Study: Everyone loves feminists and environmentalists!

[JackRiddler]

Here is an environmentalist:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpkRvc-sOKk

Oh look! She's got a whole bunch more videos in the same style.

http://www.youtube.com/user/storyofstuf ... ture=watch

Here's her original "Story" video:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

I bet she's a feminist! Untucked shirt! Hot! No bullshit! Straight talk from her brain to your heart. Love her!

Everyone loves her, studies show!

[Rory]

I like her presentation (re game changing) and will look at the others later.

I do think she is very optimistic and somewhat wishful thinking - of course if everyone pulls together and worked towards a non-growth, non-consumer waste future then we have a shot at future generations living and loving better than today.

I like her style though and think there is much good from changing goals and adopting new rules to follow in pursuance of the new, better aims.

I work in water conservation and there is a shift away from the old world of attempting to sublime nature to our wills with capital dam projects and giant aquaducts, towards conservation and self management of your own personal watershed with raingardens and drought tollerant landscaping.

But it is a slow process and one that takes effort to get the message across.

This lady and her project are good food for thought. Cheers, Jack

[JackRiddler]

Cross-posting my last bit from the HATE thread because LOVE is better:

Aversion to labels on principle is a big part of the mind-fuckery.

The system conditions us to fear having political labels attached to us as part of the depoliticization process. It's fine to be a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, and increasingly even an atheist, but we're trained not to want to be left or right, or even to understand properly what these words mean and what they have meant historically.

Many labels are inherently nonsensical. Many have been distorted and perverted and misused and tainted beyond redemption. Many are taken over by bad people and bad causes, so that now it sounds like an ugly thing to be a republican or a democrat or a communist. Many were meant as attacks in the first place, like conspiracy theorist.

And yet other labels are so ubiquitous and so freely applied that no one even notices they make the most trouble. Number one among these is American. A false unifier. Yet no one has a problem with that label. They don't even think of it as a label, it's a natural state, like water to the fish.

The Kaiser's famous speech on the declaration of war in 1914: "Today I see no Social Democrats, no liberals, no conservatives. I see only Germans!"

Let's remember that a label is just a word. A noun. The question is, does the label fit the object? Is it fair? What are its connotations?

I am a feminist.

I am an environmentalist.

These are easily defined concepts.

These are unambiguously good things to be.

Anyone who reacts poorly to either label is or has been fucked in the head from an early age.

To me a feminist believes in equal rights and privileges for women and men; freedom from proscribed gender roles; and fair treatment for all: From each according to her ability, to each according to her need. The "second wave" feminism of the 1970s would serve any nation far better as a hegemonic ideology than our present nightmare of religions and secular creeds.

A few female feminists would deny me the label, but I have no problem with them. They are on their own path and they do little harm to anyone else (contrary to how the David Mamets and Stephen Morgans might see it).

An environmentalist understands that the human species, its populations, its cultures, economies, polities and civilizations are entirely subordinate parts and functions of a biosphere that carries these, and is complexly interdependent with these. The first principle of economics must become that it is inescapably a subset of ecology -- as well as a product of historical development, and not of abstract first principles like the "market." Until then, it is only an ideology of the powerful and a pseudo-science.

An environmentalist understands the species as a whole -- thanks mostly but not entirely to a minority of over-consumers, generally the ones whom the pseudo-economics serves actually -- is trashing the carrying capacity for the species. And making the place much uglier in the process. And causing one of the great extinction events in the earth's history, so far more rapid than any other in the fossil record. And causing great suffering to all the other life as well as our own. This necessitates more change than we are willing to imagine. Or the die-off will come to us. Perhaps this is already inevitable. I don't think so, but to think so does not necessarily make you in favor of it.

.

[Project Willow]

Love The Story of Stuff!

I am a feminist.

I am an environmentalist.

These are easily defined concepts.

These are unambiguously good things to be.

[Carol Newquist]

Alright (not Albright yet), let's take it for a ride since it's unambiguous. Is Madeleine Albright a Feminist?

[JackRiddler]

I don't know, is she? Why do you ask? Do you have any citations on her views?

[Iamwhomiam]

Thanks for creating this thread, Jack. I'll be back in a while to add more commentary, but for right now, Ah luvs me my Annie!

The Story of Sustainability, released yesterday morning, is the latest episode in the Story of Stuff project. The Stories of Bottled Water; Cosmetics; Electronics; Change; Solutions; Broke; Citizens United v FERC; Cap and Trade also available for viewing on the SOS website: http://storyofstuff.org/

[Carol Newquist]

I don't know, is she? Why do you ask? Do you have any citations on her views?

That's not for me to answer, it's for you to answer. You said it was unambiguous. Here she is, painted in a positive light at Feminist.com, so apparently, it considers her a Feminist. I don't know whether Madeleine describes herself as one, though. I didn't read the interview. She's a genocidal murderer, something Marianne Schnall seemed to overlook with her glowing review of Madeleine.

http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/interviews/albright.html

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/madeleine-albright-ethically-challenged

1) “Asked if it is not hypocritical to punish Burma for human rights violations while refraining from sanctions on China for similar actions, Albright replied, ‘We have consistent principles and flexible tactics’.” 1

The same “flexible tactics” (English translation: hypocrisy) are evident in the policies embraced by Albright toward Cuba, Libya, Iraq, et al, as opposed to the policies toward Turkey, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia.

2) Television interview, “60 Minutes”, May 12, 1996:

Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?”

Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” 2

At the Town Hall in Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 18, 1998, Ms. Albright was moved to declare: “I am willing to make a bet to anyone here that we care more about the Iraqi people than Saddam Hussein does.”

Though her logic may escape us, she may yet have some DNA molecules for compassion. On May 21 she signed an agreement between the U.S. and six Latin American countries to protect dolphins, declaring: “This is one of the strongest agreements ever negotiated to conserve marine life.”

3) Albright in Guatemala, talking to a group of impoverished children: “Why would [ I ] and the United States care about what is happening here? The reason is we are all one family and when one part of our family is not happy or suffers, we all suffer.” 3

Thus speaketh the leading foreign policy officer of the country directly responsible for bringing more than 40 years of poverty, torture, death squads, massacres and disappeared people to Guatemala, without even a hint of apology or restitution, ever.

4) “To a student who asked [Albright] whether the United States was not spending too much of its resources on being the world’s policeman and too little on more pressing domestic concerns, Albright asked him in return to estimate what share of the federal budget goes to foreign policy. When he guessed 15 or 20 percent, Albright pounced. ‘It’s 1 percent, 1 percent of the entire budget,’ Albright said.” 4

Her reply was conspicuously disingenuous. At best, she was referring to the budget of only the State Department, concealing what everyone knows, even the teenage student she browbeat – US foreign policy expenditures must include the Defense Department, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and a host of other government agencies. Together they consume more than 50 percent of the budget.

5) In February 1996, as UN ambassador, Albright reacted with righteous indignation against the Cuban pilots who expressed satisfaction after shooting down two planes of Cubans from Florida which were headed toward Cuba. “This one won’t mess around any more,” one of the pilots is reported to have exclaimed.

“I was struck by the joy of these pilots in committing cold-blooded murder,” Albright said, accusing the Cuban pilots of “cowardice”. 5

What, one may ask, does she think of the American pilots who, while bombing and strafing helpless retreating Iraqis in 1991, exclaimed: “we toasted him” … “we hit the jackpot” … “a turkey shoot” … “shooting fish in a barrel” … “basically just sitting ducks” … “There’s just nothing like it. It’s the biggest Fourth of July show you’ve ever seen, and to see those tanks just `boom’, and more stuff just keeps spewing out of them … they just become white hot. It’s wonderful.” 6

6) On October 8, 1997, in announcing the designation of 18 additional foreign political organizations as terrorist-supporting groups, Secretary of State Albright declared that she wanted to help make the United States a “no support for terrorism zone”. It could be suggested that if the Secretary were truly committed to this goal, instead of offering her usual lip service, she should begin at home – the anti-Castro community in Miami, collectively, is one of the longest-lasting and most prolific terrorist organizations in the world. Over the years they’ve carried out hundreds of bombings, shootings, and murders, blown up an airplane, killing 73 people, fired a bazooka at the United Nations, and much, much more. But Madame Albright will not lift a finger against them.

The State Department designates Cuba as one of the states which harbors terrorists. The United States can well be added to that list.

7) At the fabricated “Town Hall” meeting (in which the officials came not to listen, but to tell) held in Columbus, Ohio, February 18, 1998, concerning Iraq, Albright was heckled and asked critical, and perhaps uncomfortable, questions. At one point, her mind and her integrity could come up with no better response than to make something up: “I am really surprised,” she declared, “that people feel that it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein.”

At another point, a besieged Albright was moved to yell: “We are the greatest country in the world!” Patriotism is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel, though her words didn’t quite have the ring of “Deutschland über alles” or “Rule Britannia”.

Finally, unable to provide answers that satisfied or quieted the questioners, she stated that she would meet with them after the meeting to answer their questions. But as soon as the meeting ended, the Secretary of State was out of their, posthaste. Her offer, it would seem, had just been a tactic to try and pacify the hostile crowd.

And here is Madame Albright at her jingoist best, on TV the day after the Town Hall meeting, again in the context of Iraq:

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future.” 7

9) Madeleine Albright, then UN Ambassador, informed the UN Security Council during a 1994 discussion about Iraq: “We recognize this area as vital to US national interests and we will behave, with others, multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must.” 8 Ms. Albright is thus stating that the United States recognizes no external constraints on its behavior, when it decides that a particular area of the world is “vital to US national interests”. It would of course be difficult to locate a spot on the globe that Albright and the United States do not regard as “vital to US national interests.

10) On more than one occasion while U.N. ambassador, Albright yelled at U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali that he must not publish the report about Israel’s bombing of the U.N.-run refugee camp in Qana, Lebanon, in April 1996, which killed more than 100 refugees. The U.N. report said that the attack was not a mistake, as Israel claimed. Albright – who has surrounded herself with alumni of Israeli and Jewish lobbies – warned the Secretary-General that if the report came out, the U.S. would veto him for his second term. The report came out, and so did Boutros Boutros-Ghali. 9

11) Madeleine the humanitarian: It is “not a good idea” to link human rights and trade issues. 10 A philosophy that could have been used to justify trade with Nazi Germany … or anyone else … or anything.

12) To Colin Powell, who felt that the U.S. should not commit military forces to Bosnia until there was a clear political objective: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” “I thought I would have an aneurysm,” Powell later wrote. “American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board.” 11

If that's Feminism, no thank you. Or is it ambiguous, afterall?

[Rory]

C_w - are you posting here, again?

[JackRiddler]

A lot of people seem to want to point to bad women in power, like Albright, and blame this on feminism. (Do they blame bad men in power on patriarchy? There's probably more of a case to be made for that.) It may have been feminism that allowed Albright to acquire a job formerly reserved for males, but the sanctions that she enforced on Iraq weren't feminist, and no one claimed these were.

Carol, as you point out, anyone can call themselves (or anyone else) whatever they like. That still doesn't mean you must take it at face value, even if it's promoted by a site called feminist.com. That site is only so named because someone bought the URL first, right? I'd be more impressed if you could find an endorsement of Albright by a real organization, like NOW. And yet, they also don't have eternal hegemony over feminist philosophy or the meaning of any given word.

Whoever's behind that wants to promote a particular kind of feminism that focuses on celebrating successful females even when they are being as evil as their male counterparts. They're free to call this particular form of cannibalism feminism if they like.

I provided a different definition. Not every definition is the same, or equally valid, or equally meaningless. You're still stuck thinking things through for yourself. I'm sorry you seem to want to have a simplistic answer. (That's right, that's how "I see" it!)

No word is resistant to being flipped into a different meaning, or used and abused. No word has an eternal meaning. Context and era are essential, yes. "Liberal" has gone through so many iterations it should make our heads spin. Why are you fixated on how that's done with feminism? (At least you didn't use Thatcher as an example!)

Are you provoked when people say "freedom" because the Austrian Freedom Party is extreme right-wing and xenophobic? Should we dump "democracy" because of the German Democratic Republic? Obviously you must oppose republics and be for monarchy, since the Republicans are so horrible. Etc. etc.

Now I'm done with this, unless you want to answer some of the questions I posed about labels above. Are you an "American"? Why isn't that label a problem?

[JackRiddler]

C_w - are you posting here, again?

C_w never had a problem with saying she was a feminist. Quite the opposite.

[Carol Newquist]

A lot of people seem to want to point to bad women in power, like Albright, and blame this on feminism.

Maybe they do, but I'm not one of them and that's not my point. I can't do this two thread thing on this topic. I'm going to stick to the other original thread. I think this one will devolve into pillorying anyone who doesn't jump cheerfully on the Feminist Bandwagon and that doesn't make for a healthy, balanced discussion.

[JackRiddler]

A lot of people seem to want to point to bad women in power, like Albright, and blame this on feminism.

Maybe they do, but I'm not one of them and that's not my point. I can't do this two thread thing on this topic. I'm going to stick to the other original thread. I think this one will devolve into pillorying anyone who doesn't jump cheerfully on the Feminist Bandwagon and that doesn't make for a healthy, balanced discussion.

Actually, Carol, your use of "Feminist Bandwagon" (at least it's not a steamtrain) and ignoring of various questions I asked you about labeling indicate little desire for "healthy, balanced discussion" on either thread.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Alright (not Albright yet), let's take it for a ride since it's unambiguous. Is Madeleine Albright a Feminist?

No, because she is a murderer who believes the cost is worth it.

Her publicist would certainly tell you otherwise, but it's very simple: she is not. You cannot be anti-life and be feminist.

[hanshan]

...

Alright (not Albright yet), let's take it for a ride since it's unambiguous. Is Madeleine Albright a Feminist?

No, because she is a murderer who believes the cost is worth it.

Her publicist would certainly tell you otherwise, but it's very simple: she is not. You cannot be anti-life and be feminist.

huh?

...