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Reflecting on Fukuyama's neocon defection

This book review by Paul Berman, raises some issues that I'm wanting to stew over some more. I'm still not sure what I think yet, but this feels like the most rational and pointed look at the ironies and contradictions that make the neoconservative philosophy so peculiar, and notable in its very peculiarities.

I just wanted to pull out the bits here that help me remember certain ideas, so I can think about them some more.

Link: 'America at the Crossroads,' by Francis Fukuyama - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times.

March 26, 2006

'America at the Crossroads,' by Francis Fukuyama

Neo No More

Review by PAUL BERMAN

In February 2004, Francis Fukuyama attended a neoconservative think-tank dinner in Washington and listened aghast as the featured speaker, the columnist Charles Krauthammer, attributed "a virtually unqualified success" to America's efforts in Iraq, and the audience enthusiastically applauded. Fukuyama was aghast partly for the obvious reason, but partly for another reason, too, which, as he explains in the opening pages of his new book, "America at the Crossroads," was entirely personal. In years gone by, Fukuyama would have felt cozily at home among those applauding neoconservatives. He and Krauthammer used to share many a political instinct. It was Krauthammer who wrote the ecstatic topmost blurb ("bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant") for the back jacket of Fukuyama's masterpiece from 1992, "The End of History and the Last Man."

But that was then.

Today Fukuyama has decided to resign from the neoconservative movement — though for reasons that, as he expounds them, may seem a tad ambiguous. In his estimation, neoconservative principles in their pristine version remain valid even now. But his ex-fellow-thinkers have lately given those old ideas a regrettable twist, and dreadful errors have followed. Under these circumstances, Fukuyama figures he has no alternative but to go away and publish his complaint.

[...]

His resignation seems to me, in any case, a fairly notable event, as these things go, and that is because, among the neoconservative intellectuals, Fukuyama has surely been the most imaginative, the most playful in his thinking and the most ambitious. Then again, something about his departure may express a larger mood among the political intellectuals just now, not only on the right.

[...]

Fukuyama offers a thumbnail sketch of neoconservatism and its origins, back to the anti-Communist left at City College in the 1930's and 40's and to the conservative philosophers (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Albert Wohlstetter) at the University of Chicago in later years. From these disparate origins, the neoconservatives eventually generated "a set of coherent principles," which, taken together, ended up defining their impulse in foreign affairs during the last quarter-century. They upheld a belief that democratic states are by nature friendly and unthreatening, and therefore America ought to go around the world promoting democracy and human rights wherever possible. They believed that American power can serve moral purposes. They doubted the usefulness of international law and institutions. And they were skeptical about what is called "social engineering" — about big government and its ability to generate positive social changes.

Such is Fukuyama's summary. It seems to me too kind. For how did the neoconservatives propose to reconcile their ambitious desire to combat despotism around the world with their cautious aversion to social engineering? Fukuyama notes that during the 1990's the neoconservatives veered in militarist directions, which strikes him as a mistake. A less sympathetic observer might recall that neoconservative foreign policy thinking has all along indulged a romance of the ruthless — an expectation that small numbers of people might be able to play a decisive role in world events, if only their ferocity could be unleashed. It was a romance of the ruthless that led some of the early generation of neoconservatives in the 1970's to champion the grisliest of anti-Communist guerrillas in Angola; and, during the next decade, led the neoconservatives to champion some not very attractive anti-Communist guerrillas in Central America, too; and led the Reagan administration's neoconservatives into the swamps of the Iran-contra scandal in order to go on championing their guerrillas. Doesn't this same impulse shed a light on the baffling question of how the Bush administration of our own time could have managed to yoke together a stirring democratic oratory with a series of grotesque scandals involving American torture — this very weird and self-defeating combination of idealism and brass knuckles? But Fukuyama must not agree.

The criticisms he does propose are pretty scathing. In 2002, Fukuyama came to the conclusion that invading Iraq was going to be a gamble with unacceptably long odds. Then he watched with dismay as the administration adopted one strange policy after another that was bound to make the odds still longer. The White House decided to ignore any useful lessons the Clinton administration might have learned in Bosnia and Kosovo, on the grounds that whatever Bill Clinton did — for example, conduct a successful intervention — George W. Bush wanted to do the opposite. There was the diplomatic folly of announcing an intention to dominate the globe, and so forth — all of which leads Fukuyama, scratching his head, to propose a psychological explanation.

The neoconservatives, he suggests, are people who, having witnessed the collapse of Communism long ago, ought to look back on those gigantic events as a one-in-a-zillion lucky break, like winning the lottery. Instead, the neoconservatives, victims of their own success, came to believe that Communism's implosion reflected the deepest laws of history, which were operating in their own and America's favor — a formula for hubris. This is a shrewd observation, and might seem peculiar only because Fukuyama's own "End of History" articulated the world's most eloquent argument for detecting within the collapse of Communism the deepest laws of history. He insists in his new book that "The End of History" ought never to have led anyone to adopt such a view, but this makes me think only that Fukuyama is an utterly unreliable interpreter of his own writings.

[...]

He proposes a post-Bush foreign policy, which he styles "realistic Wilsonianism" — his new motto in place of neoconservatism. He worries that because of Bush's blunders, Americans on the right and the left are going to retreat into a Kissinger-style reluctance to promote democratic values in other parts of the world. Fukuyama does want to promote democratic values — "what is in the end a revolutionary American foreign policy agenda" — though he would like to be cautious about it, and even multilateral about it. The United Nations seems to him largely unsalvageable, given the role of nondemocratic countries there. But he thinks that a variety of other institutions, consisting strictly of democracies, might be able to establish and sometimes even enforce a new and superior version of international legitimacy. He wants to encourage economic development in poor countries, too — if only a method can be found that avoids the dreadful phrase "social engineering."

[this is perhaps the most frightening observation I've seen, but I'm happy to see SOMEONE from the neocon camp at least acknowledging that the majority of the "non-nation-building" nation-building rhetoric out of the Bush administration appears to be lifted directly from the Woodrow Wilson playbook, with any notion of a "League of Nations" surgically removed and replaced with U.S. despotic dominance, the U.S. as the single superpower to assume sovereignty over all as a self-appointed United Nations of One.

What I find so frightening in Fukayama's view here, and in the views of others who hold these ideas as well, distinctly neocon ideas since they bear little resemblance to the ideas usually attributed to traditional conservatism, is that the "promotion of democracy" as some kind of saving grace is purely rhetorical and bears no resemblance to what is actually happening.

I believe the word "democracy" is being corrupted, used as a code word for "governments that are easy to manipulate using massive influxes of capital to interfere, influence, and buy elections for our hand-picked and corruptible puppets." In other words, the opposite of true democracy (although one could argue it has become the way "democracy" is currently being practiced in the U.S.)

Sure, the U.S. could put a chosen dictator or despot in place, as colonial powers have traditionally done, or perhaps use the methods of control previously employed by the Soviet empire, OR it could simply use capital and corruption to turn the word "democracy" into a pale shadow of it's true meaning, and simply use it as rhetorical cover for things we might call "democracy" that are really unregulated monopolies by non-local corporations seeking to find the best way to siphon as much wealth out of a nation as possible, as quickly as possible.]

[...]

I worry that Fukuyama's preferred language may shrink our predicament into something smaller than it ever was. He pictures the present struggle as a "counterinsurgency" campaign — a struggle in which, before the Iraq war, "no more than a few thousand people around the world" threatened the United States. I suppose he has in mind an elite among the 10,000 to 20,000 people who are said to have trained at bin Laden's Afghan camps, plus other people who may never have gotten out of the immigrant districts of Western Europe. But the slaughters contemplated by this elite have always outrivaled anything contemplated by more conventional insurgencies — as Fukuyama does recognize in some passages. And there is the pesky problem that, as we have learned, the elite few thousand appear to have the ability endlessly to renew themselves. HERE is where a rhetoric pointing to something larger than a typical counterinsurgency campaign may have a virtue, after all. A more grandiose rhetoric draws our attention, at least, to the danger of gigantic massacres. And a more grandiose rhetoric might lead us to think about ideological questions. Why are so many people eager to join the jihadi elite? They are eager for ideological reasons, exactly as in the case of fascists and other totalitarians of the past. These people will be defeated only when their ideologies begin to seem exhausted, which means that any struggle against them has to be, above all, a battle of ideas — a campaign to persuade entire mass movements around the world to abandon their present doctrines in favor of more liberal ones.

[that would entail actually being true advocates for liberal democratic ideas, rather than using them as a smokescreen for more fascist strong-arm tactics and overt manipulation.]

[...]

In "America at the Crossroads," Fukuyama describes the Hegelianism of "The End of History" as a version of "modernization" theory, bringing his optimistic vision of progress into the world of modern social science. But the problem with modernization theory was always a tendency to concentrate most of its attention on the steadily progressing phases of history, as determined by the predictable workings of sociology or economics or psychology — and to relegate the free play of unpredictable ideas and ideologies to the margins of world events.

And yet, what dominated the 20th century, what drowned the century in oceans of blood, was precisely the free play of ideas and ideologies, which could never be relegated entirely to the workings of sociology, economics, psychology or any of the other categories of social science.  [...]  Fukuyama is always worth reading, and his new book contains ideas that I hope the non-neoconservatives of America will adopt. But neither his old arguments nor his new ones offer much insight into this, the most important problem of all — the problem of murderous ideologies and how to combat them.

Here's my deal: somewhere along the way I stopped worrying so much about the problem of murderous ideologies and how to combat them and instead started worrying more about those who pretend to ideologies, some potentially murderous, as crass cover for intentions that are far more devious.

Say what you like about Osama bin Laden, but the guy is apparently incorruptible and a true believer in his cause, however odious many of its basic principles may be to me.

So bin Laden has a murderous ideology, a cultural construct based in an interpretation of a venerable ancient religion. This is the lens through which he sees the world, and however I may not like it, it is reliable and consistent.

Many venerable ancient religions can be turned into murderous ideologies, perhaps ANY venerable and ancient religion, what with Pluto in Sagittarius. (I just had to throw that in... hey, you know Pluto will be moving out of Sag soon. Something to look forward to. When Pluto was in Scorpio, sex=death, and when Pluto moved into Sag, ideological purity=death. What do you suppose will happen when Pluto hits Capricorn, coming on the heels of these wars for ideology? Ambition=death. The will to power=death. So many people try to psych Pluto out, but Pluto has its own way of doing things, you know?)

But back to more rational thinking... It seems to me that it is easier to fight an ideologue than to fight a Machiavellian sophist. I dunno, maybe it's just me. One enemy seems a lot easier to understand and pin down than the other.

And once Pluto moves into Capricorn, we will just be aswim in Machiavellian sophists, as if we aren't gearing up for their ascendancy already.

So Berman may be more worried about how to characterize and combat an enemy that has an ideological beef with us, a clash of world views, and a desire to make one world view dominant over the other. So long as this fight is characterized by "my god is better than your god" thinking, a distinctly patriarchal view of religion that requires dominance just as surely as a dog pack requires an alpha, wars can only result. These are the wars of the "true believers," patriarchal true believers who make the fight an extension of rival high school football games with considerably more dick-waving, er, waving of big sticks. Even if the warfare is ultimately asymmetrical, broadswords vs. daggers or what have you.

Many cultures have allowed multiple religions, often matriarchal religions, to peacefully co-exist without a need for one to dominate or wipe out the others, without the culture of literalism, the book and the law, that demands the ascendancy one metaphysical interpretation of spirituality and one interpretation only.

In other words, this isn't high noon. The two patriarchal religions that are squaring off seem to think so, however, and they're saying, "This here globe isn't big enough for the two of us."

Both of them are of a piece, claiming allegiance to the same war-like Jehovah alpha god, nearly identical ascendant male deities, only with somewhat different commands and opposing claims of who exactly are the "chosen people."

I know one side is supposed to have white hats and the other side is supposed to have black hats, but they just look alike to me, with differences of degree in their oppression of women, the shrillness in which they impose their belief systems, and the manner in which they execute their will to power, to have power over others, and which commodities of power they prefer to use. Power and dominance are the coins in both of their realms. Ideology is merely the fuel that feeds it.

And me, I'm anticipating Pluto in Capricorn. I figure, ultimately, once Pluto moves, true believers will be corrupted by that power, by ambition. I'm not picking on Capricorn. Some of my best friends have their SUNS in Capricorn. But this is PLUTO in Capricorn, and power corrupts.

I think a day will come when we will wistfully long for true believers, as we face unending death, suffering, and wars over far less, over this person or that group's mere ambition and crass willingness to reach and grasp with Machiavellian slipperiness.

Anima

Out, Out Damn Spot

Looks like my favorite poet, Sharon Olds, doesn't want to associate with those in the current regime. They do, after all, have blood on their hands.

In a letter to Laura Bush, Olds declines an invitation to the September 24 National Book Festival.  She says:

"So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. . . . I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

". . . But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

" . . . So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it. "

Eyebrows raised - CountryDew

Patients put down

Link: Patients put down
September 12, 2005

DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.

With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials.

One emergency official, William Forest McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana and the doctors spoke only on condition on anonymity.

[...]

Coffenut

This site showed up on one of our Google ads under the heading "Private Prisons"

Link: Omni View: Innovative Incarceration.

When I clicked on the link, it mostly was talking about Native American reservation corrections sites... but I found the entire thing REALLY disturbing.

First of all, what kind of outfit tries to sell itself as a "Private Prison"?! What is a Private Prison?

If there are "private prisons" in the U.S. (or elsewhere) it would seem to me that they would have to be EXTRA-LEGAL facilities for incarceration of human beings, because as far as I know, only governments are given the power to confine and enslave people against their will, based on their legal systems.

SO, if an entire system of "private prisons" exists (and I'm thinking of the "prison franchises" in Neal Stephenson's wonderful sci-fi cyberpunk book Snow Crash, the "Hoosegow" and "The Clink") they'd either come from this freakish movement to "privatize" and subcontract government functions (yeah, like to Haliburton)...

OR the Google ad is pandering directly to an invisible subculture of facilities confining humans against their will, say for sweatshop labor, sex slaves, etc, in other words, a winked-at subculture reinstituting slavery.

Now that last bit is just pure speculation on my part, spinning out from that bizarro Google Ad Words phrase "Private Prisons," I suppose appealing to the eccentric millionare owning an island (if ads are out to reach these people they must be a dime a dozen) needing to enslave an entire facility of human beings for forced island labor.

See, I made that whole thing up too, OK?

I don't think there are hundreds of millionares in the market for private prisons. I don't know that a million would be enough to pull it off these days, unless you buy the island from some dictator in a currency-deflated devasted, poverty-stricken economy usually associated with the so-called "Third World," but now shown to be alive and well and propagating in the U.S. (see also Katrina and New Orleans).

So if we rule out elitist oligarchies hunkering down with a kidnapped slave class on islands and in isolated compounds, ready to open the plantation for business with the apocalypse at the end of the world's oil supply (within 30 years to one generation, sources say), what kind of market does that leave for "private prisons"?

Enough of a market to advertise on Google, I guess. Chinese factories? I dunno. The link above is definitely a site I will watch, to see if it is linked to such evils.

Anima

My favorite sound bite yesterday

Link: nancy1.mov (video/quicktime Object).

"At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had ''absolutely no credentials.''

She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown...

''He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.

'''I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'''

''Oblivious, in denial, dangerous,'' she added."

Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi discovers how clueless the president is, and it boggles her mind. Which is what makes this video clip so precious.

Yo Nancy! Most of us have that reaction to very nearly everything he has to say, like living in a world of one long non sequitur.

Or like how Keith Olbermann introduced his timeline of who knew what when regarding the Hurricane Katrina response, some of us feel like the only way people could entertain such diametrically opposite perceptions of the same events is if we are actually on different planets.

My problem is, one of those planets seems to be so unaware of how deeply its unconsciously racist assumptions go, it can't even dredge up normal-sounding or credible PR spin to rationalize the depths of inhumanity it is willing to stoop to.

The secret of lying with PR, as far as I can tell, is for the PR person to truly understand the perceptions of those she or he wants to persuade or plant an idea virus with, to achieve success. Karl Rove is good at planting idea viruses in the heads of bigots, homophobes, and it turns out, racists who don't know they are racists because they just think all black people are scary and want to hurt them, and who don't care if the black people are thirsty or hungry or drowning or dying in staggering numbers. His absurd words and assumptions sound like bizarro-world non-sequiturs to those of us who don't buy into that peculiar world view, and who find such a world view flatly immoral and about as unChristian as you can get.

We don't have to go very far back to remember when those attitudes were considered unthinkingly obvious to some powerful white people: just take a look at that  lynching photo exhibit that has made the rounds of so many galleries. Or perhaps the history of the South and also in the North, when Blacks weren't considered full human beings.

If these people ACTUALLY BELIEVED they were full human beings, their PR people would not have slipped so easily into the glib PR spin that is now being sneezed about by right-wing freepers chanting the planted phrase "blame game," just like earlier this year they chanted "up or down vote up or down vote" like trained parrots.

Do you think they are actually PROUD to be trained parrots?

Anima

ps here's a transcript of that bit from Keith Olbermann:

Olbermann's intro:

"Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, the thought may have already crossed your mind: Is this disconnect between the two sides simply political, or have the members of each policy simply begun to inhabit separate and mutually exclusive planes of existence -- you know, like separate universes?

Perhaps a simple recap of who has said what when since the advent of Hurricane Katrina might help bring us all back to the same solar system."

Here is the video. As Crooks and Liars says, "how in God's name could our President say something so false that is so well documented on national TV?"

Gas Prices

Coffenut

WOW, check this out! South African anti-rape condom hooks sharp barbs into the penis

Link: Stuff.co.nz: South African anti-rape condom aims to stop attacks.

This looks like it comes from Reuters. The photo does at least.

South African anti-rape condom aims to stop attacks

02 September 2005

KLEINMOND: A South African inventor has unveiled a new anti-rape female condom that hooks onto an attacker's penis and aims to cut one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world.

"Nothing has ever been done to help a woman so that she does not get raped and I thought it was high time," Sonette Ehlers, 57, said of the "rapex", a device worn like a tampon that has sparked controversy in a country used to daily reports of violent crime.

Police statistics show more than 50,000 rapes are reported every year, while experts say the real figure could be four times that as they say most rapes of acquaintances or children are never reported.

Ehlers said the "rapex" hooks onto the rapist's skin, allowing the victim time to escape and helping to identify perpetrators.

"He will obviously be too pre-occupied at this stage," she told reporters in Kleinmond, a small holiday village about 100km east of Cape Town. "I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital."

The device, made of latex and held firm by shafts of sharp barbs, can only be removed from the man through surgery which will alert hospital staff, and ultimately, the police, she said.

It also reduces the chances of a woman falling pregnant or contracting Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases from the attacker by acting in the same way as a female condom.

[...]

Ehlers, who showed off a prototype yesterday, said women had tried it for comfort and it had been tested on a plastic male model but not yet on a live man. Production was planned to start next year.

But the "rapex" has raised fears amongst anti-rape activists that it could escalate violence against women.

[...]

Other critics say the condom is mediaeval and barbaric – an accusation Ehlers says should be directed rather at the act of rape.

"This is not about vengeance ... but the deed, that is what I hate," she said.

Anima

Once "Top Gun" in a codpiece, Bush "Jumps the Couch" like Tom Cruise too?

Maureen Dowd has some fun in the New York Times, but serious issues behind the lightness. She compares the president's August vacation antics to Tom Cruise nuttiness in jumping on that couch, and with another one of my favorite metaphors, compares the Rovian "non-reality-based universe" to the original version of Cinderella, where the ugly stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to jam them into the "reality" of the glass slipper.

Link: Bike-Deep in the Big Muddy - New York Times.

Op-Ed Columnist

Bike-Deep in the Big Muddy

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 27, 2005
WASHINGTON

W. has jumped the couch.

Not fallen off the couch, as he did when he choked on that pretzel.

Jumped it.

According to UrbanDictionary.com, "jump the couch" has now become slang for "a defining moment when you know someone has gone off the deep end. Inspired by Tom Cruise's recent behavior on 'Oprah.' Also see 'jump the shark.' "

The former stateside National Guardsman who was sometimes M.I.A. jumped the shark by landing on that "Mission Accomplished" carrier. (With Tom Cruise cockiness.)

Then, as president, he jumped the couch by pedaling through the guns of August - the growing carnage and chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He did do a few minutes of work this month, calling a Shiite leader in Baghdad a few days ago to lobby him to reach a consensus with the Sunnis, so Iraq doesn't crack apart. But the Shiites and Kurds ignored the president and skewered the Sunnis.

Iraq, it turns out, is the one branch of American government that the Republicans don't control.

W. had a barbecue for the press on Thursday night. (If only the press had grilled him instead.) He mingled over catfish and potato salad with the reporters, who had to ride past Cindy Sheehan's antiwar encampment to get to the poolside party.

Yeah, but did any of them STOP?

Dan Froomkin wrote on the Washington Post Web site that many of the reporters "fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved." W. chatted about sports and the twins, still oblivious to the cultural shift that is turning 2005 into 1968.

[...]

Gary Hart began his Washington Post op-ed piece this week by quoting from an anti-Vietnam War song, "Waist-deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said to push on."

The former campaign manager for George McGovern's antiwar campaign in 1972 wrote: "We've stumbled into a hornet's nest. We've weakened ourselves at home and in the world. We are less secure today than before this war began. Who now has the courage to say this?"

[...]

You'd think that by now, watching the meshugas in Iraq, the Bush crowd would have learned some lessons about twisting facts to suit ideology, and punishing those who try to tell the truth. But they're still behaving like Cinderella's evil stepsisters, who cut their feet to fit them into the glass slipper: butchering reality to make the fairy tale come out their way.

Eric Lichtblau reported in The Times this week that the administration was dumping the highly respected Lawrence Greenfeld, appointed by President Bush in 2001 to head the Bureau of Justice Statistics, because he refused superiors' orders to delete from a press release an account of how black and Hispanic drivers were treated more aggressively by the police after traffic stops. The Justice Department study showed markedly higher rates of searches and use of force for black and Hispanic drivers, compared with white drivers.

Fearing that the survey would give ammunition to members of Congress who object to using racial and ethnic data in terrorism and law enforcement investigations, Mr. Greenfeld's supervisors buried it online with no press release or briefing for Congress.

[...]

This last bit is just so telling. The party-line enforcement and goose-stepping has evolved to the point where they can have mini-Saturday Night Massacres and not even make a public announcement of the firing.

Question: if a Republican underling is fired for not altering reports to hide uncomfortably racist findings, and they don't tell anyone, did it really happen? In the "non-reality-based universe"?

And when those in charge of a party that claims not only NOT to be racist, but even supporting Hispanics (with a Hispanic Attorney General, no less!) goes out of its way to hide a blatantly racist bias, does that get added to the list of racist Republican acts for which the party can be held accountable for in the next election?

Anima

A place where women rule

This is so exciting to learn about!

Link: A place where women rule - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com.

A place where women rule

All-female Kenyan village points to burgeoning feminism in Africa

By Emily Wax
Photo by Emily Wax / The Washington Post

Kenyan female leader Rebecca Lolosoli is trying to help gain rights for her all-female village.

Updated: 1:29 a.m. ET July 9, 2005

UMOJA, Kenya - Seated cross-legged on tan sisal mats in the shade, Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of a village for women only, took the hand of a frightened, 13-year-old girl. The child was expected to wed a man nearly three times her age, and Lolosoli told her she didn't have to.

The man was Lolosoli's brother, but that didn't matter. This is a patch of Africa where women rule.

"You are a small girl. He is an old man," said Lolosoli, who gives haven to young girls running from forced marriages. "Women don't have to put up with this nonsense anymore."

Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umjoa, which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community.

Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic and self-assured woman with a crown of puffy dark hair, decided no men would be allowed to live in their circular village of mud- and-dung huts.

In an act of spite, the men of her tribe started their own village across the way, often monitoring activities in Umjoa and spying on their female counterparts.

Role reversal

What started as a group of homeless women looking for a place of their own became a successful and happy village. About three dozen women live here, and run a cultural center and camping site for tourists visiting the adjacent Samburu National Reserve. Umjoa has flourished, eventually attracting so many women seeking help that they even hired men to haul firewood, traditionally women's work.

The men in the rival village also attempted to build a tourist and cultural center, but were not very successful.

But the women felt empowered with the revenue from the camping site and their cultural center, where they sell crafts. They were able to send their children to school for the first time, eat well and reject male demands for their daughters' circumcision and marriage.

[...]

Feminism spreads across continent

In a mix of African women's gumption and the trickling in of influences from the outside world, a version of feminism has grown progressively alongside extreme levels of sexual violence, the battle against HIV-AIDS, and the aftermath of African wars, all of which have changed the role of women in surprising ways.

A package of new laws has been presented to Kenya's parliament, intended to give women unprecedented rights to refuse marriage proposals, fight sexual harassment in the workplace, reject genital mutilation and to prosecute rape, an act so frequent that Kenyan leaders call it the nation's biggest human rights issue. The most severe penalty, known as the "chemical castration bill," would castrate repeatedly convicted rapists and send them to prison for life.

[...]

When she came back to Kenya, armed with ideas and empowerment training workbooks, she stood her ground even when some of the men filed a court case against her, seeking to shut down the village.

"I would just ignore the men when they threw stones at me and ask, 'Are you okay, are your children okay, are your cows okay,' " she said. Her tactic and calm reaction was disarming, she recalled. "After everything, they weren't going to stop us."

Lolosoli is still battling her brother over his attempt to marry the 13-year-old.

But lately, the residents of the men's village have been admitting defeat. They are no longer trying to attract tourists. Some have moved elsewhere. Others have had trouble getting married, because some women in the area are taking Lolosoli's example to heart.

[...]

Coffenut

Comeuppance

Someone (Logan Darrow Clements) has decided that it would be of greater financial benefit to
the community build a hotel rather than to leave a plot of New Hampshire land under private ownership.

Under a recent Supreme Court ruling, such an act may be lawful under "eminent domain."

The good part? It's the land which now supports Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter's home.

Here's the press release:

http://www.freestarmedia.com/hotellostliberty2.html

For Release Monday, June 27 to New Hampshire media
For Release Tuesday, June 28 to all other media

Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB) Could a hotel be built on the land owned
by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme
Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow
it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a
hotel on Souter's land.

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision
allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give
it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or
other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip
Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New
Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on
34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's
home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of
Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits
with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own
the land.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature
the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public,
featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America.
Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn
Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular
piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone
largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five
people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the
power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin
our hotel development."

Clements' plan is to raise investment capital from wealthy pro-liberty
investors and draw up architectural plans. These plans would then be
used to raise investment capital for the project. Clements hopes that
regular customers of the hotel might include supporters of the
Institute For Justice and participants in the Free State Project among
others.

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Logan Darrow Clements
Freestar Media, LLC