Pollitt on French Sexism, Racism, and Hypocrisy

Katha Pollitt unloads on French hypocrisy over Strauss-Kahn's rape of the hotel maid, finding it shockingly depressing that French women are reacting just as awfully as French men.

Of course, the French (and a lot of Europeans at large) are complete hypocrites when they say bad things about America given their own history of racism, colonization, and inequality, not to mention excuses for rape. And it's when she moves beyond DSK that she delivers my favorite line:

A word about race: for decades, France, you've prided yourself on your lack of racism. But really what that means is you like African-American jazz musicians and writers. You're actually quite racist toward your own ex-colonized immigrants of color, most notably Muslims from North Africa. The way you talk about Muslim immigrant women, you would think France was a gender-egalitarian paradise for everyone else, and the biggest feminist issue was whether or not to ban the burqa.

Best thing I've read today. 

MLK's Vision--That Workers Regardless of Color Could Be Exploited!!!

The story of the exploitation of Chinese workers that are building the statue for the new Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall is bad:

The man told Bassan that the rest of the Chinese crew lives in another apartment, but all the workers gather for breakfast and dinner, which they make themselves. They work for a sculpting company in Hunan province and have no idea what they will be paid for their work on the King memorial. They expect to be paid when they get home.

The translator asked: Why are the workers okay with not being paid until they return to China?

Because they are working for "national honor," the man said. "To bring glory to the Chinese people." He said the workers felt patriotic pride in having been chosen to work on the King project. He said they knew there were Americans who wanted their jobs, didn't get them and were mad that the Chinese did.

The man said the workers get free room and board, and lunch delivered at the job site. Their work breaks last only as long as it takes them to eat. When they had been in the United States for one month, they were treated to dinner at a restaurant. Like any good tourists, they planned to go to New York City over Thanksgiving and maybe Niagara Falls.

But this response by King Memorial Foundation head Harry Johnson is just disgusting:

Instead, the foundation sent a Sept. 8 statement by Johnson that reads: "While 95% of the work is being done by American workers, we strongly believe that we should not exclude anyone from working on this project simply because of their religious beliefs, social background or country of origin."

Precisely--labor unions are being racist by not allowing the foundation to exploit workers from around the world in the building of this memorial!


Via Cogitamus

Somebody Call the Waaaaambulancia

Porfirio Lobo Sosa is apparently unhappy that deposed president Manuel Zelaya, who is writing a book on the coup, is critical of Honduras. Greg puts it best:

I guess [Lobo Sosa's] complaint would go something like this:

Our military overthrew a democratically elected government, then the police killed a bunch of people, a coup government then did its best to bankrupt the country, the Congress faked a resignation letter, everybody lied about being willing to negotiate, the Supreme Court allowed violations of the constitution, and we all made a mockery of both horizontal and vertical accountability to make sure everyone stays poor. So why would Zelaya say bad things about us? As Robert Micheletti said last year, we're all just happy people!

Heh. Indeed.

Consumption and Environmental Destruction

From the always interesting environmental site Worldchanging, allow me to reprint the caption from this photograph.

Congo, Conkouati National Park, 2007
In the Cotovindou logging concession a Congolese worker for the Chinese timber company Sicofor saws down a 22-meter moabi tree that will be loaded the same day on a truck bound for Pointe Noire. From there it will be embarked for China. It will probably end up as luxury furniture in Europe or the States. Moabi (baillonella toxisperma) takes about hundred years to reach maturity. Its fruits are edible, its bark has medical applications and the oil its seeds produce is very sought after on the African markets. The droppings of elephants, that love the Moabi fruits, are the main mechanisms for spreading the seeds and therefore of its reproduction. Due to poaching, elephants are getting rare, due to logging Moabi is getting rare. In the Congo forest elephants and Moabi could disappear at the same time. Moabi has been included in the red list of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) in 2004.

The most important point made here is not the decline of elephants or even the tree species. It's the fact that this tree is almost certainly going to make luxury furniture for the United States or Europe. For all the complaining the first world does about environmental destruction in the developing world, a large percentage of that is done for our consumption. I can't tell you how many environmentalists I've known who seem to miss this connection. They talk about how much they love the environment and how much they hate its destruction. Then they buy homes on the edge of the wilderness that they commute to. And they purchase expensive wood furniture from exotic trees. Sure it looks good. Adds a lot to the atmosphere of the house. It also destroys national parks, forces wildlife into extinction, threatens indigenous cultures and native knowledge, and contributes to climate change.

Purchasing products made from rainforest wood is simply unacceptable and must be stopped. The model is CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. CITES has gone a long way to stop the smuggling of sea turtles, rare birds, elephant ivory, and other endangered species. But it does nothing to protect their habitats. We need a new convention to protect those habitats and make it illegal to purchase products made from goods that destroy habitats. We also need to attack those who are hypocritical in their purchases of these products, making it socially unacceptable to buy them, much as we have done with exotic animals.

Rio's Governor Sérgio Cabral on Abortion; PSOL Again Reveals Its False Sense of "Equality"

In today's Globo, there's an article in which Sérgio Cabral comes out in favor of the right to abortion in Brazil. Cabral rightfully points to studies that go back to the 1970s that show the undeniable links between birth rates, poverty, and violence, saying that, while he may not approve personally of abortion, he fully believes that not only should it be a woman's right, but that it would help combat the problems of poverty and violence in Rio specifically and Brazil more generally. He goes beyond what many politicians in Brazli (which is generally still extremely conservative on the abortion issue) are willing to say, proclaiming that the option of choosing an abortion is a woman's right, and as such, there should be public facilities that offer such services.

I can't agree more with Cabral on this. Until abortion is legal in Brazil, the growing inequality, poverty in urban areas, and the violence in those same areas will never decrease. This isn't a matter of "kill the poor and things will get better", an argument some "progressives" here claim it is (funny how they don't raise the same point when police invade favelas and kill dozens of people, traficantes or not). Until women have every means available to them for family planning (state-subsidized birth control is just a small step), the situation won't get better. I highly applaud Cabral for his open stance - Brazil needs to confront this issue, and fast.

Unfortunately, it won't thanks to people like Chico Alencar, one of Rio's representatives in the Câmara dos Deputados in Brazil and a member of the PSOL. He came out and called Cabral's remarks "nazi-fascistic". Taking that "progressive" stance of saying that such comments are just efforts to kill the poor, Alencar refuses to acknowledge the facts that, until all options are available to women (not just efforts to educate them about birth control, which many Catholic authorities here resist and undermine anyways), the problems will not improve. Alencar (and others) can harp all they want about how this is inequal and an example of "elitist" efforts to kill off the poor, but doing so ignores another very central aspect of society, not just in Brazil, but in other countries - making abortion illegal just makes it difficult for the poor to get an abortion. It is common knowledge here that the middle-class and elites have access to private doctors who can, will, and do perform abortions on unwanted pregnancies for them. So this isn't a matter of inequality on Cabral's part - it's a matter of inequality on Alencar's part, for to deny the poor the right to an abortion that many middle-class and elite women already have is just more stubborn insistence to ignore the real problems.

What is worse, Alencar is another example of the PSOL's false concern with equality. I have only grown angrier and angrier with PSOL since last year's presidential debates, when candidate (and PSOL leader) Heloisa Helena campaigned on a platform of social equality, yet was vehemently anti-abortion, effectively rendering any claims of a desire for "equality" useless (after all, what good is social "equality" if you're not even willing to defend women's equal right in decisions concerning pregnancy?). Alencar is further demonstration of how deep this complete failure to consider equality in all its forms (not just social or class, but gender, too) runs in the PSOL. It's one thing to hide behind his "progressive" concern for the poor to mask his anti-abortion stance; calling it "Nazi-fascist" just reveals how irrational, tragically cartoonish, and false the PSOL's (and many others') concerns for equailty are in Brazil. For all the good that a Cabral does by making such statements, you will have at least 10 Alencar's coming out against it with smoke-and-mirror arguments and baseless (and untrue) labeling. As great as it is that Cabral said this today, Brazil still has a very long way to go on this issue.