There’s always great stuff to read in the PUMAsphere even though it’s summer. Check out my blogroll for the best reality-based news and commentary.
Nicholas Kristof thinks American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were set-up, ironically, by a trafficker or guide to be used as pawns in the US-NK nuclear standoff. This is really appalling and is probably what happened. Follow on Twitter @LiberateLaura and the blog Liberate Laura & Euna Now.
The details of the arrests remain unclear; they have “confessed,” but that is meaningless — who wouldn’t in such circumstances? There have been some suggestions that they wandered accidentally across the border, but that’s not easy to do. I’ve reported three times in that same area along the Tumen, interviewing North Koreans on the Chinese side of the border, and it’s always clear where the border is. That said, people often do cross over deliberately, just inside the border, and there are usually no consequences at all.
Another possibility, which I incline to, is that Ling and Lee may have been sold to North Korea by a local guide. If the guide said that it was safe to cross, or that they were still on Chinese territory, they would have believed him. Moreover, by some accounts they were working on a story about human trafficking — there’s a good deal of trafficking of North Korean women and girls into China, into prostitution and to be wives of peasants — and the traffickers could well have tricked them in exchange for a reward from North Korea. A couple of years ago, I set up an interview with a trafficker in that border area, but then backed out when he demanded money; the traffickers may realize that the people to demand money from aren’t the journalists but the North Korean officials. And at a time of crisis, when it is undergoing a leadership transition and a confrontation with the West, North Korea would probably pay well for a few extra bargaining chips in the form of American journalists.
The Confluence: Could “reform” possibly look worse than what we’ve got?
Party. Unity. My. Ass.
I plan on enjoying every single moment of this. I am not a mean person, a vindictive person, or even a person who needs to be right all the time. But this is just too good to not watch!
So will I. But gotta admit, I AM a vindictive person. I’m also looking forward 3.5 years of Obot-bashing.
alright, i might be a tad vindictive! LOL
New Hampster: “I don’t mind politicians being liars and hypocrites as much as I mind them thinking that we are too stupid to know they’re liars and hypocrites.”
Today, on NPR, Secretary Sebelius said that single payer is not only ‘off the table’ but that the President is considering measures to make sure it does not happen now or ever. Hope and change. He has the White House, House and Senate. There’s no excuse not to push through progressive legislation. It’s all Obama’s fault. Not Republicans, Blue Dogs, Congress, Bush or 11-dimensional chess.
Obama to Extend Benefits to Federal Workers’ Partners but this does not include health benefits. It would take an act of Congress to include health benefits. This guy is incredible. Last night, Bill Maher said if he doesn’t give us health care and other progressive policies, Democrats will lose the House in 2010. I read in Details that Plouffe is making OFA as massive as the election campaign website. He can’t afford health insurance, partners’ health benefits or DOMA because all that money goes towards his re-election. The people get nothing but O.
The Slate ladies have a number of opinions about Sandra Tsing Loh’s Atlantic article against marriage but it’s clear from the article she’s divorcing because she’s overworked, under appreciated by her husband and is essentially a single working mother five months out of the year (her musician husband is away five months out of the year). One cited her children as the problem, another cited books that glamorize marriage and domestic life as the problem. The double bind is the problem and feminism the solution. She shouldn’t diss marriage but look at structural causes and solutions. Tsing Loh tends to take the contrarian view in her writing and is oblivious to structural causes or she misappropriates them to make a contrarian point. The Slate ladies seem pretty annoyed too.
Rebellious Jezebel Blogging is hosting the third Asian Women Blog Carnival entitled, Intersections between Culture and Sexism, and asks a few interesting questions. Cf. this Confluence post.
Ted Rall, Common Dreams: An Early Call for Obama’s Resignation: With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators? Obama and Failbots’ misogyny and race-baiting lost the election. This is a repeat of the propaganda war against the Second Wave in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2008, women ran for President and VP and this threatened the status quo so the MSM and netroots used misogyny and race-baited these women and their supporters. Replace “black men” with Obama and Failbots and “black women” with PUMAs in the following three paragraphs written by Violet:
Feminism has always striven to be inclusive. You can read the minutes of the New York radicals in 1968, the conversations white women were having with black women. Black women were very drawn to feminism, but they were in the midst of a civil rights struggle, too, and they felt like they needed to stay with that. Which of course they did; the civil rights movement was a great uprising of a people. Unlike feminism, which is immensely more complicated because it requires us to interrogate the fundamental structures of our own families.
At any rate, while black women were in sympathy with feminism, black MEN were not. The civil rights movement was notoriously patriarchal and sexist. Some of the first feminists I knew were black women who were in essence refugees from that movement, having learned to their heartbreak that black men had no interest in elevating women. Black men considered feminism a threat — both to their own patriarchal hegemony, and to their civil rights mythos of The Struggle of the Black Man. They accused white feminists of being racists who were trying to brainwash black women into hating their men. They accused black feminists of being race traitors.
It was ugly and mean and wrong, but you know what? Those fuckers won the propaganda war. Those assholes wrote the history books. And now young people actually believe that the Civil Rights movement was all sweetness and light and equality for all, while Second Wave feminists were white racists.
More here, here, here and here. I recommend cutting, pasting and highlighting these three paragraphs and reading these five links so we can win the propaganda war against the Failbots. In the 1960s and 1970s, black patriarchs were threatened by feminism so they called white feminists racist and black feminists race traitors. Propaganda focused on white feminists’ racism not on the misogyny and race-baiting of black patriarchs. In 2008, the black and white patriarchy was threatened by women running for the Presidency and VP and also turned to misogyny and race-baiting. After the 2008 election, I believe Violet when she says Second Wavers were not racist (intersectionality came into play later in the 1980s) because I found no element of PUMA racist like Third Wave and netroots racism. PUMA is very similar to the Second Wave. The Second Wave was made up of leftist and conservative women reacting to sexist, white, male anti-war activists in the 1960s. PUMA is leftist and conservative women reacting to sexist, white, male so-called progressives in 2008. As we know, the Second Wave was the most successful feminist wave in terms of raising consciousness about sexism.
The most racist PEOPLE I ever encountered in my life let alone feminists were white Third Wave commenters on the LJ group, feminist, and the blogs Pandagon and Feministe before intersectionality became cool. There was one racist commenter named MsJane at Feministing where I hung out but it was better than the other two blogs. Netroots commenters were just as racist but I spent less time there. There was never anything in PUMA like the sheer contempt, hatred and racism behind the comments in the Third Wave and netroots. There was never anything like this in PUMA. This is not to be confused with the justified anger and reaction of PUMAs to the abuse from Obama, the DNC, the MSM and Failbots. Similar to how black women must have felt in the CRM. Yes, just a couple years ago, racism was cool in the Third Wave and netroots. This was when POC couldn’t get a word in edgewise about racism in comment sections. Of course, now the Third Wave and netroots overcompensated and gave us Bush III. So, really, the netroots is both extremely racist and sexist and PUMAs are 100% innocent. Just like black women in the CRM.
For a theoretical framework of the race trumps gender, “bros before hos,” misogynist, race-baiting mentality that lost the election, I recommend Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice as the problem and Michele Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, Elaine Brown’s A Taste of Power and Angela Davis’ autobiography, which combine feminism and anti-racism, as the solution. Cleaver was a prominent leader of the Black Panther Party. If you read Wallace and Brown’s accounts, you will see the black patriarchs were 100% at fault and black women were 100% innocent. Like the last paragraph of the quote says, propaganda made the CRM sweetness and light and white women racists. Similarly, Failbots are 100% guilty of misogyny and race-baiting and PUMAs are 100% innocent but their propaganda is the exact opposite. Obama and male and female Failbots of all colors morphed into Eldridge Cleavers and Daniel Patrick Moynihans who came up with the matriarchy myth to blame black women for black men and women’s problems. Male and female Failbots of all colors are Eldridge Cleavers and Daniel Patrick Moynihans who oppress women while calling them racists and traitors. Women Failbots who deny Obama was sexist or that there was sexism in 2008 and 2009 morphed into black and white patriarchs so call them black and white patriarchs, Eldridge Cleavers, Daniel Patrick Moynihans and oppressors whenever they do that and read those five links. I have little patience for sexist men but even less for women gender sellouts. I’m really tired of this Axelrovian propaganda straight out of the 1970s.
The double standard from Obama, the DNC, the MSM and Failbots in 2008 and 2009 is the main way in which Obama and the left were sexist. The double standard continues unabated today because Obama and Failbots would not treat PUMAs this way if we were mostly men instead of women. If we were mostly men, Obama, the DNC, the MSM and Failbots would have addressed our concerns from the beginning. PUMAs are the abused black women in the Black Panther Party. Makes sense. Pumas are panthers and vice versa. Spread this meme and we will win the propaganda war against the Failbots because if you say “black,” get the faux anti-racist guilt up and they recognize the accuracy of the parallel, they will apologize.
Howard Zinn, The Progressive: Obama has to be pulled in the right direction. The poor people’s historian knows what’s going on. Where have they been hiding him? This is transcribed from a February 2009 talk. Oh right, Zinn, with his extensive anti-racism background would have been a racist if they published it four months ago. Watch the Failbots try to throw the author of A People’s History of the United States and The Zinn Reader (there’s a must-read) under the bus. If they stop calling people racists, we might be able to save Social Security and single-payer.
Paul Street, ZMag: The Dawning Age of Obama as a Potentially Teach-able Moment for The Left
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive: Behind Obama’s Beautiful Rhetoric
LA Times: Muslims not sure President Obama’s speech means real change
Noam Chomsky: Chomsky on Obama Speech
Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to ‘point fingers’ at each other or to ’see this conflict only from one side or the other.’ There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.
Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.
Avedon:
The public option idea isn’t a way to move us to Medicare-for-All, it’s a way to keep the insurance leeches in business.
The 80-member Congressional Progressive Caucus and 41-member Congressional Black Caucus both favor single-payer. That’s why Obama opposes it. He’s not progressive, liberal or a Democrat.
Stanley Fish: Yes I Can
SUGAR is on Twitter. Watch out.
The Confluence: Not so fast with the primaries, Atrios
The Confluence: We Told You So!
Another day, another broken promise:
The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to the Pentagon policy forbidding gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, granting a request by the Obama administration. [...]
During last year’s campaign, President Barack Obama indicated he supported the eventual repeal of the policy, but he has made no specific move to do so since taking office in January. Meanwhile, the White House has said it won’t stop gays and lesbians from being dismissed from the military.
Well it’s good to know our red-blooded warriors won’t have to worry about catching teh gay from a toilet seat while they are keeping the world safe for democracy.
(Cue the Obots Failbots explaining that this is more “11-dimensional chess)
Here’s a tip from Arthur Silber:
Don’t try to keep a list of all of Obama’s broken “promises.” Instead, keep a list of the promises you think he made that he’s kept. In this manner, your work will be brief and undemanding.
At the moment, I can’t think of a single issue of importance that would appear on a list of promises Obama wanted us to believe he was making, and that he has kept. Not even one.
Nonetheless, he has kept one commitment, the overriding one that was obvious from the beginning but that he notably restrained himself from offering explicitly: that he would faithfully serve the interests of the ruling class, that he would increase their already massive power and wealth still more, and that he would entrench them and their particular interests so that they would become impervious to all serious challenge.
The Confluence: The Low Road 2008 and We Own Our Votes. myiq2xu is spot on.
Conflucians Say on the blogosphere.
The Confluence: Obama on “Women’s Rights” in His Speech in Cairo, Egypt. Really excellent.
The Confluence: Book Review: The Bloggers on the Bus. A great overview of the blogosphere in 2008.
Widdershins: We need some fun! Amazing tree-climbing Moroccan goats.
Widdershins: I Won’t Dance; Don’t Ask Me. A must-read.
PUMA United Radio on the day democracy officially died and building our movement. People on the left are starting to understand where we’re coming from.
The Left Coaster: Bloggers on the Bus: A Conversation with Eric Boehlert – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. You can tell from comment sections the left is no longer into Obama and merely repeats Obama’s inspiring 2012 slogan: “At least he’s not McCain.” They went from, “Yes, we can!” “Hope! Change! Progress!” and “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!” to “At least he’s not McCain” in four months.
The bottom line to me is simple. The progressive movement in the United States might be very effective in fighting Republicans and electing Democrats to office but it is nowhere near being able to drive a truly progressive agenda in some key areas. The main reason for this is that many of the key players in this movement are not really leaders. It remains to be seen how that changes in the coming years.
The real leaders are on my blogroll. We were right about everything regarding Obama, the election and the blogosphere but no one listened to us because we are mostly women.
The Left Coaster: The State of the Progressive Movement.
At the FDL book salon with Boehlert, Dakinikat and myiq2xu asked the best questions and got the best answers. The left is starting to understand where we’re coming from.
From a June 4 Feministing post called “What Are Civil Rights Leaders Saying About the Murder of Dr. Tiller?” emphasis mine.
While abortion is rarely seen as a civil rights issue, the dismantling of Roe v. Wade would have dire consequences for African-American women. [...]
While organizations such as Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI), Black Women for Reproductive Justice (BWRJ) and the Third Wave Foundation are in the foreground of the fight for reproductive justice as a social justice, racially progressive mainstream organizations, such as the NAACP, have yet to incorporate black women’s “right to choose” as a fundamental part of their civil rights agendas.
Go read the rest. This is a really powerful argument for why many black leaders should take a stance on reproductive rights because of the unique implications for black women. At a certain point we have to stop being scared and hold our community leaders accountable for the things they are saying and the impact that has on our communities. The agenda for women’s rights and the agenda for civil rights has to overlap at a certain point. That said, I don’t necessarily think of the NAACP as the center of progressive anti-racist activism, similar to how I don’t really see many mainstream feminist groups as having a truly intersectional approach. But this is one way they both could move towards the direction of justice, as opposed to a solely identity politics based approach, playing to the common denominator.
Like the Cairo speech, there is too much fear of offending men of color. Sexism is still acceptable, racism is not. Intolerance should not be tolerated. I wrote 93 posts about feminism in communities of color but because WOC are viewed as a monolith, an issue is only important when it affects black women.
