Though it has been somewhat lost to our generation, as some distant relic of the past, humans are today, as they have ever been, caught in a struggle between classes of people. Such tumult is the inspiration of vicious cultural supremacy and nowhere is it as insipid as between the superrich and the struggling people of the world.

The equality and individual empowerment that makes democracy the purest political system, is marginalized in the vastness of the American condition. Even more defeating to democratic ideals is how obscene amounts of wealth can so utterly overshadow the generally good-natured instincts of the people.

Recently, the corporate instruments of unconscionable economic stratification have been granted new and indecent power over our political system. Already advantaged with control over mainstream media and unmatched governmental influence, corporate dollars now have legal sanction to engulf the political process as never before, leaving the voice of the people lost in a current of political manipulations undoubtedly to favor the narrow, hoarding interests of insatiable economic gain.

Sung and re-sung are the lullabies that put to rest discontent for the callous externalities of greed, with ideas of the American dream. It is a spell of nightingale syndrome which deceives the well intentioned into believing it is purely honest work, and not the disease of corruption, which leads to “success”. It is a spell that foments blindness and submission to an economic pyramid scheme where the usurious and supremacist economic elite maintain control at the expense of the tired masses.

Optimism After Heartbreak.

Despite concerted efforts to mollify economic unrest–despite efforts to direct popular culture and conventional wisdom away from populist inclinations—despite near monolithic control by the economic elite’s uniquely cold outlook—we are deeply fortunate. We have this moment.

Even with so much of the game rigged—we are not without means to change. We are privileged to live in an age where the openness of technology gives legitimacy to hope. Technology provides an incredibly powerful vehicle for the free exchange of ideas—ideas that are untempered by corrupting centralized authority. It is this, more than anything else that has breathed new life into democracy.

And still, there are no easy answers…

Problems with no clear solutions are unique in their ability to entangle the soul with sullen myopia. Our fiery passion to fight the good fight is quickly doused by complications. I am left sure only that peace and human dignity are the objectives. We’ll start there.

Technorati Tags: homosexuality, homosexuals, gay marriage, slavery

With the Iranian election results disputed (a dispute that the incumbent will likely win), I think it’s important to revisit the American conventional wisdom about the Iran and its president. Suspicious sources and a lazy media echo-chamber have instilled many misconceptions into the American public’s mind about Iran. This is worrisome because such misconceptions leave the American public vulnerable for the type of hawkish manipulations that led us into the Iraq war, and so for that reason US attitudes towards Iran need reexamining.

Nuclear Weapons Program

Top among the controversies surrounding Iran is the issue of their nuclear development. One goal of Iran’s energy policy is to use nuclear energy for domestic energy needs so that more of Iran’s oil supplies can be diverted for foreign sale.

In developing their domestic nuclear energy program Iran has often skirted certain IAEA regulations, with the ostensible reason being that strict adherence to the rules has allowed the US to sabotage nuclear development contracts forged between Iran and other countries. This evasion of IAEA directives has been the primary basis on which Iran has been accused of having a nuclear weapons program.

However, in 2007, part of a United States National Intelligence Estimate was leaked that concluded that Iran had not worked on a nuclear weapons program since 1993. Ironically, Iran’s first nuclear weapons programs was facilitated by America in the 1950s.

“Vanish from the page of time” vs. “wiped from the map”

Since he was elected in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has received much criticism on his comments regarding Israel. The most famous of these was given in a speech called “A World Without Zionism” in which he quoted a line from Ayatollah Khomeini.

An improper English translation painted him as calling for Israel to be “wiped from the map.” When word got out there was an international uproar. As it happens, in Persian there is no such idiom. More accurate translations read “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] the page of time.”

The focus of the speech was a hopeful vision of a world free from Western oppression of Muslims, and, in context, it is clear that this is not policy—much less a military threat. In fact, Iran has never made a military threat against Israel. Israel has against Iran, though—many, many times.

Holocaust Denial

Ahmadinejad has also met sharp international criticism over his comments on the Holocaust. The widespread and misleading allegation is that he denies that the Holocaust ever occurred.

It is undoubtedly true that Ahmadinejad has raised some uncomfortable questions about the Holocaust. Indeed, in December 2006, he even convened a conference to explore historical evidence for the Holocaust, and he also occasionally referred to people making “a myth” of the Holocaust.

However, as Iran Specialist Professor Shiraz Dossa states, while Ahmadinejad’s “rhetoric has been excessive and provocative,” he“has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation. What Ahmadinejad has questioned is the mythologizing, the sacralization, of the Holocaust.”

Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory statements are all in the context of the Palestinian struggle. The questions are put in terms of skepticism towards the Holocaust’s use in justifying Zionist colonialism in Palestine. The intellectual exploration, undoubtedly born of a deep, sometimes justified, mistrust for the West, has never crossed the line into outright denial of the Holocaust.

When such statements have been conflated with anti-Semitism, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly clarified his position with statements like “creating an objection against the Zionists doesn’t mean that there are objections against the Jewish.”

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, the recent election dispute in Iran leaves one questioning the democratic scruples of the country’s leadership. Ahmadinejad’s Iran is far from the idyllic liberal democracy. But, however great the fervor for Ahmadinejad’s opponent, one need be careful not to lose sight of how unfairly Western caricatures of Iran have influenced attitudes toward the incumbent worldwide—a habit long in the making and likely slow to change.

The part of me that loves poop jokes decided to search naughty terms and analyze what regions are interested in various fetishes.

Czech Republic is far and away the worlds leader in deviant search results. They’re number one for bbw, anal fisting, fisting, bdsm, bondage, interracial porn, dildo, orgy.

What the fuck is goin on in the Czech Republic right?

I decided to look at trends for shock value sex sites memes like Meat Spin, hai2u, cakefarts, tubgirl, lemon party. Finland loves them. Every one of them has Finland as the number one searching nation.

What is it about Finland that makes them love hilarious and repulsive sexual things more than other people?

Pakistan is beyond a shadow of a doubt the capital of the universe for bestiality.

yeah man I donno.

UPDATE:

Romania love cum. Also there is an inverse correlation between searches for cum and news stories about cum.

It is human nature to be comforted by our allegiances. There’s a certain exhilaration one gets from being on a team. The bond of comradery and love is something we as people value deeply, and such unity is often found in things like tribalism, nationalism, and, most troublingly, ethnic supremacy.

The dagger is when pride’s isolating effect divides people against each other. One can look to many instances where this type of behavior has occurred, but history’s most glaring and egregious example, where the dream of unity provoked terrible violations against humanity, is, needless to say, Hitler’s push for an Arian master race.

Science has shed light on genetic differences between ethnicities and too often people use these differences to validate ideas of racial superiority.

Ironically, there is a considerable number of people from the Jewish community who have espoused the same type of ethnic superiority eugenics that Hitler did, which reminds me of something Nietzsche said: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Here is what I think is important to remember:
• Ethnic political equality should be of foremost concern
• Biological differences are two minimal and complicated to a) fully understand and b) dictate policy
• Ethnic superiority should be avoided.

2004 arrived after a long four years of our current administration and my will to help solve problems was frustrated. I was eager to find someone on the national stage who I could put my trust in–someone who the political system had not compromised–someone who could relieve my cynicism and revive my faith in the good tomorrow might bring.

John Kerry wasn’t that person. But a young keynote speaker at Kerry’s nominating convention showed promise. My mother got me his book: “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama. I read it cover to cover. This was the guy.

I took that book with me after high school to Louisiana where I served in AmeriCorps. It was two years after Katrina had devastated the area and things were still bad. I spent a lot of time in the lower ninth ward, which, prior to the storm hosted one of the highest rates of black home-ownership in the country. When the levees broke, people were washed out of their houses. Most never came back. Now it’s practically a ghost town.

Two years later I realized that whatever I thought I understood from the news at the time of the storm did the reality of the situation no justice. I stood in what was left of a neighborhood on the front line of the levee breach. This was not the best America could offer. This was a hard blow to take.

Even so, there were a lot of reasons to be hopeful. I was part of a movement where people helped one another. I worked with people to build the house that would soon be their home. I saw people stand up and stay standing. Things were getting better.

And even if some of its leaders couldn’t get their act together, Americans seemed to turn a new leaf after that storm. More and more people noticed the failures of the Bush Administration. And as I worked in New Orleans, I noticed my man Barack Obama starting to gain momentum as Presidential Election season approached. I knew who I was for.

Obama won’t try to be our king. He will try to be our peer. That’s why he’s got my endorsement.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King demonstrated the power of non-violence in combating imperialistic exploitation. They showed how empathy from the ruling political class of people could lead to change in an unjust policy. The tactic is still powerful, and, in fact, it may be the most powerful means of radical change left in the world.

However, as loudly as Gandhi and King’s success has rung for those who support equality, it has been heard even more keenly by those dastardly purveyors of exploitation. To the particularly craven observer (and I admit that I fall reluctantly into this category), it becomes evident that non-violent resistance was successful only because the goodly people that unknowingly supported the far away tyranny of their government, woke up from their ignorance and took pity on the wrongfully treated. It seems a fairly simple intellectual leap for any sharp Machiavellian to consider that their machinations would be better protected if more time was given to branding the exploited as less morally righteous.

India, when it was under the tyranny of British Rule, was demoralized away from violence by their lack of military resources, which, thanks to the leadership of Gandhi, actually worked in their favor. But remove that sense of militaristic futility–give fuel to the violent intuitions that afflict the human condition after being dehumanized, and person will neglect the moral high ground of pacifism for the satisfaction of their rage.

Add a little media manipulation and you’ve got a cocktail for a real fuckjob.

I give you IRAQ.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/23/sprj.nitop.army.dissolve/

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/26/explosives_were_looted_after_iraq_invasion/

Women: Some just say “Sure, they’re those things with vaginas in ‘em.” others understand the feminine identity as an endless majesty of intellect, strength, and fashion sense. All throughout history, differences between males and females have shaped the way society looks at the shapelier sex, and the unfortunately common patriarchal societies have pushed the female potential-sometimes all too literally-to the back burner. However, with the 19th and 20th centuries came the blossoming of social, technological, and medical advances. These changes became the mother’s milk of progress, and birthed the modern Women’s Rights Movement. In this essay we will expose ourselves to the legal background of one of the most titillating issues surrounding women’s movement in America: Reproductive Rights.

The post World War 2 era was a turbulent time for America. Increasingly tenacious currents of a liberalizing society began to stand up to the status quo’s sentimentalized notions of the way things used to be and challenged their legal manifestations.

Throughout the country, seldom enforced, socially restrictive laws, known as Blue Laws, became the main attraction for progressive ire, and, in the mid-twentieth century, no state’s laws were quite as Blue as Connecticut’s. Indeed, it was from the “Nutmeg State” that one of the most famous showdowns in the history of Reproductive Rights emanated, in Griswold v. Connecticut.

In 1879, Connecticut passed a statute demanding that doctors not provide “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” In the almost 100 years following law’s passage, it was almost never enforced. However symbolic it may have been, several failed legal attempts were launched aimed at overturning the law culminating with a case known as Poe v. Ullman.

Oddly enough, the insurmountable hurdle for these attempts, and particularly for Poe v. Ullman, was that, because Connecticut filed no charges against the plaintiffs in these cases, the Supreme Court felt that issue was not “ripe” for judicial review. In other words, one needed to break the law and be recognized with legal sanction before the Supreme Court would take the case.

The Court’s dismissal of Poe v. Ullman provoked Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, Estelle Griswold and professor of Medicine at Yale, Dr. C. Lee Buxton to test the law, by opening a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. Such flagrant violation of the law succeeded in landing both founders in the kind of legal controversy that lacked in Poe v Ullman, and when their $100 fines were upheld by both the Appellate Division of the District Court and the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, the case made its way onto the docket of the Supreme Court.

The case was argued before the Warren Court on the dates of March 29 and 30, 1965 and was decided June 7 of the same year. The decision was 7-2 in favor of invalidating the Connecticut law.

Justice William Douglas, writing for the majority, contended that the Connecticut law stood in opposition to the right of privacy, which, though not specifically enumerated in the constitution, existed in what he called “penumbras” of other constitutional provisions. In his argument, he cited as precedent for unenumerated rights, the courts protection, in NAACP v. Alabama, of freedom of association “and privacy in one’s associations” as a peripheral virtue of the First Amendment.

Justice Douglas maintained that, in addition to the First Amendment, penumbras regarding privacy existed in the Third Amendment’s protection against the quartering of soldiers, the Fourth Amendment’s provision for “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the Fifth Amendment’s assurance that one need not incriminate one’s self, and the Ninth Amendment’s assurance that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Several other justices joined Justice Douglas with concurring opinions. The most notable of these was written by Justice Goldberg, who held that the “language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments.” To support his assertion, Justice Goldberg cited both a wide array of legal precedent, and a very relevant statement by James Madison that went, “It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure.”

If Connecticut v. Griswold was the child of the Reproductive Rights Movement, surely Roe v. Wade was the afterbirth. Eight years after the decision in which Estelle Griswold and Dr. C Lee Buxton were absolved of their $100 fine, Norma L. McCorvey, better known as “Jane Roe,” won a case against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, and, in doing so, increased the legal support for reproductive rights an entire proverbial bra size.

Roe v. Wade, while far and away the most recognized Supreme Court case in history, was more or less a reiteration of Griswold v. Connecticut. The District Court (which actually ruled in favor of Roe, but declined to grant the injunction against the Texas criminal abortion laws that Roe sought) cited Justice Goldberg’s concurring opinion in holding that the Ninth Amendment, through the Fourteenth, provides a fundamental right for women to decide whether to have a child. Justice Blackmun, writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, contended, much as Justice Douglas had when ruling against the Connecticut law, that Roe’s right to privacy existed in the “Fourteenth Amendments concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action”

Even so, Justice Blackmun’s opinion in Roe v Wade is distinctly illuminating. He writes, almost as a side note, that legal restrictions on reproductive rights are a fairly recent development. With few exceptions, the regulations on abortion and contraception that pervaded the United States in the latter half of the 19th century had no foundation in either the ancient or common law on which the American legal system is based.

This is significant because it emphasizes the culturally entrenched expectation of reproductive choice as a “fundamental right”. That argument, though only parenthetically recognized, is, in fact, the underlying principle for the decisions in both cases: It is a culture’s expectation of rights that secures its liberty, and it was when the champions of the Reproductive Rights Movement demanded that their rights be respected, that they got their liberty.

The success of the Reproductive Rights Movement paralleled the successes of the larger
Women’s Rights Movement. 1950’s America returned home late in the twentieth century startled to find dinner absent from the table—startled to find that women wandered off the well beaten path between the kitchen and the bedroom to find lives outside of making pies and babies. In the wake of America’s dismay, the movement succeeded in turning a once a month complaint into a permanent menstrolution.