The major presidential candidates ignore this...

...but Amy Goodman, Bill McKibben, and climate scientist Greg Jones talked about it yesterday on Democracy Now!:



Here's a sample of what you'll hear on the video:

AMY GOODMAN: Bill, you mentioned that the storm is made up of elements both natural and unnatural. What do you mean by that?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, look, I mean, global warming doesn’t cause hurricanes. We’ve always had hurricanes. Hurricanes cause when a wave, tropical wave, comes off the coast of Africa and moves on to warm water and the wind shear is low enough to let it form a circulation, and so on and so forth. But we’re producing conditions like record warm temperatures in seawater that make it easier for this sort of thing to get, in this case, you know, up the Atlantic with a head of steam. We’re making—we’re raising the sea levels. And when that happens, it means that whatever storm surge comes in comes in from a higher level than it would have before. We’re seeing—and there are a meteorologists—although I don’t think this is well studied enough yet to really say it conclusively, there are people saying that things like the huge amount of open water in the Arctic have been changing patterns, of big wind current patterns, across the continent that may be contributing to these blocking pressure areas and things that we’re seeing. But, to me, that, at this point, is still mostly speculation.

What really is different is that there is more moisture and more energy in this narrow envelope of atmosphere. And that energy expresses itself in all kind of ways. That’s why we get these record rainfalls now, time after time. I mean, last year, it was Irene and then Lee directly after that. This year, this storm, they’re saying, could be a thousand-year rainfall event across the mid-Atlantic. I think that means more rain than you’d expect to see in a thousand years. But I could pretty much—I’d be willing to bet that it won’t be long before we see another one of them, because we’re changing the odds. By changing the earth, we change the odds.

And one thing for all of us to remember today, even as we deal with the horror on the East Coast, is that this is exactly the kind of horror people have been dealing with all over the world. Twenty million people were dislocated by flood in Pakistan two years ago. There are people with kind of existential fears about whether their nations will survive the rise of sea level. We’re seeing horrific drought not just in the Midwest, but in much of the rest of the world. This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened on earth, climate change, and our response has to be the same kind of magnitude.

McKibben's organization, 350.org, is starting a 20-state Do the Math tour to help organize a movement to change human consumption patterns to mitigate climate change before it's too late. Too bad they're not coming to Oklahoma.

Hail and farewell

George McGovern is dead.

Green Party Presidential ticket arrested at debate

This just in. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Cheri Honkala have been arrested as they attempted to enter the venue for tonight's debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.  Stein and Honkala issued a statement calling the debate a "mockumentary."

Although Stein has been approved for presidential matching funds and is on the ballot in 38 states, she has not been permitted to participate in the debates. Neither has Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who is on the ballot in 47 states. A recent NPR story suggested that Johnson, who is polling at about six percent in national polls, could draw enough votes to affect the outcome of the race. Stein and Honkala's statement claims that they have "polled 2-3% in four consecutive national polls."

The Commission on Presidential Debates might argue that because neither Johnson nor Stein is likely to be elected president in November, they are not relevant to the debates. But this is clearly wrong. Given the structure of the Electoral College, both Stein and Johnson have the possibility to affect the race. It would be good for the country and for voters if Obama and Romney were forced to face a wider spectrum of ideas. Personally, given the doleful state of the economy and the clear and present danger of climate change, I would like to learn more about the Green Party's Green New Deal. While I personally think the economic aspects of the Libertarian Party platform would be disastrous, especially in terms of worker rights, I think the public has the right to hear those ideas.

Given that only Romney and Obama will appear on the Oklahoma ballot on November 6--and there isn't even the opportunity to write in a candidate's name--I will certainly vote for Obama. Obama is clearly the better candidate of the two--even though most of his policies are to the right of Richard Nixon's. I understand that some commentators on the left think it's blasphemous for progressives to even think of voting for Stein. Her voice still needs to be heard.

I have signed a petition calling on the CPD to open up the presidential debates to Johnson and Stein. If you would like to sign that petition, you can do so here.

Wow. Walmart workers are striking

Graduate school has eaten my brain, and I almost missed noticing that Wal-mart workers are striking in several locations across the US. As thenation.com's Bryce Covert points out:

It’s not just the workers who walked off the job that have something at stake in taking on Walmart. As these sorts of jobs increasingly dominate our workforce, we’ll be forced more and more to ask not just how many jobs the economy is adding, but what kind of jobs. If Walmart and its ilk supply most of them, families will have little money to rely on, few benefits and chaotic work schedules. All eyes should be on this historic strike and what gains Walmart’s workers are able to make in negotiating higher pay and better benefits.

Goodbye, Columbus Day

Thanks to commondreams.org for reposting this marvelous essay by Dana Lone Hill about all the reasons not to celebrate Columbus Day--and how South Dakota, alone among all the US states, has given up this celebration.

Here's a sample:

I always felt proud that our state didn't honor someone who murdered, enslaved, and raped indigenous people. Considering that it was the beginning of a genocide, this would be like putting a day aside to honor the memory of Hitler and selling sheets at a discount for the role he played in the world. Mickelson's initiative made me feel like we were a little ahead of the rest of the country: this is the same state that remembers the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Occupation of Wounded Knee, and unsolved deaths of our people in the 1973 incident. So, we celebrated Native American Day, not Columbus Day.

Yet, as Lakota people, we have all experienced racism in the state of South Dakota. Every single one of us, many times. My first time was when I was six years old and moving off the reservation. I was called horrible names, but I survived. And that was only the beginning.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Happy birthday to me

Only four more years until I'm old enough to join Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.

Feminist Library in danger of closing

While doing some advance research for an upcoming project in a library school class, I happened to do a Web search on "feminist library." This is how I discovered The Feminist Library in London, which

is a large archive collection of Women’s Liberation Movement literature, particularly second-wave materials dating from the late 1960s to the 1990s. We support research, activist and community projects in this field.

That's the good news. The bad news is, due to local government cutbacks and a privatization effort, it's in danger of closing.

Activist efforts are underway to save the library. You can read about these on the Save the Women's Library blog and on the library's Facebook page.

Real change is a do-it-ourselves project

So notes Alan Minsky in his excellent analysis of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, posted over on Truthdig.

Minsky notes that leaders of the Democratic party don't live up to the faith placed in them by Democratic party nationalists:

In 1999 Bill Clinton, under the guidance of Summers and Rubin, signed legislation eliminating the Glass-Steagall Act, perhaps the most important piece of financial industry regulation in American history. This move is widely seen as paving the way for the financial collapse of 2007-08 that sparked the current Great Recession.

Wednesday night at the Democratic convention, Clinton said the Republicans want “to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts.”

Furthermore, while the Democrats decry Paul Ryan and his embrace of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, they have forgotten to mention that during the Clinton years, Rubin was “joined at the hip” (according to former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr.) with die-hard Randite and Republican darling Alan Greenspan, working together to block oversight of toxic financial derivatives.

Would the rank-and-file Democrats—defenders of the middle class, lovers of Bill and Barack, kept in the dark about the minutiae of economic policy—ever have supported these policies that boosted the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent? If not, that’s some serious betrayal.

Voting for the Democrats can be an understandable strategy in a swing state, Minsky says, but it won't lead to the economic, social, and political transformation of this society that the vast majority of us need:

The kindheartedness and generosity of spirit I found in Charlotte are inspiring, but if these people’s political activity still revolves around Obama, aren’t they missing the bigger, more important picture? Sure, but when there’s no other game in town, ameliorating the system so it causes less damage is not something that should be entirely dismissed. Would I vote for someone other than Obama in a swing state? I live in California so it’s not an issue, but I know come early November if I were faced with a choice between the only two candidates who could win and they were in a neck-and-neck race, I’d vote for the less reactionary one. But I’d never lose sight of the fact that the two main political parties are too far down a path to address the nation’s problems in the way they must be addressed. This is not to say we’ve lost hope, not if we recall that the major political parties have never really been the vehicles for progressive change. The New Deal, the Great Society, hell, even the right to vote in this Godforsaken political system were won not by politicians and their big-money backers, but by tremendous social movements that rocked the world. We need hope and change; it’s up to us to produce them.

Minsky's post is fairly long, but well worth reading in its entirety.

In honor of Spot, out in the unknown universe

Spot, about 2003, up on the fridge
in my 39th Street apartment

Way back in August of 1997, I was living in a little house in Eugene, Oregon with my old cat Pounce. My long term girlfriend had left me that May, but I was getting over it. I worked at my janitorial job at the Eugene Public Library. I wrote poems, tinkered with old computers, thought about making a Web page. Life was pretty good, actually.

Then, on or about August 3rd, I heard a meow out on my side porch. I thought the neighbor's kitten had gotten loose. When I opened the door, a beautiful little tortoiseshell calico ran inside the house. She was about a year old, so far as I could tell, and she was all fur and bones. She dashed over to Pounce's food dish and gulped down over the food before I could throw her out.

I thought I didn't need another cat. I called the new arrival "Spot," as in "Out, damned Spot!" But it was too late. She had already won my heart.  Pounce tried to be patient, even when the kittens arrived. But that's another story.

Spot and I had almost 15 great years together. She died a month ago tomorrow.

Here's to you, Spotter Cat, to your intelligence, and your sly sense of humor, and your indomitable will. Here's to the way you would hide in the garden or under the house, and to the way you would yowl when I would pick you up and bring you in. And to the way you would come to investigate when I played the harmonica. I hope you are having fun out there in the unknown universe, wherever you are, and that you never have to go inside any more.

Are careerists the root of all evil?

Many years ago, when I was in college, I remember that I believed that most of the evil in the world was done by self-righteous zealots who were completely convinced that they were on the side of the Good. I thought that Hitler, for instance, understood himself to be conducting a great moral crusade, and this belief in his own goodness allowed him to perpetrate unspeakable evil.

Later, I abandoned this idea as simplistic. After all, many "moral crusades" are orchestrated by cynical manipulators to further their own ends. Thomas Frank has famously argued that ultra-wealthy Republican strategists have used the "culture wars" to convince white working-class people to vote against their own economic interests. Do those strategists even think about morality when they're planning those strategies?

Yesterday, thanks to Grandmothers Against Bullshit, I saw a provocative post by Chris Hedges that explores the idea that those who are really the most evil are the minor functionaries who do the mundane dirty work of those with the most power:

These armies of bureaucrats serve a corporate system that will quite literally kill us. They are as cold and disconnected as Mengele. They carry out minute tasks. They are docile. Compliant. They obey. They find their self-worth in the prestige and power of the corporation, in the status of their positions and in their career promotions. They assure themselves of their own goodness through their private acts as husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. They sit on school boards. They go to Rotary. They attend church. It is moral schizophrenia. They erect walls to create an isolated consciousness. They make the lethal goals of ExxonMobil or Goldman Sachs or Raytheon or insurance companies possible. They destroy the ecosystem, the economy and the body politic and turn workingmen and -women into impoverished serfs. They feel nothing. Metaphysical naiveté always ends in murder. It fragments the world. Little acts of kindness and charity mask the monstrous evil they abet. And the system rolls forward. The polar ice caps melt. The droughts rage over cropland. The drones deliver death from the sky. The state moves inexorably forward to place us in chains. The sick die. The poor starve. The prisons fill. And the careerist, plodding forward, does his or her job.

It seems to me that Mr. Hedges is on to something. But he leaves unanswered the question of how these functionaries turn off their moral sense. And he doesn't look beyond the bureaucrats to the masters they serve. There is something that doesn't quite ring true to me about his analysis, but I can't quite articulate it at this time of night. Maybe it has to do with the ways that the very concepts of "good" and "evil" have been leveraged to justify oppression--as the philosopher Sarah Hoagland has pointed out.

But is it possible?

Yesterday, I discovered a cool Web site called Role/Reboot. Here's another great post (from a week ago) I found on that site today. Blogger Melissa Byrne writes with excitement about the appointment of a woman named Marissa Meyer to be the CEO at Yahoo. But Byrne is disappointed that Meyer has also agreed to join the board of union-busting Wal-Mart:

I'm worried the values of Wal-Mart—greed at any cost—will seep into the still growing tech sector. Will Marissa become chummies with the Waltons? Will they trade secrets on union busting? Will she influence Yahoo!'s political giving to support conservative, anti-worker candidates?

I want women to succeed at business. But, I want no one to succeed at business who doesn't respect the rights and dignity of workers, especially low-wage workers, most of whom are women.

I do wish Marissa the best. Mostly, I wish that she would spend a few days with low-wage workers and decide to leave Wal-Mart.

I agree with Byrne's sentiments, but wonder if there really are good corporations out there that respect their workers, their customers, and the natural world. Isn't that how corporate owners succeed, by ripping off the rest of us and covering it up with public relations campaigns? Is it possible for women (or anyone) to succeed in business without abandoning their moral principles?

First female US astronaut dies, then comes out

You can see the details here.

A disturbing story with a slightly happy ending

According to theage.com.au, a Kentucky teenager who was assaulted by two teenage males was faced with contempt of court charges when she revealed their names on Twitter. She was distressed by the light sentences her attackers had received. The charges were eventually dropped.

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said the motion to withdraw the contempt of court charge was "a huge victory not only for Ms. Dietrich, but for women all over the country." Deitrich told The Courier-Journal that after the sexual assault, the boys posted photos of the attack on the internet. "These boys shared the picture of her being raped with their friends and she can't share their names with her Twitter community? That's just crazy," O'Neill said.

Privileged white men and mass murder

Thanks to the Women's International News Gathering Service (WINGS), for a link to a interesting and thought-provoking post about the Colorado theater massacre. Writing for Role/Reboot, Hugo Schwyzer argues that privileged white men are much more likely than other men to murder strangers in public places.

It’s not that white men are more violent. Rates of domestic violence, including homicide, are roughly the same across all ethnic groups. Statistically, murderers are more likely to kill family members and intimate partners than strangers. But while men from all backgrounds kill their spouses, affluent white men are disproportionately represented in the ranks of our most infamous mass murderers. In other words, the less privileged you are, the less likely you are to take your violence outside of your family and your community.

White men from prosperous families grow up with the expectation that our voices will be heard. We expect politicians and professors to listen to us and respond to our concerns. We expect public solutions to our problems. And when we’re hurting, the discrepancy between what we’ve been led to believe is our birthright and what we feel we’re receiving in terms of attention can be bewildering and infuriating. Every killer makes his pain another’s problem. But only those who’ve marinated in privilege can conclude that their private pain is the entire world’s problem with which to deal. This is why, while men of all races and classes murder their intimate partners, it is privileged young white dudes who are by far the likeliest to shoot up schools and movie theaters.

The observation that such acts of violence are most often committed by men is an old one. For instance, consider this song by Judy Small about the 1989 Montreal Massacre. What makes Schwyzer's post unusual is the way he bases his analysis on personal experience. The whole thing is well worth reading.

The place of the police in a humane society

I have been so absorbed in the process of taking care of my dying cat, Spot, that I had almost forgotten that tomorrow is the Fourth of July. So this evening when it got dark and cool, I folded a towel and put it on the porch, and set out a dish of fresh ice cubes as well. Then I picked Spot up out of the bathtub and took her outside. She is almost too weak to walk now, but going outside is one of her favorite things. She was sitting on the walkway with her front paws crossed and enjoying the cool night breeze and looking very happy.

You know what happened next.

Some nincompoops down the street started setting off large and loud fireworks.

Spot dashed back onto the porch and tried hiding under the bench. I picked her up and took her back inside and put her back in the bathtub.

I have never liked the sound of fireworks, and I have never understood why people think it is clever or fun to endanger their limbs, their eyeballs, and their children's safety by setting off small explosives. This makes even less sense as the weather grows hotter and drier, and the wind is blowing. Add to this the fact that this neighborhood consists almost entirely of old wooden houses. Doesn't this sound like a recipe for disaster?

In Oklahoma City, following this particular recipe for disaster is also illegal.

So yes, I called the police.

My anarchist friends--for whom I have great respect--would say that in a situation like this a person should try to talk reasonably with her neighbors. Point out how important it is not to set the neighborhood on fire.Explain how bad it is to make every little dog ion the street whimper. (Not to mention the fact that they scared the hell out of my poor dying cat.)

But sometimes, under great provocation, a person is not capable of talking reasonably. If I had gone down there, I wouldn't have trusted myself to remain nonviolent. And frankly, calling the police is probably the thing that kept me from going over the edge and going down the block and hurting someone.

With luck, I will still be able to take Spot outside in the morning.

Good news or bad news? Court upholds health law

So. According to this statement from the Oklahoma Policy Institute, it looks as if the US Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act. I was both surprised and relieved to read this when I opened up my e-mail just now. OPI's post provides a link to the entire decision. (It's almost 200 pages long, so I'll have to read that later.)

BBC News reports that the law was upheld by a 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the deciding vote. Justice Anthony Kennedy, sometimes described as the key swing vote on the court, wrote the dissent.

OPI welcomes this decision as a step forward in the journey to bring quality healthcare at a reasonable price to all US residents, and calls on Oklahoma lawmakers to move forward on implementing the ACA:

The Supreme Court also upheld expansion of the Medicaid program, a provision that will particularly benefit low-income uninsured Oklahomans, paid for almost entirely by the federal government.

For the 1.7 million Oklahomans who are privately insured and happy with their plan, coverage is now more secure and comprehensive. Insurers can no longer deny their claims or drop their coverage without oversight. Their insurer will now cover routine preventive care, like immunizations and cancer screenings, for no co-pay or additional out-of-pocket cost.

The health law is already working to strengthen consumer protections and ensure that Oklahomans are getting what they pay for from their insurers and providers. It’s now up to state leaders, regardless of their personal political preferences, to move forward quickly to implement the Affordable Care Act.

That's an optimistic assessment about the ACA's effects. Others have less optimistic assessments. As Physicians for a National Health Program point out:

Although the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the unfortunate reality is that the law, despite its modest benefits, is not a remedy to our health care crisis: (1) it will not achieve universal coverage, as it leaves at least 26 million uninsured, (2) it will not make health care affordable to Americans with insurance, because of high co-pays and gaps in coverage that leave patients vulnerable to financial ruin in the event of serious illness, and (3) it will not control costs.

Why is this so? Because the ACA perpetuates a dominant role for the private insurance industry. Each year, that industry siphons off hundreds of billions of health care dollars for overhead, profit and the paperwork it demands from doctors and hospitals; it denies care in order to increase insurers’ bottom line; and it obstructs any serious effort to control costs.

In contrast, a single-payer, improved-Medicare-for-all system would provide truly universal, comprehensive coverage; health security for our patients and their families; and cost control. It would do so by replacing private insurers with a single, nonprofit agency like Medicare that pays all medical bills, streamlines administration, and reins in costs for medications and other supplies through its bargaining clout.

Some folks argue that the Affordable Care Act is merely the beginning of a process that will ultimately lead us to a single-payer system. Right-wing opponents of the law certainly made that case as the bill was making its way through Congress.

I would like to believe that the ACA will lead to a better system, but I'm not sure that it will. On the other hand, if the Supreme Court had struck down the law, this would have been a decisive blow against any kind of comprehensive national health insurance coverage. Thus, while I'm not particularly happy with the ACA, I am relieved that it wasn't struck down.

What is marriage?

About a month and a half ago, President Obama announced that his position on gay marriage had "evolved" to the point that he now supports the right of same-sex couples to marry. Depending on the perspective of the commentator, this meant Obama was defying the will of God, had committed a serious political blunder, had made a wishy-washy statement that "sold out" gay rights, or had done something "historic and brave."

Despite the controversy over the president's statement, it seems that same-sex marriage is becoming more and more accepted. According to blogger Richard Kim of thenation.com, we have reached the point that "it is increasingly untenable for anyone bidding for mainstream credibility to remain opposed to same-sex marriage."

Kim said this in an essay about the changing position on same-sex marriage of one David Blankenhorn. I've never heard of David Blankenhorn before now. He seems to be the founder of something called The Institute for American Values. He appeared as an "expert witness" as part of the legal defense of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. Recently, Blankenhorn very publicly recanted his opposition to same-sex marriage. Richard Kim used this occasion to share some thoughts on the issue of marriage that are much closer to my own than what I usually see in the gay or progressive press:

Back in 2005, in the wake of a rash of state constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, Lisa Duggan and I argued that the gay movement—and progressives at large—should focus on advocating for a range of household recognitions, for “decentering” marriage as an institution even while fighting for legal equality. Here’s what we wrote:

For gay activists, and indeed for all progressive activists, it would be far more productive to stress support for household diversity—both cultural and economic support, recognition and resources for a changing population as it actually lives—than to focus solely on gay marriage. By treating marriage as one form of household recognition among others, progressives can generate a broad vision of social justice that resonates on many fronts. If we connect this democratization of household recognition with advocacy of material support for caretaking, as well as for good jobs and adequate benefits (like universal healthcare), then what we all have in common will come into sharper relief.

Of course, Lisa and I lost that argument, at least when it comes to setting the strategies of gay and progressive organizations. The fight for same-sex marriage has scored some significant victories in the intervening years, including Obama’s recent “evolution,” but those wins have come within the framework of same-sex marriage as an isolated right granted to a minority group, the equality/dignity line that Blankenhorn acknowledges has become the dominant framing of the issue. In some cases, the passage of gay marriage has actually eliminated alternative forms of household recognition like domestic partnerships and reciprocal beneficiary statuses. And despite our perhaps outlandish wishes, no progressive movement has risen up to champion the proliferation of diverse forms of household recognition, despite the fact that Americans increasingly continue to live outside of marriage (see Eric Klinenberg’s excellent new book, Going Solo, for example, in which he documents the rise of living alone as the predominant residential pattern). Indeed, in the years since we wrote that article, I’ve often felt as if the debate over same-sex marriage has raged on the national stage while queer radicals like myself and marriage advocates like David Blankenhorn were off to the side, hosting our own tangential debate. We lost the war over issue framing—and in a way, so did Blankenhorn.

My opinions and feelings about marriage are not quite the same as Richard Kim's. For one thing, despite his unease with marriage as an institution, Kim says he's been a consistent supporter of the right of same-sex couples to marry. I have taken the stand that I don't need the right to participate in an oppressive institution. But as an old-school radical lesbian feminist, I can certainly identify with his feeling of simply being cut out of the entire national discussion.

I think the biggest question here is, what is marriage? Is it a commitment between two loving adults to engage in a lifelong relationship, and the commitment of the larger community to support them in this? Or is marriage an institution designed to enforce a set of social patterns and norms that society finds desirable? Richard Kim offers an excellent illustration:

The primary difference, of course, is that Blankenhorn and I fundamentally disagree about what marriage should mean—for gays and straights alike. As the founder of the Institute for American Values, Blakenhorn has attacked single mothers, championed federal marriage promotion as welfare policy, railed against cohabitation and no-fault divorce and opposed access to new reproductive technologies. One of his institute’s latest crusades has been against anonymous sperm donors because it leads to “fatherless” children, an abiding preoccupation of his. Suffice to say, I don’t agree with any of this. I think divorce can be a great thing—as anyone leaving an abusive marriage might confirm. And I think all the debates over which type of family produces the best outcomes for children ought to be meaningless as a matter of state policy. Gay or straight, single or married, let’s try to create the conditions in which all families can succeed. Blankenhorn sees an inner circle of honor and benefits that should be attached to marriage, and he’s now extended that circle to include gays and lesbians. I want to scramble that circle.

Richard Kim seems to believe that some version of "marriage" is possible without this kind of patriarchal baggage. I disagree. But I'm pleased to see that on the edges of the oversimplified national debate about same-sex marriage, there are thoughtful and complicated voices such as Richard Kim's.

Also today...

...is the 40th anniversary of the signing into law of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which states that:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

 Despite the long list of exceptions that qualified this mandate, the passage of Title 9 was an important milestone of the second wave of the US feminist movement. While it is best known for equalizing opportunities for girls and women in school and college athletics, it has also been an influential piece of legislation in other ways.

The Title IX Blog  has a list of links to resources about Title IX and its effects on society, and posts about today's anniversary that you can find here and here. The Web site TitleIX.info has additional resources.

You might also want to read this thoughtful essay by Catherine R. Stimpson on women and sports. Among Stimpson's points is this:

On balance, the Utopian feminist fan thrills to the radical vision and uses it as the horizon of possibility. I hope that the presence of women in sports will be a rebuke to corruption and a murderous desire to win; that it will provide a moral and psychological leavening; and that it will weaken gender as one of life's organizing principles. Interestingly, the currently major study of collegiate athletics found the women athletes less materialistic than the men.[25] At the same time, the liberal feminist fan believes in that old shibboleth of "being effective." I seek gender equity in sports. Women should have as many athletic opportunities as men, be able to play as hard and well as possible, be recognized and rewarded with an income and the currency of hard-earned celebrity for it.

Given the political culture of the United States, with its oscillations between gender conservatism and belief in equality of opportunity, the liberal vision of sports is implemented more often than the radical. The push and pull towards equity is notoriously incomplete, jagged, and uneven. As the century turned, women were 56% of United States undergraduates, but in the major schools, they had only 36% of the athletic operating budgets and 32% of the recruiting dollars.[26] Even the liberal vision wrenches the guts of the diehard sports traditionalist.

National Typewriter Day

Today is National Typewriter Day.

of cockroaches and queens

I've been thinking about archy and mehitabel, and that always makes me think of Rosalie Sorrels:

Management theories

Truthdig has posted this interesting essay by the ever-interesting William Pfaff about the ideas of management theorist James Burnham. Burnham was a Trotskyist--"during the period when Trotskyism was a serious matter among American intellectuals," Pfaff says--before evolving into the loopy sort of extreme right-winger who worships Ayn Rand.

Pfaff analyzes Burnham's 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution, and concludes that it accurately predicted an undemocratic U.S. society run by the managers--not the owners--of large corporations:

Burnham’s Trotskyist period ended with a declaration in 1940 that he had decided that Marxism was merely a form of imperialistic class politics, and he proposed a new theory which said that the managerial class was the new force in the class struggle, seizing privilege and control over society. Capitalism, he said, as a form of social organization, was finished. His new managerial class was taking over in German Nazism, Soviet Stalinism and in F.D.R.’s New Deal.

Pfaff goes on to say:

Burnham’s theory that a new class of professional and technocratic managers were taking control of modern economies accompanied another phenomenon of the wartime and postwar years in the U.S. Intellectually moribund university business schools were reawakened by the influence of “scientific” and strategic management theories and practices developed by military staffs and at such institutions as the RAND Corporation. These made use of mathematical models, behavioral theory and operations research (usually a glamorized and heavily numerate version of empirical or common-sense analysis) and gave business executives an aura of scientific professionalism.

This combination eventually gave us the version of global finance and industry that has given us world crisis. It generally is run by managers who, without necessarily investing a farthing of their own money, control the American (and increasingly European) economies, enriching themselves by assigning to one another titanic emoluments as rewards for having been hired, for carrying out executive duties that earlier professional managers performed for unexceptional rewards and eventually rewarding themselves for leaving their jobs.

This reminded me, actually, of the annoying management guru Peter Drucker, whose worship of the managerial class was accompanied by a subtle contempt for democracy and ordinary working people. A quick Google search turned up a review of Burnham's book by Drucker. Drucker loved it--except for this:

(I)f society is to continue free, it must be asserted that ideas are not economically determined, that they are not "myths" invented to cover economic power; and above all, it must be re-asserted that power must be legitimate and that legitimacy is not a function of economic reality but one of the basic beliefs of society. If Mr. Burnham thinks that the totalitarian power wielded by the managers will be "legitimate" simply because it mirrors the existing structure of industrial production, he denies all possibility
of right or wrong in politics.

Drucker was an interesting and complicated guy, actually, who came by his distrust of government power as a Jew who fled the Nazis. He really wanted to believe in the benevolence of the managerial class.

William Pfaff seems to believe that Burnham--though he later abandoned these ideas--was able to accurately predict the fate of the world in The Managerial Revolution. I think he's wrong. There is nothing so difficult to predict as the future, as George Orwell argues in the passage below. Pfaff refers several times to Orwell's analysis of Burnham's ideas, and I think this is the essay that Pfaff mentions:

Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end. Burnham's writings are full of apocalyptic visions. Nations, governments, classes and social systems are constantly described as expanding, contracting, decaying, dissolving, toppling, crashing, crumbling, crystallising, and, in general, behaving in an unstable and melodramatic way. The slowness of historical change, the fact that any epoch always contains a great deal of the last epoch, is never sufficiently allowed for. Such a manner of thinking is bound to lead to mistaken prophecies, because, even when it gauges the direction of events rightly, it will miscalculate their tempo. Within the space of five years Burnham foretold the domination of Russia by Germany and of Germany by Russia. In each case he was obeying the same instinct: the instinct to bow down before the conqueror of the moment, to accept the existing trend as irreversible. With this in mind one can criticise his theory in a broader way.

In other words, Burnham did identify a powerful trend in society, but there is no reason to insist that this is how everything will end up.

Summer begins and the struggle continues

As Starhawk reminds us, today--and tonight--marks the Solstice. For all of its great and sometimes excessive heat, summer is a time of great joy for me. On this Solstice, I like to think of things that help me feel connected to the Earth, other women, the community, and the ongoing struggle to set the world right.

Here are two random things that give me hope:

First, thanks to Spinifex for sharing this radio interview with renowned Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva.  Shiva describes not only the peril we face, but the great and growing strength of the movement to undo that peril.

Second, thanks to Tamlyn for sharing this video made by Oklahoma labor activists. The times we live in are both scary and exciting, and seeing that activists here are working to raise the voice of ordinary working people gives me hope.

At the risk of sounding like a pagan, I would like to say that the Earth and her seasons are sacred. Actually, I guess I am a pagan of sorts, an agnostic pagan. So finally, thanks to Beacon Press for sharing this video of poet Mary Oliver reading her poem "The Summer Day."

Michigan, the Oklahoma of the north?

Thanks to Kansas National Organization for Women for a link to this post from Jezebel about an extreme anti-choice bill that has since been passed by the Michigan House of Representatives. Among other provisions, the bill would ban all abortions for any reason after 20 weeks of pregnancy. There are no exceptions.Not even if the life or health of the pregnant woman is endangered by the pregnancy. Not even if the fetus has such serious problems that it will never be able to live outside the womb.

To add insult to injury, according to Jezebel, two pro-choice female legislators have been banned indefinitely from speaking on the House floor. One of these legislators, Democrat Lisa Brown, apparently gave offense by using the word "vagina" in her floor speech opposing the bill.

JOS of Feministing reports that the bill passed on June 13 by a vote of 70 to 39 after only 20 minutes of debate. The anti-choice Michigan Senate is likely to consider the bill in September

Besides the ban on all abortions after 20 weeks, the bill is what pro-choice advocates call TRAP legislation. According to the National Abortion Federation, the acronym stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. The goal is to drive abortion providers out of business under the pretense of regulating clinics to make sure they meet proper medical standards.

According to Feministing blogger Chloe, the Michigan bill includes:

: state-mandated scripts for doctors that masquerade as faux concern for women who are being coerced into abortion, new TRAP laws to make insurance more complicated and expensive for providers, stricter regulations for clinics, new rules about the disposal of fetal remains that would affect women who have miscarriages as well as abortions, and a new measure requiring the presence of a doctor for a medical abortion in a state where many women rely on tele-med prescriptions because so few counties have a provider on the ground.

Chloe provided a link to the text of the bill, and recommended reading the ongoing coverage of the Michigan situation by Angi Becker Stevens at RH Reality Check. Robin Marty, also of RH Reality Check, wrote another excellent analysis of the bill.

Michigan state lawmakers seem to want to vie with the Oklahoma Legislature for the honors of producing the most extreme and ridiculous laws to limit women's lives and freedom. Of course, in Oklahoma, valiant and well-organized activists managed to defeat one of the worst anti-choice bills considered in the recent legislative session. Maybe our Michigan sisters will be able to do the same.

Why you won't see me wearing a Thunder t-shirt

Dave Zirin at thenation.com tells the ugly story of how the former Seattle Supersonics basketball team became the OKC Thunder.

Strip away the drama and the Heat are called “evil” because their star players exercised free agency and—agree or disagree with their decision—took control of their own careers. The Thunder are praised for doing it the “right way,” but no franchise is more caked in original sin than the team from Oklahoma City. Their owners, Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon, with an assist from NBA Commissioner David Stern, stole their team with the naked audacity of Frank and Jesse James from the people of Seattle.

For non-NBA fans, as recently as 2008 the OKC Thunder were the Seattle Supersonics, a team of great tradition, flare and fan support. They were Slick Watts’s headband, Jack Sikma’s perm and Gary Payton’s scowl. They were a beloved team in a basketball town. Then the people of Seattle committed an unpardonable offense in the eyes of David Stern. They loved their team but refused to pay for a new taxpayer funded $300 million arena. Seattle’s citizens voted down referendums, organized meetings and held rallies with the goal of keeping the team housed in a perfectly good building called the KeyArena. Despite a whirlwind of threats, the people of Seattle wouldn’t budge, so Stern made an example of them. Along with Supersonics team owner and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz—who could have paid for his own new arena with latte profits alone—Stern recruited two Oklahoma City–based billionaires, Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon, to buy the team and manipulate their forcible extraction from Seattle to OKC.

Stern is a political liberal who has sat on the board of the NAACP. Bennett and McLendon are big Republican moneymen whose hobby is funding anti-gay referendums. Yet these three men are united in their addiction to our tax dollars. In Oklahoma City, where rivers of corporate welfare awaited an NBA franchise, Stern, Bennett and McClendon had found their Shangri-La.

To Zirin, the appropriate response to this situation is for all right-thinking people to root for the Miami Heat to beat the Thunder in the current NBA finals. I dunno. I think a better response is to ignore the whole sorry spectacle. Noam Chomsky says that sports in our society serve mostly "to provide training in irrational jingoism," and I think he has a point.

Update: Hat tip to my friend Pat Reaves for finding this recent Miami Herald article. It demonstrates that the owners of the Miami Heat are just as greedy and irresponsible as the owners of the Thunder, and the local government of Miami-Dade is just as irrationally generous to sports teams and millionaires as the government of Oklahoma City is. An auditor's report uncovered serious problems with the county's oversight of the Heat's arena:

The pointed, 60-page document released Thursday faults Miami-Dade for having “little idea” about whether the team has met financial benchmarks that would trigger profit-sharing from the county-owned arena.

Though the Heat’s operating budget is consistently submitted late, it has never faced repercussions from the county. And the county apparently wasn’t aware the Heat was required to submit an annual budget for big-ticket capital expenditures, the audit states.

“The county’s hands-off approach to an operation that now generates more than $60 million a year is perplexing, especially an operation that has yet to produce sufficient profits to result in profit-sharing,” Inspector General Christopher Mazzella wrote.

Neither party criticized in the report acknowledged culpability. Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s office said the audit covers a timeframe that pre-dates his tenure, and he is working to fix any problems. Miami Heat representatives disagreed with the audit’s conclusions. Heat lawyer/lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez said the inspector general “spent a significant amount of taxpayer money on what appears to be a witch hunt.”

I'm old enough to remember when the private owners of professional sports teams paid for their own arenas, and I think it should have stayed that way. Or else, if professional sports teams are not viable without large and continuing public subsidies, those teams ought to be publicly owned.

Target closes site of rescheduled union election

If, like me, you've tended to shop at Target because they're "not as bad as Walmart," you are in for a rude awakening, at least when it comes to the issue of workers' rights.

So, what happened in Wisconsin?

Thanks to Occupy Philadelphia for the link to this thoughtful analysis of the failure of progressives and union activists in Wisconsin to recall the union-busting Republican Gov. Scott Walker. A small silver lining to this cloud: Democrats appear to have regained control of the Wisconsin State Senate in the same election.

Barack Obama the cynical warmaker

As far as I can tell, Barack Obama has always been a nice centrist Democrat in favor of doing government "business as usual" in a slightly kinder and gentler fashion than the Republicans have done it. "Change" was always an advertising slogan, and never a plan of action. This is no where more evident than in Obama's management of the U.S. war machine. Three recent posts from Truthdig demonstrate this.

In the first of these posts, Andrew J. Bacevich describes Obama's leadership of "The Golden Age of Special Operations." Obama is campaigning for re-election as the man who ended the Iraq war and who is ending the war in Afghanistan. But the president is simultaneously conducting more and more secret military operations. While the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) existed long before the Obama presidency, this president is making greater use of it than ever before.

From a president’s point of view, one of the appealing things about special forces is that he can send them wherever he wants to do whatever he directs. There’s no need to ask permission or to explain. Employing USSOCOM as your own private military means never having to say you’re sorry. When President Clinton intervened in Bosnia or Kosovo, when President Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, they at least went on television to clue the rest of us in. However perfunctory the consultations may have been, the White House at least talked things over with the leaders on Capitol Hill. Once in a while, members of Congress even cast votes to indicate approval or disapproval of some military action. With special ops, no such notification or consultation is necessary. The president and his minions have a free hand. Building on the precedents set by Obama, stupid and reckless presidents will enjoy this prerogative no less than shrewd and well-intentioned ones.

Then, Bill Boyarsky analyzes the recent New York Times report that President Obama is personally selecting the names of people to be killed because they are suspected terrorists.

The idea of Obama picking out individuals for the death list brings back memories of President Lyndon B. Johnson selecting targets for bombing in Vietnam. So intent was Johnson on micromanaging the war that he lost sight of how the bombing strengthened the will of North Vietnam. Like Johnson, Obama micromanaging the drone attacks, with their killings of noncombatants, may be strengthening our foes.

In his first campaign for the presidency, Obama pledged to pull most troops out of Iraq and concentrate on Afghanistan, capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and defeating al-Qaida. It was his promise to end the Iraq War that got the attention and affection of liberals, who ignored the underplayed but consistent warlike aspects of his foreign policy pitch.

Boyarsky goes on to note that

With drone technology growing more refined and deadly, Obama has dispatched the robotic killers on an increasing number of missions. Two of those assassinated by the machines were Americans—Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric, and Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen traveling with him. Awlaki, a propagandist who called for more attacks on the United States, had plotted with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber” whose attack on an airliner bound for Detroit failed.

The Justice Department produced a memo justifying the killing of citizen-terrorists, saying that internal, secret executive branch deliberations satisfied Fifth Amendment requirements for due process. Such reasoning seems to constitute a threat to the freedom and the lives of any American targeted by the government as a terrorist or an accomplice. The Justice Department memo remains secret.

Finally, Robert Scheer adds his own searing analysis of the New York Timesreport. He mocks the "steely warrior" Obama, who is willing to send drones to attack designated US enemies, even if that results in the death of children.

Scheer argues that the story was "planted" in the Times to promote the president's credentials as a tough military leader in the midst of the re-election campaign. He notes that Pfc. Bradley Manning was held in solitary confinement for many months, accused of releasing information with a much lower security classification.

Pfc. Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they will burnish his “tough on terrorism” credentials. This is clearly not the Obama whom many voted for in the hope that he would stick by his word, including the pledge he made on his second day in office to ban brutal interrogation and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes,” the Times now reports concerning the early promises by Obama. “They reflected a still unfamiliar Barack Obama, a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric.”

Parse that sentence carefully to learn much of what is morally decrepit in our journalism as well as politics. The word “realist” is now identical to “hypocrite,” and the condemnation of immoral behavior addresses nothing more than “rhetoric” that only the “fervent” would take seriously. The Times writers all but thrill to the lying, as in recounting the new president’s response to advisers who warned him against sticking to his campaign promises on Guantanamo prisoners: “The deft insertion of some wiggle words in the president’s order showed that the advice was followed.”

How telling that reporters who might as well be PR flacks are so admiring of the power of “wiggle words” to free a politician from accountability to the voters who put him in office: “A few sharp-eyed observers inside and outside the government understood what the public did not. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies—rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention—that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

As Boyarsky and Scheer both point out, Obama has adopted policies that were roundly condemned by progressives when George W. Bush carried them out. Obama seems to be making the shrewd calculation that progressives will have no where else to turn in the upcoming election. As for myself, Obama will most likely get my vote, but he won't get my support in the form of money or volunteer time.

Do Afghan women have free speech?

Thanks to Spinfex Press for posting a link to this intriguing account a the struggles of a feminist newspaper in Afghanistan:

Its masthead claims that it is the first “feminist weekly” paper in Afghanistan. In a highly male dominated society where violence against women is rampant, the word “feminism” sets off alarm bells for some officials. And ringing this bell is a determined 22-year-old woman – Heleena Kakar.

Responding to the inbuilt biases Afghan society has against women, Kakar, the founder and brains behind the paper, is determined to shake up the system.

“One of the major challenges that we are facing is that the government agency responsible doesn’t offer approval for the paper to be registered because of the word ‘feminism.’ We are trying to convince them the word ‘feminism’ doesn’t go against any legislation and law,” says Kakar, who adds that she hopes to lay the foundations for a feminist movement in Afghanistan.

The rest of the post is well worth reading.

Supreme Court to reconsider Citizens United

According to the Washington Post, a recent decision of the Montana Supreme Court  might ultimately result in the US Supreme Court reconsidering its controversial ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Sounds like good news if it happens. Thanks to Progressive Breakfast for the link to the Washington Post news item.

Update: Mother Jones says that a group in Hawaii thinks they can use the 11th Amendment to overturn Citizens United.

The feminist general assembly

Cross-posted from The Daly Planet:

At our weekly Mary Daly Feminist discussion group at Church of the Open Arms, we often talk about the Occupy Wall Street movement and how or if feminism in connected to it. On May 17, several cities around the nation held feminist general assemblies to bring feminist goals, vision, and strategy to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thanks to Occupy Patriarchy for posting two accounts of the feminist GA that took place in Washington Square Park in Manhattan.

One of these posts came from Melanie Butler at the Ms. Magazine blog. Here's a sample:

I arrived to find a diverse crowd of around 300 people. Members of the Occupy Wall Street women’s caucus, Women Occupying Wall Street (WOW), were giving a shout of solidarity to Occupy Maine. The people of Lafayette, Ind.; Bend and Portland, Ore.; Chicago and a handful of other cities were also holding feminist GAs. The Raging Grannies sang “Evolution is too slow, revolution’s the way to go!” and things were off to a raucous start. I pitched in with a paintbrush to help record the shared values we were brainstorming–“Trust!” “Creativity!” “Justice!” “Humor!”–and, ignoring my friend’s smirk, embraced the consciousness-raising exercise as though I were encountering it for the first time. After focusing almost exclusively on women’s organizing for the first six months of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), I was happy for the chance to just participate. More importantly, I was happy to see so many new leaders and so many of the elusive “unfamiliar faces” we had spent meeting after meeting trying to attract to the movement.

Sarah Seltzer of The Nation offered a more in-depth analysis of this gathering. Seltzer saw an effort not only to counter sexism within Occupy Wall Street, but also to counter oppressive attitudes within feminist ranks. She also pondered whether this GA might be the start of a new way for Occupy Wall Street to collaborate with other movements.

Aspects of this GA offered a model for how Occupy can work with other progressive movements without accusations of “co-option” on either side. The fact that the organizers of the GA were both new to and familiar with Occupy meant that the attendees came from both inside and outside the movement, an example of horizontalism—rejecting hierarchy—in action. Beyond that, the GA reinforced the notion of Occupy as platform for ideas, rather than organization. The simple act of presenting feminist ideas in the Occupy format--in a public space, welcome to all, mingling with strangers beyond the reach of institutions--was refreshing and inspiring, the opening of a door of possibility, almost like the early days at Zuccotti Park. I realized with a start during the event that I’d never been in a public space that simply existed for feminist-minded conversation before, without a destination or goal or even work-oriented networking.

Will that door of possibility lead to a new coalition or plan for action? That remained unclear. None of the goals mentioned in the report-backs included targeted plans like “organize a sit-in in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops offices.” No specific march or strike or radical art project is in the works, and no one appeared as a representative from an established feminist organization to start building a formal coalition. At this point, the OWS ethos may not mesh with most institutional organizations, and perhaps that’s okay. What the feminists at the GA wanted more than a formal partnership was to keep converging and talking. So the one thing there will definitely be? Another GA.

This is bound to be a complicated and difficult process. I thought I detected from both Selzer and Butler an expectation that Occupy Wall Street and its feminist participants would eventually reach consensus on a complete range of goals. I don't think this is going to happen.

My own feelings about this are contradictory. On the one hand, I would join Selzer and Butler in wanting to push OWS to support women's reproductive freedom. The idea that abortion rights are "too divisive" and can be ignored just doesn't sit well with me. Besides everything else, reproductive freedom is a basic economic issue.

On the other hand, both Butler and Selzer take for granted that support for "transgender rights" is something that there is, or should be, a feminist consensus to do. I find myself balking there, because I believe there is a still a substantial segment of the feminist movement that sees the gender system itself as oppressive. We see the goal as eliminating gender entirely, not reforming the gender system to make it "more diverse."

Censorship or editorial judgment?

Occupy Together has posted on Facebook a controversial TED talk given by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Hanauer says it's a mistake to claim that increasing taxes on the rich will interfere with job creation. He calls this "an article of faith for Republicans" that is "seldom challenged by Democrats."

Jobs are not created by rich people or by capitalists, Hanauer argues, but by a "circle-of-life" type of "feedback loop" between consumers and businesses. If ordinary consumers don't have the resources to make purchases, no jobs are created. Capitalists such as himself only hire more workers as a last resort after demand has increased so much that more workers are absolutely necessary. If tax policies adopted in the US since 1980 that favor the rich really worked, "we would be drowning in jobs."

TED originally failed to post Hanauer's talk, as reported by Ezra Klein and GeekWire. A National Journal post said that TED decided Hanauer's lecture was "too partisan." TED curator Chris Anderson insisted that this was not a matter of censorship, but of editorial judgment, then released the Hanauer video so that viewers could judge for themselves.

I thought that Hanauer gave a vivid description of a fairly standard progressive argument about what causes prosperity or unemployment. What do you think?

Standing her ground

Many people have understandably questioned Florida's "stand your ground" law, which says that a person who is being attacked may use deadly force without being required to retreat first. This is the law that encouraged the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Oddly enough, this law has been ruled not to apply to the case of Florida resident Marissa Alexander, who fired a warning shot into her kitchen ceiling to keep her abusive husband away from her. This sounds like a case in which most sane people would feel that no criminal charges would be appropriate, especially since Ms. Alexander didn't actually shoot her attacker. Why then, is Ms. Alexander facing a sentence of 20 years in prison? I found this interesting and thoughtful video discussion on thenation.com Web site.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Occupying the Left

Katha Pollit at thenation.com tells it like it is.

Do no evil?

Okay, I really need to quit writing blog posts and get seriously to work on my term paper about open access journal publishing for my library management class. But I think this post from Jaqui Cheng on Ars Technica is worthy of note. Google is negotiating with the FCC over the amount of the fine it will face for "unintentionally" bypassing privacy protections on the Safari Web browser. Reader comments on this post make much of Google's continuous violations of its own motto, "Don't be evil."

This caught my attention because it was so closely related to the subject of my most recent post. Although I didn't mention it, David Sirota used Google to illustrate his concerns that folks who store material on the cloud could lose important rights to their work.

As The Los Angeles Times reported, Google’s announcement of its “Google Drive” came with the promise that users will “retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content.” But when you save files to Google’s new hard-drive folder in the cloud, the terms of service you are required to agree to gives Google “a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute (your) content” as the company sees fit.

As Sirota notes, Google has an innocent explanation for this--they insist they're merely getting your permission to allow you to share your stored material with others. But keep in mind that Google, like Facebook and other "free" online services, makes its profits from mining and selling our personal information. Maybe it's time to reconsider whether this kind of "free" is a good deal.

Partly cloudy?

Over at Truthdig, David Sirota has this interesting essay about cloud computing and how you might surrender rights to your own work by storing material on the cloud.

Raspberry Pi

I want one of these. It's a tiny little computer that costs $35 and runs Debian Linux. A person needs a power adapter, a USB keyboard and mouse, a compatible monitor (or t.v.), and an SD card bigger than 4 GB to make it all work, so the total cost would be a bit higher.

Of course, I could probably have just as much fun playing with the various old computers I already have lying around the house. The really fun thing would be to find a similar variety of Debian Linux that would run on my existing obsolete machines. But the Raspberry Pi is made by a nonprofit organization with the goal of inspiring kids to do computer programming, so I may eventually decide to get one. Apparently there's quite a waiting list, anyway.  Unfortunately, the hardware is not open source, but it still seems like a cool project.

Oklahomans unite against War on Women at 4/28 rally

This afternoon I took a brief break from the end-of-semester madness to enjoy an hour or so of sanity at the Oklahoma Unite Against the War on Women rally at the state capitol. This was part of a nationwide day of events in support of women's liberation from an increasingly obnoxious right-wing backlash against our well-being and freedom.

I estimated that about 300 people, mostly women but some men, attended the event in front of the capitol's north steps.

When pregnancy begins

Hat tip to Planned Parenthood of Oklahoma for a link to this informative post about how pregnancy happens and how the extreme right intentional distorts this information to limit women's reproductive freedom.

Correction--down to the wire April 26

I mistakenly posted that yesterday was the last day that the Oklahoma House could hear SB 1433, the bill that would declare fertilized eggs to be persons. (Once upon a time we had a "personhood bill" for adult women. It was called the Equal Rights Amendment, and unfortunately it didn't pass, in Oklahoma or the nation.) I finally made it down to the capitol last night after an emergency tweet asked for supporters when Rep. Reynolds attempted an obscure parliamentary maneuver to bring SB 1433 to a vote. It failed! Things are looking good for the bill to finally go down today, but the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice--which has played such a crucial role in stopping this monstrosity--is still calling for supporters to join the Pink Wave at the Capitol today. You can follow how things are going on Twitter, or you can even listen to the Oklahoma House live.

Down to the wire on April 25th

The anti-choice backers of Oklahoma Senate Bill 1433 were angered by the reported death of the bill that would declare that a fertilized human egg is a person with all of the rights thereof. Yesterday, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and others worked to stop the consideration of SB1433 and reported that the bill was still dead, replaced by a non-binding resolution that was passed by the OK House. Today is the last day for bills that originated in the Senate to be heard on the House floor. Anti-choice activists were not appeased by the passage of the non-binding resolution, and according to newsok.com, pressure is growing on lawmakers to hear SB 1433 while they still can.(Hat tip to Oklahomans Against the Personhood Act for the link.)

The daring pro-choice Pinkwave is still making its presence felt in the House. I tried to join them on my way to work, only to discover that the House is in recess until 1:45 today. You should join them if you can, or consider calling your representative.

Finally, good news from the OK Legislature

The Tulsa World reported this morning that SB 1433, the so-called "personhood bill" will not get a vote in the Oklahoma House. House Speaker Kris Steele described this decision as representing the collective will of the Republican caucus. The extreme right-wing Rep. Randy Terrill said it was "stunning and unbelievable" that the bill wouldn't come up for a vote. Whatever. The bill would have declared that from the moment a human egg was fertilized, it had all the rights and privileges of a person. (Unlike the adult female human who carried it.)

Kudos to the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice for its hard work in stopping this nonsense.

Who wants an Oklahoma income tax cut?

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma Senate passed a bill to cut the state's income tax to a top rate of 4.9 percent. While this might sound appealing on the surface, it would result in cutting important public services--like healthcare and education. And to get to this lower top rate, deductions and credits for ordinary working people would have to be sacrificed, meaning that rich people would pay lower taxes and poor people would pay higher taxes. Vital public services have already been cut drastically in the wake of the Great Recession.

The Oklahoma Policy Institute has been doing a lot of work on analyzing this issue, and they have a page of links devoted to information about this important topic. This morning, a post on OPI's OKPolicy Blog shows that most of the support comes not from Oklahomans--even business groups are wary of it--but from outside pressure groups. Among these groups (no surprise) is the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):

So where is it coming from? It’s no coincidence that very similar efforts to eliminate the income tax are popping up in Kansas and Missouri. All three campaigns rely heavily on a report by Arthur Laffer, a former Reagan advisor who has dedicated his career to restricting taxes in numerous states. Governor Fallin mentioned Laffer’s numbers in this year’s state of the state speech, though she cited them as coming from Americans for Prosperity, a national lobbying group founded by David and Charles Koch. Most recently, Governor Fallin wrote the introduction for a report by Laffer and others at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that ranks states based on how closely they follow ALEC’s economic policy agenda. It’s clear that these national groups have the governor’s ear.

Does housework count as real work?

Some time in the foreseeable past, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney described his wife, Ann, as his primary advisor on women's issues. His wife told him that women didn't care about feminism, they cared about the economy.

Democratic campaign consultant called Hilary Rosen set off a kerfuffle when she said that Ann Romney knew nothing about economics because she hadn't worked a day in her life. Staying home to raise five sons counted as working, Ann Romney said. This ignited a silly media row that I did my best to ignore. However, a couple of interesting items showed up on the Web as a result of this silly row.

One such item was Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne's commentary. I think he's supposed to be a liberal. I found his post on the Truthdig Web site. Mr. Dionne basically agrees with the Romneys when he says

For millions of American moms and dads, debates about “feminism” or “social conservatism” are irrelevant. It’s about money.

He goes on to chastise Republicans and conservatives for undermining the economic foundation of most families that would allow one parent to choose to stay home.

This points to a contradiction that few conservatives want to confront. When trying to win votes from religious and social traditionalists, conservatives speak as if they want to restore what they see as the glory days of the 1950s family. But they are reluctant to acknowledge that it was the high wages of (often unionized) workers that underwrote these arrangements.

Yet on the right, economic conservatism almost always trumps social conservatism, and market imperatives almost always get priority over family imperatives. As a result, the United States has the weakest family-leave laws in the industrialized world. We have done far less than other well-off countries to accommodate the difficult work-family dilemmas that most moms and dads deal with in the new economy.

There's much in that second quote to agree with, but I'm left with the strong impression that Dionne considers women's freedom and women's lives irrelevant, unless these are considered as part of a family economy that affects men.

A much more interesting conversation about the topic of women and housework took place on Democracy Now!, where host Amy Goodman interviewed long-time activist and theorist Selma James. Back in 1952, James wrote a brilliant pamphlet called "A Woman's Place," and now James has published a book called Sex, Race, and Class, a collection of her essays.

James argues that the work of stay-at-home mothers is crucial to the operation of capitalism, because mothers reproduce labor. The housewife becomes the servant of the working husband, who relates to her in the same way the capitalist relates to him. That is, he pays her just enough to live on, while capturing goods and services with a value far beyond that.

Selma James says it better than I do. Here is the interview as it aired on Democracy Now! on April 16:



On the Democracy Now! Web site, you can view a longer version of the interview, complete with written transcript.

Right here in Central Park

Peak Oil Hausfrau has a post about a great project that goes on right in my neighborhood.

My kind of tea party

Saturday night, after the poetry reading at Herland, I headed over to the Blue Door to the fundraiser for the Voices of Oklahoma community radio station. I regretted missing the opener by Miss Brown to You, but loved the show by Emma's Revolution. One of their funniest numbers was a send-up of the Tea Party Movement called "Taxed Enough Already." Below you can watch the version that's out on YouTube:



It would be interesting to ponder the complexities of a duo named in honor of the anarchist Emma Goldman producing a defense of government. But I'll leave that conversation aside in favor of noting the appropriateness of "Taxed Enough Already" as an anthem to opponents of the Buffett Rule that is coming up for a vote in the US Senate today.

Occupying patriarchy

Lucinda Marshall is always wonderful. You can read her latest post either at Feminist Peace Network or at Occupy Patriarchy.

It is not sufficient to say that we have to come together as the 99% against the 1%. The needs of the 99% are not homogenous and it is not acceptable to say that it is divisive when we point this out.

While the Occupy movement has been developing, the war on women has become a nightmare of hateful, ignorant, daily attacks on women’s human rights. It is urgent that this be stopped and presents an opportunity for the Occupy movement as a whole to stand up for women’s lives and say that this war must stop. On April 28th there will be rallies in all 50 states and in Washington, DC calling for an end to the war on women.

Thank you, Lucinda. In Oklahoma City, we will have a march at the state capital starting at noon on April 28. I will be there. What about you?

Oklahoma not the only anti-woman state

The woman governor of Arizona (!) has signed into law one of the most extreme anti-choice laws in the US.

Some complexities of the Trayvon Martin case

Sean Thomas-Breitfeld over at colorlines.com has written a really good analysis of some of the complexities involved in the Florida shooting of African American teen Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch volunteer whose ethnicity has become a source of controversy in the case. Here's a brief sample:

George Zimmerman’s unconscious biases and his racial identity did not cause Trayvon Martin’s death. The gun he carried while volunteering his time as a neighborhood watch captain is what made the difference between a misunderstanding leading to insults and hurt feelings, and the death of an unarmed black teenager who was walking home from the store. But rather than talk about the laws in play in this case, we get mired in a debate over the motivation of individual actors.

The new black/brown terms of this case were a convenient distraction for conservatives (particularly the National Rifle Association) who would rather we not focus on how Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law fosters a vigilante mentality. The leaking of details about how Trayvon Martin was a normal (rather than perfect) teenager helped the Sanford Police shift the focus away from how their inaction the night of Trayvon’s death and showed a too-familiar disregard for the well-being of black men.

There are legitimate questions to raise about how gated communities—as modern-day, segregated enclaves—foster a racialized paranoia that George Zimmerman was caught up in. There’s a real discussion to have about the many ways that structural racism and criminal justice collide and conspire to rob Trayvon Martin of fair and just protection by the police. We must not lose sight of the structural factors at work in situations like this one.

There's much more to this eloquent post, and it's well worth reading the whole thing.

Unique Kenyan village empowers women

Hannah Rubenstein of Inter Press Service has written a fascinating article about a woman-only village in Kenya:

Umoja’s history began in 1990, when a collective of 15 Samburu women, who called themselves the Umoja Uaso Women's Group, began selling beadwork and other goods to raise money for themselves and their families. As the group began to grow financially lucrative, they found themselves facing increasing harassment by men in their communities who felt that economic growth was not appropriate for the women, who traditionally play a subordinate role.

In response, the women, led by matriarch Rebecca Lolosoli, decided to break away and begin their own village, in order to ensure security and cooperation for themselves out of the reach of those who sought to undermine them.

Today, Umoja is home to 48 women who have come from all over the country. Their stories vary – some were young girls fleeing forced marriages to old men, others were raped or sexually abused, and several were widows who were shunned by their communities. Moreover, several women residing in the village are Turkana, taking refuge from the tribal violence currently raging in the central region of Isiolo.

Only women are permitted to sleep in the village. An exception is made for men who were raised there. Many women who live in Umoja plan to marry eventually, and conduct courtships outside the village--on their own terms.

Gender nonconformity lives

This post by Dorothee Benz at thenation.com is well worth reading.