From Forlorn to Forbearing: Feminism Never Stood a Chance

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

We all remember the scene in When Harry Met Sally, when Meg Ryan shows Billy Crystal how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm, and another patron declares "I'll have what she's having".

It was probably the funniest scene in the movie, but not everyone was laughing.

Two years before the movie's release, in November of 1987, Shere Hite published the last installment of her national survey on sexuality and relationships, Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress, and the reaction from the male population was immediate.

The media, unable to dispute the findings, since they were testimonials from flesh and blood women, instead attacked Hite personally, as a man hating flake.

I doubt many read all 922 pages, representing the views of 4,500 women, so instead thumbed through the summaries, questioning the numbers.

They also accused Hite of only distributing her questionnaires through women's rights groups, but that was not the case. Hite sent her surveys through a wide range of women's groups, including church societies, social clubs, and senior citizens' centers. And while their views were dismissed as "man-bashing diatribes", they sounded more forlorn than vengeful.

So why the uproar?

Says Susan Faludi, in her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women: "the overheated denunciations of Hite's book suggest an emotion closer to fear than fury."

Hite revealed that women were more likely to experience orgasm through masturbation than intercourse, and panic set in. Test-tube babies were already a reality, so the fear for some men would be that they might be deemed to be obsolete.

A ridiculous assumption, but one shared by many just the same. Canadian neoconservative Link Byfield, spoke at a REAL Women of Canada conference, relating his fears"

To populate the nation, society has implemented the ideas set out in Aldous Huxley's book, "Brave New World." For example, we are increasingly playing with providing babies in nurseries without mothers and fathers and families, just as predicted by Mr. Huxley ...

Fortunately, most men don't really feel that way, enjoying more intimacy in an equal partnership, but it helps to reveal some of the fears, neocon males have of "radical feminists".

If women can support themselves, pleasure themselves, have and raise children themselves, where do they fit in? Will they have to audition for a place in society that they were once guaranteed, simply because of their maleness?

The Strange Case of Srully Blotnick

Eventually Shere Hite was forced to leave the United States and become a German citizen, she was so vilified.

And yet another expert on women, who was releasing the results of his survey, was glorified by the media. Srully Blotnick, a columnist for Forbes Magazine.

Blotnick asserted that his twenty-five-year study of 3,466 women proved that achieving career women are likely to end up without love, and their spinsterly misery would eventually undermine their careers as well. "In fact," he wrote, "we found that the anxiety, which steadily grows, is the single greatest underlying cause of firing for women in the age range of thirty-five to fifty-five." He took some swipes at the women's movement, too, which he called a "smoke screen behind which most of those who were afraid of being labeled egomaniacally grasping and ambitious hid."

Dr. Blotnick appeared everywhere and was quoted often. And his testimonials were not deemed to be female-bashing diatribes, but legitimate views of working women.

And Forbes magazine paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce still more studies about these "anxiety-ridden careerists". But there was a problem.

First off, if Blotnick had really been compiling his data for 25 years, using interviews with women, as he claimed; it would have meant that he had began when he was only 17. How many women are going to open up to a 17-year-old boy, about their anxieties over working outside the home, while still being expected to perform 80% of the domestic duties.

Or about their sexuality?

The biggest problem, however, was that Dr. Blotnick was not a doctor at all. His degree had been acquired through a correspondence course, and was not recognized anywhere. When the news broke, Forbes had him remove the "Dr." from his byline, but continued to print his columns.

And the media continued to quote him everywhere.

Why Was Forbes so Interested?

Eventually Forbes magazine did fire Blotnick, after a criminal investigation for practicing psychology in New York, without a license.

But why was a business rag so concerned with women's rights, that they poured so much money into this man's "research"? Keeping him on even after learning that he had lied about his credentials?

To understand the motivation of Forbes magazine is to understand it's editor-in-chief, Steve Forbes, a card carrying member of the Neoconservative movement.

Grandson of the magazine's founder, Forbes used the publication to endorse Ronald Reagan, and when Reagan became president, he brought Forbes into his administration as head of the Board of International Broadcasting.

Steve Forbes took a run at the presidency on his own, but failed. However, he continued to work behind the scenes, in many think tanks and AstroTurf groups, the most famous being the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy

Alykhan Velshi, Jason Kenney's former puppet master, was plucked from there to help put words into Kenney's mouth, and keep the boys in the backroom "election ready". However, now that Harper has a majority, Velshi has left, his work here apparently done.

AEI also helped to draft the "Clash of Civilizations" foreign policy, which according to Lawrence Martin in his book Harperland, is something that Stephen Harper has embraced.

The American Right has been the driving force behind Canada's movement for decades.

In fact, Steve Forbes was key adviser to Christie Todd Whitman's 1993 run for New Jersey governor, transforming her from "plain old Christie Whitman to a Christian Coalition Republican" (CNN Crossfire, January 20, 2000).

He brought on board some Republican heavyweights, including strategist Mike Murphy, who drafted a "common sense" revolution, with the promise of a 30 percent cut in New Jersey's income tax. As a result she beat out the incumbent Governor James Florio.

So successful was the campaign that the Neocons decided to replicate it, transforming plain old Mike Harris into "a *Christian Coalition Republican".

Whitman defeated a popular Democratic incumbent, Jim Florio, primarily on the basis of a Murphy-inspired campaign using a "common sense" slogan and pledging a 30 per cent tax cut. Since her victory, the activities of her government in implementing this plan had been carefully charted by Harris aide Bill King. In March 1994, Harris actually travelled to New Jersey to meet Whitman and discuss strategy. Two months later, the "Common Sense Revolution" with its 30 per cent tax cut was unveiled. (Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2 4, Pg. 166)

The Undeclared War Against American Women, is now the well documented War Against Canadian Women.

And the American neoconservative movement has expanded it's mandate, making Canada Chapter Twenty-two of The Shock Doctrine.

They didn't need a bloody coup to achieve their goals, only a willing partner, and no one was more willing than Stephen Harper.

When is our media going to wake up? The evidence is so overwhelming, that it is hitting them between the eyes, knocking them on the head and kicking them in the groin. Yet they still choose to ignore it, preferring instead to believe that Harper was sprinkled with happy powder and instantly turned into a "Tory".

A miracle only rivalled by those witnessed at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.

Another man behind REAL Women of Canada was the late Ted Byfield. When Harper cancelled the Court Challenges program, Byfield wrote under the headline: Canadian Tories pull rug from feminist-gay revolution (World News Net, September 30, 2006)

Whether the challenges program is gone for good is, of course, still in doubt. It survived its last demise under Mulroney, [Lorne] Gunter recalls, by kicking up such a squawk that even the Tories themselves promised to revive it if returned to office. But the Conservatives of those days were the so-called "Red Tories," a species to which Harper & Co. do not belong.

Moreover, the conservative lobby groups are now considerably better organized. The SOW had barely got started in its mass-mailing campaign against the Harper axe when Gwen Landolt of the conservative REAL Women organization, pounced on them for using government funds to influence government policy. Her swift response was typical. It has been REAL Women, totally self-financed by thousands of members, which more than any other group finally put the boots to these detestable agencies. May they stay dead.

There is no argument that we've "had the boots put to us", but the question is: When are we going to start kicking back?

Footnotes:

*Later brought to Canada by Jason Kenney and company. Kenney would also use his Canadian Taxpayers Federation to endorse Mike Harris.

One-Eyed Shieks and Holy Wars. How we Got it so Wrong

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

U.S. President Obama has come out this week suggesting that gains are being made in Afghanistan, though the progress is fragile.

In other words, they have no idea what they're doing.

U.S. intelligence supports my assessment.

The Americans drew the Soviet Union into invading the country in 1979, giving them their Vietnam, and are now caught in an unwinnable war that has gone on longer than the Soviet occupation, and threatens to continue for several more years.

15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed against about 1,000,000 Afghans, between 1979 and 1988.

And when you look at the rate of casualties in the American led invasion of Afghanistan, as represented by the chart below, we sure aren't fairing much better. And these are just the coalition forces. Thousand more civilians have fallen.


If the Americans wanted to give the Soviets their Vietnam, to weaken their military build up, they are getting it back. And while Stephen Harper has Canada trapped in the Afghan underworld, his answer is that he will now be directing the war himself, from the safety of his office. Rick Hillier calls it "crap!" I agree.

So How Did we Get it so Wrong?

The end of the Second World War brought on the Cold War, and the world's super powers spent enormous amounts of money building up an arsenal of advanced weaponry, in what Hannah Arendt described as an "apocalyptic chess game".

The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict. Hence, warfare—from time immemorial the final merciless arbiter in international disputes—has lost much of its effectiveness and nearly all its glamour. (1)

It was a spy war as they all kept a close watch on each other, no one really wanting to use their weapons in what would have been a "universal suicide".

But this created another problem, because as the super powers became both omnipotent and impotent, smaller nations were left virtually unrestricted in the game of one-upmanship.

... in conventional warfare the poor countries are much less vulnerable than the great powers precisely because they are "underdeveloped," and because technical superiority can "be much more of a liability than an asset" in guerrilla wars. What all these uncomfortable novelties add up to is a complete reversal in the relationship between power and violence, foreshadowing another reversal in the future relationship between small and great powers. (1)

So the threats did not necessarily come from countries with nuclear capabilities, but from small groups "able to upset the strategic balance", by launching attacks that cost them very little.

And this bears an ominous similarity to one of political science's oldest insights, namely that power cannot be measured in terms of wealth, that an abundance of wealth may erode power, that riches are particularly dangerous to the power and well-being of republics. (1)

And since many of these new "armies" were stateless, who could the super powers wage war against? The CIA kept track of known terrorist cells, and did their best to keep them contained, but it was still presenting a huge problem for the military-industrial complex.

They had enormous weaponry but few targets, that allowed their use on any large scale.

Enter the Neoconservatives and Their "War on Terror"

In his 'Battlefields of the 1980s', General Andre Beaufre points out, that only "in those parts of the world not covered by nuclear deterrence" is war still possible, so the challenge for the Neoconservatives was to wage war in areas unrestrained by "nuclear deterrence".

But how to get Americans on board. They had already interfered in the affairs of the oil rich Middle East, but needed something bigger.

An enemy. A face. And fear.

Then 9/11 provided the perfect trifecta, though it was only the catalyst. The planning for this had been taking place for several years beforehand, when Bernard Lewis adapted Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, into a blueprint for war.

And through clever messaging, the American Neocons were able to sell the notion of an enormous Jihad. One launched by "savages" who had to be destroyed or their entire country would be demolished.

They "didn't start it", but they were sure going to finish it. Eyes lit up, keyboards clicked away and the landscape was awash in yellow ribbons. Meanwhile, the Bush administration used homey rhetoric to reach the masses, knowing that few intellects would find their theory of a massive Jihad against America logical.

Not that terrorism isn't real, but there are other ways of keeping it contained, without the senseless slaughter of so many.

The Blind Leading the Blind

Though Osama Bin Ladin went to his grave in 2001, denying any involvement in 9/11, he became the face of the war. Every now and then an actor would come out and make another tape, to keep fear at just the right level. It didn't make Bin Laden any less dead, but who was going to question?

However, even before Bin Laden became a household name, the Jihad against America had a leader. Omar Abdel Rahman, also called the "One-Eyed Sheik". He was apparently behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, which at the time, was not considered the work of a mastermind.

However, it did prove to be an embarrassment for the CIA and others, especially when the person who allegedly planted the bomb, returned to the rental agency requesting a refund because the van he rented blew up. (2) I know there's a lot more to that story, but suffice it to say they were not that organized.

But that didn't stop the Bush Administration from linking this incident to their notion of a massive Jihad.

In neoconservative Andrew C. McCarthy's book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, we see just how they created a powerful enemy from several smaller "underdeveloped" ones, by using myths and creative language. And yes I do on occasion read books by neocons. It's the only way I can get inside Stephen Harper's head. (have you seen the movie Jacob's Ladder? It kinda' looks like that in there. I scream a lot)

He starts out complaining that the government's main focus after the 1993 incident, was handling the fall out. Aghast, he questions why, after "the most brazen attack against the American homeland since Pearl Harbour had taken place". (3) Really? Since Pearl Harbour?

He then fancifies Rahman, who was indeed a horrible man, and currently in prison with no chance of ever being released. But to equate him those who planned the attack on Pearl Harbour, is a bit of a stretch.

But then McCarthy reminds his readers of the seriousness of the situation. Intelligence and containment wasn't enough. This was "war".

In terms of actual national commitment, such wars translate into a somewhat higher priority than the dogged pursuit of tax cheats and corporate fraudsters. To be sure, jihad differs from Wars on Drugs, Poverty, Disease. Incivility, Intolerance, Greenhouse Gases, or whatever the next Flavor of the Month may be. Jihad, after all, actually does involve warfare: real bombs, real victims, and real death. But the distinction is lost when the side that declares only rhetorical war is exclusively on the receiving end of the blows ... (3)

America was the "victim". They had been taking all the blows, and never fought back. So forget all the other nonsense. Pardon the corporate fraudsters (as George Bush did). Forget about poverty, disease and Global Warming (as George Bush did). Heck you could even forget being civil to each other.

Every waking moment and every red cent had to be put into fighting this Jihad. (as George Bush did)

And where did it get them? Iraq is in a mess and Afghanistan has been taken over by the criminal element. They are still chasing ghosts, while all but ignoring domestic problems, that are spiralling out of control.

And to top it off, the Jihadists are more powerful than ever, because the invasion has only increased the recruitment.

Again, Neoconservatism is the god that failed and we need to rethink this war.

Sources:

1. On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, Harvest Books, 1970, ISBN: 978-0-15-669500-8, Pg. 3

2. He wanted his money back: Insistence on a Refund for a Van Led to the Arrest of Blast Suspect, by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, March 5, 1993.

3. Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, By Andrew C. McCarthy, Encounter Books, 2008, ISBN: 13-978-1-59403-213-4, Pg. 5

The Haiti Crisis Revisited: It Was All a "Commie" Plot

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

By now many, if not most, Canadians realize that Stephen Harper's quick response to the Haiti crisis was to change the channel, after taking a beating in the polls over his second self-serving prorogation.

And by now many, if not most, Canadians realize that Stephen Harper's visit to Haiti was for photo-ops.

If you had just one word to describe our prime minister, it would not be humanitarian, so the above assumptions are certainly justified.

However, there was something else going on here that seems to have been missed by Canada's mainstream media, even as several are revisiting our so-called aid, which appears to have been almost non-existent* (only 1.5% came from us)

This was a military operation. The ships Harper bragged about arrived empty and the military personnel, were there primarily to secure the airports and clear the way for the arrival of military jets. And they turned away Doctors Without Borders and planes loaded with medical supplies, so they could instead land troops**.

There were military trucks everywhere, with troops carrying machine guns... Stopping at the US Embassy we spoke with the marines... One said "...I thought I would be helping people but all I am doing is standing around in the heat with a gun...." And that's what they were doing. Everywhere. In trucks, hummers, on the streets, standing around in flak jackets with guns. Or sitting in the trucks with guns. While...Haitians were digging themselves out.... Everywhere we drove we saw Italian, French, Canadian, and US military...holding up the traffic, causing more congestion than was necessary, and not completely participating in relief efforts. ..." (1)

So why the need for so many troops? In part: Cuba.

The "Commie" Plot

Stephen Harper was the first world leader to visit Haiti after the earthquake. There was some belief that he rushed his travel plans, wanting to get ahead of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who arrived days later.

But Harper's presence there, standing in front of our military hardware and with our troops, was to deliver a different message. He was on top of it.

Because before the Canadian or U.S. governments could respond, the Cubans were already taking charge.

... for the first 72 hours following the earthquake, Cuban doctors were in fact the main medical support for the country. Within the first 24 hours, they had completed 1,000 emergency surgeries, turned their living quarters into clinics, and were running the only medical centers in the country, including 5 comprehensive diagnostic centers (small hospitals) which they had previously built. In addition another 5 in various stages of construction were also used, and they turned their ophthalmology center into a field hospital-which treated 605 patients within the first 12 hours following the earthquake. (2)

The Cubans had actually been there since 1998, after Hurricane Georges ravished the island:

Cuba adopted a two-pronged public health approach to help Haiti. First, it agreed to maintain hundreds of doctors in the country for as long as necessary, working wherever they were posted by the Haitian government. This was particularly significant as Haiti's health care system was easily the worst in the Americas, with life expectancy of only 54 years in 1990 and one out of every 5 adult deaths due to AIDS, while 12.1% of children died from preventable intestinal infectious diseases.

In addition Cuba agreed to train Haitian doctors in Cuba, providing that they would later return and take the places of the Cuban doctors (a process of "brain gain" rather than "brain drain"). Significantly, the students were selected from non-traditional backgrounds, and were mainly poor. It was thought that, because of their socio-economic background, they fully understood their country's need for medical personnel, and would return to work where they were needed. The first cohort of students began studying in May, 1999 at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). (2)

No one was overly concerned. But now amidst the worst natural disaster in modern history, exacerbated by extreme poverty, the West may have been a little worried about Cuban [communist] influence.

While North American media might have ignored Cuba's role, Haiti has not. A pointed remark was made by Haitian President Mr. René Préval, who noted,
"you did not wait for an earthquake to help us". Similarly, Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has also repeatedly noted that the first three countries to help were Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. (2)

This story on it's own would not be newsworthy, except as a human interest story. But there are several other factors that make me question Stephen Harper's motives.

First comes from the Democracy Digest in December of 2009, revealing that Canada was going into the "democracy" business: The D-word out of favor? Don’t tell the Canadians. Seems that American warmongers are finding the coup business not as profitable as it once was, so the Harper government has expropriated 70 million dollars to take it over.

The second comes from Lawrence Martin's new book, Harperland. Martin reveals that Stephen Harper is not a fan of Peacekeeping, believing that Canada should become a "hard power". He also states that our prime minister sees the world not as a global community but as a "clash of civilizations". Something he's never shared with Canadians.

The third is Harper's anti-communist grounding, part of that "clash of civilizations". The Religious Right believe that the Antichrist will only appear after the world has ridden itself of communists. And his corporate base of course sees the profit in supplying military hardware, and also fear that communism will put an end to their greed.

But the most compelling reason, I believe, for the enormous military operation, was to protect something they would find more valuable than religion or war profiteering.

OIL!

The Jan. 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies including the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, he said yesterday in a telephone interview. (3)

He speculated that these enormous oil reserves could help Haiti get out of poverty. But will they be used for that?

According to Marguerite Laurent:

I wrote Part 1 of Oil in Haiti as the economic reasons for the US/UN occupation back in October, 2009. After the earthquake, I questioned whether oil drilling could have triggered the earthquake: Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake? ... After being called crazy and un-American for writing that the 2010 earthquake gives the US the perfect disaster-capitalism opportunity to come out from behind the UN and openly occupy Haiti to secure Haiti's oil ... , strategic location and other riches for the corporatocracy... a veteran oil company man comes forward in Business Week to say, and one wonders how he can so authoritatively speculate about the area of the faultline without intimate knowledge of the drillings, explorations .. Haiti lies in an area that has undiscovered amounts of oil, it must have oil and the earthquake "may have left clues" to petroleum reservoirs! Oil that, uhmmm, "could aid economic recovery in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. (4)

Of course the veteran oil company man was Stephen Pierce and as Laurent reminds us, what he really meant to say was "that could aid Haiti's US-occupied economy recover its strategic oil reserves" for the global elite.

So while Haiti looked like just another photo-op for the big guy, it was more than that. He had planted the flag of Exxon, conquering the region for the global elite and kicking a little "commie" butt for the morally self-righteous.

And what will this mean for the people of Haiti who are still living in tents under horrendous conditions, ten months after the expenditure of millions of dollars, while sitting on all that oil?

I expect they will be colonized and subjugated, and if the Haitian government doesn't see it our way .. can you say "coup"? He'll just have to claim that Cuba was planning an invasion and we needed to protect them.

And the media will applaud.

Footnotes:

*By this I mean only government aid. Canadians were more than generous in their contributions to relief organizations.

**During our stay of only seven weeks, our medical team did amazing work and the United States provided a much needed hospital ship.

Sources:

1. "Our Hands and Help For Haiti", By Elaine Brower, Op Ed News, February 24, 2010

2. One of the World's Best Kept Secrets: Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti, by Emily J. Kirk and John M. Kirk, Global Research, October 29, 2010

3. Haiti Earthquake May Have Exposed Gas, Aiding Economy, By Jim Polson, Bloomberg, January 26, 2010

4. Oil in Haiti: Reasons for the US Occupation Part II, by Marguerite Laurent, Global Research