a big step forward. It also represented an interesting coalition between Smith, an advocate of a single-payer system, and Bob Remer, a Hillary Clinton supporter on the platform committee:

This was the first time I met Bob. He was (and is) a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton's. From the icy cold in Iowa to this moment, Bob believed with his heart and his head that Sen. Clinton was the best candidate to lead his nation. A big, hulking fellow with a rich history of community and political involvement and a career spent working in the healthcare field, Bob felt the strengthening of the platform language on healthcare was a way to honor Sen. Clinton. So, I thought, that's fine, so long as we agree that every American has a basic human right to healthcare. We sat in the hotel coffee shop in Pittsburgh, two ordinary folks from Chicago, hoping we could push our party off the mark on this issue and toward true reform. We both agreed that the platform is not where legislative details or programs are either negotiated or adopted--and because we disagreed on what the final outcome of health reform legislation might be, Bob and I quickly moved beyond that discussion. He supports a Clinton-type reform while I am firmly in the single-payer camp.

I find something incredibly encouraging about this. It offers hope that people with similar goals but dramatically different proposals for reaching them can work together respectfully and honestly.

More on Russia vs. Georgia

JANINSANFRAN also has a good analysis of the situation in Georgia, along with a map.

happening-here?: Enter the arc of mountainous agony

Russia and Georgia Clash Over Separatist Region - NYTimes.com

Not that I am any expert on the politics and history of the countries of the former Soviet Union, and not that I'm necessarily a big fan of the New York Times, but this looks like a pretty thorough explanation of what's going on in Georgia:

Russia and Georgia Clash Over Separatist Region - NYTimes.com

It's a reminder to me of how much that goes on in the world that US media--including alternative media--doesn't attend to. And then we're surprised and puzzled when a war breaks out.

Cindy Sheehan vs. Nancy Pelosi

If no one challenges the Democrats from the left, they will probably continue to drift further and further to the right.

Anti-war Activist Cindy Sheehan on the Ballot - CommonDreams.org

Urban Infill vs. Urban Gardening

I've read that Oklahoma City is one of the most geographically dispersed, least dense cities in the U.S. This causes all sorts of nasty problems. For one thing, public transportation is nearly nonexistent, in large part because there is too much area to serve for the number of passengers involved. Because businesses, stores, restaurants, public libraries, and neighborhoods are so dispersed, people are forced to rely more on cars and less on bicycles or walking. I've often thought that "urban" infill is just what we need to add some urban vitality to this vast suburban wasteland.

As with most difficult situations, there's another side to the story. You can read about it all at the link below:

The Locavore’s Dilemma: Finding Places to Plant - CommonDreams.org

Anthrax And The Bush ‘War On Terror’: Why We Need An Investigation

Over on Firedoglake there is an informative and thought-provoking article on Anthrax And The Bush ‘War On Terror’: Why We Need An Investigation.

It's becoming increasingly apparent that the Bush administration -- including the FBI, Homeland Security, and the Pentagon -- all want the anthrax-killer case to quietly die with the person of Bruce Ivins. Yep, case closed, move along, folks. Right?

Well, excuse us. If you don't mind, we still have a few questions:

-- Was Ivins, as Marcy and Glenn Greenwald have wondered, a conscious part of the disinformation campaign to convince Congress and the public to go to war with Iraq?

-- Did Ivins -- if he really was the anthrax killer -- have any co-conspirators, as the evidence suggests?

-- Why was security at Fort Detrick, home of USAMRIID, probably the nation's most sensitive and secretive weapons laboratory, so lax as to allow this to happen?

-- And finally (and perhaps most significantly), was the mere fact of this kind of weaponized anthrax's existence at Fort Detrick another example of the Bush administration's flagrant violations of international law?

Friday Cat Blogging?

I wonder if people still blog about their cats on Friday.

Well, no matter what "people" are doing, I'm going to try a Friday cat bloggette here.

Looks like that worked...

Naomi Klein: The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0

I've been planning to ignore the Olympics, but I couldn't pass up this fascinating article over on Huffington Post:

Naomi Klein: The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0

Seems like an interesting counterpoint to the article about the French enabling Rwandan genocide that I blogged earlier today. Both articles seem to be about Western powers covertly enabling what they overtly condemn.

Carbon-Free Energy, Cutting Poverty in Half: Mr. Gore, Meet Mr. Edwards - Column | GreenBiz.com

This is worth reading:

Carbon-Free Energy, Cutting Poverty in Half: Mr. Gore, Meet Mr. Edwards

I wouldn't have expected an article this interesting to be posted on a site called GreenBiz.com.

That's why I originally found it at truthout.

Did French play part in Rwandan genocide?

I've started reading a book about genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia that I saw recommended over on happening-here?

Here's an interesting angle on this story that I found this morning at
t r u t h o u t.

Polls About Race Can Elicit Dishonest Responses : NPR

As I was driving over to the Red Cup today, I was listening to this segment on Talk of the Nation. I wasn't so much listening on purpose. It was just a thing where I hit the "FM" button on my radio out of curiosity about what was on.

If I'd known the topic was going to be politically polling, I would have kept my finger off the button. The existence of polling makes me angry. If I were Queen, I would outlaw it. Polling creates the illusion of popular involvement in political life, but undermines the reality of real participation. Instead of genuine discussions of issues of public policy, political campaigns become superficial popularity contests.

This discussion made me uneasy for two reasons. They were talking about the idea that white people might be lying when they tell pollsters that they're willing to vote for a black candidate. I think this is a discussion that shapes opinions as well as revealing them. At the risk of sounding irrational or paranoid, it feels like something that justifies and encourages racism in the white electorate.

But what really blew my mind was a caller to the show who said she was liberal on most issues, but against what she called "illegal immigration." Not only does she hide her true opinion from her friends, but she goes to political demonstrations and holds up signs she disagrees with. I hardly even know what to say to this. It scares me. Disagreement is important. Honest disagreement is one important ways that community is built.

This is a complicated topic, but the Red Cup is closing in five minutes, so I'll leave it as it is.

Truthdig - Reports - Microbiologist’s Suicide Demands a Full Probe of�’01 Anthrax Attacks

This is what I hope I would have said about the anthrax case the other morning if I had been awake.

Truthdig - Reports - Microbiologist’s Suicide Demands a Full Probe of�’01 Anthrax Attacks

Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

Don't think I've ever seen this blog before, though I've seen pieces from it on AlterNet. Looks interesting.

Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

Home Energy Audit | City of Edmond, Oklahoma

Here's another interesting looking site about home energy audits:

Home Energy Audit | City of Edmond, Oklahoma

Saving energy in your house in Oklahoma

Here's information on two ways to do that:

Online Energy Audit - Oklahoma Electric Cooperative, Inc.


OK Gives Credit for Conservation Efforts - Journal Record, OKC

Another interesting health care article from Maggie Mahar

Want High-Quality Universal Health Coverage? Fix Medicare First and Use It as a Model | Health and Wellness | AlterNet

Anthrax 'suspect' is found dead

This was kind of weird and interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/7536890.stm

It seemed sort of odd to me, somehow, that this anthrax case, which was out of the news for years, was coming back into the news right now during a presidential campaign. But maybe this is just some early morning hypervigilance on my part. The link to the longer LA Times story is here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anthrax1-2008aug01,0,2864223.story