Baghdad is slammed with bombings. Iraqis and US soldiers are dead. If the liar Barack had kept his promise, there would be no US troops in Iraq to die and, troops having left, Iraq might have been able to sort through their own decisions and have a truly representative (and responsive) government instead of the US-imposed puppet regime. But Barack didn't want to keep his promise and Barack wanted to lie.
The fools at the likes of FactCheck.org will rush in to insist, "Barack always said 'combat troops'!"
They're liars and whores who lied and whored for him in real time.
No, he didn't "always" say that. Most of the time, he never said it. When he sat down with the New York Times (and when Michael R. Gordon refuses to swallow the sap Barack was leaking), he did explain what his actual plan was. Most people never saw that. We called Barack out for that interview. Tom Hayden praised it. Then, a few days later, Tom Hayden saw the transcript of the interview and joined in calling it out. In the transcript (which readers of the print version -- I read the print version -- were referred to the day the article ran), Barack explained that withdrawal wasn't a promise. In fact, forced to answer by Gordon, Barack admitted he'd send troops back into Iraq after he started 'withdrawal' if the security situation got worse.
Americans didn't not know that for the most part. Reading the print version of the New York Times didn't inform you of that. You had to hunt it down. And people have a right to assume that if they go to a candidate's appearance, if they make time to, that what the candidate says from the stage is what he or she plans to do. And at those tent revivals -- check out the footage -- what they heard, over and over, was "We want to end the Iraq War and we want to end it now!" That was in Barack's stump speech. Not only did he say at all the events, footage of that was also used in commercials throughout the primaries.
That's where people got the idea that in sixteen months of being sworn in (January 2009), all US troops would be out of Iraq. Every last one.
They're not idiots. They were tricked and they were lied to. I know damn well what people thought because in March 2008, when the BBC broadcast Samantha Power stating that Barack wouldn't stick to any 'promise' he made now about Iraq, the e-mails here were dripping hatred and denial. There were some who claimed Samantha didn't even know Barack. There were others who claimed the BBC was working for Hillary's campaign.
And what should have been huge news was ignored by the whores telling you that Barack was going to end the illegal war. That would be The Nation, that would The Progressive, Mother Jones, go down the list.
The promise to the people was 16 months after he was sworn in. That's how he worded it, that's how he misled them. So, in May 2010, all US forces should have been out of Iraq.
If they had been, US soldiers wouldn't have died in Iraq today.
Ned Parker and Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) report Iraq was slammed with bombings today resulting in the deaths of 2 US soldiers and the deaths of multiple Iraqis, "The bloodshed highlighted the tenuous situation around Baghdad, where assassinations and other attacks still occur almost daily. It also drew attention to Sunni Arab and Shiite militants' continuing efforts to kill American troops, who are scheduled to leave at the end of the year. There has been an increase in the shelling around U.S. military bases within Baghdad's airport grounds as well as the American Embassy compound in the fortified Green Zone enclave." Tim Craig (Washington Post) adds, "Most of the explosions were directed at Iraqi police officers and government officials, who have become targets of terrorism in recent months. Security officials estimate that at least 21 people were killed and more than 80 injured during a succession of attacks that came from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m." Michael S. Schmidt (New York Times) counts eighty injured today and observes, "There were bombings in both Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods, including two in Sadr City, the stronghold of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, but it was unclear whether they were coordinated. Insurgents have often attacked both groups simultaneously, in an attempt to incite sectarian strife and further destabilize the country."
They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)
Last Sunday, the number of US military people killed in the Iraq War since the start of the illegal war was 4455. Tonight? PDF format warning, DoD still lists the the number of Americans killed serving in Iraq at 4455. They haven't updated since the two deaths today were announced.
Reuters provides this breakdown of today's violence: a Taji suicide bomber took his own life and the lives of 11 Iraqi soldiers, a Tuz Khurmato bombing which claimed the lives of 3 Iraqi soldiers, a Mosul mortar attack which injured one Iraqi soldier, a Mosul roadside bombing which claimed the life of 1 bystander and injured two Iraqi soldiers, two Baghdad roadside bombings that injured two people, another Baghdad roadside bombing that injured two people, a Baghdad sticky bombing injured two people, a Baghdad roadside bombing claimed 2 lives and left seven people injured, another Baghdad roadside bombing which injured five people, four Baghdad roadside bombings and a Baghdad car bombing resulted in 2 deaths and fifteen people injured, a Baghdad car bombing claimed 1 life and left five injured, another Baghdad roadside bombing left six people injured, 1 security guard was shot dead in Kirkuk (his daughter was left wounded) and, dropping back to yesterday, 1 person was shot dead in Kirkuk.
New content at Third:
Isaiah's latest goes up after this. Pru notes "The 'SlutWalk' phenomenon: Women refuse to take the blame for rape" (Great Britain's Socialist Worker):
Protests, billed as ‘SlutWalks’, are spreading after a cop’s sexist comment to Toronto students. Sally Campbell looks at the culture that blames women for rape and questions whether we should embrace language bound up with oppression
Our society promotes and constantly reinforces the idea that women are to blame if they are raped. A third of students think a woman is wholly or partially to blame for her rape if she was drunk, according to a 2009 survey in London Student newspaper.
Some 27 percent said she was responsible if she was “flirting”, 26 percent if she was walking alone in a dark place, and 17 percent if she was dressed in “sexy clothing”.
These attitudes are old—women have long been held to be responsible for inflaming or calming the so-called animal urges of men.
The women’s movement made progress through the 1970s and 1980s in breaking some of these myths. For example, it highlighted the negative role of the police in rape investigations, and popularised the slogan “No means no”.
But over the last couple of decades the blame culture has begun to creep back.
On university campuses there has been a backlash against the idea of safe, political spaces. Student unions now tolerate or even encourage beauty contests, sexist rampages by rugby clubs, pole-dancing as exercise and any number of other activities that many thought had died out after the 1970s.
Across the Atlantic this process is even more developed, as three stories from North America illustrate to chilling effect.
At Yale University—the US’s equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge—members of Delta Kappa Epsilon (George Bush’s former fraternity) marched round the campus last year chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!” and “We love Yale sluts”. They stopped in front of the women’s centre with the intention of intimidating women students.
This has been happening for years and the college authorities have done nothing to stop it.
The march is just the tip of the iceberg. Figures show that one in four female students at Yale will face sexual assault during their time at college. In March 2011 a group of current and former students filed a lawsuit against Yale for failing to provide women with a fair and non-threatening learning environment.
In Texas in 2008 a 16-year old school cheerleader alleged three fellow students raped her at a party.
One of her attackers was the school’s star basketball player. All three were charged with sexual assault but a grand jury later withdrew the charges. When the victim returned to school the head teacher told her it was up to her to avoid them.
Some students started calling her and her younger sister “sluts”, causing her sister to leave the school.
Prioritised
The cheerleader refused to cheer the name of her attacker at games. She was told that unless she chanted for him she was off the team.
Her family sued the school, saying she has a right to free expression—and that included not being forced to cheer for her rapist. They lost the case.
The judge ruled that her refusing to cheer was “interfering with the work of the school”.
So a school’s “work” is prioritised over the needs of a victim of sexual assault.
At York University in Toronto, Canada, in 2007, two drunken young men walked into a student hall of residence at midnight and went from floor to floor trying to open doors.
They raped two women and attempted to assault several more. The university has since increased security, but the most chilling aspect is the attitude of one of the rapists. In a pre-trial interview when asked what the victims could take away from the incident he replied, “Perhaps they now know to lock their doors.”
This was the same university where the SlutWalk would be founded. The first “walk” was organised in response to advice from a police officer to a group of women on personal safety.
He told them the best way to avoid rape was not to “dress like a slut”—implying that they are responsible if they are assaulted.
Some 3,000 people marched in Toronto to say, “Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.”
Attack
Where the officer and society at large say, “sluts are to blame”, the organisers want to say then we are all sluts, and none of us are to blame!
The idea has caught a mood, spreading across North America, Europe and Australia. Dozens of marches are planned. The Facebook page for the London SlutWalk on 11 June carries the statement:
“NO. Let’s raise our voices and tell the world that rape is never, ever OK. Not if she was wearing a miniskirt. Not if she was naked. Not if she was your wife, girlfriend or friend. Not if she was a prostitute. Not if she was drunk. Not if you thought she wanted to.”
This is the key message of the “walk”, and the reason we should support it.
However, the use of the term “slut” has raised hackles and led some to attack the march or to feel uncomfortable with it. I think there are some invalid and some valid concerns.
Sex has never been more open, discussed and visible. This should be a good thing.
But the form it takes in neoliberal society is distorted. Sex has become a commercial product to be bought and sold, or used to help other objects be bought and sold—rather than a relationship between human beings.
Many people are rightly angry at this “pornification” of everything and the pressure on young girls to look like Barbie dolls. A whole new generation of women’s liberation activists is being born from that anger.
At the same time Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail newspaper reading Tories are thrown into abject fear of young women’s sexuality—especially when the marriage figures are the lowest they’ve ever been!
So Tory MP Louise Bagshawe can appear on Newsnight claiming to support 100 percent the idea that no means no, whatever we wear. But she then attacks SlutWalk for “promoting promiscuity”, which she claims is harmful to women and society.
In doing so, she accepts the term “slut” (insulting women since 1450) exactly as it is defined. In a word it contains an idea of womanhood as pure, chaste and innocent, which is besmirched by women who don’t conform to that idea.
There is no equivalent term for men. After all men are made of slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails—they can’t be expected to control themselves.
“Slut” is a term completely and inextricably bound up with women’s oppression. This is where I have an issue with SlutWalk. It also seems to accept that binary opposition of the “pure” woman and the “slut”—but it simply reverses the polarity. For me this cannot get us very far in challenging oppression.
I reject the notion of judging or defining women by their perceived sexual behaviour. But we live in a contradictory situation. With the new niqab law in place in France, women can be arrested for wearing too much. Everywhere we can be blamed for wearing too little.
The desire to control women’s bodies and tell them how to behave is as strong as ever. But women are fighting back, and new generations are coming to the movement with ideas informed by all kinds of traditions, theories and gut reactions.
Every new movement sees a battle for ideas and strategies and throws up new and old ideas and ways of organising.
The new movement for women’s liberation is no different. It would be a shame if those feminists who balk at the name of this march cut themselves off from the many young women who will be taking part. At times like this you just have to link arms and argue.
Slutwalk takes place at 1pm, Saturday 11 June, Trafalgar Square, central London
We’re victims, not criminals
In 2009 five police officers were disciplined for failing to properly investigate sexual assault claims against a driver of a London black cab.
John Worboys was eventually convicted for rape. He was thought to have assaulted at least 100 other women—dozens came forward to give evidence as the case hit the press.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that a proper investigation could have prevented some of the attacks. Complaints raising the same pattern of events were reported to police over the period 2003-7. If the police had followed these up properly, many women would have been spared assault.
The police report of one women’s account shows the disgusting attitude some police take towards women reporting rape. It stated, “The victim cannot remember anything past getting in the cab, it would seem unlikely that a cab driver would have alcohol in his vehicle let alone drug substances.”
One victim, who was a 19-year old student at the time of her attack, said officers “just laughed” when she reported the assault. She said, “I felt like I was the criminal. I did not feel like I was the victim at all, and I certainly was not treated like one.”
We’re victims, not criminals
- 23% of women are sexually assaulted as an adult in Britain—and 5 percent are raped
- 54,602 sexual offences were committed in 2010 according to the British Crime Survey—up from 53,091 in 2009.
It recorded a 6 percent increase in the number of most serious sexual crimes—up to 44,693 from 42,187 - 40% of adults who are raped tell no one about it. Of the rapes that are reported, less than 6 percent result in a conviction
- 86% of rape victims know their attacker, exposing the myth that it is what women wear that leads to sexual assault
The following should be read alongside this article:
Cop: ‘Don’t dress like a slut and you won’t get raped’
© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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the los angeles times
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raheem salman
the washington post
tim craig
the new york times
michael s. schmidt
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