Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

http://mysticbourgeoisie.blogspot.com/2 ... ience.html

New Age "Asiatic" thought ... is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. (Zizek)


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27

I AM HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE




Oh no. I just got my Namaste newsletter from Tupak Okra and... oh god this is terrible... he's moving in! Just down the road from where I live. Less than ten miles from here. Even worse, he thinks we are one. I know that he's one, but he should speak for himself.

Here, from the "press kit," is the lovely Ananda complex. That's the Westin hotel on the right. I've gone here with my daughter, Selene, dangled my feet in the water, fed the ducks. Now it's going to be crawling with the absolute dregs of the Mystic Bourgeoisie. It's like what? Boulder wasn't bad enough? Now I know that, if there's a God, It hates me.

The following are clips from the "press kit," along with a few interpolated remarks. I think you'll be able to tell which parts are mine and which parts are from the Ananda condo-bondage folks.


Every aspect of the design of the Rocky Mountain Chopra Center and Spa will encourage you to explore your true nature, which is infinite, miraculous, and whole. i invite you to join us at the center and experience the ocean of peace, harmony, and love that lies deep within your being.
~ Deepak Chopra


LIFESTYLE AT ANANDA

Namaste. Welcome to Ananda, Colorado’s premier wellness destination, a true home for relaxation, recreation and inspiration.

There goes the neighborhood.

Translated from ancient Sanskrit, Ananda means joyful bliss. Anyone breathing the crisp Rocky Mountain air, meditating in the abundant Colorado sunshine or enjoying Westminster’s open spaces knows how fortunate he or she is to own a part of it.

Translated from ancient Sanskrit, Westminster means strip mall with a 24-screen multiplex -- a great place to boot up a little crank on a Saturday night at Ricky's All Day Grill, discover the open space between your ears. Cop a blissful part of that scene, motherfucker!


Inspired by the colors and textures of Colorado’s high plains, Ananda is a collection of luxury residences, Colorado’s only Chopra Center & Spa, and retail space over-looking a calming lake and connected by tree lined pedestrian paths to the Westin Hotel and the Westminster Promenade.

Ranging from the mid $200’s to over one million dollars, Ananda’s executive studios and dramatic one, two, and three bedroom floor plans capture the spirit of the Rocky Mountains with soulful spaces, appealing atmospheres and inspired lifestyles balanced with services, amenities and recreation.




Yeah, the place'll make you feel like a million bucks -- lighter. But hey, what's money when your spiritual well being is at stake? What are you, some sort of crass materialist? Just look at this pure whiteblond Aryan Brahman caste woman communing with Nature. She's getting her needs met simply by premeditating her next move in the Now. In an inner, holistic kind of way, she is watching the detectives. She's filing her nails as they're dragging the lake... And you? All you can think about is money. Or how much you'd like to light up her chakras with your serpent power. You should be ashamed of yourself.

The Rocky Mountain Chopra Center and Spa is designed to heal, renew and invigorate your mind, body and soul by infusing a soothing environment with a highly trained staff of therapists and trainers.

Good. I'm going to need a highly trained staff of therapists once these bastards move in.

The blending of medicine, psychology, and philosophy, the centuries-old Ayurvedic techniques used at the Rocky Mountain Chopra Center and Spa help you identify your optimal mind and body balance.

Smoke lots of cigarettes and eat as many cheeseburgers as possible. Am I getting warmer? Anyway, it goes on... So I'll just leave you with this suitable for framing portrait of Mr. Wonderful himself...

[American Dream]

Shaking the Money Tree

From Amway to Equinox, multilevel marketing schemes have won 7 million devotees on the promise of unlimited wealth and freedom. But when the numbers don't add up, distributors lose more than their dreams.

By Ami Chen Mills





MY EXPERIENCE with multilevel marketing began with Mark, the classified sales rep in a small newspaper office where I once worked. After an unremarkable stint at an ad desk, Mark announced that he had struck gold--and was leaving us to make a fortune in his own business.

He would work for the Boss Man no more, and we who stayed behind would regret our miserable lives when, in a few years, Mark* tore himself away from the country club to visit, and paid for lunch with a tiny fraction of his $50,000-a-month salary.

"You'll be sorry," he said on strolls to and from the taqueria for our usual low-budget burritos. "You'll see." Mark was suffering from an acute case of Americandreamitis, the symptoms of which first surfaced, as he now tells it, at a recruiting meeting in Santa Cruz for Equinox distributors. For two months, the only language Mark could speak was the language of Equinox International, an ostensible environmental and health company which produces herbal supplements, water filters and other sucking and sifting gadgets to ward off air- and water-borne toxins. Yet the miraculous Equinox products were not the main event for Mark. Rather, Equinox and its executive progeny had convinced Mark that if he did not sign up to become an Equinox distributor right away, he would be squashed flat by the thundering steam train they call the Opportunity of a Lifetime.

When we coworkers learned that Mark had already maxed out two credit cards to fly to Equinox "training seminars" in Portland, Denver and Hawaii, when we learned Mark was preparing to take out a $5,000 loan to buy into the company as a "manager," we each decided to take our turn with Mark, to talk some sense into the boy.

My own conversation with Mark took place in the office after hours, and went something along the lines of, "So, are you sure you can make all that money? "

"Oh yeah, no problems." Mark looked at me askance, considering something, then retrieved a magazine from his desk. "Look at this," he said, flipping through pages filled with pictures of Equinox founder Bill Gouldd. (The extra "d" was added by Gouldd according the advice of a "spiritual adviser." Mark told me it stood for "dollars.") There was Bill Gouldd next to his sports car collection. There was Bill Gouldd at his expansive mansion on a hill. There was Bill Gouldd with a buxom blonde at his side. According to the magazine, there was no doubt that Bill Gouldd was making money.

My next approach was to question the fundamental premise of multilevel marketing, the sketchy business of selling not a product, but a dream. The conversation was making Mark uncomfortable. I saw a flash of panic in his eyes before they glazed over. Then he said this: "They told us there'd be ripe apples who are ready--who see it. They told us there'd be green apples that weren't ripe yet. And they told us there'd be rotten apples. ... You're a rotten apple," he said. There was an uncomfortable silence. I smiled thinly and suggested we both go home.

Multilevel Madness

MULTILEVEL marketing, according to practitioners, is poised to take over the world. According to their predictions, multilevel, or network, marketing will emerge as the dominant marketing system as the dinosaur called corporate America (the "real" pyramid scheme) runs out of prey.

While some people make money in multilevels, many more lose out--sometimes big--in an industry that walks, talks and smells like a pyramid, but keeps insisting that it's not. Despite scores of investigations against MLMs like Destiny Telecomm and lawsuits against Amway, Nuskin, Herbalife, and Equinox, multilevels continue to thrive, with limited regulation in sight.

Multilevel marketing companies, or MLMs, as they are called in industry parlance, operate under their own set of guidelines. In 1979, the Federal Trade Commission determined that although the multilevel company Amway engaged in deceptive practices, as long as profits were made through the sale of product, the company could continue to operate within the law. As a result, MLM companies have developed extensive product lines which they sell to new distributors who are, in turn, expected to retail the product to others, earning a small profit. If the whole thing ended there, MLMs would be confined to the relatively innocuous world of direct sales with companies like Kirby Vacuum and Avon.

But in a multilevel marketing company, to make the big bucks, distributors must also recruit others into their distribution network, or "downline," and receive commissions on the wholesale sale of product to members of their downline. You tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on. Top executives in an MLM are paid by lower-ranking distributors, from the bottom up, rather than the other way around. Ideally, and if dreams come true, you end up sitting fat and pretty on top of a huge pyramid of distributors, all of whom are shelling out a percentage of their incomes to you. MLM distributors claim fantastic salaries ranging from $1,000 to $100,000 to even $1 million a month. Long after they've quit the game, "residual" income, they say, will see them through lengthy and luxurious retirements. (According to company disclosures, Equinox distributors make an average $756 per year, or $63 dollars a month. Amway distributors, $88--before product purchase costs.)

MLMs sell everything from airline tickets to shark cartilage to Super Blue-Green Algae. The companies cater to graying baby boomers by offering a plethora of anti-aging, herbalish and miraculous-sounding antidotes to death. Many play on fears of environmental degradation while offering up the pristine egg of perfect health and eternal youth. In so doing, multilevel marketers have fused two seemingly incompatible concerns: an ostensible passion for health and environmental protection with an unabashed lust for money--and lots of it.

Continues at: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro ... -9640.html

[American Dream]

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article- ... nergy.html

"Money is just spiritual energy": incorporating the New Age.

Journal of Popular Culture
March 22, 2002 | Aldred, Lisa

"Visualize Prosperity Now": New Age Conceptions of Money

One of the most popular channeled beings in the New Age movement is a spirit named Lazarus, channeled by a former insurance salesman. (1) At one of Lazarus' seminars, a man from Brazil stated that he wanted to become a psychic healer, but he was reluctant to charge money for his services. The man elaborated, "In my country, the people believe that you lose your spiritual power if you charge money for your service. They say you are supposed to do spiritual services for free" (D'Antonio 112).

Lazarus replied as follows:

Everything that exists is really a spiritual vibration, an illusion. To separate money and say it's not spiritual is wrong. You can have all of it you want and still have spirituality. It's like little girls and boys playing tea party. Do they ever run out of tea? No! Money is the same way. You can have all you want. (D'Antonio 112)

When the Brazilian man still wasn't convinced, Lazurus took a different tack. "Your problem," quipped Lazurus, "is you live in a whole country of martyrs who denied themselves life's abundance. That's why you were born there. Martyrdom and guilt are your big problems to tackle in this lifetime" (D'Antonio 112). Lazarus then noted that he made millions a year from his corporation, allowing him to live in ways which he had never dreamt of. Indeed Concept: Synergy, the company that markets Lazarus, generates millions of dollars annually from seminars, telephone counseling, and merchandise sales. The Lazarus Materials, comprised of books, audio tapes and videos, deal with a variety of "spiritual" matters including "how to make money."

The term "New Age" is often used to refer to a movement which emerged in the eighties. Its adherents ascribe to an eclectic amalgamation of beliefs and practices, often hybridized from various cultures. New Agers tend to focus on what they refer to as personal transformation and spiritual growth. Many of them envision a literal "New Age." This "New Age" is described as a period of massive change in the future when people will live in harmony with nature and each other. They will realize the full extent of human potential, including spiritual growth, the development of psychic abilities, and optimum physical health through alternative healing. However, most New Agers contend that this transformation will not take place through concerted political change directed at existing. structures and institutions. Rather, it will be achieved through individual personal transformation.

There is a wide and burgeoning number of practices associated with the New Age, including interests in shamanism, Native American spiritual traditions, goddess worship, Eastern religions, crystals, pagan rituals, extraterrestrials, and channeling spirit beings. Estimates of the number of people affiliated with the New Age run from ten to thirty-four million. (1) By all indications, affiliation with the New Age and its ideas is continuing to increase. New Agers in this county are largely upper-middle-class to middle-class Anglo baby-boomers with a college education. The New Age Journal reported that 91% of its subscribers are college educated with an average household income of approximately $42,000 a year (Wilson 134).

In general, the New Age movement is characterized as a counter-cultural movement. Many baby-boomers who formerly identified with the hippie movement have now linked up with the New Age. Most people who have joined the New Age movement believe it offers alternatives to mainstream culture. Nevertheless, I would characterize the New Age as primarily a consumerist movement, that despite "exotic" practices and search for alternative spiritualities, reinforces consumer capitalist values. As Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon observe in America: The Sorcerer's New Apprentice, "Beneath the seemingly sincere doublespeak about higher consciousness, enlightenment, astral travel, infinite psychic powers, and cosmic law, blatant bottom-line materialistic profitability plays a large part in the new spirituality".

[Emphasis added].

[Allegro]

.
Yes, “God” will love you (more), will pay attention to your needs and your continual success— thus, you will demonstrate the strength of your faith unto “God” by the amounts of money you offer (unto him), of course, in the name of Jesus. (Amen.)
Which leads to this documentary.

The Prosperity Gospel | Prosperity Theology
— Fourth Line Films Production



[YOUTUBE NOTES.] In November [2009] the Global Conversation [focused] on the prosperity gospel—the teaching that true Christian faith results in material wealth and physical well-being. While it has its roots in America, it has found fertile soil on other continents as well. To accompany the lead article in Christianity Today by Ghanaian scholar Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, director Nathan Clarke went to Ghana to explore the forms the prosperity gospel takes in that West African nation. [SEE BACK STORY.]

[REFER.] [REFER 10/40 WINDOW.]

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

The economic/racial dimensions of prison rape in the United States should be obvious...


Prison Rape, the PREA, and the PLRA

MARCH 7, 2011

by Jennifer Wedekin

An estimated 88,500 adult inmates — 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of jail inmates — reported at least one instance of sexual victimization in the previous year, according to a 2010 Bureau of Justice Statistics report. At a Hughes Unit prison in Texas, the facility with the highest rates of reported victimization, 8.6 percent of inmates reported being sexually assaulted by another inmate. Sexual victimization by guards is equally as prevalent. In the Crossroads Correctional Facility in Missouri, the male facility with the highest rates of guard sexual misconduct, 8.2 percent of inmates reported being victimized. At the women’s Bayview Correctional Facility in New York, 11.5 percent of inmates reported sexual victimization by guards.

When a prisoner comes forward and reports a sexual assault, he or she is more likely to face retribution than redress. Complaining prisoners frequently face retaliatory harassment, discipline or further abuse. A full 25 percent of inmate victims are summarily sent to solitary confinement, according to the Department of Justice’s own numbers.

In a notable 2003 case, Human Rights Watch reported that sixteen female inmates filed suit alleging systematic sexual abuse by prison staff, including forcible rape, coerced sexual activity, oral and anal sodomy, and forced pregnancies. The federal court hearing the case refused to address the merits, instead taking nearly five years to conclude that the women’s use of informal reporting procedures provided by the prison resulted in a failure to adequately exhaust all administrative remedies.

http://solitarywatch.com/2011/03/07/pri ... -the-plra/

[American Dream]

.


Evaluating the Drug War on Its 40th Birthday, by the Numbers

[American Dream]

http://peaceandfreedom.org/blog/?p=4738

Socialists Should Oppose Child Abuse & Sexual Predation

Posted January 9, 2011

By Relf Alison Star & Bob Maschi


Socialists have a long history of defending the rights of children. From child labor laws to universal education to health care and nutrition assistance, socialists have fought for the protection and safety of young people. While capitalism views children as just one more commodity – the private property of parents or whoever else can afford them – feminist-socialists view children as individuals who merit protection. We have and should speak for those who have no voice.

Instances of child sexual abuse are very real and, possibly, a product of capitalism and patriarchy. But are we committed to protecting our children from sexual predators? While the left generally takes a liberal attitude toward sex, this should not be confused with the accompanying power differential that accompanies pedophilia (sexual acts with children prior to puberty) or ephebophilia (sexual acts with children after puberty).

The issues of child abuse and sexual predation are deeply tied to feminism. The patriarchal relationship of women and men largely mirrors the relationship between a predator and child. Only on a minor level is child molestation pursued for sexual gratification. The real goal is to wield power in an effort to dominate, manipulate and control the victim.

Older (and primarily) male attraction to young girls is encouraged by our corporate culture. Young women are objectified in our media advertising while older women are tossed aside for ‘newer’ models (we are aware of the pun). Because of this corporate brainwashing, men might be forgiven for feeling that a woman of 18 is more attractive than a woman of 40, for no other reason than for age. But that cannot blur the line between appeal and action. For adult males to act out on these feelings, to pursue women who might, or might not, be ‘of age’ is a foul capitulation to sick, capitalist mores.

The serious and negative effects of molestation on children are well documented. While the predator can walk away, the memories remain for the child’s entire life via post-traumatic stress disorder. At the time of the sexual abuse the child may even consent to the acts. And, surely, many young people (themselves usually underage) would claim that they do have the maturity to make these sexual decisions. But according to the American Psychiatric Association, “children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults.” It is that plain and that simple.

Feminist socialists must beware of this issue, insuring that there is no hypocrisy in their positions. For example, we understand the corrupting influence that capitalism has on individuals. Under certain conditions, our society accepts murder and torture and encourages rape and molestation. We therefore understand that the criminal (in)justice system is inherently corrupt. When awakened to these facts, people can change while accepting responsibility for prior acts and being remorseful for those acts. Socialists should be able to accept that.

Unfortunately, most people engaged in child molestation do not show remorse. From their privileged view they claim themselves the victim. They blame the police, the courts and even the child for their own despicable actions. More, they make excuses for their predatory behavior and never attempt to accept responsibility.

Socialists must deal with a variety of social issues. Often, debates are passionate and loud. But this issue and our position on it should not be controversial in the least. Without doubt, these are the positions that any feminist/socialist should wholeheartedly accept.

[American Dream]

Colonialism and the Sexual Exploitation of Canada's First Nations Women

by Jackie Lynne

To cite, use: Lynne, Jackie 1998 "Colonialism and the Sexual Exploitation of Canada's First Nations women," paper presented at the American Psychological Association 106th Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, August 17, 1998.


Street prostitution in the lives of Canadian First Nations women is a fundamental form of sexual oppression whose exploitative roots are located within earlier colonial relations. Historical patriarchal, capitalist relations subjugated First Nations women collectively. This collective sexual oppression, based on gender, created our inferiority as a class of people to both First Nations men and non-First Nations men. The sexual domination of First Nations women has remained unabated to present-day due to patriarchy's stronghold. Thus, it has had, and continues to have profound, and prolonged injurious consequences in First Nations women's lives. This article describes some aspects of the historical rootedness of the sexual exploitation of First Nations women.

First Nations women who have been prostituted are graphic examples of how deeply patriarchy wounds. When sexual oppression is intersected by racism, and capitalism, the wounding worsens--this compounded wounding for First Nations women has occurred for over 500 hundred years.

Several powerful aspects of colonization imposed upon First Nations women which changed our lives were capitalism (mercantalism)., the church, the state, and the military. All these forces systematically created women's subservience to men. For example, European colonizers intended to accumulate capital through the production and circulation of commodities. Fur was the main attraction to Canada, and First Nations women were especially essential to the fur traders. The Europeans used the presence and influence of First Nations women to penetrate new territories and secure new markets. Thus, First Nations women were integral to the creation of commodity production. However, their position in that new society was one of slave. For example, in 1714, a Hudson's Bay Company officer, as part of an expansionist strategy, "obtained" a Chipewyan woman whom he referred to as "slave woman". He "obtained" kept her with him for two years so that she might learn they system of commodity exchange and the value of British goods and private property. She was then sent into the interior to recruit Chipewyan people to come to York Factory and begin trade. Her confinement to the fort was a form of hostage-taking where she was forced to accept the Western values of capital and private property.

As First Nations society became transformed through a policy of capitalism, First Nations women were also sexually commodified (Absolon, Herbert & MacDonald, 1996). Women were purchased through a system of exchange. For example, women were bought by alcohol, and other European goods. In Kathleen Barry's Female Sexual Slavery (1984), she stated:

the traffic in women, like the traffic in drugs or black market babies, depends upon a market ... the demand for sexual service is most significant where men congregate in large groups separated from home and family (p. 70).

In the first century of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), European women were not allowed to travel or to live in Canada known as Rupert's Land at that time. Neither were mixed family formations allowed in or around the fur trade posts (Bourgeault, 1989). This further encouraged relations of domination as European males used First Nations women for sex. Sexual exploitation became so prevalent around Bayside, an officer at York Factory reveals in his 1769 journal: "the worst Brothel House in London is not so common a (stew) as the men's House in this Factory was before I put a stop to it" (Bourgeault, 1989).

Not all men visited brothels. Some took First Nations women as their "country wives", lived with them and had children. While on the surface, this seems a respectable practice, all too often these women and their children were abandoned by the white men at a later date. The phenomenon of the "country wife" was a form of sexual exploitation which was used by the officer class, and was a more subtle form of sexual exploitation. In these relationships, First Nations women were concubines--secondary wives without legal sanctions. These relationships, particularly when First Nations women became dependent on white men, created serious differences between First Nations women, and their culture. "Country wives" and their children were not deemed legitimate property of men by English common law. Therefore; these families were abandoned.

The state-regulated residential school system (an assimilation strategy designed by the state/carried out by the church) has had grave consequences for First Nations culture in general, and women in particular. The residential school system was designed to eradicate Native culture in the process of cultural genocide (Haig-Brown, 1988). The school system was modelled after the United States' industrial schools established for First Nations people known as "aggressive civilization" (Davin, 1879, as, cited in Haig-Brown, 1988, p. 30). The superiority of European culture was the underlying belief inherent in this type of assimilationist policy.

As a tool of assimilation, the residential school system failed, but it was successful in causing irrevocable damage to First Nations culture. Its damaging impact has had serious consequences. Children were held taken from their families and communities and held as captives within these schools. Parental care and guidance were lost and replaced by institutionalized child care characterized by authoritarianism, often to the point of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse "bordering on (and often passing into) the realm of torture, such treatment often being rationalized as discipline by those inflicting it" (Chrisjohn, 1991, p. 169). The legacy of residential schools on the children who attended, their parents, and the subsequent generations, can be described as internalized collective trauma. This type of trauma is the result of separation from family, cultural denigration, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse (Absolon, Herbert & MacDonald, 1996).

Sexual abuse of First Nations children is at crisis proportions. This form of violence is a legacy of colonialism. As previously mentioned, residential schools held First Nations children captives. These children were terrorized sexually with no avenues of escape. When they were allowed to visit their families during holidays, these children often felt increasing loneliness and despair due to a widening sense of cultural estrangement, and abandonment.

Today, there are northern communities in which the entire female population has been sexually assaulted by males who are living in community with them. These men are their brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers. Some of these abusers hold powerful positions on band councils--most of them are held unaccountable for their assaults against their female relatives. Often women feel powerless to effect change, and are threatened with further violence if they attempt to stop the abuse.

In summary, the afore-mentioned historical impact of the market, the military, the church, and the state have created the sexual oppression of First Nations women as a class condition. (Street) prostitution depends upon this class of devalued women.


REFERENCES

Absolon, K. & Herbert, E. & MacDonald, K. (1996). Aboriginal women and treaties proiect. Victoria, B.C.: Ministry of Women's Equality.

Barry, K. (1984). Female sexual slavery. NY: University Press.

Bourgeault, R. (1989). Race, class, and gender: colonial domination of Indian women. In J. Forts et al. (Eds.), Race, class & gender: Bonds and barriers. (2nd ed). Toronto: Jargoned Press,

Chrisjohn, R. (1991). Faith misplaced: Lasting effects of abuse in a First Nations Community. Canadian Journal of Native Education. (18), 1, pp. 161-196.

Haig-Brown, Celia. (1988). Resistance and renewal: First Nations people's experiences of the residential school. Vancouver: U.B.C. Press.

Lynne, Jackie A.M. (1998) "Street prostitution as Sexual Exploitation in First Nations Women's Lives", essay submitted in partial fulfillment of Master of Social Work, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, April.

[American Dream]

http://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/1 ... parenting/

“Feminist Parenting”

bell hooks

Chapter 13, Feminism is for Everybody, South End Press, 2000.

Feminist focus on children was a central component of contemporary radical feminist movement. By raising children without sexism women hoped to create a future world where there would be no need for an anti-sexist movement. Initially the focus on children primarily highlighted sexist sex roles and the way in which they were imposed on children from birth on. Feminist attention to children almost always focused on girl children, on attacking sexist biases and promoting alternative images. Now and then feminists would call attention to the need to raise boys in an anti-sexist manner but for the most part the critique of male patriarchy, the insistence that all men had it better than all women, trickled down. The assumption that boys always had more privilege and power than girls fueled feminists prioritizing a focus on girls.

One of the primary difficulties feminist thinkers faced when confronting sexism within families was that more often than not female parents were the transmitters of sexist thinking. Even in households where no adult male parental caregiver was present, women taught and teach children sexist thinking. Ironically, many people assume that any female-headed household is automatically matriarchal. In actuality women who head households in patriarchal society often feel guilty about the absence of a male figure and are hypervigilant about imparting sexist values to children, especially males. In recent times mainstream conservative pundits have responded to a wellspring of violent acts by young males of all classes and races by suggesting that single women cannot possible raise a healthy male child. This is just simply not true. The facts show that some of the most loving and powerful men in our society were raised by single mothers. Again it must be reiterated that most people assume that a woman raising children alone, especially sons, will fail to teach a male child how to become a patriarchal male. This is simply not the case.

Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cultures of domination children do not have rights. Feminist movement was the first movement for social justice in this society to call attention to the fact that ours is a culture that does not love children, that continues to see children as the property of parents to do with as they will. Adult violence against children is a norm in our society. Problematically, for the most part feminist thinkers have never wanted to call attention to the reality that women are often the primary culprits in everyday violence against children simply because they are the primary parental caregivers. While it was crucial and revolutionary that feminist movement called attention to the fact that male domination in the home often creates an autocracy where men sexually abuse children, the fact is that masses of children are daily abused verbally and physically by women and men. Maternal sadism often leads women to emotionally abuse children, and feminist theory has not yet offered both feminist critique and feminist intervention when the issue is adult female violence against children.

In a culture of domination where children have no civil rights, those who are powerful, adult males and females, can exert autocratic rule of children. All the medical facts show that children are violently abused daily in this society. Much of that abuse is life threatening. Many children die. Women perpetuate this violence as much as men if not more. A serious gap in feminist thinking and practice has been the refusal of the movement to confront head-on adult female violence against children. Emphasizing male domination makes it easy for women, including feminist thinkers, to ignore the ways women abuse children because we have all been socialized to embrace patriarchal thinking, to embrace an ethics of domination which says the powerful have the right to rule over the powerless and can use any means to subordinate them. In the hierarchies of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, male domination of females is condoned, but so is adult domination of children. And no one really wants to call attention to mothers who abuse.

Often I tell the story of being at a fancy dinner party where a woman is describing the way she disciplines her young son by pinching him hard, clamping down on his little flesh for as long as it takes to control him. And how everyone applauded her willingness to be a disciplinarian. I shared the awareness that her behavior was abusive, that she was potentially planting the seeds for this male child to grow up and be abusive to women. Significantly, I told the audience of listeners that if we had heard a man telling us how he just clamps down on a woman’s flesh, pinching her hard to control her behavior it would have been immediately acknowledged as abusive. Yet when a child is being hurt this form of negative domination is condoned. This is not an isolated incident – much more severe violence against children is enacted daily by mothers and fathers.

Indeed the crisis the children of this nation face is that patriarchal thinking clashing with feminist changes is making the family even more of a war zone than it was when male domination was the norm in every household. Feminist movement served as the catalyst, uncovering and revealing the grave extent to which male sexual abuse of children has been and is taking place in the patriarchal family. It started with grown women in feminist movement receiving therapeutic care acknowledging that they were abuse survivors and bringing this acknowledgment out of the private realm of therapy into public discourse. These revelations created the positive ethical and moral context for children to confront abuse taking place in the present. However, simply calling attention to male sexual abuse of children has not created the climate where masses of people understand that this abuse is linked to male domination, that it will end only when patriarchy is eliminated. Male sexual abuse of children happens more often and is reported more often than female abuse, but female sexual coercion of children must be seen as just as horrendous as male abuse. And feminist movement must critique women who abuse as harshly as we critique male abuse. Beyond the realm of sexual abuse, violence against children takes many forms; the most commonplace forms are acts of verbal and psychological abuse.

Abusive shaming lays the foundation for other forms of abuse. Male children are often subjected to abuse when their behavior does not conform to sexist notions of masculinity. They are often shamed by sexist adults (particularly mothers) and other children. When male parental caregivers embody anti-sexist thought and behavior boys and girls have the opportunity to see feminism in action. When feminist thinkers and activists provide children with educational arenas where anti-sexist biases are not the standards used to judge behavior, boys and girls are able to develop healthy self-esteem.

One of the most positive interventions feminist movement made on behalf of children was to create greater cultural awareness of the need for men to participate equally in parenting not just to create gender equity but to build better relationships with children. Future feminist studies will document all the ways anti-sexist male parenting enhances the lives of children. Concurrently, we need to know more about feminist parenting in general, about the practical ways one can raise a child in an anti-sexist environment, and most importantly we need to know more about what type of people the children who are raised in these homes become.

Visionary feminist activists have never denied the importance and value of male parental caregivers even as we continually work to create greater cultural appreciation of motherhood and the work done by women who mother. A disservice is done to all females when praise for male participation in parenting leads to disparagement and devaluation of the positive job of mothering women do. At the beginning of feminist movement feminists were harsh critics of mothering, pitting that task against careers which were deemed more liberating, more self-affirming. However, as early as the mid-’80s some feminist thinkers were challenging feminist devaluation of motherhood and the overvaluation of work outside the home. Writing on this subject in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center I made the point that:

Working within a social context where sexism is still the norm, where there is unnecessary competition promoting envy, distrust, antagonism, and malice between individuals, makes work stressful, frustrating, and often totally unsatisfying … many women who like and enjoy the wage work they do feel that it takes too much of their time, leaving little space for other satisfying pursuits. While work may help women gain a degree of financial independence or even financial self-sufficiency, for most women it has not adequately fulfilled human needs. As a consequence women’s search for fulfilling labor done in an environment of care has led to reemphasizing the importance of family and the positive aspects of motherhood.

Ironically just when feminist thinkers had worked to create a more balanced portrait of mothering patriarchal mainstream culture launched a vicious critique of single-parent, female-headed households. That critique was most harsh when it came to the question of welfare. Ignoring all the data which shows how skillfully loving single mothers parent with very little income whether they receive state assistance or work for a wage, patriarchal critiques call attention to dysfunctional female-headed households, act as though these are the norm, then suggest the problem can be solved if men were in the picture as patriarchal providers and heads of households.

No anti-feminist backlash has been as detrimental to the well-being of children as societal disparagement of single mothers. In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love.

[American Dream]

“The goal of a good society is to structure social relations and institutions so that cooperative and generous impulses are rewarded, while antisocial ones are discouraged. The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment -- or at least much handicap -- to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.”

Michael Parenti

[American Dream]

But see, the thing is quite a few women of color are called sluts. Three recent examples of this, in consideration of what the word means:

1) Slut, meaning a “servant girl,” has her modern-day descendents in the women to do domestic work, be it in a home or in a hotel—like the woman who cleaned former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s room. She may or may not have been a young woman, may or may not have been body-conscious or thought herself as sexy. What I do believe she was conscious of was that doing her job didn’t involve this man allegedly sexually violating her. Strauss-Kahn probably thought the hotel worker he violated was powerless. He thought wrong, as his arrest and subsequent resignation has proven, thanks to the worker going to her union and people supporting her in getting her story in the media.

2) Slut, meaning “a sloppy, dirty, untidy woman,” which is essentially what Massachusetts Representative Ryan Fattman said regarding undocumented women. He said they deserved to live in fear because that’s what they get for living in the US without having their paperwork in order when they arrived. (Considering that the implicit ethnicity in talking about immigrant women are those from Latin America, another stereotype in play is the “spicy Latina” who’s always ready for sex, which tends to render them “unrapeable” because Latinas are naturally "asking for it.") Regardless of age and whether or not immigrant women are sexually self-confident about their bodies, what they are aware of is they are people living and contributing to this country and they are not a readily available group of women people are free to rape with impunity because the women lack paperwork. Their taxes put clothes on the cops’ and Rep. Fattman’s back and food in their bodies, Undocumented or not, that fact alone means the police and the lawmakers are beholden to these women—including responding to their reporting of sexual violence.

3) Slut, meaning a bitch, which tends to get flung at the woman who stands up for herself, like Rihanna did in her video “Man Down.” We can argue and otherwise carry on about her offing her assailant in the video. But, as a woman who survived rape, I completely understand why her character did what she did. That vengeance fantasy goes through many a victim’s and survivor’s mind because our lives are shattered and quite a few of us don’t feel anyone will bring the perpetrator to justice. We’ve seen how the criminal-justice system will let off male perpetrators, including those who had a duty to protect the citizenry from sexual violence. If the System can do that…then, yes, I can empathize with a victim going the way of the gun or needing to spit on their violators’ graves.

http://www.alternet.org/story/151390/do ... age=entire

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

Quoted: Rebecca Walker on Capitalism and Transracial Adoption

by LATOYA PETERSON on SEPTEMBER 30, 2009 ·

It is beautiful that people can open their lives to human beings of any background, but I think that all of us – every human being – runs the risk of being commodified in a hypercapitalist culture. For example, I feel that as a biracial person I have more social currency now that we have a biracial president. So when we think about which bodies have currency, it’s an interesting question.

One of the writers [whose piece] didn’t make it into One Big Happy Family wrote about how the process of adopting a child from another country made her more aware of human trafficking. Ultimately, she had to question whether her child had been put up for adoption or was stolen. If we look at plunging fertility in developed nations and raging underdevelopment and poverty in others, we can see how children can become the ultimate product.

Many people don’t realize that there are more human beings in slavery today than ever before. The discussion of transracial adoptees should be part of a growing awareness about the modern slave trade, but I think the glamourization of them in popular culture often does not lend itself to a deeper dialogue.

— “All In the Family: A Q + A with author Rebecca Walker”, Bitch Magazine, Fall of 2009, interview by our own Nadra Kareem

[American Dream]

http://www.skilluminati.com/Research/en ... nt_complex

The Conspiratainment Complex

Posted Nov 19, 2010



Conspiracy Theory lacks credibility because it has no history. Original research doesn't get cited so much as looted, refitted as filler content to feed new revelations to a hungry audience. They know what they like because they like what they know. It is a product that gets updated for new audiences through a self-selected succession of upstart entrepreneurs. Mae Brussel becomes Lyndon LaRouche becomes Alex Jones.

As a published field, though, Conspiracy Theory has a surprisingly strong foundation. Consider Carroll Quigley's "The Anglo-American Establishment," a masterpiece that completely unravels a powerful, and very real, conspiracy. It's written by an internationally respected Georgetown professor, and it's content has never been disputed. Indeed, it is so meticulously and absurdly detailed that nobody has ever read it. There are lists of names and dates over 10 pages long throughout the text and I find myself skipping whole chapters every time I try and dig in. The information here is seldom referenced today, but it has been co-opted and integrated into the marketplace, too. Professor Quigley becomes Cleon Skousen becomes Glenn Beck.



The signal always gets distorted, degraded...and more popular every time. Dumb is accessible, people like dumb. They like aliens, they like Satanist bad guys, and they like to buy products that signify their secret knowledge. It's hard to exaggerate how hollowed out the Conspiratainment Complex has become in 2010. Conspiracy Theory is literally being taught to Americans on a chalkboard now. Remote Viewing has gone from a classified project to a mini-industry of competing DVD training packages. Even Tila Tequila is tracking the Illuminati's every move these days. This is an emerging demographic and it's going to be extremely important in the next decade.



Consider the rise of Evangelical Christianity as a political force, from the fringes to the frontline. It took decades of negotiations to turn dozens of theological disputes into a single policy platform. Once that machine clicked into place, though, things changed very quickly. This is the social movement that brought us Jimmy Carter and Ralph Reed. It's also the story of a conspiracy, involving hundreds of people, to infiltrate powerful organizations and advance a political agenda. How it happened is the real Political Science.

Jeff Sharlet: Key to the growth of evangelicalism during the last twenty years has been a social structure of “cell groups” that allows churches to grow endlessly while maintaining orthodoxy in their ranks. New Life, for instance, has 1,300 cell groups, or “small groups,” as Pastor Ted prefers to call them. Such a structure is not native to Colorado Springs; in fact, most evangelicals attribute it to Pastor Paul Cho, of South Korea, who has built a congregation of 750,000 using the cell-group structure.

Pastor Ted's insight was in adapting this system for the affluence of the United States. “Free-market globalization” has made us so free, he realized, that an American cell-group system could be mature enough to function just like a market.

In devising New Life's small-group system, Pastor Ted says that he asked himself and his staff a simple question: Do you like your neighbors? And, for that matter, do you even know your neighbors? The answers he got—the Golden Rule to the contrary—were “Not really” and “No.” Okay, said Pastor Ted, so why would you want to be in a small group with them? His point was that arbitrary small groups would make less sense than self-selected groups organized around common interests. Hence New Life members can choose among small groups dedicated to motorcycles, or rock climbing, or homeschooling, or protesting outside abortion clinics.

What, are you too good to learn from Ted Haggard? Anyone who can harness millions of supporters is worth studying and taking seriously. His beliefs are probably not your beliefs, but his goals absolutely are.



In any market, the focus is on "Conversion" -- Baptists want more Baptists, Catholics want more Catholics, and the whole point of 9/11 Truth is to "wake up" the sheeple who haven't seen the light yet. Conversion is a numbers game, and it's been studied scientifically for several centuries, here in the Land of the Free. From Charles Grandison Finney's clinically detailed market testing to the strange duo of Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, there's always been a quiet elite studying how minds get changed. Preaching has been a precise science for longer than modern medicine has even existed. Behind the scenes, from the Great Awakening to the Moral Majority, men have been watching closely and taking notes on everything. Measure, Model, Calculate, Control. Dwight L. Moody taught John Wilbur Chapman taught Billy Sunday.



Real power moves through crooked lines like these. The secret lineage of World Government is more important than the public history. It is more than coincidence that Al Gore and Newt Gingrich were both taught about Toynbee by Alvin Toffler, before they memorized their scripts and walked onstage in the 70s. Alvin Toffler had some zingers of his own, especially the concept of "Ad-hocracy," which describes the flexible and informal power structures that get created by default during times of change and crisis. Conspiracy theory tends towards monolithic explanations, attributing far too much power to far too few people. Political Science assumes the existence of hundreds of co-existing and conflicting conspiracies in any group of over thousand people.



Most real, successful conspiracies are mundane and barely covert: consider the Council for National Policy, an invitation-only Evangelical Conservative influence network with a membership list so powerful it defies belief. What happens when you get Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft into the same room? Throw in Oliver North, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Jesse "33°" Helms, James Dobson, and big money sponsors like Richard DeVos, Holland Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife and Nelson Baker Hunt. Strangely enough, Lawrence McDonald was also a member -- one of the most vocal and powerful members of the John Birch Society was rubbing shoulders with members of the CFR and Trilateral Commission while publicly demanding those same organizations be investigated for treason. He was assassinated in 1983 and like everyone else in this movie, his lineage becomes sadly degraded, as Ron Paul becomes Rand Paul becomes...well, what do you see coming? Look closely.



In 2010, The Watchmen is a superhero movie. In 1918, Les Veilleurs was a superhuman movement. The roots of conspiracy theory and modern Political Science emerge from Synarchy and Fabian Socialism -- but names like Antoine Fabre d'Olivet are not easy on American audiences. Which is unfortunate, because the original Watchmen centered around René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz, one of the most amazing non-fictional characters of his age. There will be more like him, though. Things move too fast for history these days, so the saga of super-scientist Camille Flammarion's secret mission for Rudolf Hess amounts to little more than a neat story now that we're almost a century downstream from aftermath of the first World War. Besides, Les Veilleurs fell to pieces, like most conspiracies do.



Maybe the secret lineage doesn't matter so much after all. Perhaps the dead hand of the past has less influence than we think. The details of how Synarchy was established as a concept, then implemented around the world by dozens of competing conspiracies, probably have no relevance to our situation today. The simple fact It Happened will suffice, as a briefing, because there are more important subjects for us to interact with. Synarchy is not a secret commodity, it's a best-selling business book called The Spider and the Starfish that's been embraced by CEO's and Tea Party organizers in the past year. The New World Order of H.G. Wells has grown into the generic and very exoteric New World Order of market globalization. Fabian Socialism was so successful it became ubiquitous, and even institutionalized as the Council on Foriegn Relations, who openly celebrate their infiltration of US government, business and media.



This is not about which conspiracies are "real," though -- this is about the bigger picture, where dozens of different subcultures have converged into a single market. It was a 20 year process of enterprising graphomaniacs, like Jim Marrs, Graham Hancock and David Icke, synthesizing hundred of books into "Unified Field" conspiracy theories that offered readers a secret history of the entire world.

Today, these competing meta-narratives are blending into a Conspiratainment mainstream, where the largest possible audience meets the lowest common denominator. Roswell is an article of faith, JFK is holy scripture, and 9/11 is the wedge issue and the litmus test. The Apollo 11 mission exists in a Schroedinger-style quantum state where it simultaneously did and did not land on the moon, although the priesthood agrees there was a cover-up, either way.



The concept of the Overton Window is essential, especially now that it's being whitewashed into a generic civics lesson. Joeseph Overton created an important blueprint for successful conspiracies, the Window of Political Possibility. The civics lesson whitewash positions Overton's concept as a theory about public participation in government. The reality is that the Window represents a sandbox which is owned and operated by a small, powerful conspiracy. The job of PR and government operatives is move the Overton Window by establishing the limits of "Acceptable Public Discourse." The conversation should be about how we go to war with Iran, not if we go to war with Iran.

This is an explicit statement about media control. Overton never saw this as a natural process, but as a managed project. It wasn't a social theory so much as it was ad copy for his Mackinac think tank. It's a visualization of what Think Tanks do: taking privately-funded business goals, positioning them as important public policy reforms, and then working with the media to push the message until it becomes normalized enough to pass into law without controversy.

The window is a scale that claims to run from "More Freedom" to "Less Freedom," but this is not a system of measurement. You simply position the policy you don't like as "Less Free," and then you designate your current sponsor's goals on the other end of the spectrum...and through the magic of Framing, Americans aren't less safe, they're "More Free."

That much is true. We're more free every year.



So what will the Conspiratainment Complex grow into? Who is doing the polling work to determine where this emerging demographic stands on The Issues? What is the common ground between Alex Jones and Glenn Beck and Rand Paul? Will Stanton Friedman ever pay for his sins?

More importantly, could all this have played out any other way? People are wise to mistrust "Marketing," but naive to think they'll be able to know it when they see it. Marketing has consumed everything in our culture, and there is no way to build a mainstream political movement without some serious merchandising involved.



"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." That's Andrew Card, talking about the Iraq War. It's too late to mistrust marketing: We won. It's too late to lament about how far we've fallen. Everything is marketing and we have to engage reality. Stickers and shirts, baby. Business cards and style guides and databases, too. The metrics of conversion.



I don't like Ed Dames and Richard Hoagland, but I don't hate them, either. I understand why Richard Dolan made the decisions he's made to get a larger audience for his work. Every single guest on Coast to Coast AM is a true American entrepreneur, trying to find a business model that clicks with the masses. Conspiracy Theory has no history because it's never been about history -- it's about product testing.

These guys are all just doing their jobs. Ultimately, that's the worst I can say about any of them. They're building their email lists and trying to get as much media coverage as possible. They're all doing the same radio shows and conferences. They're all showing up on each other's blogs and podcasts. Thus do you make money in the Conspiratainment Complex. It might be less profitable than mortgage modification, but it's more interesting.

I'm not pointing fingers, I'll sell out eventually, too. Skilluminati becomes MSNBC becomes TMZ. And I'll be selling your email address to the highest bidder, every step of the way. Tell Warren Tompkins I'm coming for him.