Nietzsche

I was looking over some of the news articles by Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who was held captive for a month by Iraqi insurgents. Interestingly enough, 35 minutes after her release she was nearly killed by U.S. troops as she was trying to exit Iraq. There are some theories that this was “accidentally on-purpose,” as she found some pretty controversial stuff — you can read about a woman who spent time in Abu Ghraib here, and there are other stories in the Il Manifesto, an Italian newspaper. This particular story about prisoner abuse brought to mind a quote from the (in)famous Nietzsche, Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Not much to add to that, and thanks to Nafisi, who put that poignant and timeless quote into her book.

Baghdad Burning

Now that I have my new Bloglines account set up, I can get the feed for my newest favorite blog, Baghdad Burning, a blog written by an Iraqi woman about the current situation there. Since I am currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, an amazing book about an English Lit professor whose study of 19th century American novels was considered “revolutionary” in Iran after the ayatollahs gained power in the 1980’s, the allegations that radical Shias who came into power during the last elections may make Iraq another Iran is downright chilling. It seems counterproductive that our administration may do such a thing, but actually, what most people do not know is that, in general, women’s rights are not considered “human rights” by U.S. policymakers, which is why there was no protest regarding the Taliban regime before 9/11 (although press made it seem that saving women was one of the reasons for destroying the regime, there were other — primarily geo-political reasons — that are far more plausible). This means that, were the Iraqi clerics who came “democratically” to power to bring stability to the country, even at the expense of women’s rights, it is totally possible that the U.S. may leave it at that. I mean, who can justify staying in Iraq longer than necessary? The protesters want the U.S. out of there right now (yesterday, really), and so does everyone else who has taken a hard look at the U.S. deficit. Would there really be the political pressure to stay in Iraq for the sake of women who do not want to wear the chador or for girls who don’t wish to be married at the age of 9? Or will this be left to “the Iraqis themselves” to iron oPost Options ut what is often considered either a cultural or a religious problem? Who could justify spending billions of more dollars — or for our troops to continue getting killed on foreign soil — for human rights violations that the U.S. certainly has never cared about before?

This is what struck me about Nafisi’s novel: I am working hard to help children who have been sold into slavery and prostitution. But, in Iran, even today, men can have “temporary marriages” that are as short as ten minutes (in addition to four wives) and men can also marry a girl as young as nine years old. What I work against every day is legal there. If we turn yet another country into a duplication of that — well, this is what I think about it : And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. (Mark 9:42, The Bible)

Liberty vs. Freedom

Although we don’t have cable (read: no Comedy Central) and thus are deprived of such shows as Crank Yankers and Crossballs, I have recently become enamored of Jon Stewart after his amusing and truthful confrontation on Crossfire, which is now being cancelled. His recent assessment of George Bush’s inaugural speech, and his repeated uses of the words Freedom and Liberty is here. (Note to the computer-challenged: click on the underlined words).

George Soros and the New DP

Okay, I said I’d post more pictures, and I will, but I have to stand on my soapbox for a while again, if only because I haven’t had any rabid e-mails lately. I just finished reading A New York Times article about the struggles of the Democratic Party. In addition, I am reading the fabulous book Fast Food Nation (For a review by FSBA, please click here.) …I am a labor Democrat. While the Republican Party has one platform, the Democratic Party is made up of many factions, including social, fiscal, labor, and environmental Democrats. It has infuriated me for years, not only because the factional nature of the Democratic Party makes it easy for a conservative family or friend to pick one issue unrelated to me (such as abortion, or gun control) and use it to color the entire platform (or variety of platforms) of the Democrats, but also because the Republican Party’s “family values” propaganda often causes blue-collar workers to vote for the party that, well, is taking their right to fair pay, insurance, and tax breaks away from them, something I cannot convince anyone to believe, regardless of its truth. I grew up a Republican. If I had been old enough to vote, I would have voted for Ronald Reagan, something I look back upon with horror. I went to a conservative university that did not allow alcohol, banned the distribution of condoms, did not allow birth control to be given by the health center, and had strict regulations on fraternizing with the opposite sex in its dorms. Nevertheless, most people blame my change from Republican to Democrat on “that liberal university education,” which is simply not true. I majored in liberal arts, not liberal politics. The change stems from the suggestion of a friend to attend a small student group called “The Progressives.” To this day, I believe they thought I was a Republican trying to infiltrate their group, as they rarely spoke to me, and because I never joined in any of their protests or leaflet-spreading campaigns. I simply listened, and I found myself going back, again and again, to listen to what these hemp-wearing radicals had to say. And for me, a small-town girl coming from a working-class area, the message was one I could hardly believe. Immigrant workers dying from respiratory diseases because the agri-business companies that employed them sprayed pesticides while they picked vegetables and fruit? Big beef processors fixing prices, hurting small ranchers, destroying rain forests in countries I had never even heard of before? It seemed like a lot of liberal hogwash to me. Then I went home — and heard from a friend’s dad, who had been a rancher, about how he couldn’t sell his cattle anymore. Or witnessed my own father struggling to convince other workers at his factory that 5 cents an hour, or $5.00 a month, did not a pension make, regardless of what company executives said. I witnessed, just in my lifetime, the loss of more than 50% of the family farms in our area as houses were built on prime farmland. Or what about the high nitrate concentration in an area close to my childhood home because of feedlots? The land, and the underground lakes on which everyone depends for their water, was and is being poisoned. Nobody asks me why I became a Democrat, and certainly my large and very conservative extended family would not want to take the responsibility for my change of heart. But they are. When I returned to my university the last half of my junior and my senior year, I became one of the most outspoken liberals on campus, joining forces with a small but intense intensely progressive group of friends, some of whom have gone on to dedicate their lives as an important member of the Democratic Party, a missionary/human rights worker, a women’s health specialist who is also a sexual assault nurse, and a businesswoman with aspirations to run for government office. In the shadow of these people, I often feel small and insignificant, with most of my contribution toward progressive politics centering on speaking, and mostly angering, those closest to me. And, while my dream is to start a non-profit organization to help women, for two years I have been swimming in place. So, when I read an article like the one in the New York Times, speaking about a revolution in the Democratic Party, I can only applaud the change. The “liberal agenda” has focused on the special interests of a variety of factions who feel under-represented in the U.S., and the DP has been unable to unify themselves under a single banner, like the “family values” of the Republican Party. This has made even myself only a nominal member of the DP, and in many ways unwilling to campaign for the party because of the various points on which I disagree. I am a Democrat because I am, above all, NOT a Republican. To see progressive organizations like MoveOn step forward and try to emphasize standards like labor reform, fair trade and good foreign policy as well as challenging the current administration and it’s insistence that it answer to nobody except themselves, is heartening. And, reading Eric Schlosser’s compelling book, Fast Food Nation, reveals the true nature of big corporations and confirms in my mind the fact that we have come full circle in the past 100 years, in that small businesses, small towns and American workers are suffering they way they did in the 1890’s, when large “trusts” took up so much of the market that nobody could compete. And maybe you like calling me a “bleeding-heart liberal,” but in truth, I am no different from Teddy Roosevelt who ran on the Republican ticket for governor of New York in 1886. I demand, and hope our politicians will someday be brave enough to demand, the same thing Roosevelt felt was required of his America: “…the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none.” (Biography of Theodore Roosevelt, www. http://www.whitehouse.gov/. [see previous link]) If that’s liberal hogwash, then so be it.