International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

It's a mouthful, but it's also important.

Millions of women around the world make their living through sex work. Some do it by choice, some do it because they have no choice, and some are forced into it.

In any case, supporting laws that allow more harm to come to women whether they be trafficked or willing participants, does no good. A policy of harm reduction, outlined by Renegade Evolution at Feministe a while back, is a far better way to make sure that women are safe and supported.

I want for sex workers what I want for every woman and man on the planet--safe working conditions, fair wages, and the ability to choose what kind of work they will do to support themselves and their family. I don't believe that sex work is fundamentally dirty, wrong, or exploitative, but that just like working at Wal-Mart or a meatpacking plant or waiting tables, it damn well can be.

Whatever your stance, though, on sex work, I hope we can all agree that allowing violence against sex workers to continue, that a sentence of one day for murdering a "hooker" (yes, that's from an actual headline) and allowing the rape of sex workers to be written off as "theft of services" has to end.

Check Bound, Not Gagged for much more today. And thanks to Amber Rhea for reminding me to write about this.

Historical Image of the Day

Recipe for pickle to cure beef or ham, 1820s.

I like how someone wrote "not good" at the bottom.

Blagojevich

Hey kids. Sorry I haven't been around so much--it's been finals week, and between writing papers about Sarah Palin and about arresting journalists at the RNC, and studying for my Law final (which is today) I've been tied up for a while.

I did manage to squeeze out a piece for GlobalComment on Blagojevich. Because he's hilarious, and it gave me an excuse to talk about Rahm Emanuel more.

“There were too many investigations and allegations to not believe that his time in office was not going to end badly,” Joe Wolfe, Chicago resident, said of Blagojevich. “I think I speak for most Chicago and Illinois residents who have followed the governor’s story when I say that I wasn’t so much shocked at the arrest as I was STUNNED by the charges.”

Wolfe, who twice voted for the Democratic governor, continued. “No one expected that the laundry list of charges brought against him December 9, 2008 were for actions committed just since Obama was elected president! The nature of Blagojevich’s alleged crimes border on pathological.”

...Rumor even had it that Rahm Emanuel was the one who tipped off the United States attorney to Blagojevich’s blatant scam, but a source close to Rahm has denied it. Perhaps he just sent a dead fish instead.

In addition to trying to auction off a Senate seat, Blagojevich is also accused of pressuring Chicago Tribune management to fire writers critical of him, and using the Tribune’s bankruptcy and a deal with the sale of the Chicago Cubs, owned by Tribune Co., as leverage.

And if all this wasn’t enough for you, December 9 was also International Anti-Corruption Day. And December 10 was Blagojevich’s birthday.

Read it.

Wish me (and Karthika!) luck on my final. I'll be back in action soon, I promise.

Also, everyone congratulate Karthika--she's about to be finished with yet another degree.

iTunes

Is it just me, or does iTunes kind of suck? Every other album I want to buy isn't in the system. I do have reasonably obscure musical tastes, but not so obscure that iTunes shouldn't have most of what I want. All these albums I can't get there are available on Amazon. Why can't I get Ray Price's Nightlife? Or Al Stewart's Between the Wars? Or the new Gibson Brothers album, Iron and Diamonds? Or the third disc of The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs separately since I already have the first two discs? But it only lets you buy it as a set. Bah.

I still buy about 1/2 of my albums on CD, in part because I like liner notes, in part because I like the physical nature of CDs, and in part because when I take CDs into my office, I have trouble remembering what I have burned from the computer and put in alphabetical order, so the albums purchased on iTunes don't get listened to as often.

I guess iTunes and other systems are the future. OK, but they had better get a more complete catalog. We don't all like to listen to Beyonce, or whatever she is calling herself today.

Legacies

Wow, I'm really thrilled to see Caroline Kennedy as the frontrunner for the New York senate seat. I mean, her complete lack of qualifications and experience really makes me feel good about our political system. Wish I had a name like Kennedy (or Bush) so that I could avoid actually having to work in order to be appointed to first-rate posts.

Call me bitter or jealous or whatever of not having advantages growing up (well, except being a white guy which is a freaking huge advantage), or of having gone to relatively pedestrian schools, but this is outrageous. Shouldn't people be rewarded who have dedicated their lives to progressive politics (or conservative politics for that matter) rather than giving a senate seat to someone who has never played any active role in politics before 2008 but who has a big name? She doesn't even want to campaign for it. It's not as if New York doesn't have a dozen great candidates for the position who have actually earned it, starting with Nydia Velazquez, who withdrew from contention today, presumably because she knows it's probably going to Kennedy.

Go democracy!

From Colony to Superpower, Part VI

This is the sixth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week's discussion covers the Civil War and Reconstruction, or 1861-1877 to be precise. According to Herring, there are two major themes in U.S. foreign policy during these years: diplomacy concerning the Civil War and the continued expansionist ideology of the Americans.

Herring argues that the Civil War was part of the nation-building conflicts around the world during the mid-19th century. It's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure that I agree exactly. Had the North actively tried to limit slavery during the 1840s and 1850s, I think this would be a stronger argument. But the South wasn't responding to increasingly northern pressure on their peculiar institution. Rather, the North caved on nearly every issue in the 1850s and yet the South still wasn't satisfied.

However, the result of the Civil War was a much stronger and more centralized United States. Increased control over the west, a more centralized currency system, and a much greater industrial capacity all resulted from the war, and the United States certainly left the war much stronger than it began it. The late nineteenth century is a story of amazing growth in the nation. While this is a story mostly for next week's discussion of the Gilded Age, there's no question that the Civil War spurred this amazing period.

What I really like about this chapter is the combination of knowledge I did not previously had with the correction of myths that are pass for almost common knowledge among a lot smart people. Like many others, I always thought that the Emancipation Proclamation basically ended any chance the Confederates had of British recognition, but Herring says that Europeans saw it as an act of desperation on Lincoln's part and that it actually spurred more calls for European intervention. Additionally, Herring stresses that while the British did need American cotton, they also had equal or greater investments in the Union and that they were loathe to risk those by recognizing the Confederacy.

Like Rob, Herring also dismisses many of the Confederate diplomatic efforts. The more I read about Jefferson Davis, the more I am convinced that he was a deeply ineffectual leader who made extremely poor appointments. His secretaries of state and diplomats were no different. His representative to Mexico alienated that nation immediately, while James Mason and John Slidell did far more good for the Confederacy becoming U.S. prisoners in the Trent affair than they ever did in their official diplomatic responsibilities. The fact that they were defending slavery, an increasingly loathed institution in Europe, certainly did not help their cause. Nonetheless, the Confederacy badly misunderstood their own position in the world when they assumed that Europe could not survive without Southern cotton. While Davis's cotton embargo did cause some hardship, the Europeans were very uncomfortable risking Northern wheat, not to mention their own investments in railroads, canals, and other pieces of American infrastructure. On top of all of this, the North had incredibly skilled diplomats such as Cassius Clay and Charles Francis Adams, who basically ran circles around their Confederate counterparts.

That the Confederacy would have little understanding of reality hardly surprises me. The slaveholders seem to have worn glasses that only allowed them to see the world as they wanted it to be, as opposed to how it actually was. That doesn't mean the Confederacy couldn't have won the war, but they faced significant disadvantages from the beginning and needed everything to go right.

Herring also usefully points out that 19th century American expansionism was a continuity, not the two distinct periods of Manifest Destiny and the Spanish-American War. Rather, Americans wanted to expand their power and territory through the mid 19th century as well, but were generally stopped by domestic politics and the Civil War from doing so. Nonetheless, during Reconstruction, William Seward, who Herring lauds as one of the nation's most effective Secretaries of State, managed to buy Alaska from the Russians. In addition, Hawaii and Samoa increasingly came into the American orbit. Nonetheless, the period saw more failures for American expansion than successes. Colombia consistently refused to allow the U.S. to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, the Dominican Republic resisted American ownership of a port, and instability in Cuba combined with American racism stopped us from trying to annex that long-desired island. Still, American attitudes toward power remained relatively consistent throughout the 19th century and our ambitions for new territory would find greater satisfaction at the turn of the 20th century.

Ken Salazar?

Color me unimpressed with Obama picking Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary. Salazar is a pretty conservative Democrat and I have trouble seeing him really taking on the oil and gas lobby or being as aggressive as environmentalists hoped the Interior Secretary would be in overturning the Bush legacy.

For me, this is one of the two cabinet level positions I am looking at to get a sense of how progressive Obama is really going to be. Along with Labor, Interior is a vitally important post that doesn't quite get the scrutiny of the top level positions. I can deal with Bob Gates at Defense, but I was hoping he would show more progressive leanings with these positions.

I was really hoping for either Raul Grijalva of Arizona or John Kitzhaber of Oregon in the post. Grijalva would have filled the need for more Latinos in top level positions, brought a really progressive agenda to the position, and have gained significant public recognition, at least in comparison to the House seat he holds now. Kitzhaber, the former governor of Oregon, is a lover of the outdoors, has significant and very successful executive experience, and is much beloved in his home state.

Meanwhile, Salazar is probably the worst western Democratic Senator (though Max Baucus might have something to say about that). At least Colorado has a Democratic governor, so Salazar's position will stay in the party. His brother John is a likely replacement, though he isn't much better than his brother. That's fine for a senator from a relatively conservative state, but for the most important cabinet position on environmental issues, it's not so great.

In Which Even Mr. Trend's Extremely Limited Sensibilities Are Offended

I have an almost universal sense of humor, and I often find things that appal others rather funny. My sense of the appropriate is more than a bit askew (you simply have to ask those who know me well to confirm this). This is something that I'm neither proud of nor ashamed of - it's just how I am. There are just very few things designed with the intent of humor - whether they're actually funny or not - that I find offensive. In short, it's really hard to find comedy that I think has crossed a line.

However, I'm siding with Gov. David Paterson on this SNL skit crossing the line. The most obvious complaint here, I think, is the "blind jokes." In part, it's offensive for the same reason that making fun of people with Down's Syndrome is offensive, or making fun of people for their skin color is offensive - it's mocking people for something that's beyond their control (save for making fun of the bizarrely orange - they do that to themselves). Blind jokes about Paterson definitely fall under that category - people with disabilities and special needs have enough problems in trying to get equal and fair treatment in society, and this kind of stunt just helps society not see that and fall on easy stereotypes of incompetence and inequality. And the worst part is, from a strict sense of humor bit, the blind jokes in this sketch aren't even that funny. If they were at least intelligently crafted jokes, I would maybe concede that point, but the "blind guy/girl who is messing everything up because he/she can't see" is one of the easiest jokes in the world, and well below the talents of professional comedians.

To be clear, I don't think that Paterson is in any way off limit in the joke-making industry, and I actually thought the joke about living a Richard Pryor movie was excellent (even if Armisen embellished the amount of cocaine Paterson has done - "massive amounts of blow" is a funny phrase). But the blind jokes were simultaneously offensive and lazy. Political satire can and should be better performed, instead of falling back on physical challenges as a crutch, and if you can't make your satire be funny without that crutch (and Armisen can be and was funny without the blind jokes), then you shouldn't be in the comedy business.

Historical Image of the Day

Phyllis Schlafly protesting against the Equal Rights Amendment. Late 1970s.

Most. Disgusting. Museum. EVER.

Next time in Chile, make sure to stop by the Pinochet Foundation Museum!

Family and friends of former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet quietly inaugurated a museum in his memory on Friday, replete with uniforms and medals he wore, to the horror of victims of his rule.
Among items displayed at the new Pinochet Foundation museum in an upscale quarter of the capital, Santiago, are the last uniform he used as commander in chief of the Chilean Army along with dozens of his medals.
"I am happy because this is a way of doing some justice to what he represented and what he did," said Lucia Hiriart, his widow, flanked by family and some former ministers and retired military. The event was low-key. [I wonder why - Mr. Trend.]

I can't even begin to describe what could be done to bring some justice on Pinochet and his family - it's too inappropriate, even for this blog. Justice can and never will be done to what he did, and the fact that his family is trying to create a museum to show he was a "hero" is stomach-churning. I certainly didn't expect Pinochet's survivors to have any shame, but this is truly diving to new lows. What a truly despicable, contemptible family.

Rio's Mayor Cesar Maia - A Not-So-Fond Farewell

If you want a true measure of how little good a local politician has done, just take a look at Rio de Janeiro's outgoing mayor, Cesar Maia. Maia was a former member of the Leninist Brazilian Communist Party and was actually exiled during the dictatorship, but has gradually shifted to the furthest right-wing political party in Brazil (the Partido Frente Liberal, Liberal Front Party).

In his first term (when he was still a member of the centrist Partido Movimento Democratico Brasileiro), he actually accomplished a couple of major social improvements, most notably the completion of Rio's Linha Amarela (a highway connecting the Northern zone of Tijuca with the southern Zone of Barra) and the launch of the Favela-Bairro Project, which tried to integrate the outlying favelas into the city via infrastructural improvements.

However, something happened inbetween his first term (1993-1996) and his second and third terms (2001-2004 and 2005-2009 - between his first and second, he was not allowed to run for reelection). Since 2001, Maia has been the worst kind of Carioca politician, one who appeals to the basest classism of the middle-class and wealthy elites of the Zona Sul (who elected him in 1992, as well as his hand-picked successor in 1997, before returning Maia to office in 2001 and 2005). He has done absolutely nothing for social improvement. As police continue indiscriminately killing people in the favelas, Maia has virtually disappeared from the scene of governance, allowing them to do so while leaving governors (now Sergio Cabral) and Lula to deal with the issue. Infrastructurally, he has let the entire city rot, with the roads getting worse and worse throughout the city and being slow to react to problems with major tunnels that connect the city (it is, after all, built around 3000-foot tall mountains, an impressive thing considering it's a coastal city). He has even offered a solution to the street dogs that one finds sometimes in the city (and which cause nobody any harm) - two years ago, he offered to round them all up and kill them, eliciting protests from animal-lovers and the homeless (many of whom see the dogs as pets). As he leaves office, he leaves exactly one public transportation project in progress (the creation of Ipanema's first subway stop). In short, Maia has done nothing but espouse the hateful, classist, racist vitriol of his supporters from the furthest right in the political system in Brazil to get re-elected twice (2001 and 2005).

So how bad was he? Bad enough that, playing off president Juscelino Kubitschek's "50 years in 5" program in the 1950s, historians are calling Maia's administration, "4 years in 12." Now that's an excellent bit of political snark, made better by the unfortunate fact that, in the best analysis of Maia's time as mayor, it's true.

*(And as a quick postlude, I could tear into Globo for siding with the historians in its headline of "4 years in 12," given that Globo was the main organ that helped Maia win through its coverage, and that O Globo shares his contempt for the poor and "dark-skinned," but this isn't the first time that O Globo has bitten the back of the groups and individuals whose actions it supports and whose ideologies it shares, and it won't be the last time this happens. Globo is a hypocritical beast that acts pious at all times while trying to make the most money while pushing a repugnant right-wing ideology. But that's not news...)

Gee, You're In an Unfortunately Ironic Position to be Using Illegal Immigrant Labor, Mr. Chertoff

It's pretty embarrassing when one of the top governmental positions in the fight against illegal immigration is caught employing illegal immigrants. (Of course, Chertoff blames the company, and the company blames the workers, while the workers have nobody to blame but get to fear for their livelihoods and families now.)

No doubt Chertoff will definitely face firing - after all, hiring illegal immigrants brings down potential cabinet members (even if the hiring wasn't illegal at the time), so it must bring down current members too, right?

Are We Ready?

Despite the fact that I hate Oklahoma for their whining about losing to Oregon a couple of years ago, I should congratulate the quite awesome Sam Bradford on winning the Heisman Trophy.

And although we have elected a black man president, is this nation ready for a Native American Heisman Trophy winner? I guess we'll find out.

Ron Carey, RIP

It's been a crazy news week. There's so much I want to talk about. But in the limited time I have right now, I want to mention the death of former Teamsters president Ron Carey.

Carey was the reformer who threatened to bring the Teamsters into the progressive movement during the 1990s. The head of the union from 1992 to 1998, Carey was a sharp contrast to the staid, corrupt Hoffa years, Carey centered organizing and supporting progressive causes in his program to reform America's most corrupt union. During my labor organizing days of the late 90s, I knew a Teamster who was a big Carey supporter. If this was the kind of person who a revived Teamsters was going to push forward, Carey was a great man.

Sadly, Carey was done in by corruption charges of his own. These were somewhat hazy charges, but people in power loathed Carey because of his reforms, including the Hoffa wing of the union. He was kicked out of office, and out of the union for that matter, not for doing anything wrong or being corrupt, but for not detecting a campaign finance scheme. His replacement--Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., a figurehead hoisted by the old corrupt elements of the Teamsters, who remains in power today.

Meanwhile, unions become less relevant to American political life every day.

More on the Protests over Human Rights Abuses in Rio de Janeiro

Just as a follow-up to my post below, there is a follow-up in which protesters lined Copacabana beach with 16,000 coconuts, representing the number of murders in Rio favelas over the last 2 years. While I questioned the number of 9,000 "disappeared," it was more because of how that term was being used, and I don't doubt the number of murders in the slightest (again, when you commonly have headlines like "Police kill 19 traficantes," the number of deaths is going to be really high). And for an alternate photo of the impressive display (and the story in Portuguese), see here.

Worst TV Movie Edit Ever?

This is hands down the weirdest turn-of-phrase for a TV edit that I've ever seen. Consider this an open thread for other "why did they use THAT phrase?" moments for TV (or airplane) versions of movies.

From Colony to Superpower: Followup

It's been a slow blogging week with grading finals and all. So just a couple of quick points on Rob's review this week of the relevant From Colony to Superpower chapter on the 1837-61 period.

Rob speculates:

I'm actually inclined to think that British resistance on the Oregon question would resulted in the theft of more of Mexico by a frustrated US

Interesting, but I'm not sure I agree. There wasn't much stopping the U.S. from taking more of Mexico. We didn't take less because we were satiated. Rather, it was because we didn't want to incorporate too many brown people into the nation. Since Americans basically saw race as a black-white dualism (except for Indians who simply were in the way for most Americans), we didn't know where Mexicans fit. Clearly almost all Americans saw them as inferior. But could they be enslaved? No. Could they be equal members of American society? No. New Mexico was bad enough. New Mexico had a large enough population in 1848 to become a state, but it took until 1912. Zachary Taylor was interested in admitting New Mexico as a free state, but that died at the hands of the slaveholders. However, slavery was only part of the problem. Why didn't it become a state in 1865? Because there was a widespread belief that New Mexicans were not prepared to be Americans.

One of the great ironies of American expansionism is that we took over half of Mexico in part because of racism, but we didn't take over the other half because of the same racism.

Rob is also certainly correct about the importance of slavery for understanding the Mexican War. It was a mostly regionally supported war with significant northern opposition. It is more complicated than that, as Rob notes, but there's no question that it is almost impossible to interpret the Mexican War outside of the slavery context.

I have a lot of doubts about the long-term viability of an independent Texas. Texas was barely able to hold off Mexican reconquest. In 1842, Mexican forces briefly retook San Antonio for instance. Even if they had maintained independence after 1845, and I think even if the British had recognized Texas as an independent state, it would have aligned closely with the Confederacy in 1861 (assuming still that the Civil War would have happened at that time), and I think probably had merged with it. Then in 1865, it would have been officially annexed by the United States.

Historical Image of the Day

Apache prisoners at rest stop beside Southern Pacific Railroad, near Nueces River, Texas, 1886. Geronimo is one of the men on the right.

Ecuador Defaults on Its Loans - What Does It Mean for South America?

Back in October, I began wondering if relations between Ecuador and Brazil were not starting to head south. Dissatisfied with the work that Odebrecht, one of the largest construction firms in Brazil, had performed on dams in Ecuador, Correa expelled the company and siezed control of the dams in question. This was a particularly inflammatory action because Lula's government, ever trusting on the power of negotiations, had made strong efforts to work out a settlement between Odebrecht and Ecuador, and Ecuador, which gave hints that it may be willing to settle, rather quickly reversed course. In response, Brazil suspended a trade mission to Ecuador, and the sale of 24 Super Tucano jets (from Brazil) was frozen. Relations on both sides were harmed, as Brazil and Ecuador both had financial and infrastructural benefits they could have co-benefited from before things got tense.

Well, if things were tense before, they will get ugly now, as Ecuador has defaulted on its loans. As Boz pointed out, when Ecuador was trying to get support in the region for its default, Brazil was less than welcome to working with Ecuador on the issue, in part because of Correa's somewhat abrasive attitude towards Brazil back in September and October. The default only worsens things, as Odebrecht was not the only matter at issue back in October; Brazil's development bank (the BNDES) had invested $243 million in aid to help Ecuador, and the expulsion of Odebrecht and the default put that money at risk for Brazil. Brazil has already announced that it will no longer lend money to Ecuador, given its history of defaulting (in addition to this year, Ecuador also defaulted on loans in 1999, as well as in the 1980s.

Nor is Brazil the only one at risk here. By defaulting, Venezuela, one of Correa's creditors, is now going to probably have to swallow at least $400 million in bonds, at a time when the economy in Venezuela is already threatened by the low price of oil right now.

Right now, it's still pretty difficult to really come down on one side or another in this issue. I certainly don't think Ecuador "defaults out of spite." The default on loans is something Correa has been threatening since he ran for president in 2006. What is more, he's not some economic idiot or an uninformed ideologue - he has a PhD in international economics. That said, I think his move has a very real chance of seriously harming Ecuador's relations with its neighbors. Defaulting on IMF and World Bank loans that impose neoliberal economics is one thing; defaulting to friendly nations like Brazil and Venezuela, who can relate to the experience of onerous debts and who are providing a far more friendly, regional alternative to the IMF and World Bank is a very different matter. And Ecuador certainly isn't defaulting due to a lack of funds - it apparently has $5.65 billion in cash reserves right now, so this isn't a case of "we simply can't afford it." It definitely seems, as Ishmael put it, that "this is an ideological dispute more than a strictly economic one (in as much as you can separate the two)." And I'm not totally unsympathetic to Correa's desire to wipe the slate clean from debts established by previous administrations, and try to lead economic reform from within.

At the same time, Brazil and Venezuela certainly aren't "predatory creditors." Those two countries have been at the forefront in helping South America as a whole become a stronger economic bloc, breaking some of its economic dependence on trade deals and loans with the U.S. and Europe and strengthening the region's own economic power in the global economy (as well as helping to improve infrastructure and social programs). However, as two growing regional and, in the case of Brazil, global economic powers, they are experiencing one of the downsides that comes with a global economic presence: not all investments pay off in the end. This may not be the first time Brazil has had a debtor default in loans to Brazil, but I certainly can't think of a previous instance, and certainly not one with this magnitude both economically and geopolitically.

I think overall, everybody is losing in this. Correa's choice may be right for his country financially, but his general abrasiveness is really alienating and is putting Ecuador more and more in a corner by itself. What is more, Ecuador simply does not have all of the capabilities to establish major infrastructural development and independence on its own right now, and relies on its neighbors for basic construction and military needs (as the Odebrecht case and its fallout demonstrated), so the temporary economic benefits it may gain from defaulting are still mixed. And Brazil and Venezuela certainly are losing out: after trying to help a neighbor with a similar political ideology (i.e., more "left" than "right"), they are left swallowing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, just as the global economy gets weaker. They really have no incentive to help out Ecuador in the future, and I wouldn't blame them for refusing to do so. I wouldn't say that Ecuador's regional relations are irreparably damaged, but given this default and (in the case of Brazil) previous contentions with its neighbors, Ecuador is looking pretty isolated right now.

The Ongoing Case of Human Rights Violations and "Disappearances" in Brazil

While I'd like to see some more research that can back up the claim that 9000 people have been "disappeared" in Rio over the last 24 months, there can be no doubt that the police commit dozens of gruesome murders every month (and probably every week) in the favelas. There is no question that Brazilian police's continuous war against and murding of poor and marginalized in Rio is nothing short of a major human rights disaster, and one that gets ignored far too much both inside and outside of Brazil.