Posted at Reclusive Leftist
I’m feeling it especially today, with the news that Obama is planning to keep Bush’s faith-based programs. God almighty. How much clearer can it get? Coming on top of the FISA immunity thing, the campaign finance reversal, and the trial balloon about keeping Gates on as Secretary of Defense, it’s a miracle of nature that the possums can’t see what this guy is about. If he started showing up at press conferences wearing a flight suit, do you think they’d get it then? (Answering self: no; see insanity, mass.)
But she, like Woman Space, was overly protective of her left friend's positions and always defended them from my confrontations. I got tired of it and thought it was stupid to argue with people who were not ready to look at what had become a sacred cow in their life. Now, I think the blinders were removed by force and to Violet's credit, she has become very very aware of what is being done to women by the corporate left and MSM. I suggest you go to her blog and read, A Note on PUMA and Sexism
Here is my comment.
I left this blog some time ago and now I am back to ask you to reconsider the issue that caused me to leave. The belief that the political left is a credible ally to women as compared to the right and its' publications are more acceptable in terms of credibility.
I am speaking to the women who consider them self "leftists" I am asking you NOT to see Obama as some aberration that "chipped socialism" but as the symbol of the aggregate left positions.
Positions which are packaged in very attractive wrapping but are not generally in the interests of women globally. The left both within and without the Democratic party which proposed and supports Obama never moved us one step closer to women's liberation or even basic human rights. Because they are controlled by corporate globalism as is the right.
Corporate money buys non profit organizations, gets appointed to NGO boards, hires staff and then adopts positions which favor corporations. They label these positions "progressive" and market them to the masses through the non profits like the progressive state network. Now they have even started to canvass neighborhoods asking for donations.
Independent organizations actually elevate the rights of those they represent. The corporate left never is clear about who they represent.
The left is mainly the corporate left and its' policies will keep the class balance intact regardless of the beautiful soaring speeches made during campaigns. That is how the left has functioned for 40 years in the US. Women must wake up and look at the results from a democratic majority in Congress. Do you really believe the left Democrat majority has kept abortion safe, legal and available? Did they pass the Equal Pay Act?
The left view the UN as superior to the US. Obama sponsored the Global Poverty Act which gives one in three foreign aid dollars to the UN. The UN's Human Rights Committee just ruled that Muslim practices such as FGM and child marriage are religious practices not human rights violations. It forbade women's advocates from presenting action resolutions to the H R committee concerning these and other "religious" practices. That is where US foreign aid will go under BO's legislation.
Feminists should be insisting that no country nor the UN get FA dollars except that they are used to fight sharia abuse of women and children and promote gender and ethnoreligious equality. The US Office of International Women's Issues should be solely responsible for distributing these funds and USAID for relief efforts. The UN cannot show fiscal responsibility and women should not approve funds going to maintain thug theocracies.
All of the left's positions, just like the rights, should only be adopted by an INDEPENDENT feminist movement and PUMA's feminists when we can see a direct feminist benefit to the women they affect. Not rhetoric about how this or that is better for women because we say so but adopted because we can see on the ground improvement in women's lives.
17 women's center have been built in Afghanistan, some of them underground domestic violence women's shelters. All of them have economic development programs. Women Police Corps are being armed to protect them. We are building schools and hospitals for women and girls. That work must continue. That is where the US foreign aid dollars must go - not to the corrupt Muslim majority UN. If the UN were to take over these projects women will be raped, imprisoned and die.
That Afghan women's rights work must continue - it should have happened in Iraq but did not.
If the Repubs get in 2009,we will still have the State Dept Office of Womens Issues (OIWI)but without Condi Rice and her band of feminists, I do not know how strong it will be -- Rice is a single, childless, pro choice woman who never wore a veil while visiting with the theocrats. She is the one who built the shelters and made violence against women an issue.
I don't want to respond to anyone who has not gone to that website and reviewed what those women have done. It is a shame feminists did not support them.
http://www.state.gov/g/wi/
Feminists were too busy supporting the DNC and the left to reach out to oppressed women in Iraq and Afghanistan through US soldiers. We might have become a powerful independent movement in the process.
If BO gets in 2009,Sen.Biden has pledged to replace OIWI with this:
http://www.greenconsciousness.org/weblog/2007/11/international-violence-against-women.html
Dems always think if you change the by-laws things will improve. So they spend all their time changing the rules and when push comes to shove they ignore the rules they wasted all our time and money arguing about anyway (see May 31 rules com meeting).
So women will lose two years while this new office gets set up in the state dept and the Muslim women who believed us, and left their homes, will be left to the mercy of the theocrats during that time. UNLESS we start demanding now that does not happen and make it part of the PUMA priorities along with rejection of provisions of the Global Poverty Act.
Anger is not enough.
Feminist must realize that BO is a corporate tool. The wealthy are both the right and the left. They use race, religion, gender and identity politics to control and divide the working class.
3/4 of Bo's contributors are Wall St companies like Goldman Sacks,and their employees - trust fund babies like the Kennedys and Kerrys, George Soros and other Billionaires, and all these people have always supported thug theocracies regardless of how they treated women or rather perhaps because there is an affinity between the corporate left and how women are treated under sharia.
An independent women's movement must work with the left and the right on different issues. Our allegiance must be only to what is helpful to women in achieving their liberation which is not always a safe thing to struggle toward.
Right now we should be demanding of both McCain and Obama that they bring that Afghan journalist who was sentenced to death for distributing feminist literature back to the US. We should demand they hold talks with the Afghan government on freedom for Afghans to organize for women's rights without interference from the religious police. The Afghans want protection from the Taliban so they must stop acting like the Taliban
Additionally, Obama supported relatives in Kenya who want to bring back sharia. His cousin and his half brothers - he donated funds to their political campaigns. His half-brother is calling for a return to Sharia. We must raise this as an issue and ask if Obama will intervene for women's rights. We must ask if BO will refrain from contributing to the UN until they show by results on the ground that they can use the money they have to successfully end human rights abuses.
PUMA feminists must ask for a public audit of what happened over the past ten years to the money in the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Against Women. To my knowledge not one shelter has been built.
Be it a vision of a "Christian Nation"
as seen by the far-right,
or "Political Correctness" by the far-left,
both are dangerous visions of the future, and
both are a threat to democracy
and the esoteric ideals
of individual responsibility, liberty,
and living spirituality
as has been outlined in Hermeticism’s
utopian texts of the last 400 years.
http://www.pagannews.com/cgi-bin/articles1.pl?110
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