CLAIRE FLYER

SEX. VIOLENCE, JUSTICE

BETTER THAN GEORGE WASHINGTON?

You think you're better than George Washington? George Washington risked his life for freedom. George Washington waded through mud and cold and heat and hell of every kind  for 7 years to create an army to fight against the British in the name of a new kind of political freedom that he believed in. George Washington left his farm that he loved and his wife that he loved even more and sweated and worried over a ragtag, undernourished, undersupplied army because he believed in freedom. George Washington turned down an offer to become a kind of King of America because he believed in freedom. George Washington became president and gave 8 more years to his country because he believed in freedom.

I know, I know. George Washington had slaves. George Washington presided over a country in which slavery was allowed in the Constitution even though he and many others were well aware that slavery compromised their vision of freedom. But they allowed this slavery as a compromise that made a union possible. They knew that without this union, there could be no experiment in freedom. They knew that the freedom they had created was not perfect and would take a long time to become perfect, but they figured it was better to try to create the conditions of political freedom and deal with the other issues later or there could never have been any kind of union. And without that union, there would be no way to resist British force. So Washington and others compromised with the Southern states to protect their union and to create a possibility of a kind of political freedom that had never really been tried before.

They knew it wasn't perfect. They knew it might all fall apart at any time. But they believed in freedom and they did something about it. They did the best the could under the circumstances in which they lived and they fought and risked everything for their experiment.

What have you done for freedom that you feel so righteous? What have you risked that makes you better than Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and Madison? And most of all, what makes you think that the freedom they created had to be perfect in order to be worth pursuing? Don't you understand that American freedom is still a work in progress? Don't you see that your courage and your skill and your dedication and willingness to risk all are still necessary in order for the experiment of freedom to mean anything? Or are you all just lazy, cynical, crybaby takers who think that somebody owes you something? If you think America is just an existing power that should or even could just hand out freedom like candy, then you are deluded. You are weak. You are a fool and you are nothing. You couldn't hold George Washington's knickers. If you believe in freedom, then shut up with the criticism and do something about it. Otherwise, you will deserve the slavery towards which you and your children are headed.

PATRICK HENRY

NEGATIVE VIEWS OF HUMANITY

In the end, even I concede that human nature can't be entirely defined or limited by those living today. Some version of evolution may still take place or some deep change of heart could sweep across a large mass of humanity due to extreme circumstances. No one can know everything about the future. 

Still, the overall composition of humanity seems unlikely to change to me. A certain percentage will almost always be deeply bad and there will be a certain number of ambivalent, questionable types who can be drawn in to do bad things for gain of some kind. Most people will remain basically neither good nor bad. They will mostly seek security and a kind of selfish freedom. 

At the other end of the spectrum will be those who are inspired by something or someone to stand up and fight for something. There will always be people who lives as examples of something most of us are inclined to call goodness. But all these types will probably always be with us. The only thing that could be altered would be the percentages in which the various types appear. Literature such as Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz supports this view and even modern, up-to- the-minute science has become increasingly skeptical about major changes in what we usually refer to as human nature (see Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature or Edward O. Wilson's Consilience).

At any rate, this question should always be approached with some delicacy. To preach about the nobility and goodness of humanity seems childish and naive beyond measure after the moral disasters of the 20th Century. To preach only negative, vicious things about human nature seems peevish and bitter and motivated by the kind of hatred that is born of jealousy, envy and failure.

In practical terms, being too positive makes you seem naive and being too negative can stop people from taking any kind of action because negativity enters the veins as a kind of poison. Once negativity becomes cynicism, it negates possibility.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND INJUSTICE

The treatment of women and children in any country is one of the best indicators of the degree of justice to be found in that country.

INJUSTICE TODAY

Today, millions of lives around the world are in the grip of injustice.

More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade: Millions toil in bondage, their work and even their bodies the property of an owner.

Trafficking in humans generates profits in excess of 32 billion dollars a year for those who, by force and deception, sell human lives into slavery and sexual bondage. Nearly 2 million children are exploited in the commercial sex industry. The AIDS pandemic continues to rage, and the oppression of trafficking victims in the global sex trade contributes to the disease's spread.

In many countries around the world, pedophiles find that they can abuse children with impunity. And though police should be protectors, in many nations, their presence is a source of insecurity for the poor. Suspects can be held interminably before trials, imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.

The land rights of women are violated on a massive scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, leaving widows and other women in vulnerable positions unable to care for themselves or their children. Around the world, women suffer the double trauma of rape - and seeing their perpetrators face no consequences.

Often lacking access to their own justice systems and unable to protect themselves or their families from those more powerful, it is overwhelmingly the poor who are the victims of these brutal forms of abuse. 

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION WEBSITE

WOMEN AND POVERTY

Women make up half of the world's population and yet represent a staggering 70% of the world's poor. For the millions of women living in poverty, their lives are a litany of injustice, discrimination and obstacles that get in the way of achieving their basic needs of good health, safe childbirth, education and employment. Overcoming these inequalities and ensuring that women benefit from development requires that the needs and desires of women are not only taken into account, but be put front and centre.

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination that a woman may suffer during her entire life is unacceptable but all too common. What does this look like throughout a woman's life?

As a baby born into poverty, she might be abandoned and left to die, through the practice of female infanticide. Worldwide, there are 32 million 'missing women'. During her childhood, her proper feeding and nutrition may be neglected out of family favouring of male children.

As a girl or woman she may be a victim of female genital mutilation and cutting. 100 to 140 million girls and women around the world have undergone genital mutilation, including 6.5 million in Western countries. Embedded in cultural norms, this act is often carried out with the consent of mothers, in conditions that lead to lifelong pain, infection and premature death. As an adolescent she may be required to have an early marriage.. and young pregnancy puts girls at risk of maternal deaths.

"a mother dies every minute"

At child-bearing age, she could die from haemorrhaging during childbirth, one of the most common causes of maternal mortality for anaemic or undernourished pregnant women. Of the 500,000 women who die in childbirth every year, 99% live in developing countries. In other words, in developing countries, a girl or a woman dies every minute in giving birth.

At working age, she does not have the same job opportunities and receives less pay for the same work.

Women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, produce half of the world's food, but earn only 10% of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. On average, women earn half of what men earn.

Informal employment is a greater source of employment for women than for men. The reality of the informal economy for women is more stark. While it can offer life-changing opportunities to earn money, the low pay and lack of social protection makes women vulnerable and open to exploitation.

Over her lifetime, she may suffer unimaginable violence and neglect, often in silence. Three million women die each year because of gender-based violence, and four million girls and women a year are sold into prostitution. One woman in five is a victim of rape or attempted rape during her lifetime. Gender-based violence takes more of a toll on women's health than that of traffic accidents and malaria combined.

As a woman living in poverty, she represents the majority of the world's poor. Women make up 70% of the world's one billion poorest people.

These stark inequalities happen everyday, everywhere around the world, yet despite the clear message that figures send, progress towards gender equity in development is deplorably slow and the obstacles of political indifference are nearly overwhelming. In the 2005 Massey Lectures, speaking on his role as UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis argued that,

"The atmosphere of benign neglect, compounded by the rooted gender inequality, all adds up to a death sentence for countless millions of women in the developing world. For whatever reason, we can't break the monolith of indifference and paralysis."

In many societies, women struggle with exercising their human rights, fulfilling their basic needs and participating in decision-making. Such disadvantage is both ubiquitous and historical amongst the world's poor. Modern societies have developed on unequal foundations of legal frameworks and economic structures that undervalue women, label them as 'caregivers' and fail to recognize them as fundamental participants of a healthy society. The efforts in recent decades to address these inequities have been met by astonishing lack of support, to the point at which Lewis has also argued that,

"There is no greater emblem of international hypocrisy than the promise of women's rights."

The education of girls has been shown enhance maternal and child nutrition and lower mortality rates, inhibit the spread of fatal diseases like HIV/AIDS, and reduce birth rates. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, girls do not attend school because of reasons as simple as lack of decent sanitation facilities or the need to spend hours each day collecting water.

FROM THE GLOBAL POVERTY PROJECT WEBSITE

CELEBRATING MURDERERS

TOM
I want you to look at the handout I gave you. These are actual quotes from Che Guevara. I want you to ask yourself if this is really the kind of person you want to become. Do you have enough heart to look your supposed enemies in the eye and put a bullet in their brains? Are you willing to stain your rifle red with slaughter? Ready to throw away every rule of law in favor of arbitrary murder? If so, I think you are living in the wrong country. So unless you're willing to do these things, I'd say you're either a dupe or a liar for wearing those Che Guevara t-shirts around campus. If you want to support the poor and the exploited masses, then go out and do it and don't hook your name up with a cold-blooded freedom-hating murderer.  

"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"

"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his   natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become … "
 

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary...These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
 

 

 

CHE GUEVARA IS DEAD

GET OVER IT

 

THE GREEKS STAND UP

“Since you are continuing this destructive policy, we warn you that you cannot make us fight against our brothers. We refuse to stand against our parents, our brothers, our children or any citizen who protests and demands a change of policy,” said the union, which represents more than two-thirds of Greek policemen. We warn you that as legal representatives of Greek policemen, we will issue arrest warrants for a series of legal violations … such as blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty” Reuters

MITCHELL'S LAWS

Mitchell’s laws:

●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.

 ●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.

 ●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

 ●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.

 ●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

 ●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.

 ●Everything in economics devolves to motivation.

From Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

http://mythfighter.com/


 

CHARITY

HEADLINES

‘INCREASINGLY DEBAUCHED’: ARE SEX, DRUGS & POOR SANITATION ECLIPSING OCCUPY WALL STREET?

 

INDIA: THREE GIRLS RAPED AND MURDERED, AGED 5, 9 AND 11

 

INDIA GANG RAPE: WOMAN ASSAULTED BY BUS DRIVER, CONDUCTOR

 

INDIA’S FATAL RAPE WAS TYPICAL IN A COUNTRY THAT DEGRADES WOMEN

 

HUNDREDS MOURN TEENAGE VICTIM OF
VICIOUS GANG RAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA
 
OVER 30 MINERS KILLED IN CLASH WITH POLICE AT SOUTH AFRICA'S LONMIN MARIKANA MINE

 

THOUSANDS ACROSS GREECE PROTEST AUSTERITY

BULGARIAN PRIME MINISTER RESIGNS AFTER ANOTHER NIGHT OF PROTESTS

ROMANIAN GOVERNMENT RESIGNS OVER ECONOMY AFTER THREE WEEKS OF PROTESTS

HEDGE FUNDS ‘LAND-GRABBING’ IN AFRICA

"When these investors promise progress and jobs to local chiefs it sounds great, but they don't deliver."

 

The report said the contracts also gave investors a range of incentives, from unlimited water rights to tax waivers.

 

"No-one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans.

US UNIVERSITIES IN AFRICA 'LAND GRAB'

 

Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out

 
THE E.U. THREATENS TO STRIP GREECE OF ITS OWN SOVEREIGNTY IF IT DOESN'T COMPLY WITH DEMANDS
 

 

STOP DREAMING ABOUT POWER

CLAIRE

If your main concern is keeping power, then you don't really care about anything. Power is an illusion anyway – it's an illusion that has to be maintained by cruelty and paranoia. The force you waste on keeping other people in line only creates your destruction. It only turns you into a monster who deserves destruction. Holding onto power is a sickness. It's the same kind of sickness that makes serial killers hunt, rape and murder women. It's the same sickness that makes a person walk into a grade school with a rifle and start shooting. It's the same kind of sickness that makes schoolboys gang rape girls on buses. Power is the sickness. Stop dreaming about power.  

HELP THE NEEDY

CLAIRE
I'm not talking about revolution. I'm not interested in all these arguments for and against the revolution. I am talking about what I've seen and what I think can be done about it. You can't go all over the world looking at miserable, starving, frustrated, beaten down people all the time without feeling something. You try to just tell the story but sometimes, you just can't. There's too much going on. How can you be a human being and just watch while people are suffering. The suffering you actually see is beyond your imagination. Probably, once in a while, when you see some situation where a bunch of innocent children are shot down in cold blood and you see the grief and you imagine the loss, in those situations, you get a taste of everyday life for millions of people. So fuck the revolution. Don't start talking bullshit about Che Guevara. Don't get all hot and bothered about how you can kill "the man." Do something to empower the poor. Do something to feed them, house them, provide sanitation for them, educate them. That will start the revolution. 

QUOTES AND DISCUSSION

Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution? Original French: Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?

 Réponse à J.- B. Louvet, a speech to the National Convention (5 November 1792)

Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution —— what was it based on? The land—less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I’m telling you, you don’t know what a revolution is. ’Cause when you find out what it is, you’ll get back in the alley; you’ll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution —— what was it based on? Land. The land—less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven’t got a revolution that doesn’t involve bloodshed. And you’re afraid to bleed. I said, you’re afraid to bleed.

“The smallest and most inoffensive state is still criminal in its dreams.” Bakunin

“Certain women enjoy rough sex. I suppose they like to feel humiliated, cheap, dirty, nasty.” Roxanne Hall

“These it is who kill the rich crop of reason with the barren thorns of passion, who  accustom men’s minds to disease, instead of setting them free.” Boethius

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Jesus

“Once upon a time, Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly, flying about enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Chuang Tzu. Suddenly he awoke, and veritably was Chuang Tzu again. He did not know whether it was Chuang Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it was the butterfly dreaming that it was Chuang Tzu. Between Chuang Tzu  and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is a case of what is called the transformation of things.” Chaung Tzu

“Individuals and masses attribute everything that irks them, without exception, to the existing dispensation, while for the most part what they are suffering under is inherent human frailty.” Jacob Burckhardt,  Force and Freedom

“The realization of ethical values on earth by the state would simply be brought to grief again and again by the spiritual inadequacy of human nature in general, and even by the best of humanity in particular.” Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom

"Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just."

  William Shakespeare, King Lear

Because I see so many weak ones trodden down, I greatly doubt the sincerity of much that is called progress and civilization, but only in the kind that is founded on real humanity. That which costs human life I think cruel, and I do not respect it.

—–Vincent van Gogh, The Hague, December 1881

Because I see so many weak ones trodden down, I greatly doubt the sincerity of much that is called progress and civilization.’

—–Vincent van Gogh, The Hague, December 1881

“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62, The Bible

"Who knows the fate of his bones or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes or whither they are to be scattered?" Thomas Browne

"Who knows the fate of his bones or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes or whither they are to be scattered?" Thomas Browne

"Who knows the fate of his bones or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes or whither they are to be scattered?" Thomas Browne

“To overthrow the authority of the bourgeois class, the humiliated population has reason to institute a brief period of terror and to assault bodily a handful of contemptible, hateful individuals. It is difficult to attack the authority of a class without a few heads belonging to members of that class being paraded on a stake.” Benny Levy

  

The thought of American theologian and intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) is marked by the recognition of "the force and pervasive reality of human sin," an abiding faith in a merciful God, and a deep engagement with American society and culture. Niebuhr's attitude can be characterized as one of pessimistic hope, or, to invoke one of Niebuhr's own expressions, "pessimistic optimism." He rejects the easy optimism that Americans find so appealing and discounts the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

“It was wrong in the optimism which stated that the law of love needed only to be stated persuasively to overcome the selfishness of the human heart. The unhappy consequence of that optimism was to discharge interest in the necessary mechanisms of social justice at the precise moment in history when the development of a technical civilization required more than ever that social ideals be implemented with economic and political techniques designed to correct the injustices and brutalities which flow invariably from an unrestrained and undisciplined exercise of economic power.” Reinhold Niebuhr

TIME FOR CHANGE

ROAD TO A LAWLESS SOCIETY

"The road to a lawless society is currently being paved by the congressional sequester. Budget cuts will just make it more difficult for the feds to capture terrorists and child molesters. What they're going to do is amputate the long arm of the law. We're not going to sit back and go gentle into the sequester. The consequences are dire. It's unfortunate we have to reach this point." 

WE NEED CHAOS

MIKLOS
They will tell you that democracy is working just fine. That democracy is suffering the usual growing pains in a fast-changing world filled with new technologies and new possibilities for communication. They will tell you to wait and see what happens. Don't jump to conclusions. Don't take unnecessary risks before we've had time to seriously analyze the problem. And besides, we have to be aware of the dangers of fascism and totalitarianism that are waiting for us if we act too quickly. We may only bring down the walls of Jericho and create chaos before we have anything ready to replace the existing order. And when that order falls, we won't be able to fix it. This is the standard argument you will hear against revolution in the rich and successful countries. These arguments will come from the liberals and the conservatives. They will come from the young and the old. These are the standard arguments of people who are afraid. It's not that I don't understand their fear. I just wish they could understand that the time for change is now. The world is drifting toward chaos one way or the other. Chaos is the only thing that can bring real change. I say that the first step in any revolution has to be letting go of the past. Letting go of the things that tell you revolution is bad. Open your minds and press the chaos button because we desperately NEED CHAOS. 

FLASHLIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

MIKLOS
You can't expect me to provide solutions to the problems of the world. My job is to help you see the problems clearly. My job is to shine a light into all your hiding places so you don't think you're solving problems when you're actually just hiding. My job is to be sure that you are aware of all the tricks the capitalists will play to convince you that things are changing and getting better. You have to stop being naive. You have to be willing to see what is happening. And you also have to be willing to take action. I can't be the guide for this action. I am only the guy with the flashlight in the darkness. 

CLAIRE FLYER

THE LINE BETWEEN REALISM AND PARANOIA

TOM
Where is the line? Where does realism become excess and even paranoia? It's not an easy question. If somebody doesn't pull back at some point, then conflict becomes inevitable. And history has shown over and over that signs of weakness in a government can be interpreted as an invitation to attack or invade. At the same time, World War I was an amazing example of misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions, strange treaties of mutual protection and paraniod fantasies leading to absolute chaos. Most analysts believe that WWI was avoidable. Of course, historical speculation is not perfect. It's just as easy to argue that all the paranoia was the result of foolish and shortsighted colonialism that was bound to lead to war sooner or later. Historical inevitability is hard to establish but the possibility that things could have been different is almost equally hard to prove. Some measure of caution and preparedness for war clearly prevents war. But too much indulgence in arms buildup and military posturing also invites war or creates the conditions for war. Where is the line? Back to the beginning. It's not so easy to be comfortable trying to establish such a line but what else is the job of the policy-maker? How much military force do we need? What do we need to do to convince our enemies that we are serious about using military force? We have to provide practical answers to these questions and we have to hope that we're pretty much right. In that case, history and psychology are pretty much all we've got.

FORCE THE RICH

MIKLOS
Force the rich to explain why they should have more - allow them no excuses. No way out. Show them that they are outnumbered and they can no longer be allowed to do whatever they want. To starve people, to hoard and waste resources, to rape the environment, use people as labor and as consumers. We have to do whatever it takes to rip control out of their hands and keep it out of their hands. Take back the government, the planet, your dignity and your future.