http://www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh05012003.html>Found it! here's Linebaugh's wonderful essay on May Day 1916

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 30 2005 7:05 utc | 101

Cabinet Earmarks $6Bln for Disabled The Cabinet on Thursday earmarked more than $6 billion in next year's federal budget to assist disabled citizens as part of a five-year program that will focus on improving medical care and providing better wheelchair access.

Posted by: DM | Jul 30 2005 7:37 utc | 102

With each new atrocity on every side in the hydra-headed "war on terror," you think that now, perhaps, we've reached the bottom. But never believe that comforting notion. The evil that has opened up beneath our feet is bottomless, and we are falling deeper, fathom by fathom, into the pit. The worst, far worse, is yet to come.

Floyd

Posted by: DM | Jul 30 2005 7:55 utc | 103

While we're on the subject of corrupters and/or incompetents in the mainstream media has anyone else picked up on the story of the awful Lachlan Murdoch pulling the pin at NewsCorp?

There will be as many theories about this around the traps by everyone from the NewsCorp arselickers to Murdoch runs the world conspiracy theorists. One can't help but feel that NewsCorps shareholders are those most likely to have demanded his ouster.

Apart from the cock-ups listed on the link above Lachlan baby has been responsible for defacations in the nest that have cost even more money as well as others which have caused NewsCorp considerable embarassment

The SuperLeague debacle was most probably sold to shareholders as the error of callow youth since it appears to have got out of hand due to an adolescent "Who's the alpha male?" contest between Lachlan and PBL heir apparent James Packer.
However the later OneTel poop was dropped in conjunction with young Jim so that must have caused some interesting fur to fly around the boardroom.

Students of Australian media dynasties will know that unlike Victorian English ruling families the goods don't automatically pass to the eldest male, they frequently go to the single child of the most recent wife. At the time Rupert may have thought the purpose of this marriage was to secure his Chinese interests but it seems Wendy may have had a different plan.

Nevertheless no one ever considered Rupert to be anything less than pragmatic which must be why he is using Lachlan's departure as a way to reassure an Australian public concerned that their media sector has fallen under the control of the US. The Murdoch flagship the London Times goes on to say:
A strong affinity with Australia is thought to have played a part in Lachlan’s decision. He is understood to have had significant concerns about last year’s decision to shift the legal headquarters of News Corporation from Australia to the United States.

The same article isn't afraid to attempt to normalise this schism by revealing other breaks in family unity:
Lachlan is not the first child of Rupert Murdoch to walk out of a job in the News Corp family. Five years ago Elisabeth, his elder sister, resigned as managing director of BSkyB, saying that she wanted to “alter her lifestyle and be in control of my own time” as she was about to have a third child.

It's hard to say if the Times blather will work as young Lachlan hasn't always endeared himself at home in Oz.
It may be a climbdown from the NY gossip pages.

W'ere badly in need of an Orson Welles lest anyone begin to feel sorry for the isolated old man without his sled.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 30 2005 8:24 utc | 104

DeA,

good read, thanks

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 30 2005 9:06 utc | 105

slothrop,
for what it is worth I like your literary references.

On the prostitution discussion, I would like to add that in Sweden pimps and johns breaks the law while prostitutes do not. Pimps has long been out-lawed (not that they have not existed anyway) and a couple of years ago buying sex became forbidden, after much debate. I was concerened at the time that the deabte was very little focused on the situation of prostitutes and much focused on the effects on the norms of society.

Anyway, a few years on and it is obvious that it has changed the norms of society. Though sex not being much of a scandalous subject in Sweden, more of a private matter, high-ranking males (a couple of judges, at least one highranking police and so on) getting convicted of buying sex has become very much a public matter. Johns are (and also has been) considered sleazebags (and now criminal sleazebags) in the public discourse, yet earlier it was not know (and was considered a private matter) who was a john.

And DeA, missed you on the robustus-thread, I suspected you had read much more of both MacKinnon and Dworkin. As a sidenote: the references the Macdworkin was shorthand not slander, at least that was my use and perception. How we could bake two different philosophers to one cake? Well, I told you you were missed.

And on the subject of good, feminist reading, I always enjoy Emma Goldman. Angry, intelligent, clear and unfortunately still very applicable.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jul 30 2005 10:57 utc | 106

De- in your description of porn, you do not differ with the adage of the judge who "knows it when he sees it." So the issue is who gets to decide what is pornographic and for whom. Your description upholds the societal norms as they exist.

however, the law that CM and AD worked to pass, resulted in confiscation of all sorts of literature (much of it gay and lesbian) that went far beyond the basic description of hardcore (which is what the description comes down to.)

Not that I'm a great fan of hers, but "Camille Paglia has referred to the pair as "the new Carrie Nation." Paglia also has this to add:"
 
MacKinnon is a totalitarian. She wants a risk-free, state-controlled world. She believes rules and regulations will solve every human il and straighten out all those irksome problems between the sexes that have been going on for five thousand years.

Perhaps not strangely, Clarence Thomas and the Bush administration find common cause with the CM/AD legal proposals.

The ACLU does not support the AD/CM law proposal:

A core idea of the anti-pornography movement is the proposition that sex per se degrades women (although not men). Even consensual, nonviolent sex, according to MacKinnon and Dworkin, is an evil from which women --like children -- must be protected. Such thinking is a throwback to the archaic stereotypes of the 19th century that formed the basis for enacting laws to "protect" women from vulgar language (and from practicing law or sitting on juries lest they be subjected to such language). Paternalistic legislation such as that advocated by MacKinnon and Dworkin has always functioned to prevent women from achieving full legal equality.

In their own words:

From Dworkin:

Pregnancy is confirmation that the woman has been fucked: it is confirmation that she has a cunt . . . The display marks her as a whore . . . Her belly is proof that she has been used. Her belly is his phallic triumph . . . The pregnancy is punishment for her participation in sex. She will get sick, her body will go wrong in a thousand different ways, she will die. The sexual excitement is in her possible death . . . And now, the doctors have added more sex--to birth itself . . . They cut directly into the uterus with a knife-- a surgical fuck.

From feminist Pat Califia (1993): "Andrea Dworkin has done more damage to women's culture in her tenure as darling of the media than anyone who is leader of the right wing. She is morally responsible for what is happening to women's literature in Canada."

This last from a site run by a gay male, fwiw.

de- you put quotes around the words gay porn, does that mean it doesn't exist in your opinion...that only heterosexual sex is porn? Or do you not think it exists?

The common view among those who oppose CM/AD is the ACLU view that their law legally infantalizes women, something that was fought and overturned as law after long struggle.

Laws in existence make it illegal for children to be bought and sold into porn or prostitution. Societal issues like poverty are not going to be solved by laws restricting pornography. Rather, it distracts from facing the causes of poverty and puts time, money and energy into a side issue that is not the core of the problem.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 30 2005 15:53 utc | 107

@fauxreal, I do think you're reaching a wee bit here. what I in fact suggested, or was trying to suggest, was an objective social-justice-based standard (exploitation, lack of control of outcomes, etc) that might be applied to view the porn industry in the same light as any other sweatshop industry, and thus to redefine "pornographic" not according to the random eye of any beholder -- mine or anyone else's -- but according to established leftist/human rights principles and based on verifiable material conditions. Follow the money, in other words.

as for your cites -- Paglia, Califia, and the ACLU? really? not a very impressive counterargument, imho, unless you're registered Libertarian :-)

Paglia imho is only one or two steps up from Coulter, a media darling of the resurgent Right who established her anti-feminist and misogynist credentials early on: she was the gal who said that "if it had been up to women we would all still be living in grass huts," which must have made Larry Summers' day :-)

And then there's good ol' Pat Califia, the well-known lesbian sadomasochist activist and writer who later became so discontented with her femaleness that she changed genders and is now Patrick Califia? well that's one way to escape from sexism, I guess -- switch sides...

There are far more reputable intellects who have differed with the legislative approaches to the porn industry and its abuses. There is imho a serious and legitimate critique of the approach that MacK and AD tried, but media circus performers like Paglia and Califia to me don't qualify as serious contributors. And sure, anyone can pull extreme quotes from AD's writings -- also from Monique Wittig for that matter, or Hakim Bey or any other raving visionary philosopher/poet. That's what such people exist for, to articulate the extrema, to take theory to its logical conclusion and past. We could cherry pick some juicy -- and maximally offensive -- quotes from Califia's writing, come to think of it. Another articulator of extremes.

The ACLU, now that is a real mixed bag. I respect their principled stand on first amendment issues in many cases -- they distinguished themselves with honour back in the McCarthy era and occasionally during the COINTELPRO years. However they have also sided far more consistently with commercial or profitable "free speech" than with noncommercial individual free speech -- they are far more likely to defend a Larry Flynt, shall we say, than a woman who's been busted for spray painting feminist grafitti. And far more likely to defend the "right" of men to consume images of women than the right of women not to be consumed in this manner.

I remember the case that changed my feelings of trust and admiration for the ACLU to a more wary stance towards them -- I still think they do good work in many cases, but I do not trust them as defenders of women's rights.

The defendant, Douglas Oakes, photographed his l4-year-old stepdaughter posed "Playboy-style" on a bar, wearing only bikini pants and a scarf, her breasts uncovered. The photographs were taken without the knowledge or consent of the child's mother. When the girl saw the prints she ripped them up and buried them, but Oakes forced her to dig them up. The girl then told her mother, who filed charges against Oakes under a Massachusetts law intended to ban child pornography. She also filed for divorce. Oakes was convicted and given a ten year sentence, but the conviction was overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The case is currently under appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, determined to weaken and ultimately overturn all child pornography laws, asked The Naturist Society and the American Sunbathing Association (ASA) to submit an amicus brief for the appeal. The ASA, the largest and most established nudist organization in the United States, has spent $15,000 on a friend of the court brief challenging the Massachusetts law.

IMHO the ACLU was well and truly on the wrong side here, siding against an abusive stepfather against a teenage girl.

I find the argument that legislative intervention in trafficking and abusive pornographic production methods (the two are closely related) is pointless until we eliminate poverty (and presumably all other forms of injustice?) ...somewhat curious. After all, if we eliminated poverty and other forms of injustice we would not need labour laws either, as no one would ever have to stay in a job that was dangerous or where they were poorly treated; we would not need laws governing domestic violence or child support, as no woman would ever be trapped in an abusive marriage due to lack of financial or child support options; hey, we would hardly need any laws at all if we had already levelled the playing field and eliminated poverty and injustice!

Waiting to intervene in abusive situations until we have fixed poverty and injustice seems to me a shirking of our responsibility to women and teens and children who are being exploited right now -- whether in sex sweatshops or garment sweatshops. It is the age-old argument of the trad male Left -- pipe down, girls, your issues will be addressed after the Revolution. In the sweet by-n-by.

By all means let us reduce poverty as much as we can, but let's also go after the SOB who takes naked pics of his girlfriend and then posts them all over the Internet without her consent. I really think we could do that without taking any gay person's favourite smutty books away from them :-)

For example, we could take a market-based approach -- introduce a new propertarian legal principle that the ownership of any nude or sexualised portrait image resides with the person photographed, not with the taker of the photo or the reproducer or distributor. Women could then sue the hell out of pimps and pornographers for distributing images of them without consent or fair earnings distribution. It would put the female subject (or any gender of subject) back into the transaction as an agent with legal rights in the matter, not as a mere commodity being transferred between (usually male) producer and (usually male) consumer. Take that, Levi-Strauss! me, I would prefer obviously a less market-based, less monetist, more rights-based approach, but there are many options...

I think we can consider and define such interventions on a human-rights basis and thus dodge the fatal confusion of "offensiveness" with "abusiveness".... as an aside, I have often idly wondered why it is that we see first-run big-budget movies which include in the trailers carefully worded guarantees to the effect that "no actual animals were hurt during the making of this film." I would like to see the day when all porn flicks, photo spreads, etc. bear a similar label assuring me that "no actual women were hurt during the production of this material" -- and giving me and the actress/model/prostitutes the right to sue if this claim is false. Sometimes it seems like we care a lot more about the well-being of animals of both genders than of humans of female gender...

Personally I was never that convinced that the MacK/Dworkin legislative proposal was the best possible strategy. In fact I'm rather attached to freedom of speech in principle. We're all exercising it vigorously here, which is a Good Thing (NOT TM). But I think when we consider Freedom Of Speech as a high-flying concept, we have to consider the same two words that we have to consider when we talk about Free Trade and Free Markets -- for whom? Whose freedom, and whose speech?

Defending our collective "right" -- based on 1st Amendment absolutism -- to consume endless reams of sweatshop porn, regardless of the cost to people used in its production, seems to me perilously close to "The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable." It gives me a nervous feeling.

And with that, since the differences being expounded here appear to be irreconcilable, I think I'll let my part of the debate lapse. The literature's out there. The curious can go read for themselves and see whether Strossen's Defending Pornography makes more sense to them than, say, Not For Sale or For Adult Users Only or (video) The Shocking Truth. Or Bob Jensen's haunting essay "Blow Bangs and Cluster Bombs". [I still think Strossen reminds me of Friedman and that ironically brings me back to Comrade Slothrop's comment about the failures of petit-bourgeois feminism... the substitution of identity politics for class-based analysis perhaps?]

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 30 2005 21:38 utc | 108

Yes, I am really tired of this. We agree to disagree. I did not, however, state that we wait until the end of poverty to address such issues...I said it was a side issue to poverty, as in, a way to make money...which is very diff. than the way you posed my statement.

And, yes, as I said, I would be labeled libertarian on vice issues.

And, again, anytime you mention porn, it is within the context of the most degrading sort, and, as was noted by many in re Canada, including a doc on free speech tv last month or so, the outcome of that was that gay and lesbian bookstores, for example, had their stock confiscated.

I take issue with your condescending tone, also (and not the first time), but in the long run, who give a fuck, so to say. I'm finished with this discussion as well.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 30 2005 21:58 utc | 109