Finally, Gas for under $3/gal.! McCain/Palin "S" Word! NAFTA!

On my way home tonight, I was happy to finally see gas for $2.99/gal. It's about time. Oil and gas companies have been setting these high prices to greedily line their pockets by taking money directly out of ours. If there really was a legitimate shortage, nothing would make these prices drop. Hmmmm...

As for Palin and McCain using the "S" word, I think there should be no problem in Obama using the "F" word in reply. Obama is not a Socialist, but the entire policy of the Bush Administration, which McCain has enthusiastically supported, endorsed and for whom he campaigned twice, has for the past eight years been absolutely Fascist.

As for McCain bringing up Rev. Wright after promising he wouldn't, means he lies! So much for his promises.

NAFTA - multi-national corporations going into less-developed nations in Central and South America, using up the natural resources of these nations with little thought to adverse environmental consequences and unfair labor practices. Now, indigenous peoples of some of these countries are beginning to protest.

Not-so-Free Trade or the High Human and Environmental Costs of Free Trade

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has enabled corporations to do business internationally, bringing low-cost products to the American public, high corporate profits, and high dividends for corporate shareholders. This is seemingly a win-win situation. Until you begin to look below the surface. Corporations who do their manufacturing outside of the United States are not hindered by enforced strict environmental laws designed to protect workers, the environment and United States citizens because the Mexican government doesn't police these companies. Maquiladoras don't have to worry about paying high minimum wages, implementing expensive safety measures, or compliance with stringent OSHA laws. They may be required to transport hazardous wastes out of the country, but have repeatedly and illegally dumped their hazardous wastes into rivers that also serve as sources of drinking water.

One of our partners in trade, the Mexican government, raises property taxes forcing people from their land and into the bordertowns to increase the labor pool. The factories or maquiladoras pay their workers low wages, making it next to impossible for them to earn enough money to pay their taxes, so the government can confiscate their lands. The maquiladoras then have a permanent, low-cost pool of mostly female laborers, who work uncomplainingly and compliantly. The maquiladoras do not provide security for their shift workers, who work for a company that remains open 24 hours per day. The high cost of this employment comes in the kidnapping, torture, rape, dismemberment, and murder of these women since 1993.

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico is ground zero for these women. It is a wasteland for human rights, providing inadequate protection of their women and girls, and no justice for those who have paid the ultimate price of trying to survive on low wages. The government says less than 500 women have been murdered, human rights organizations say the number may be more like 5,000. This also happens in Guatemala, where over 2,500 women and girls have been murdered. I believe that even 1 is one too many. The US Government isn't pressuring these governments enough to protect their women and girls, and to hunt down, prosecute and imprison their kidnappers, rapists, torturers, and killers. This attitude of the disposability of these women and girl's lives by the Mexican and Guatemalan governments is unconscionable and essentially condones these crimes and this treatment of women and girls as less than human beings. All of this for higher corporate profits and gross national product. The bottom line is money, not human rights.

Corporate America also runs the news outlets that refuse to print and disseminate the truth because it will damage their bottom line, upset their advertisers, and bring to light the fact that the free trade agreements amount to nothing more than government-sponsored slave labor. The last thing they want the majority of the American public to know is that thousands of Mexican and Guatemalen women are being kidnapped, tortured, raped, dismembered, and murdered as part of the price of producing the low-cost products they buy as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which still contains no provisions protecting the workers.

People of the United States, especially women, please put pressure on all the governments and corporations involved, as well as the media. Write, tell others about this, and most of all make some noise so that this doesn't continue! Hit their pocketbooks by boycotting goods from the corporations who essentially profit from the rapes and murders of these women. If we come together as a community and work together, we can create the changes that will end this femicide.

Women and Gender-Based Hate Crimes

Throughout history and into today’s world, women have been the victims of gender-based hate crimes, including dehumanization, devaluation and exploitation. These hate crimes have been tolerated and sometimes even encouraged. Women are still being trafficked, abused, raped, humiliated, mutilated, killed for honor, and murdered in record numbers. When someone is not treated equally, given the same human rights and level of self-determination as those in power, allowed the same standards of treatment and equal pay, they are a slave. When someone purposefully doesn’t pay a person anything or pays someone significantly less than what they are worth, they are still dealing in human exploitation and the slave trade. Women in the USA are currently paid at 80% of a man’s salary, up from 60% when I was a child, but still unequal. We are simply cheap, slave labor. Women and female children are still prevented from becoming educated in many parts of the world. Male embryos are pre-selected over female embryos, creating a form of technological female genocide.

When all of these things affect over half of the world’s current and historical population, it is the largest brain-drain in human history and has caused a huge imbalance in the world. This is evidenced in the imbalance in gender ratios in youth in China, creating the current crisis of a lack of potential wives (and mothers of the next generation) for the, now older, pre-selected male embryos. I’m curious as to how China is going to handle the potential increase in violence due to male-male dominance hierarchy when these men compete for a smaller population of potential female mates. As for this hierarchy that still dominates the world, it has brought an unnatural imbalance of power and a concomitant increase in violence and bullying to extreme levels when encountered on a global scale. We have now had more loss of life from wars in the past hundred-or-so years than in the balance of all of recorded history.

So here we still are. Women have been slaves for thousands of years. We still do not have the same freedoms and right of self-determination as do men. We are still expected to work for less, to be quiet, to be uneducated, to stand aside, and/or be veiled and hidden. There are, of course, always those bright and shining exceptions that the people in power will hold up as examples of women’s equality, but these success stories are still in the minority. It is like when people in the 30's, 40's and 50’s would hold up Lena Horn as an example of a successful African-American performer. Yet her contracts benefited others more than herself, and she often wasn’t allowed to stay at, or even walk through the front doors of the hotels or venues in which she headlined. Many women in traditional male roles of power today have less power than they would if they were a man. They are still treated and spoken of differently, and held to a higher standard than they would if they were a man. In the United States of America, we have still never had a woman president or vice president. It has taken over 225 years for a woman to be able to even run for the office of president. I wonder if Senator Hillary Clinton thinks she was treated fairly and equitably, compared to her male running-mates, while campaigning for president.

I was recently appalled to read, in an August 11, 2008 online article on MSNBC, that the increase in the reporting of rape in Afghanistan has also led men like Ali Khan to say that women are being raped more frequently now because they are essentially exposing themselves to more violence. “These days all these young girls are going to school, and coming out of their houses. These criminals chase after them,” he said. “When these criminals come, they commit rape as well.” Khan’s 12-year-old niece was brutally gang-raped by men who invaded her family home, and beat her mother and father. Her father is still in the hospital two months after the savage attacks. Khan is using illogical circular logic to keep women home and “protected.” His niece wasn’t raped because she left her home and went outside; she was raped because rape and violence against women has been tolerated in her country and the attackers left to continue their reign of terror and rape without impunity. She was raped when her attackers broke into the very home in which her uncle and those in power wish her to remain. Here we go again, blaming the victims! Some of the men involved have been identified by their victims, yet have been allowed to freely roam their country without ever being charged, committing additional crimes of violence, including rape. They are being protected by fellow citizens, police, government officials, warlords, religious leaders, and their powerful families. Their victims are in hiding, afraid for their lives, attempting to escape retribution from their attackers because they "talked." Here we see the perfect example of tolerance, and almost the encouragement, of gender-based hate crimes.

I have a great respect for different religions and cultures; however, when these are used to justify human rights abuses and slavery, I believe the secular and religious leaders, the men holding the reins of power, also abuse the beauty of their religion and culture to maintain their positions in society at any cost. They will do anything to keep women controlled and in the home, and to maintain the status quo. I personally believe there is nothing wrong with a woman choosing to stay home of her own free will, when she has all the same freedoms, political power and right to self-determination as a man, and is not being pressured by religious and cultural norms. Please don’t get sidetracked by a discussion on the family and women’s roles in the family, the breakdown of family values because of feminism, and that women who are out in the workforce have irreparably damaged the family core. Again, that would be blaming the victims, as well as oversimplifying a discussion that would also need to include such topics as economics. A fair and legitimate debate can only occur when both genders approach the forum wielding both equal rights and power.

Unfortunately, after thousands of years, the traditional and modern value system in the human hierarchy remains, from top to bottom, adult males, male children, adult females, female children. How and when will this imbalance of the genders finally be erased? Unfortunately, I believe that the only permanent way to change the system is from within the male gender. Which male leaders and role models will have the courage to stand up and say that this is unconscionable and will no longer be tolerated? Maybe the time will come when the testosterone-driven male-male hierarchy will be overshadowed by enlightened men who use their incredible powers of self-control, humanity, and intelligence to help women rise up and share equally in their power and human rights. Only then, will a true balance and partnership between both genders change the world, hopefully into a safer, more peaceful place upon which all people can live and thrive, without gender-based hate crimes.

Please check out Amnesty International's website:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/stop-violence-against-women-svaw/womens-human-rights/page.do?id=1108231&n1=3&n2=39&n3=1101
and the United Nations website:
http://www.unifem.org/campaigns/vaw/

ADDENDUM 1/22/09
I just read an excerpt from The Killing Fields: Harvest of Women (Peace; 2006), by Diana Washington Valdez, Prologue and Chapter 32. This is something all people, but especially women, should read and consider:
http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=1202

This article by the Global Fund for Women, states that, in the past 10 years of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo...
4 million people have died because of war and starvation
1/2 million women have been raped and tortured
Approximately 3 million people are displaced
http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=1082