In the mid-1990s, women in the former Yugoslavia were being systematically gang-raped. Often, their rapes were videotaped. Many killed themselves afterwards and many more suffered serious mental illness. At one point, I was preparing to testify about Rape Trauma Syndrome on their behalf in the Hague in the Matter of Bosnia. However, it soon became depressingly clear that both the necessary funding and the requisite political will were utterly absent from this Crimes Against Humanity court.
In the former Yugoslavia, men were not usually gang-raped. Many were tortured, and many were genocidally slaughtered. This happened on President Clinton’s watch and it took a long time and a great deal of persuasion before Clinton allowed America to become militarily involved. Europe did not come to the aid of its immediate neighbor. No Arab or Muslim country came to the aid of their Muslim brethren trapped in this treacherous war-zone.
The public and repeated gang-rapes of both girls and women had become a weapon of war and was no longer merely a “spoil of war.”
I published this piece in 1995, in a small, radical, very politically correct feminist magazine. The war-time rapes of women in the former Yugoslavia preceded the subsequent war-time rapes which took place in Rwanda and Darfur. In 1995, in this piece, I suggested that western feminists must hold themselves accountable for their own isolationism. The fact that I had published this idea in a small, feminist magazine did not rally the feminist troops.
In 2004-2005, I began to write about continuing western feminist passivity in the matter of the “politicized” gang-rapes in Sudan. Once again, feminists (and all other progressives) did not launch hunger strikes or send Missions into that Hell. Mainly Christian groups did that as did a handful of former American “peacekeepers.” What happened this time was that I was attacked for publishing such ideas in a “right-wing conservative” publication such as Frontpage Magazine.
The more things change, the more they also seem to stay the same.
What is Justice for a Rape Victim?
By Phyllis Chesler
There she was, on the front page of the American newspapers, a 20-year-old Bosnian Muslim girl, hanging from a tree, a suicide, dead by her own hand, her death a cry for help. Our silence, deafening.
We cannot say: “We didn’t know, no one told us.” We know. We’ve seen it on TV, read the detailed reports, seen the photos. I knew, feminists knew what was going on in Bosnia. True, we had trouble sleeping over it, and some of us sent money, gathered evidence, drafted lawsuits, petitioned the U.N., counseled and consoled the victims, quietly helped rape-refugees to leave the country, but, as a movement, we failed to mount even one Israeli-style Entebbe-raid, even one mass “pacifist” action on Bosnian soil. We wrung our hands and waited for the patriarchal governments to “do something”: convene a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, bomb Sarajevo, lift the arms embargo, fight it out, man-to-man.
We are the Good Feminist Germans. We-and our respective governments-did even less in the matters of Rwanda, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Liberia, New Guinea, East Timor, Jammu, and Kashmir, Haiti.
In 1971, when I first heard that retreating Pakistani soldiers had begun to gang-rape Bengali women in what would become Bangladesh, I called for the rescue of “our own.” I had once lived in the Muslim world, I knew what would (and did) happen to those raped and raped-and-impregnated women. “Many will kill themselves,” I said, “if their brothers and fathers don’t kill them first.” I called for immediate feminist airlifts of the raped women.
The assembled feminists cheered, thought I was being funny, grandiose, metaphoric: unrealistic. As feminists, we had no place on earth to which we could bring our raped Bengali sisters-assuming they’d agree to leave certain death for uncertain freedom…Continue Reading no Chesler Chronicles >>
In the end, all tyrants, frauds and killers do eventually contribute enormously to the happiness of the world’s people. Because control freak swine and utter frauds do eventually die. Che is dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. Ain’t that great? And Castro soon too, eh? Now that’s gotta be worth a laugh and a drink between true friends and and a warm family? And interestingly, these are two things that a parasite like Che, just loved to destroy.
Why do so many people love Che the child killer Guevara? Well, they don’t, actually. Nope, they love themselves first and foremost. But that ain’t gonna cut it out in the world for the average and boring twerp, trust fund brat or mediocre celebrity that needs an army of script writer’s for the only times they utter anything worth a damn. Neither will it swing for a nobody variant, your venal hubristic rich freak, or just your common garden variety rapist and killer. No, no, no! You know that what you need is a Che makeover!
In reality, if you’re about as rebellious as a mass produced consumer of an image can be, and have nothing to offer anyone unless it’s entirely about you, or you’re a coward, a bore, a criminal, an overly complex, or a dimly and simple minded nerve ending of narcissism, and gross immaturity, well…
Hell, then just put on the worlds number one fancy dress of the living dead. Be a Che for a day! Or for an entire miserable, useless, ugly, destructive, contradictory, sheltered, privileged existence, and then pretend you’re somebody that you ain’t. Somebody that people should listen to and notice for er, anything, when you know and I know, ya got precisely nothing.
It’s such a shame to waste your life away like this…existing. Nothing but existing…Oh, there ain’t no life…nowhere. -Jimi Hendrix
Approval of Congress Ties All-Time Low: Congressional job approval is now a mere 18%, tying Gallup’s record low on this measure seen first in March 1992 and again in August 2007.
Blogword is being held in Las Vegas again this year, September 20-21 (Saturday and Sunday). If you register (here) by June 20th, you can receive 50% off the full-price of registration.
BlogWorld & New Media Expo is the world’s largest Blogging Tradeshow and Conference. The most influential Bloggers, Vloggers, Podcasters, Social Media Gurus, Internet Music, Radio and TV Pioneers will be here. It’s the one event you can’t afford to miss!
This is the place for leading new media voices, ground-breaking technology for online conversations, and emerging social media success stories…
…Pop diva Beyoncé Knowles, 27, and her fashion designer mother have launched a girls clothing line that makes Miley’s bare-backed glam session look like a Shirley Temple photo shoot.
The Knowles’ family business, “House of Dereon,” recently published advertisements for its “Dereon Girls Collection” with young models who look no older than my second-grade daughter. They are seductively posed and tarted up, JonBenet Ramsey-style, with bright lipstick, blush and face powder. Draped in bling, several of the girls sport leather jackets and studded accessories…
Brown Sista, a celebrity website, pointed out, disapprovingly, that these shoes, while cute for an adult, are not appropriate for little girls.
“…the two words that pop to mind are “CHILD PORNOGRAPHY”. In all seriousness, I really wonder what sort of crack Beyonce and her mother are on. In what world do these clothes send out positive messages to little girls?”
Crunktastical, a hip-hop site, calls this “Just Plain Disturbing.”
I agree.
By now I’m sure everyone has heard or read about the child star, Miley Cyrus (a.k.a. “Hannah Montana”), who was recently the subject of lewd photos of a child, taken by a very expensive child pornographer.
Prior to this, I actually liked her father…I’m a Country music fan, and the T.V. shows I’d watched of his seemed to be sort of corny in a wholesome, family-entertainment way. So, I cannot imagine what he was thinking when he allowed seductive photos of his 15-year-old daughter to be taken for the cover of Vanity Fair.
Suffice it to say that this makes me sick, and I firmly believe that her parents, that child-pornographer (I don’t care how famous the photographer is…child porn is child porn.), and the people responsible for publishing the photos in Vanity Fair should all be in jail.
Beth, over at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy did a very good job of covering this topic from the perspective of the mother of a Hannah Montana fan. I encourage you all head on over and read her thoughts on the matter, here.
Just when you thought all hope was lost (or that it was finally over, depending on your perspective)…no, wait…is that? could it be? Why, yes, it’s Ron Paul! He and thousands of his supporters are scheduled to March on D.C. on July 12th.
Right now, 14,000 people are signed up to attend, but the group is ultimately hoping for “hundreds of thousands” of people.
Details are here, and money for security and other march expenses is being collected here.
Exit polling of Republican and Democratic voters in most states shows the economy far outweighs any other single issue (CQPolitics). After that comes concerns over national security, which lump together terrorism and the Iraq war, followed usually by domestic issues like healthcare. Where people live and what party they belong to affects second- and third-ranked choices in polls published by CNN and McClatchy. In surveys that took place in states voting through the May 6 primaries, the top three issues (CNN) break down for Republicans as follows: the economy followed by national security/Iraq/terrorism or immigration depending on the poll and the state. For Democrats, CNN polling data shows overwhelming concern about the economy followed by Iraq and then healthcare. Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points to wide partisan divides between Democrats and Republicans over U.S. troop deployments in Iraq and issues such as domestic surveillance of suspected terrorists. But he adds: “The public is far less clear as to what it wants with respect to foreign policy.”
The Economy and Globalization
Although the economy is often treated by analysts as purely a domestic issue, voters and politicians have used it to have a discussion on trade and globalization, especially in traditional manufacturing states expected to be battlegrounds in November. Some experts say soundings from the campaign trail show protectionist sentiment is spreading. For example, a December 2007 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll found that close to half the voters in South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire rated free-trade agreements as “a bad thing” on both the Democratic and Republican sides a month before their primaries. The Pew poll also noted that those numbers were consistent with views shown in national polls. Some analysts believe the backlash against free trade and globalization helps Democratic candidates who prefer “fair trade,” which amounts to trade with conditions attached, such as mandating labor and wage standards (Fortune).
As has been noted by others, the ability of Che and Fidel to turn Cuba, or what was once the world’s party central, into the worlds biggest island concentration camp and a hideous, destructive vortex of classic Communist stupidity and utter failure, is mind boggling.
It has been said that the only way to make a small fortune in a Socialist Hellhole, is to start off with a big fortune. But Fidel has managed to beggar a whole country for fifty years, while amassing an enormous fortune and a venal and ridiculous credibility with third world turds, and Western fellow traveller twerps and frauds.
The real Che was a child murderin’, short haired narcissist, coward, sadist, bore, mass killer, Stalinist, inept bungler, fraud, liar, poser, user, ungrateful, spiteful, spoiled, weak, naturally overweight, narrow minded mega dork square who was actually in his natural state, very, very, very uncool, and the man that Castro wanted dead. A lot. So Fidel wasn’t all bad. Che was not good at anything but the art of narcissism. Che never freed a single person, but imprisoned millions. Che was not a Cuban, but an Argentinian.
Like all totalitarian obsessives, Che was naturally bureaucratic, as well as deeply enamoured and aroused by the accounting and book keeping of mass oppression an’ murder. In short, Che never achieved a single damn thing in his entire rotten life. He never performed one truly kind and selfless act except for dying, but that was er, done for him.
The only reason Che looked good in his faux guerrilla shots, was because the usually overweight Mumma’s boy had the habit of getting hopelessly lost in the jungle for weeks and months at a time. This was often because Fidel sent Guevara out on absurd “missions” in the hope that Ernesto would finally die, never returning to Havana to bore Castro with endless collective diatribes of complex paranoid insanity, that were even worse than Fidel’s.
The WebWarriors of Ft. Hard Knox (WWF) will be offering a series of Web2.0 workshops online.
Watch this space for further details as they become available.
If you would like to learn more about this exciting project, and others, please make plans to attend the next WWF Vault Party, by signing up here. (Facebook account required.)
*The opinions of our collaborators, sponsors and guest authors, expressed on FHK or elsewhere on the web, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of FHK. We appreciate, however, their contributions and widely-varying perspectives on an impressive variety of topics.
The Knowles’ family business, “House of Dereon,” recently published advertisements for its “Dereon Girls Collection” with young models who look no older than my second-grade daughter. They are seductively posed and tarted up, JonBenet Ramsey-style, with bright lipstick, blush and face powder. Draped in bling, several of the girls sport leather jackets and studded accessories…
Just when you thought all hope was lost (or that it was finally over, depending on your perspective)…no, wait…is that? could it be? Why, yes, it’s Ron Paul! He and thousands of his supporters are scheduled to March on D.C. on July 12th.
The WebWarriors of Ft. Hard Knox (WWF) will be offering a series of Web2.0 workshops online.